Messages By: ivan_ho

I've been very stressed the passed two years. Christmas two years ago my fiancé tried to kill himself with sleepingpills while I was on the phone with him and I had to call his parents to save his life. We moved into our first own appartment in january two years ago (learning to do all the housekeeping and paying bills) and just after that he had sex with another woman in our home and that completely crushed me as I was allready struggeling to support him through a rough depression and getting off drugs. I was also trying to pull through my next to last year of upper secondary school at that time. However, we worked on it and I started to rebuild myself. Then my fiancé was hospitalized with gastric ulcer because of his depression, that was a year ago. Things were getting rough and I'd come home to find him barfing his insides out in the bathroom or laying motionless on the sofa completely out of reach to me. I found comfort in a friend of ours who was kind enough to keep me company after school when I didn't dare to go home, affraid of what I'd find. Unfortunatly this friend decided he wanted to kiss me and I returned the kiss without even thinking, this was in may this year. 

The relationship we had had to rebuild after my fiancés meeting with that other woman was now back at rock bottom and we were both very depressed. We're still in rebuilding his trust in me as I write to you now. 

To top it all off my parants are now getting a divorce and a lot of dirt from under the surface has been kicked up including an untill now unknown thirteen-years-old halfsister on my father's side and that my mother have been steeling money from my father for over twelve years. They are not having any kind of dialogue and my two teenage brothers suffer a very unorganised shifting of homes with no said scedual at all. So as I try to support my fiancé in his depression and rebuilding of himself I also try to carry my father and my brothers on my sholders as their only soft spot to fall, and pull of collage-level studies to finance my home as the only breadwinner. 

I couldn't have made it through 'till this day if I hadn't started to take classes in aikido one and a half years back - a selfdefense martial art designed only to defend, never to attack. It provided an outlet of my agression, a relaxation afterwards, a stressrelease. I found a group of new very supportiv and fun friends, somewhere to go and belong. To that I learn to defend myself in ways in which I don't have to be very strong or violent at all, but still gives me a good exercise. I've lost weigth, built muscles, gaid flexibility and selfconfidence. 

The best thing it had given me, however, is that I no longer have thoughts of suicide and I no longer cut myself! 

I wouldvery much want to adopt a child when I feel that I'm ready for parenthood. Especially since there are so many children out there who need a parent, and so many mothers who can't take care of their children and still want to give them the best possible start in life. 

As I see it, I want to help take care of the children who are already in this world before I give birth to any myself. Now, that is never going to happen in my lifetime, never can we take care of all the children in need, but if I can provide a good life for a child who needs in so badly, then I really want to do that! 

I am trying to end a toxic friendship right now, and I would like some advice from you guys if you would be so kind? 

My story: 

A while back I got to know one of my fiancé's friends and we became good friends very quickly. He, my new friend, had some emotional problems and I helped him out by being a good lisstener and supporter. He had very good values and ideals, more simular to mine than my own fiancé has. But my fiancé started to disslike him since they were both feeling down and none of them had it in them to help the other one out at that time, instead they started to feel like the other one was letting them down. 

This friend is very needy and wants constant reasurance to know that he can trust me and that I care "enough" about him to qualify as a friend at all. He put me to a test once, when he whenever I'd come to visit he'd allways bring difficult topics up just as I had to leave - just to see if I would stay or not. I told him multiple times that I really had to go and when he got angrier and angrier I'd run out of his appartment, scared of his agressions towards me. 

He has told me that if I really cared about him I should have stayed even though I had other places where I had to be, and that I was a stupid moron for not understanding that. He has also told me that I am a great dissapointment to him and the list goes on. He cut me real deep, especially since I was only trying to do my best to support him and at the same time support my fiancé in their hardships and even though they weren't friends anymore. 

He has appologised for this behaviour on several occations, but he still can't decide if he wants to be my friend or not, probably because of trustissues and the fact that he has romantic feelings for me that my fiancé does not aprove of. 

I want him out of our lifes mostly because it hurts my fiancé that I have a friendship with a man who has hurt us both badly and our relationship. But at the same time my friend tries to stay friends with both me and my fiancé in an on/off sort of manner. 

