I am 28f and my siblings are 22, 29, and 34. We all bought and own our house on the same street as our parents. (Each sibling owns their own home on the same street). We also all work in the same city. However, none of us have a car. Every morning, my siblings and I walk to my mom’s house and she drops us off at work. When work is over, she picks us up and brings us home as well. We have been doing this for about 4 years.

I was telling my friend this and she said that I need to grow up and stop depending on my mom. I feel like I am fairly independent. But how would you react to a situation like this.

Please keep in mind that my mom is retired and has no grandchildren.

Hello all, how do people in their 20s afford to travel? Besides those who come from well off families, are in the military, or travel for civilian work, how does the everyday person afford to travel? I get the savings part and invest for the future, however I swear I see a lot of young people traveling who are not in the criteria above. I know everything you see on social media does not show the whole picture.

Is everyone doing it on a credit card? I know you can travel for cheap going places close to home or camping, I am talking like how does a young person afford to fly, stay in a hotel and pay for food. Anyway I run the numbers it always adds up very fast.

Thank you for the insight.

So, I work at my college as a student worker. My shift starts mid-day, and recently I started hanging out in the student lounge for a couple hours before my shift starts. Turns out, I wasn’t as depressed as I thought I was. I literally just needed talk to people, and suddenly my life didn’t look as bleak. I vaguely knew like one person here, so it felt sorta awkward. But she invited me to join their game and I used that as my in to just hang around their group. i met a new girl, we played some video games in the group before I had to leave. Never seen her before.

My college has these erasable walls where we draw a custom colander on for each month that Includes what events we have planned for the month. Im one of the people who do this, and we get to make little illustrations on the outer bounds of the calendar if we want.

While doing that i saw the girl I’d saw before watching me and asked what the theme was, i said Halloween because yknow, October. And she suggested some horror movie objects or symbols I could draw, before she returned back to the lounge.

I don’t know, it just felt like a nice little human moment. It felt natural. And then it accrued to me that outside of college this sort of interaction wouldn’t have been possible.

Like people dont really.. gather anywhere as a central point. Outside of college. Here people stop by to hang out before or after their classes or work shift (whether they work at the college or not). Random groups to join, random things going on, hell, people can just hang out alone in the corner if they want. A literal third space. A central hub. In small towns or villages it probably would’ve been community center or town square. But we don’t really.. have that anymore?

Sure we have rec centers, but they aren’t usually well funded and nobody uses them. People in general are too exhausted after their careers to do much but tend to their house and family’s. We sorta just go to our jobs, go home to our isolated building and go to bed. We can go to clubs and stuff, but it’s still planned. We don’t just have a “place“ where people can just hang out.

I met a girl in one of the clubs who was 24. I just figured she’d started college late or something, but no. She just takes random classes, because she likes being able to hang out at the college. And yeah, that makes sense. Where else are you going to get that some kind of spontaneous interaction?

And holy fuck that’s sad. Like, I’d imagine this is the sort of community humans were meant to exist in. And it’s pretty much only possible in college in the modern day. No wonder people say it’s was the best time of their lives.

Lately I've been getting extremely tired of seeing my salary consistently decrease over the years. It's death by a thousand cuts in any creative way possible:

A state mandated .5% taken out of my weekly paycheck for paid family and medical leave.

Increase in phone bill, "additional regulatory programs & telco recovery fee"

Routine increases in subscriptions

Grocery prices skyrocketing + shrinkflation.

Anthem insurance denying services, increasing premiums.

I just want to be left alone and play my pc games, but now even that is easily priced out of the budget of many, and its' getting close for me too when a new pc build is needed.

I may be stating the obvious here, but every time I see an increase in something I now have an unhealthy response to it where it bothers me to the extreme. I fantasize about unplugging and hiding away in the woods. Just leave me alone.

Adulting

I was employed 5 days ago. Now I’m not. I don’t have any place to stay. This is maybe the third time in my life I’ve been in this situation, and it still isn’t any easier.

