I just had a huge McDonald’s order. I haven’t had McDonald’s in years

It’s so good 😭😩

It’s unimaginably hard to process. But it’s a very small solace knowing that I didn’t have to go without knowing for very long. I had to practically drag it out of him. Its scary thinking about if I had found out a month or two down the line, but it’s also kind of reassuring in a way, kind of like ‘I could be hurting wayyyy worse’.

I also think being around people would be helpful for me. Focusing on other social relationships. It’s just personally hard for me to connect with others. Everything I do feels forced. I wish I had let down my guard with others enough to be able have plans with someone every day. This is the goal I will have to focus on from now on so I don’t have to feel this way in the future.

Everyone here is so kind it’s making me cry even harder, lmao. Thank you. Thank you so much for your perspective, and for your encouragement. Your confidence in me makes me feel a lot stronger. my mind gets really caught up in what ifs and just general dread around the future when what I need to do is just be present in the now.

Just wish the right now wasn’t so lonely.

Thank you for your thoughtful response. I am not a social person by default (he was the extrovert), so it’s difficult for me to be more social than I am now. I do have a lot of insecurities which makes that harder but I’ve been trying to see myself in a more positive light lately.

I really like what you said about roots and connecting with the things I used to love. He was so intertwined with my life and hobbies that it’s hard to find something that doesn’t have to do with him or the both of us. I feel like I need a 180 degree, blank slate/reset. I don’t know where to start with that.

If only I could just ride the liquor until I forget I loved him. But who knows how long that will take. The liquor will have me by the end of it.

That’s the thing. He doesn’t want me to completely go because he values our friendship and the things we have built together. He said it’s okay whatever I decide, but that’s a horrible decision to have to make. I know blocking him and walking away will hurt him as a friend as well. Thankfully I’m not really active on social media and I am not the type to snoop or anything. I know no contact is probably the better route, but now I feel like I’m also letting myself and my work down

Thank you so much for this perspective. Thinking about it like that makes it easier to think about the future and be aware in my present. That being said, I’m hoping this is the highest peak because if it isn’t, I am not going to make it. My threshold for pain is in the negative digits.

I know I need to feel feelings to actually process them. I don’t think it’s fully hit me yet how drastically my life just changed. It makes me feel destructive and defeated at the same time. I want to jump out of my skin.

I plan to. It sucks because we’ve also been working closely together on a lot of dream projects and I have to decide whether to give that up and destroy what we built, or stick around and torture myself and my sanity. I can’t make that decision.

Im so sorry to hear that. That’s awful to be that close to marriage and just leaving everything you built together. I’ve gone no contact with most of my friends and family from my past because of some serious abuse issues, and have been living alone for the past three years. Prior to this he had been semi-living with me. We’d been best friends for the last 6 years. I’m a pretty solitary/private person, yet we were inseparable. Just thinking about having to be alone right now is killing me, nevermind the future.

Thank you for the kindness you’ve shared with me. I guess deep down I knew that this wasn’t the love it should have been, and I don’t want him to be stuck in a relationship he wasn’t getting any happiness out of. I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving him, but he absolutely has a right to his own happiness and love.

My mind knows this. My body hasn’t got the memo. I can’t stop crying.

Yeah. I’ve been talking to my sister and best friend about it. It’s late though, and they need to sleep so I’m also trying not to bother them too much right now. The loneliness and pain is honestly just overwhelming. I haven’t felt this bad since I lost my dog and that absolutely destroyed me. The night I lost her I drank until I passed out and I think I did that for the next couple of weeks.

I don’t want to do that again but I do need to numb the pain or I’ll lose my mind from lack of sleep

My current boyfriend is an ex coworker and did exactly that! I feel like we’ve been best friends our entire lives. Some people might find extroverted behavior annoying but for us introverts they’re a godsend 😩😭

This may not be the best advice here, but as someone who has struggled with making friends here in America, the one thing I know for certain works is befriending your coworkers. Some of my dearest friends, to this day, are people I met on the job 6 years ago!

This depends entirely on your work environment/climate, but there’s something about shared work stress that makes after hours bonding a lot easier. I know you don’t drink or go to bars due to religious reasons, so this may be more difficult for you. Instead of a bar, maybe propose something fun like laser tag or an escape room after work or for a staff outing!

It’s easier to find shared interests/make friends at that point because you’ll have been working together for at least a little bit, so the initial hurdle of “meeting someone new” has already been taken care of!

Anyway, I said all that to say, start with the people around you. Maybeeee not your neighbors, though, unless they’re having a yard sale/block party.

Nope. I don’t think the dev ever posted logs or an Easter egg guide, but I suppose I could ask! I believe their name is Orion Moon, I’ll go look for him on Twitter or something

It’s exactly like an addiction…one that’s intrinsically reinforced by these communities by their messaging. They always include the tagline “they don’t want you to know this!” and it keeps them in due to FOMO or not wanting to feel stupid. It’s a rough situation.

This is really just an anecdote, and there could have been any number of things that the chicken digested that caused this issue. I need hard, replicable data, which in the absence of, and in abundance of the opposite, I’m forced to hold my stance that soy is harmless.

I’m a woman, but we’re not married. I don’t think he’s ever heard of Joe Rogan, but I personally have seen that name thrown around a lot (though I’ve never listened or watched him). He’s certainly somewhat paranoid, which covid has made worse, but it’s on the weirder side. Like, just today he came home and during a discussion about red velvet cake, he drops the “did you know red food coloring changes your DNA???” And I’m just like…wtf? He said a teacher (who used to be a surgical doctor) told him this, so it must be true. I asked him if the doctor could back it up, and he seemed bewildered that anyone would lie so straight-faced.

I think he takes a lot of things at face value without stopping to check if things are true because they match an internal bias. This is something I’ve been trying to work with him on because his overly trusting nature has gotten him into trouble a few times.

Thank you for this input. I hadn’t considered that, and it is worrying.

Yes! This is actually a discussion I had with him recently. The subject of men’s “empowerment” leaders had come up (Andrew Tate, etc, who thankfully he hasn’t heard of yet), and we talked about how a lot of men who have been/feel ostracized or marginalized are drawn to these “leaders” who prey on their need for guidance. He seemed genuinely surprised when he realized that a lot of men (humans as a whole, really) want to feel like they’re in control of their own lives, and although many of these kinds of influencers start with reasonable takes, they all kind of redirect to the same kind of messaging: “someone or something is trying to take your power from you”. It’s an irresistible message that people are drawn to without realizing it because they can, in some way, see this “loss of power” happening in some form in their own lives.

We talked about what it would benefit these influencers to spread this kind of talk, and he initially didn’t believe it was about money. He argued that if it was about money, why are they offering this information for free? Which led to the engagement = $$$ Adsense dollars talk.

Overall, it was a great discussion but he’s still really adamant on this soybean thing. I don’t know why or where it came from.

Initially I thought this was his concern but he never mentioned anything gender specific, just that humans as a whole shouldn’t eat soy as it’s “not food”…as though it’s plastic or something. I agree that it’s probably a result of the social media telephone game, though. I just wish I could find the original source so I can prepare a good argument