Leocube,

I hope you’re well. Sorry I’m so late to this thread. I daresay I understand your feelings about your family and I have sometimes found myself thinking similar thoughts about mine. I feel that they have shown themselves to be operating in their self-interest and don’t really care about my future. Even apart from their hurtful behavior in my childhood, they have no interest in caring for me or understanding what I care about doing now, instead they mainly just want me to continue supporting them with money.

I say all this to say I think I understand. But you must realize that we are on this earth to give love, not to collect love. If you focus on others not loving you or understanding you, you will continue wanting to separate yourself from your family and others to eternity.

It is hard, but could you focus on giving them love and showing understanding to them? Do not be a doormat, say no if you need to for your own interest. But please please please try not to completely separate from them, try to love them as much as you can while preserving your own overall happiness and health.

Try not to have any expectations of them, they are imperfect humans, do not expect love or you will be disappointed. But for yourself, try to give them at least a little bit of love and time. Let any love they show you in return be a bonus. With time you may see more bonuses. Remember everybody is evolving slowly through life. They are possibly better people now than they were in your childhood, and hopefully they will continue to improve just as you will.

Lastly, when you speak with them, please make an effort to bring up any thing (current things) they might do to annoy you or hurt you. It helps to bring those things up as soon as they happen and handle them straight on. This is what you were perhaps not able to do as a child, but now you are grown. It is not helpful to keep any feelings of resentment hidden, these feelings lurk and grow.

All the best, Leocube. I wish you love and loving people.

Unconditional love.
Good to know that it is alive and working. Ninja, I am just too happy to hear that your relationship is getting better.
James,
I am confident that the same will happen for you if you continue as Ninja suggested. I’ll second the 5 Love Languages recommendation that Amanda gave too. People interpret acts of love differently.
Also, doing it for the children is okay. But also, do it because you are a man that gave his word. You made a vow to love someone no matter what. Your word is something to stand on.

I am proud of you already for two things:
1. Accountability – you admitted your mistakes that may have brought you to the current situation.
2. We are not telling you anything that you didn’t feel already. You already wanted to stay and to continue loving your wife.

Well, I just wanted to log on and encourage you.
All the best!

• This reply was modified 8 years, 1 month ago by manbuddha.

No need to be sorry, Jaxie. Alright consider this:

I may be wrong, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to start dating the people that you have just helped through depression. Please try not to do that.

After your help, They need further healing and a lot more help from their families (who are usually the unknowing cause of their depression) and perhaps even professionals. The reason is that they are still just a bit unstable and they will form unhealthy attachments to you. You can see the evidence of this as you said, if you leave Al or Oscar, they will get very depressed and may commit suicide. This is not the type of romantic relationship you want at any age – where you find yourself boxed in, having to stay so that the other person doesn’t do something bad. This is not to say that people post-depression are not good enough for relationships with you, just that they need a lot of time and healing to find their sense of belonging and self worth before engaging in any deep romantic relationships.

In a weird way, I think I understand your issue with Al quite well. I once did what she did to a best friend when I was quite little (2nd/3rd grade). Another person came in the picture and acted as my best friend and I did not know how to say “No, Stop.” It sounds crazy remembering it now but I do remember it vividly because my original best friend (you in this story) didn’t speak to me for a while. When he finally talked to me about it, I acted like it was a non-issue. He never spoke to me ever again. This is a weird memory for me right now.
Of course it’s not exactly the same situation but I think it’s possible that Al was just faced with a complicated situation and just did not know how to put her foot down and handle it. When you confronted her, she might have downplayed it, maybe said you were being sensitive, didnt try to understand your feelings at all… We are all imperfect, and you both are very young so she perhaps could not manage your feelings properly.
That said, she was wrong (as I was wrong), and if you still feel bad about it, bring the topic up in a calm way, try to explain kindly to her that you still feel hurt about that. An apology is deserved. With the time that has passed, I think her reaction might be different.

So consider staying friends with Al, Oscar and Jay but ending the romantic relationships with them. It seems to be having an effect on you, and if you don’t ease the stress from those relationships, you physical and mental health will suffer a lot. Please let them know that you will still be friends and you still care about them, but not more. Imagine what will happen if Al finds out about you and Oscar, things could go very bad! So stay friends, but not more.
If you are afraid they will hurt themselves, please do what Should have been done: explain to adult members of their family so they can watch them, and explain to teachers or counsellors at school that these great kids are at risk, so they can be watched.
You cannot take on the burden of watching over them and trying to act in the way they want to keep them from any bad action all by yourself!
That makes me worried about you. You are only 16!

I wish you the best. I’ll be praying for you.
Whatever you do, please try to use a kind tone. Your friends are all beautiful people with great potential, and will probably amaze you with the transformations that will happen with time and the good things they will go on to do.

Hey man,

Does each one know of the others? Please don’t be dishonest man.

Which woman knows your faults, can tell you and still accepts you with love? And Which one loves you conditionally – if you can fix a flaw or two?

Which woman is kindest to you?

Which woman respects you the most? Which do you respect the most?

With which woman is your love the most playful?

Which woman embraces your passions and interests? Which woman’s passions and interests do you embrace and support?

Which woman always shows her feminine essence with you?

If one woman’s name keeps coming up…

(Note)

Which woman has an expressed love for money? Desire to get money no matter what.
Unless you share that view yourself, such a person will bring unwanted hell into your life.