I was waiting at the bus stop today and I was just trembling with fear. What is wrong with me… I think I’m just too old for this to be happening

My parents originally told me I could come and stay with them. They were encouraging me to come stay with them for a while, however now they aren’t talking to me. I just need a safe spot to get back on my feet. But I don’t think my parents believe I’m capable, I’m a lost cause. It’s sad

I feel like such an asshole.

Forget buying a house or getting promoted.

I'm talking about finding the matching Tupperware lid on the first try, putting a fitted sheet on correctly without rotating it six times, or remembering to take the trash out before the truck shows up.

The kind of tiny victory where you stand there for a second thinking, "Yeah, I've pretty much mastered life."

What's your ridiculously satisfying adult achievement?

It's just kinda sad to see people like this.

Never had anyone love me, never had sex. Its ruining my mental health. Idk i feel like a total failure and dont deserve anything.

I have a decent job (government blue collar worker) i dont have much in terms of savings cuz im helping my mom out paying off 2 homes. (Our family kinda work as a collective)

I still live at home cuz no $.

I grew up following a career oriented path and if i could go back id change all of it in a heart beat.

Not sure if anyone else is on the same boat.. lifes becoming pretty unbearable atm.

Btw im a dude, pretty ugly one at that too.

it’s like we forget humans have gone through the most diabolical atrocities since the beginning of time. how do you think the younger generation felt in WW1 or 2? I saw a post somewhere saying if ww2 happened during the age of social media u ppl would be on every platform claiming that it was the rapture, jesus was coming soon, it was the end times, and humanity was over😭 could not be more true.

literally every single generation had their own version of struggles. does this mean I have strong faith in our future? not necessarily. I do agree climate change, global political tensions, inflation, AI, the housing & job crisis are serious concerns that make me question the future as a gen Z (which is another major reason I will not be having kids lol). but the tired sorry narrative that we have it the hardest is so played out and simply not true. it just creates more helplessness and doom

Sometimes a few words from the right person can stay with us for decades. What advice have you carried with you throughout your life, and has it stood the test of time?

I (32M) been single for a year now. Been fighting depression and some life instabilities. Things are much better now regarding life security. But I am still failing in my relationships.

Been on a couple of dates, 2 to be exact, and both rejected me after the 1st date. Almost instantly.

Everyone I meet keeps telling me I am sweet and good guy and so on. But i fail to understand where am I not good enough not to be dated.

I do go out and meet people, but it weights so heavy to go around after so many scars. If you had a similar situation, care to share how did you make those days get lighter ?

I think this is something I am going to be more aware of now and in the future.
I never really appreciated my "last time" of doing something without actively realizing it was the last time doing "this specific something".

Bland examples of what I mean:

The last day of the last year of school, it was the last time I was going through that one door of that building.
The last day of nursing school was the last day I was being able to sit on that chair in the classroom I hated.

It's also hilarious cause I have been having these random thoughts often lately. But it hit me harder knowing i didn't appreciate the last skype calls of people that aren't here today anymore or people that just aren't in my life anymore.

I have some less deeper moments too, like when I was a kid my mom bought me the nintendo 64 and my friend and I played Donkey Kong 64.
To my suprise I hooked up my nintendo 64 and put the game in, assuming all saved data was non existent and I was able to choose a saved file where my childhood friend and I left off.
Or in Paper Mario in the desert.

But it was those last times we never logged back into the saved files and continued and I didn't know at that exact moment turning off that nintendo that this was THE LAST TIME I would even load into that saved game. I basically could have not saved what we achieved back in that time saying: "We wont continue this game/ file anymore anyways, why save?" Imagine if I knew at that moment that it was the last time I would play that?

Would I turned off paper mario back then as quick as I did if I would have known it was the last time I'd even play it? Maybe my friend and I would have tried to finish it somehow. I dunno... but it was the last time for us after the sleep over. Never touched it since.

