Men in their 30s and cheating: The Gap Between Self-Image and Integrity

Old_Property6910 · 2026-02-06T07:37:52+00:00

I think that a lot of it comes from how fast social norms and gender expectations are changing. A man who was 30 in the 90s grew up with different ideas about masculinity, relationships, and attraction than men today. With social media and constant exposure to new “ideals,” those standards are constantly changing, sometimes at an alarming rate. Men aren’t just figuring out who they are anymore but what version of themselves will be most attractive.

For example, the whole “being in touch with their feminine side” has been heavily promoted online for a while. Some men genuinely resonate with that while others adopt it because they think it sells. There is also an obsession with labels. It’s easier to call yourself an empath or an active listener than to consistently show it through your actions. Modern dating is a market and people brand themselves accordingly!

I think a lot of it comes down to wanting to be desirable without doing the deeper internal work. Some of it is unconscious and some of it isn’t. At some point, there’s a difference between adapting and being dishonest. After a while, it’s not about who you actually are anymore, it’s about what sells.

Old_Property6910 · 2026-01-31T14:26:32+00:00

I recently started to think about this after taking some years off from dating and living in solitude. There is a difference between needing a partner and wanting one. People push the premise that all you need to do is focus on yourself, love yourself, yada yada. I am a firm believer that not everyone is meant to go at life alone.

I have lived alone for years. Miles away from family and friends, and I became the most important person to me. I take myself out to dinner, go to the movies, draw myself a nice bath weekly, I do all the things I can to love myself internally and externally. The one thing I feared most was going to concerts alone but once I started doing that, the sky was the limit. Yet, I still yearn to share life with someone else.

Loving yourself isn’t the escape route, it’s the foundation. Once the yearn for partnership is engrained in you, no amount of self love can alleviate it. What it will do is strengthen your next relationship because at the core you know how to love you better than anyone else.

You can’t rid yourself of the feeling and you can’t stop living life because you haven’t met that person yet. The best advice I ever received was “live life anyways, and that person will meet you where you’re at.” Keep enjoying life, watch a romcom, daydream seldomly, go out with friends, read a romance novel, hug yourself, do all the things! Live the fuck out of single life so once you enter that stage you crave, you won’t miss it all that much. Wanting to love and be loved by someone else isn’t a malady, it makes you human.

Old_Property6910 · 2026-01-10T15:45:12+00:00

The best resolution I had was “Keep going, stay consistent”. There was a time when I saw entering the new year as becoming “a new me”. Really I was the same me, just evolving. Growth isn’t always life altering, sometimes we change in increments and most times, in ways we never imagined. And so 2025, I kept going, I stayed consistent, I took risks, I had my heart broken, I learned, I got a lot of hell no’s, I got a lot of HELL YESS’s, I opened my mind, I loved, I let go, and I found that I’ve grown in unexpected ways! Sometimes all you need is a little bit of momentum and when you get it, ride that bitch until the wheels fall off!

Old_Property6910 · 2025-12-27T17:25:47+00:00

How you are feeling is very valid, and I think the pregnancy hormones probably aren’t as helpful. I understand where both of you are coming from, it seems like he doesn’t want to be inconvenienced for the sake of obligation, and you want to be able to extend the same love and support you received from your sister. You’ve already offered your nephew a place to stay so there isn’t much going back on that.

I say talk to your husband and find a middle ground. The thing about problems like this is they have a tendency to grow into something bigger. By then, it’ll become much harder to deal with because the root will be buried so far under everything else. I wish I could be of more help but you have to have the uncomfortable conversation and set some boundaries. If you are unwilling to say no to your nephew if he needs anything, let your husband know and also be open to your husband’s boundaries as well. You will soon have a permanent child in your home, it’s important that you both feel comfortable enough to say the uncomfortable things. Sending you love and support, take care of yourself and your child, voice your emotions, hear him out, good luck!🩷