Which woman competes with you often?
This is not a partner, you take the role of a friendly opponent in her mind.

Which woman often expresses the conditions for you to be with her?
An extreme example, I had a gf that used to say, “If you ever cheat on me, I’ll cut your thing off!” Haha
The reddest of flags.

I hope this helps you…
All the best –

Great insight, Geovane! I see you have spent some time thinking about this.
Honestly, I think your theory is true to a point.

First, I agree with you, a real mature man must value himself and realize that life is not a competition. We are simply here to love. Unfortunately, many many people live out their lives as a competition or race. All that brings is pain, weird behavior, jealousy and lack of real relationships. For example, as you have written, you can find people who are preoccupied with competIng against all the people who a spouse/gf/bad might have been with in the past. Very sad.

I find that in general, the “good” guy is usually one who has refused to accept certain realities. In nature, it usually is the job of the male to attract the female and somehow persuade her to mate – as in humans. Typically, The female part is to have beauty and able to mate+reproduce. That subtle game of persuasion is what all men must have.

I maybe be wrong, but many “good” guys seem to be guys who feel/are attractive inside, they have a light, but they kind of want to keep their light hidden, and wait for the magic girl who will come to them, recognize their goodness, pry the door open and embrace their value. Unfortunately, most women will never do that. So that attitude may not work well for romantic relationships with women.

When I was much younger, I used to judge women partly by the kind of men they were attracted to. That is, if I saw a woman was attracted to/pursuing/in relationship with a guy I knew to be dishonest or bad, I would kind of write her off. Tbh, this was not due to any humiliation as you wrote above but I simply felt that she had shown poor judgement. At first it seemed I would have to write everyone off, even family members! After a while, I saw that there were actually many women who showed good judgement and could see a bad guy and avoid him. These women are able to analyze a man’s character on one hand and her feelings due to his persuasion game on the other, in order to make a decision.
In my experience, the unfortunate thing is that the overwhelming majority of women tend to make this important analysis only from their late twenties/thirties onwards. In the teens to early twenties, it seems the majority of women only see their feelings produced by the persuasion game of a man and are quite blind to character when making relationship decisions.

It just so happens that more so called “bad” guys than “good guys are committed to that game of persuasion and that is actually what drew the women in. The women are actually not attracted to their bad side (except of course a small minority). This is why I was wrong to write all those women off.
For some crazy reason, “good” guys are either oblivious to the persuasion game, or they know of it but don’t want to engage.

Funny enough, in the reverse case, where men must hold a woman’s character on one hand and her beauty/attractiveness on the other to make relationship decisions, I believe that the majority of men are unable to see past beauty and this continues all though their lives! – if beauty is present, a lot of men will pick beauty and seem blind to bad character, over and over and over. So men cannot hold any moral ground over women in terms of judgement in this lol
All women have already embraced the fact that beauty has that ridiculously strong effect on men – thus the billions spent every year on makeup, plastic surgery etc.

If the persuasion game is that strong, the solution for relationships is simply that the good guys just need to embrace it very early. It works out better for everyone that way. Don’t just hold your light near the ground. Shine your light. Make ittwinkle.
I don’t claim to be an expert in the persuasion at all but maybe a simple hint is: love is playful.

mcrisman,

I wish I could actually send you real trailerloads of love, I don’t know why but I feel your pain, honestly.
What you are going through is really difficult.

All the best –

“Do you believe, and how do you know God is out there?”

Yes, I believe in GOD.

How do I know GOD is out there?
1)
All life and things I see around me are the product of conscious design and building/creation OR reproduction from one or two conscious living things. Thus to me, it seems there must have been a conscious starter/creator of the universe.

2)
In the past, scientists believed in a steady state universe – i.e the universe just always was – no beginning or end. This was not compatible with the creation story since in that story, there was a point at which the creator said “Let there be….”
Now, by calculating back from the current position of bodies in the expanding universe, scientists believe that everything in the universe started from one point. As you can see, this is compatible with the idea of God’s conscious creation of the universe.
“Let there be…”
The start is now called “THE BIG BANG.”

Thus, if life and the universe is finite, and everything comes from a conscious creator, the initial creator must be infinite.
Think about it, if the “first” creator was finite, then it wasn’t the first, there was one before it to create it, and so on and so on backwards, if the creator is finite.
Thus it is impossible to be first creator and finite at the same time.
I may be wrong, but I think the initial creator must be then infinite.

Thus, logically I can start to understand a conscious, infinite creator which I believe in as GOD.
I don’t know so much about GOD, but I am trying to learn more about GOD.

As Ninja said, blessing to all of you today –

In life, it seems virtually all our problems with others originate from one person’s expectations of how another should act.
I see that virtually all atheists are so at least in part because they have some particular expectations of how GOD should act. When those expectations are not met, they choose not to believe. It is very interesting.

Please, Kristin123, I just want to beg you not to put your own human expectations on GOD who we barely know and who we do not, and maybe cannot, understand. It just doesn’t seem wise.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 2 months ago by manbuddha.

Maybe call him and show you care.
If you still care.

Please try not to be afraid. You are a beautiful woman, you don’t need to say much. LOL. You still have to say something though.
Simply: Hey I was just thinking about you…how are you doing? ((he replies) and then arrange to meet. Why? The phone may make things weird.
If he’s far away, try to set up a Skype date.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 2 months ago by manbuddha.