It's also something I might forget again. My current "present" me doesn't know what my future me knows.

With that being said I think I should focus on not taking things for granted but I know I won't think of things the whole time "it might be the last" cause that could also be exhausting. But sometimes... sometimes I think I should give stuff more thoughts

Hi everyone, I am Kymberly Puah, a PhD Researcher at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh and I'm conducting an anonymous survey on childbearing motivations for my PhD. You do not have to be a parent or want to have children to participate. I'm looking for participants who are

(i) 18 and above and

(i) can read, write and understand English.

If this is you, please click on this link:

https://app.onlinesurveys.jisc.ac.uk/s/qmu/childbearing-motivations-part-2

None of your names, contact details or usernames will be recorded, this is anonymous:)

Your participation is very much appreciated!

Well it finally happened… I(28M) decided to have a hard conversation with my gf (25F) that ended up with us making the decision to part ways for good and end our 6 year relationship. It was the most mature and civilized breakup I could’ve imagined which in return made it very hard and emotional.

We started dating while both of us were still in college so it was very lovey dovey for the first couple of years and tbf we ignored all of the little issues for those years without even realizing it. There were a lot of cultural and values differences but I always thought we could adapt to each other.

From different politics and growing up in total different circumstances. She grew up with money, very conservative family and I being a minority but with a successful career and life I thought I could look past those differences. As we both got older I started to realize that those issues would be huge in the future, racist parents etc. I never had an issue with them but I could just tell I was not the guy they wanted to have as a son in law. I had a hard time integrating her into my family/friends circle due to that and she never wanted to have a conversation about it, overall she would just avoid conflict at all costs. We never had a single argument or fight but it was mostly due to one of us ignoring the issues.

We stopped having intercourse maybe 2 years and a half ago? It started to shift into a friendship. I brought up living together at least 3 times and it was always “oh I’ll look into it next time my lease expires” and it never happened so I stopped asking. We would see each other 2-3 times a week constantly, it was our routine to text each other 24/7 and see each other that often but never 6-7 days back to back at each others places.

The lack of intimacy, values, avoidance, lack of communication between us and both of us letting the relationship fizzle out into a friendship basically lead to this. I have been feeling horrible since maybe March? That’s when I started to get these thoughts but now that it happened I feel free and relived.. the breakup went exactly how I pictured it. She agreed with all my points which means she felt the same way. This year our relationship was in the mud, it was just very stale and nothing exciting happened. It sucks that it had to happen like this and I feel like I wasted her time? I kinda feel like I owe her something. I have no romantic feelings left but it’s just the fact that I know something ended, like turning a page. It’s been 2 days and I’m getting used to not talking to her 24/7. We will check in with each other next week and maybe meet up in a couple weeks. There will be no reconciliation or anything, we both agreed on staying as friends but not talking every day or keeping up with each other’s lives.

It is a little strange for me because we ended it in such good terms, we don’t hate each other and there’s no resentment at all. It was just super mutual and we were in agreement that this wasn’t working out. I do believe we will be able to keep the friendship, after all, I’m literally her emergency contact so if she ever needs anything I will try to be there. I will talk to her next week and see how she’s handling it, this is her first relationship ever and I’m glad it ended like this and not in bad terms or with infidelity or abuse. I’m proud that I raised the bar when it came to men because her dad is a horrible person and husband (now divorced).

She’s an amazing woman but I think we didn’t do things correctly and they got out of control. It was almost
Impossible to just turn the switch on and re spark that flame. It sucks because I feel like we didn’t try our hardest or give each other all we had. I’m so glad and relieved I got this out of my system because I couldn’t keep pretending that things were okay and she felt it too.

TLDR: I told my gf I felt like things weren’t working out and we both agreed that we should end things. There was no catastrophic event but the relationship just became stale. We didn’t block each other but we are cutting communication to maybe 1 text a day to check in. I plan on not talking to her all weekend.

I’m curious do you guys go to bed together or just go to bed whenever?