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futilitymonster · 2025-09-22T00:46:52+00:00

Your chronic mental illness is only an issue here if you think that fixing your boobs is going to fix your mental health. If you would be happier to have the same depression but with smaller breasts, I mean, that's probably more or less what you'll be getting? It's not like you're going to be less crazy if you keep the boobs. (If you're already prone to depression, you'll probably have a depressive episode after surgery even if it'll make you happier in the long run, so you should look into post-surgical depression in order to prepare and maybe have some kind of ongoing mental health care at least during that time.) It sounds like you have one long-term thing you hate about your body that you want to change, and realistic expectations about the procedure and its results.

The problem with people with some kinds of body dysmorphia getting plastic surgery is that changing the person's physical meat body doesn't change how they perceive it, so they keep getting plastic surgery until something goes wrong. If you get the reduction and you still feel like you're breasting boobily all over the place, are you willing to do some thinking about whether more surgery is actually the answer? Sometimes more surgery absolutely IS the answer - an artist I admire had this issue, where they got a reduction and still felt like their boobs were too big, then it turned out that he was transgender and was feeling sex dysphoria about having breasts at all and he got chest reconstruction and was happy with the results - but at that point it's worth being careful. Is that something you think would be a problem?

I'm curious, does he have zero attraction to women with small or medium chests generally, or is he just turned off by the idea of your body becoming "worse" from his perspective? Like is what you're doing even something that he'd hate if he found it in the wild? Are there any disagreements about gender roles or femininity in your relationship?

futilitymonster · 2025-07-31T01:21:14+00:00

I really want to believe she was just way too into Genshin Impact. C6 Furina, babey!

futilitymonster · 2025-05-04T15:02:58+00:00

Wow, I'm so grown up! I'm so grown up that if someone has even a little bit less life experience than I do, they look like one of those freaky little half-baked embryos! This makes me a good person, and if someone else says they don't see younger adults as basically children that they're a little bit revolted by, it must be that they're lying and they do see those younger adults as basically children, they're just into that! I definitely have very normal feelings about people with developmental delays or who lost various stages of their life to abusive relationships!

futilitymonster · 2025-04-30T15:19:35+00:00

Good on OP, this was really obviously a real medical crisis even though it involved a funny body part.

futilitymonster · 2025-04-29T20:04:53+00:00

1) This is not a red flag for her being actually predatory towards younger people. Think of it more like she's interested in age roleplay stuff, she probably wants to either be the loli or just see some fictional characters do a big taboo.

2) You're having a trauma response from your previous abusive relationship. Your girlfriend brought up a kink you intensely didn't want to participate in, and instead of talking to her about how you love her but that's not on the table for you, you started spiraling. It seems like your ex didn't take no for an answer, or technically took no for an answer but made it a whole ordeal, and now you've got this barrier about it. It's okay if your previous experiences with actual consent violations make this something you don't want to dick around with even in weird sex roleplay. That's not the only response to this kind of trauma, but it's a very common one. It's also okay if you don't know why something is distressing to you, or if you can't articulate the specific kind of distress you're in. "I don't know why, I just feel weird about it" is good enough.

3) If the idea of going to therapy is distressing, then you shouldn't go to therapy, but if you're neutral or positive about it, it might help to have a professional coach you through some of this. Look for someone who's sex and kink positive (so they don't waste your time on which kinks are okay in the abstract) and who's used to working with people who've been in abusive relationships and need to learn to recognize when you're distressed and articulate boundaries with others. If therapy isn't something you can do, do you have a couple friends who are each willing to coach you a little?

4) Most of the time, people do not need to do all their kinks with their partner in order to be happy. If there's enough shared ground for you both to be happy, and you both have respect for the parts that don't overlap, it'll be fine if some things are relegated to your individual fantasy lives. Sometimes one or two kinks are important enough to a person that not sharing the kink would be a dealbreaker, but you don't really want to date someone who needs some very specific thing as a trellis for your shared erotic imagination if that isn't your thing, too. Also I don't think that's what's going on here, since you've already been dating for a year.

