It’s that the marriage rate has been too high for a long time.

Oof I’m going to go on that soon. This is the main thing I’m afraid of :( best of luck to you!

Nice of you to try to help, but I don’t think the people who post in this community are open to learning

Wild guess here, but if it’s from antidepressants, like it is for me, you can be prescribed a second antidepressant at a dose too low to help depression, but high enough to get the side effect: heightened appetite. It’s not a miracle fix, but it helps me eat more.

Reminds me of one of mine. In the middle of my lesson, my instrument teacher paused to ask me some questions: can you tie your shoes without looking? Do you have trouble unlocking your door in the dark? Etc. Turns out I have little to no muscle memory lol.

Im not in the US but I’ve heard many people argue that joining the military (beyond mandatory service) makes you right wing. My country’s military doesn’t even leave the country.

I didn’t want to go into it in the original comment, but yes. It is a relevant debate whether it’s vegan to swallow another humans semen, or even saliva. And yes, it is, if the human consents. Consent is the more or less the basis of whether vegans find it moral to consume something. Humans can give consent to sharing their fluids. Other animals cannot.

Bees make honey for their hive. Honey also does indeed contain bodily fluids from the bees.

The bread making human consents to you taking the bread (presumably). Breast milk and other human bodily fluids can be vegan for the same reason.

And insects pollinate plants not because they use the fruit, but for the nectar. They don’t care what happens after they leave the flower.

You avoid an avoidable luxury, yet you do not avoid something unavoidable that’s necessary. Curious.

Very true, even in a less life/death situation. Example, a piercing hurts much much more than stubbing your toe, but people, myself included, keep coming back for more of them.

It’ll pause if everyone pauses

It’s a good, important step that you know this about yourself. But yeah, for both of your long term happiness, as well as for your friendship, it’ll be very important to talk about the kind of relationship you have. Even if it’s super tough and mightn’t have the outcome you’d like. But the resentment it would inevitably breed if you couldn’t date because you don’t know where you stand with your friend wouldn’t be healthy for your friendship. Maybe it’s easier to not do it all at once?

Either way, your situation sounds tough. Best of luck to the both of you!

Bit of a different take from many of the other comments.

Relationships don’t have to be the way they are traditionally. You don’t have to be monogamous. You can be in two relationships, one of which is romantic, one of which is a strong friendship with sexual aspects. It’d be under the polyamory umbrella. There’s plenty of potential partners out there who are ok with or would even want this kind of a constellation.

The very important caveat though: even more so than in any other kind of close relationship, this requires a LOT of communication. You need to clarify with your best friend what kind of a relationship it is that you have. You don’t have to label it, but you have to figure out together what you want from each other and what your boundaries are. The latter includes what kind of relationships you’re ok with the other one having with someone else. Then, when you date someone else, you have to have the same conversations and be open about your other relationship(s). I’d be upfront about the latter, the former can happen over time.

If none of this sounds like something you’d want, that’s of course perfectly valid. The point stands though that you need to clarify with each other what you want from your relationship and what your boundaries and needs are. This might mean having to change your relationship dynamic.

Some context: my best friend and I are super close and find each other sexually attractive, but aren’t romantically interested in each other. We’ve talked about that and keep checking in. We’ve done some second base things and cuddled. I now have a partner that’s decidedly monogamous. Now, I might still lightly cuddle with my best friend, but we wouldn’t kiss anymore. Those are all boundaries that had to be talked through.

Omg very similar here! My best friend, who lives oversees now, is coming to visit for 3 weeks. It’s been about 2 years since I’ve seen him. If I didn’t know him, I wouldn’t think it possible for another human to understand me on such a fundamental and intuitive level as he does. I’m stoked!

I’ve silently cried in public many many times and nobody ever bats an eye. If your town is over a certain size, people tend to prefer to mind their business.

My mum at least asked ‘do you learn about this stuff in school?’, to which i awkwardly said yeah. We did get some pretty good classes on bodies, the biology of reproduction, and contraception. I even remember having a test on contraceptives in biology class.

Unfortunately, it was very cis-het only. I had to figure out by myself that I should be using protection during sex even if both participants had a vulva.

As for drugs, it never occurred to my mum that anything other than alcohol and nicotine could be relevant to us. She did well on keeping me from smoking just by telling me about her experience as a smoker and how hard it was to quit. I kept my drinking and weed smoking from her pretty well because even a mention would make her angry. To be fair, as an adult I understand she had some trauma from her mum being an alcoholic.

Where I live it is, because of local-ish soy production. Also helps that it’s a complete protein, so you don’t have to think as much about which amino acids you’re getting from where.

Man where were you 8 years ago when I ate zero protein because I didn’t know it could be cheap. Couldn’t afford animal products and was conditioned to believe those were the only viable source of protein.

Btw I’d like to add textured vegetable protein to the list! It’s one of my go-tos nowadays.

I’m not even in tech. I teach maths at night school to support myself while doing my masters. Somehow I’ve become the ‘computer guy’ at my job. All the teachers and even office staff ask me to explain software to them that I myself have never even used. I need to learn to say no.

Semi related, but my mum likes to pretend she doesn’t know what ‘Netflix and chill’ means. She keeps saying it to people. One time I said mum please google that phrase. She said she’s well aware of the meaning and just likes to see people’s reactions.