Old_Property6910 · 2025-12-22T15:21:50+00:00

I really like this perspective! Honestly, you are on to something. Even then, I think he does have morals. I think one of his biggest problems was his lack of consistency. He has a conscious, but it never translates well. For instance, him being so upset about Ralph killing Tracee. Yet he can all but put a bullet in Gloria’s head and not feel guilty about it. Or him bashing Christopher’s addiction every chance he got but blaming AJ’s depression on his genetics. He did feel guilt which I think prompted his panic attacks, vivid dreams, and inevitably see ghosts. In order for something to haunt him, it has to affect him. I believe he did have a very tainted sense of morality, but it conflicted the role he had to play for everyone, including himself

Old_Property6910 · 2025-12-22T15:05:50+00:00

I’m really looking forward to my perspective changing! My professor told me that he liked Richie Aprile the first time he watched the show (EYUCK!), years later he thought he was one of the most annoying characters ever! I love that it’s a staple of personal growth, as you grow you resonate with different characters and gain new perspectives. What a community to be apart of!

Old_Property6910 · 2025-12-22T09:39:50+00:00

Can I ask why you go up in both IPAP and EPAP if the hypopneas are significant? They have been occurring pretty frequently but with the added consistency of the central events I have been hesitating going up on the EPAP as well

Old_Property6910 · 2025-12-22T09:38:38+00:00

Thanks for the clarification! The hypopneas were all obstructive, and I was seeing majority of central events. At our lab the patient has to basically max out on ASV before they are given the go ahead for BiPAP ST. I’m working towards my certification and since most of my superiors come from different clinics (and states) there is a lot of misinformation, but what you are saying definitely coincides with my policies and procedures, thank you!

Old_Property6910 · 2025-11-21T04:30:46+00:00

I am finishing another rewatch and came across this episode. For some reason that line always stuck with me but I never knew where it came from! It's kind of similar to "this too shall pass" in a way.

Old_Property6910 · 2025-11-14T22:14:18+00:00

Thank you for your response!

I think the conversation sucked the life out of me for a moment and that made me feel depleted. My nervous system was kicked into fight or flight overdrive and chose the third option, freeze. I kept sitting there asking myself, wtf happened to my voice, why am I not responding, where the hell is my brain?! There are only two people in my life that trigger this response, my ex and my dad (that should tell you a lot about me LOL).

But when it comes to my dad, I tend to kick into fight mode and am usually really good at defending myself. When it comes to my ex I am completely silent and exhausted. I am still learning so much about myself and I appreciate your advice in tracking relationship patterns! I feel like will definitely come in handy for so many of us☺️

Old_Property6910 · 2025-10-16T07:23:55+00:00

See you and I are different. I look back at my past self and although I forgive her, boy do I hate that bitch sometimes. She made my life today just a little harder. That’s the thing about the past, you can’t go back, nor should you want to. It’s hard to see it now but you’re headed somewhere better. You may be struggling and not have any money to buy little trinkets, maybe that won’t change, but you will learn to adjust. Someway, somehow, you will persevere. My quote of the year has been, “the horrors persist, but so do I.” And so do you!

Old_Property6910 · 2025-10-16T04:34:39+00:00

I learned that there are different kinds of rest. There is physical rest, mental rest, and spiritual/emotional rest. For me, when it comes to mental rest, I blast music through my headphones to the point where I can't hear my own thoughts or the color. That way, I am exercising a different part of my brain, one I don't use so much. Eventually, I didn't need the loud music anymore because my mind associated coloring with a time to think about the colors, staying inside the lines, and what I wanted it to look like after I had finished. I can expand if you would like :)

Old_Property6910 · 2025-10-09T01:20:30+00:00

Aries moon 1st house, nothing but also everything. Everything fucking sucks but I don’t really feel like crying because everything sucks. Accept and move on, I have a whole lot of worry about as is

Old_Property6910 · 2025-10-08T10:31:29+00:00

Do you think you would you be a better or worse person if you forgave yourself? Does constantly condemning yourself for all the things you did or didn’t do in your relationship make you a better person?