We're affraid that he would take an official ending of our friendship as a declaration of war considering his short temper and passed behaviour. 

He seemed like such a sweet man in the beginning of our friendship, but now he's managed to go against most of his good values! 

Please, any advice would be helpfull! 

Thank you very much for writing to me, the 'quiet brush off' is working like a charm I must say. But it was actually him who started brushing me off. He has done that before: decided that it's best not to see me anymore because of his romantic feelings towards me, and then he stops talking to me or become just hostile. This time, after his trip to NY, when he returned he didn't speak to me and I realised how very much better I felt when he didn't contact me. 

However, now he has started contacting me again, but I'm doing like you said - I'm giving polite, short answeres to his messages and avoid giving him any information about myself. He can write to me all he wants, but I'm holding him to his own decicion this time, he's not getting back in! 

Again, thank you very much! 

Hi y'all! 

I want to ask y'all if you've got any, sort of, "miracle diets" for me? I'm a very bussy collage-student and I haven't got much time (or money) to cook at all, I'm also a vegetarian (eggs and milk are fine, no chicken or fish though). 

Thank y'all! 

I have spent much time reading about and debating rape with many different people. Once I had a discussion about a thirteen year old girl who had been tricked to drink alcohol, then been raped by three older men in their appartment. 

I told this story in an internetforum beause I was upset that the three rapists got off. And I was appalled by the answers I got, such as: 

"she was a slut and deserved it" 

"she obviously wanted to" 

"she deserved it for sleeping around and drinking underage" 

"she wanted to shag them and when it was no good she cries 'rape'" 

These people didn't know her! Yes she had been drinking underage, yes she had had a previous sexual experience with a thirteen years old boy, the same age as she was, but that mush was enough for all therse people to judge her as a "slut", "whore", someone who's "sleeping around" and "wanted" or "deserved" what happened. 

This happened in my country, sweden, and the people who answered were from all over the globe. The age limit for legal drinking in sweden is eighteen. 

Here's what I want to ask... 

The people who answered me on the other internet forum told me when I asked them that, yes, since I drank under age at fourteen I most sertainly deserve to be raped for it. 

Does this sound reasonable to you, and why/why not? 

Luckily I was the victim, but had I been than, according to these horrible people, it would have been to no-ones fault but my own. Horrid! 

I do not understand how people can be so judgamental(sp), but the only ones who were on my side in this internet-debate was people who had been raped themselves. It was only I who took the party of the rape-victims. I think this is such a serious issue, really. 

By the way, in my research I have read that the punichment for rape in many states in america is about 20 years, while here in sweden the maximum punishment is 6 years, and most rapists get away with a couple of months as the high court makes up excuses for them, such as "the girl was drunk on her own free will" or "she followed him home on her own free will" and so on - that gives them less time to do as it can't count as proper rape. 

Bullcrap, according to me. 

How about teenage girls in leather corsettes and thigh-high leatherboots with high heels? How about toddlers with heavy make-up and thongs? How about PJ's that consists of a cotton mini-skirt and a tight top that shows off your belly-button? How about making sports all about how good you look in your gym-clothes and how well you make-up looks on the feild? How about promoting Paris Hilton as a rolemoddle for you little baby girl? 

I'm sure you've all heared about the Bratz-dolls and I would like to hear your views on them. 

Personally, I think they are the worst thing that has ever happened to the toy-industry. 

Eight-years-olds should not wear that type of clothes. Generally I am concidered to be quite liberal and open, but in this case I am completely conservative. Children sgould not dress like teenagers! I can't imagine the kind of mum who buys her daughter a Bratz Doll. Those dolls set such a terrible example and I take it as a personal insult as a martial artist when a Bratz Sports Doll is presented in what is supposed to be "karate-wear" (although it obviously isn't) and a sleesy female speaker-voice tells me through the TV-screen that it is important to look good when winning!! 

In my teenage rebellion-year I was a pretty violent radicalfeminist, but have now settled for taking part in itellectual debates on the subject. However, the local toy-store's latest window display of the Bratz Dolls just made me feel like I wanted to kick the window in and spray it all with black paint.