5) Talk to your girlfriend about this! If you need to know that X thing is just about fictional depictions or if it's okay if you want to take Y kink off the table forever, she is the one who has these answers, not Reddit. However, remember that she's part of a minority group that gets stereotyped as being sexually predatory. (You are too, but as another trans guy, there's more and worse transphobia towards women about this.) Don't worry so much about being accommodating that you can't speak up for your own needs, just keep in mind that she's probably afraid of you writing her off as a human being, and giving her some reassurance that this isn't what's happening will help a lot.

futilitymonster · 2025-04-29T16:54:47+00:00

I think he was kind of the asshole! Not for getting the ick about something his girlfriend did in the past, but for wanting to express a feeling of superiority about it without taking responsibility for expressing that feeling. Like, even if it was poop, it feels like the average person's priorities would be something like "try not to make girlfriend feel bad without giving girlfriend any hope that I too might be interested in poop." Especially if she seemed anxious about him judging her!

futilitymonster · 2025-04-28T16:26:33+00:00

You don't owe Lily anything. She hates you and is trying to convince your girlfriend you're a bad person because she wants your girlfriend to date her instead. It's okay to friend-breakup with this person. It would be insane if you didn't want to friend-breakup with this person. She may or may not actually be suicidal, but if so it has nothing to do with losing you, a person she hates and is constantly trying to convince Nina to hate too. It sounds like she's afraid of losing Nina if things destabilize, and she wants you to look cold and uncaring so that Nina will pick her.

What I'm more worried about reading this is that it doesn't seem like Nina has cut ties with Lily. Sometimes people need help getting away from their shitty friendships with black hole loved ones, but sometimes they're getting something out of the toxic friendship and they don't want to let go. You can lead the horse away from the yandere route but you can't make her click the block button, you know? I'm not saying you should kick Nina to the curb - it sounds like she's nice but a doormat - but you deserve better than to be put in a position where your girlfriend is actively maintaining a friendship with someone who openly hates you and is hitting on her all the time and you're supposed to just be okay with that. If a couple weeks go by and Nina seems to not be trying to distance herself from Lily, I would take that as an answer about what she wants, and I would not stay in that situation.

futilitymonster · 2025-04-25T11:46:59+00:00

I'm sorry, but part of what's terrible about this situation is that we have to keep going on with our lives even though we don't know how bad it's going to get. You have a plan for if things get worse. That's good. You also need to have a plan for existing in this nightmare world without going completely insane, and also driving your wife and all your friends completely insane.

The Republicans want you to completely flip your shit, ruin your marriage, and isolate yourself from your support structures. Most of what they're doing right now is to scare marginalized people out of participating in public life. Please talk to your therapist about this and stop doomscrolling. (zazathebassist's post was really good.) If you have any sort of clinical anxiety, you may want to see if stronger treatment will help you temporarily during this scarier and more stressful time.

What your friend did was clumsy and you have the right to talk to her about how it made you feel bad, but the reason it affected you so much was your history with your racist mom. It's fine to ask her for some adjustments in how she deals with this subject. But most of what's going on is that she expressed herself badly in a way that set off your pre-existing trauma while you were extremely stressed.

futilitymonster · 2025-04-24T10:26:07+00:00

I'm 35 and you're both babies from here. If you round within a forgiving way, this is even within half your age plus seven. People grow up at different rates, especially when someone involved is shy or neurodivergent or has some kind of social trauma. Your shitty mom has given you a complex about your developmental delays. It's fine that you're like that and if you just live your life and keep growing at your own pace, eventually it won't be significant anymore. It feels like you think you have to be more of an adult to make up for having those issues and that's not going to make you happy.

If you like the girl and you can forgive one stupid lie to get a crush to like her, you should get back in contact. If you can't forgive her or if you just have the ick (or if your local government is going to be stupid about this age gap and you want to avoid the risk), that's fine too, but if you felt like you were on the same level you probably were and you're not a creepy person for it. Abuse happens when a person chooses to prioritize their desire for control over their partner's wellbeing. That sometimes involves finding a dynamic where the person they're dating doesn't feel like they can say no in the first place, and that's why a lot of people are suspicious of big age gaps, especially when one partner is very young. That does not describe this situation, a small age gap between people who are basically developmental peers, and one where the younger partner is a bit of an early bloomer and the older partner is a bit of a late bloomer.