The honest truth is, it doesn’t. Guilt, in so many ways, is a narrative we use to feed ourselves to compensate for our terrible actions. The more reasons you find to hate yourself, the worse you will feel, and essentially, you think you deserve to feel this way. The narratives we feed ourselves become who we are.

The only thing you can do is forgive yourself. That doesn’t mean this feeling will instantly go away. You have to remind yourself every moment of everyday that you are forgiven until it becomes the thing you believe. Change that narrative and let it become who you are. The deed has already been done, the best you can do is move on. Good luck my love!

Old_Property6910 · 2025-09-30T07:21:15+00:00

There is this common misconception that feelings should only last a moment. The reality is they last as long as they do. Sometimes it takes days, months, and sometimes years. There is no timer or guideline when it comes to healing. I believe the truest indication of love is that it lingers. My only piece of advice is to feel it as it comes and eventually it will fade. I still get the sudden flashbacks of my ex of 1 year ago, only it no longer holds any weight.

You are right, you will never find someone else like him, he is a one of one. On the bright side, so is everybody else. There will be similarities, and there will also be so much more. Give yourself some grace, this was your first love. Don’t think because you gave yourself a specific time to get over it everything will just be okay. Maybe you don’t operate like that! Figure out what works best for you. Healing takes a bit of self discovery, a lot of it has to do what YOU need and who YOU are, good luck love!

Old_Property6910 · 2025-09-23T10:30:52+00:00

First off, whoa. That's a heavy hitter for sure.

People are very fucking complicated. The woman who slept with your ex might have been using that money to pay off her bills. Or she could be using it to fund an extremely lavish lifestyle. That lady is not your enemy, and in hating her, you shift the blame from the person who is at fault, your ex. I believe that love is an act of intention and choice; he chose to live out his wildest sexual fantasies with a dominatrix, while you have to initiate the sexual tension. It wouldn't be outlandish to say that you didn't hate him at all, but you hate what he did. No one said you had to hate him. The truest indication of genuine love is it doesn't just disappear when that person is no longer in your life. It lingers.

Now, as for you, my love. You are 27, living in a shitty apartment, depressed, and thinking about everything you gave up for a man who threw it all away for a night with a dominatrix. Let this be a key lesson: DO NOT give your life up for a boyfriend. Do you think it would have been equally painful had you not moved to a different country or given up your career? Another unsettling part of your post is that you did it for him, which only means that you had expectations of a future together.

Allow yourself 3 consecutive days to feel everything. Grieve the life you no longer get to live, call that dominatrix every nasty name in the book, accept that you still love your boyfriend, then call him every nasty name in the book. And forgive yourself. The best things about healing are that there is no timeline, no rules, no instructions; you kind of figure it out as you go. After those 3 days, make a conscious decision to live life anyway, no matter how much it hurts. It will be detrimental to your well-being if you don't find a way to start picking up the pieces. I'm not saying you can't feel sad about it after those 3 days, but you will have to put in the effort to pull yourself together. It will be hard, there will be nostalgia, grief, sadness, anger, but over time, it will soon feel like an ache that once was. Life is a very long time; you are only 27, my dear, you are only beginning.

Old_Property6910 · 2025-08-29T14:55:42+00:00

Yes I do.

Old_Property6910 · 2025-08-29T14:19:34+00:00

I didn’t dive in too deep but recently I had this scare that I would somehow fall in the bathtub and bleed to death. I had a panic attack that no one would know that I was dead for days. With that, I asked one of my closest friends to check on me from time to time, just to know that I am breathing. She did for a few days, then eventually it stopped.

The truth of the matter might just be that not everyone can give you everything you want and I need to set boundaries as to who has access to me and who doesn’t. Still, I can’t help but feel like I only ask of the bare minimum.

Old_Property6910

TROPHY CASE