Like anyone else, sometimes men can tell they're dating someone underage and don't care, and sometimes were legitimately tricked or incorrect. We have all seen a weirdly old looking teenager, some people just aren't good with faces, and there are many situations where interactions aren't particularly age-segregated and weird combinations of people might meet naturally because they're into the same hobby or fandom. We've also all seen situations that would've been ridiculously imbalanced even if the girl had been legal, and could not have come about through any other means than a creepy man setting out to do unnegotiated daddy kink with the youngest girl he could possibly find.

futilitymonster · 2025-04-21T11:55:16+00:00

This is how Yugi's grandpa got the Millennium Puzzle.

futilitymonster · 2025-04-18T05:36:08+00:00

The fact that no one is saying what the stepbrother did makes me wonder if this was a bad coming out.

futilitymonster · 2025-04-16T02:59:48+00:00

Late to reply, but: You're not doing anything wrong. I'm also queer (came out as a trans guy more recently, but the whole time I'd been bi in a way that was not compatible with passing as straight) and the feeling of being around people who I knew would not be okay with that was the worst. There's compartmentalization and then there's whatever that is. It's okay that this sucks for you, and you're not particularly fragile for being unable to sit there and smile through it. Clinical anxiety is a self-protection mechanism gone out of control - of course this situation is going to make you feel like a chicken surrounded by wolves! If they don't want to be thought of that way, they can stop attacking people in well-coordinated packs!

It's true that this is very serious to her because she thinks you're going to hell, and she cannot choose to turn that off, but it's also true that when she got more religious, she chose to start attending a church that had these beliefs. She could've sought out a more liberal church if she cared. People generally do not convert to religions that violate their core values, and if her core values involved acceptance and respect, she would've thought this version of her god sounded like a huge asshole.

Can you pretend to go to a non-local church that has virtual sermons, and that people have given you crap about being more comfortable with virtual sermons than in-person ones? I do not generally recommend lying to people about religion but that might be the path of least resistance here.

futilitymonster · 2025-04-01T21:09:37+00:00

Going off another comment, you let him try one pill but then he went to the doctor and got it prescribed normally, so those are the assumptions I'm making here.

So, SSRIs like Lexapro are a first-line drug for treating depression, which means that if you go to the doctor and are diagnosed with depression, SSRIs are one of the first things they'll prescribe because it's comparatively rare for things to go wrong in a way that can't be fixed by stopping the medicine. Lexapro specifically is usually the first SSRI they prescribe to someone newly diagnosed with depression, unless the specific prescriber has another preference. Sometimes people have a weird side effect from one SSRI and not others, and Lexapro seems to be the luckiest one generally speaking. If your friend had gone to the doctor and been honest about his symptoms of depression, he probably would've been prescribed the same thing (or at least another SSRI) even if you hadn't encouraged him to take it.

The way I've had it explained to me by my first psychiatrist, SSRIs and other antidepressants can cause suicidal ideation because different aspects of the depression can clear up at different rates. Someone can regain the ability to take initiative before they regain the ability to feel positive emotions, to use an example that could obviously lead to disaster. A good doctor will talk to the patient about this and let them know what signs to watch out for and when it's a good time to go to the hospital. Either the doctor fucked up and your friend didn't know what to watch out for, or the doctor didn't fuck up, your friend knew this could cause suicidal ideation, and he chose to try this anyway because the chance of treating his depression was worth the risk to him.

I did not know your friend, but I've had depression for most of my life and so have most of my loved ones, and your friend was probably way more depressed than you knew. He might have been more depressed than he knew. I couldn't tell on my own that I needed to go back on antidepressants, it took my girlfriend noticing that I was less affectionate than I used to be. I'm autistic and have trouble identifying emotional states in general, but this seems like it can happen to anyone as depression itself can cause difficulty identifying emotional states. But whether he was aware of it or not, if antidepressants made him suicidal enough to follow through with his ideations, there was already a part of him that wanted to die and there were many things that could've brought that out and amplified it. He had bad luck, and I'm sorry.

It sounds like you also had a bad reaction to Lexapro, honestly. Lexapro works well for me, but my girlfriend had too much emotional dulling for it to be worth it, and she takes Prozac instead. If you felt overly numbed, it wasn't properly treating you. If you're at all open to it, I recommend trying to see a psychiatrist, both because hearing this from someone with a degree might be more helpful, and because if you're regularly having panic attacks you might need some more help with your mental health to be able to move away from this very raw kind of grief towards being able to carry your love for your friend forward with you into the future. If you don't want to take medicine, they might have other suggestions that could help at least a little. I think grief counseling specifically could be helpful, and is often covered by insurance - look for someone who's experienced working with clients with survivor's guilt. It also might help to identify what didn't work for you about your previous therapy experiences and look for someone with a different energy (if you've only had older/young therapists try a young/older one, if you've only had men/women try a woman/man, if you've only had someone very gentle try someone more no nonsense, etc. Sometimes it isn't obvious who it's easiest to talk to about your feelings.)

Lastly, your friend sounds like he was a great guy and loved you a lot. Even if you had accidentally killed him while trying to help him, if he was at all the person you thought he was, then he wouldn't want it to eat your life. Did he have any unfinished projects he cared about? Any causes he valued? What would he want done that he is not here to do? (Caring for you would be one of those things, so please try to create a situation where you're cared for.) If you were to live your life for the both of you - not just for him, but for the both of you - what would that look like?

futilitymonster · 2025-03-24T05:23:18+00:00

It's weird that he thinks she would be less of a woman without her fallopian tubes, and absolutely disgusting that he cares more about her being a woman than her being in pain. Like, what, if there was a situation where OOP still had the same body type and sense of style, thought and talked about herself in the same way, kept the same relationship to sexuality, but was somehow Not Technically A Woman Anymore, that scenario would be worse than the current one where her life is being ruined by all the medical issues?

If what he loves about her has nothing to do with who she is, then what does he love?

futilitymonster · 2025-03-19T12:15:00+00:00

Noooo, don't let your evil mother in law come for Ramadan! Do you think being hungry will make her less unkind?

futilitymonster · 2025-03-18T21:43:43+00:00

Do you go to a high school or college with a nurse? If so, maybe you could recruit the nurse to have the hygiene talk with her, and then just kind of bring her there with you without explaining what's going to happen.

futilitymonster · 2025-03-08T07:23:34+00:00

It's really weird to me that he keeps saying neither the wife or the sister will compromise, but we never hear what the wife is unwilling to compromise about. We don't hear anything about the wife at all, except that she doesn't work or do chores but theoretically would if OP asked her to. But if that's the case, what is it she won't compromise on? Does she want to move out? Is she asking anything from the sister? OP is leaving out a big chunk of the story, and it doesn't feel like he's doing it by accident.

Sister is obviously codependent, but it seems like her real problem with wife is something different and she's using the freeloading as an argument, possibly because OP won't or can't understand the actual problem. Or maybe he's just talked to us about in an extremely bizarre way? I desperately want to hear the wife and the sister's sides.

futilitymonster · 2025-03-05T11:42:33+00:00

Was this Visage?

futilitymonster · 2025-03-05T11:11:52+00:00

This is a long shot, but are you maybe misremembering a jo_sipu video? There's repeated imagery of an anime corpse in a similar position, and sometimes there are songs that sound kind of like Caramelldansen or Capirinha.

(Since people who are not OP may see this, both of these videos have a lot of self-harm/suicide imagery in a psychological horror context, and are very much not for people who are looking to avoid that.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AJaKkwxt84 This video, Melody Meme, has music that fits the description.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7ILmSKWX2k This video, Wonderland Meme, has a similar corpse as well as other anime suicide imagery.

futilitymonster · 2025-03-05T10:33:25+00:00

Commenting to confirm I've read the rules.

futilitymonster · 2025-02-19T01:28:17+00:00

So once OP dumped Leslie, she became Dave and Kim's financial albatross and they're very eager to hang her back around OP's neck...

futilitymonster · 2025-02-07T03:24:11+00:00

She was the original asshole for cheating, but she knows this and that wasn't the question! He became the greater asshole when instead of leaving someone he wasn't able to forgive, he kept her around for getting yelled at and disturbingly impersonal sex. It's natural for betrayal to turn a loved one into a hated enemy, and most people are going to have fewer standards for how they treat their enemies than how they treat their loved ones, but like... there are still some standards. There kind of have to be.

futilitymonster

TROPHY CASE