Again, I’m not demanding full knowledge of my friends nor have I asked for any apologies. Rationally I understand, but does it invalidate my feeling hurt?

It wasn’t a lie by omission, they genuinely made me question myself deeply if I was just thinking too much, it made me question my reality and what I observed.

I haven’t asked for anything from them. Didn’t demand they be honest or pushed them. I just didn’t expect to be actively deceived, even if intentions weren’t malicious.

When you’ve worked hard to rebuild, keep trust and respect boundaries where you’ve overstepped before, to be shown in a way that it feels as if you’ve actually not made any progress at all hits hard.

I just don’t want to regress back to removing and isolating myself because I feel like I’m nothing but bad news to people. I’m genuinely trying my best here, it’s just that the people who helped me out of that shell back then were involved, and I’m struggling.

Like adults, we talked out the issue, I apologized and actively worked to address the mistake I made and respect new boundaries when it happened.

I’ve anonymised and changed identifiable information to seek support on dealing with the issue here to avoid discussing it with other friends, who would know the people in question. Isn’t that the point of communities like these?

I’ve come here to express my hurt at being misled and gaslit across a long period of time by my close friends and confidants, and to find actionable suggestions to try and move on. So tell me, what else could I have done to protect their privacy and still seek support?

They were literally holding hands while we were spending time together. I know they didn’t owe me a straight answer, and I’m the type to fully drop a topic if they say no, but it would be sort of dumb if I didn’t ask at that point.

For the conversation to kind of turn it around on me when I asked saying, “I mean, it was sort of obvious” like they weren’t verbally denying it to me when I asked feels disingenuous.

Life isn’t a romcom where everyone’s slyly ribbing people about being together. I’ve made that mistake before when I was a lot younger and it ended up hurting someone.

They messed up in how they handled the whole thing, and my feelings were hurt as a result. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s not unjust to need time to process and find a way forward.

We’re in similar cultures. My group and I were in a more westernised schooling environment, hence the more western ideas we share.

I’m glad we were though, because unlike others who would’ve just let the relationship die because they refused to swallow their pride and apologise, my male friend at the moment has reached out with an olive branch of sorts and it’s helped a lot in the process of us both getting over the elephant in the room.

I believe that face and pride are god awful, and I’ve seen what it’s done to my family and friends. If open communication was more of a thing, I don’t think I would’ve grown up in the environment I did. Some people would genuinely rather die than ever admit they’re at fault, but I think now I’m glad my friends aren’t one of them.

It’s sort of an everyone kind of knows but me thing, since I chose to drop the topic and ignore the signs after they said nothing was up out of respect to them. I know they owe me nothing of the sort, just that in the end, here we were. I’m just coming to terms with it.

I think it’s definitely come from some trauma of being heavily neglected in ways I desperately needed growing up. I credit my friends, including the ones I’ve mentioned here for being the support I’ve needed to survive at first, and now do well.

I don’t know how you would feel, but I would love to have returned the favour of that level of trust and support, and I endeavour to do that, best I can. It did hurt to find out that they sat on it for so long to avoid a potential scenario, that it came true anyway due to a different kind of hurt.

I told Xavier following the initial conversation: “I’ll always be your friend. That doesn’t change, and I’ll always support you.” And based on a very recent chat I think he does believe that and is willing to try to get past this.

My feelings of hurt were never going to end in me cutting them off. But they’ve just extended a sort of olive branch, and we can work with that. I feel a little reassured now that my friendship is worth at least some effort, because it has always been a deep fear that I wasn’t.

Honestly, the only thing I’d like to know is besides being within my rights to feel hurt regardless, what I can do to salvage whatever relationship is left.

But, I don’t feel it’s honestly something I can control. The ball seems to be in their court and I guess I shouldn’t hold my breath.

I’ve maintained a policy of openness and honesty with people around me. All I asked for was them to not lie. People can say they’d prefer not to say, and I’d drop the topic immediately, because that’s how I would like to be treated in kind.

I would’ve respected boundaries. I don’t emotionally blackmail people to tell me secrets, like you’re supposing. I didn’t chomp at the bit for their relationship information, and when they said there was nothing on the few times it was very obvious and I asked, I stopped asking.

If a white lie ends up hurting someone anyway, does it mean the hurt doesn’t exist because you meant well?

They’re serious people, and they told their parents within a week of starting.

I care less about the fact it wasn’t told to me, I would’ve respected it if they said they didn’t want to talk about it. I just feel hurt that they resorted to lying.

I actually bought one for my collection. Takes a lot of tweaking, which I think is what detracts a lot of people, but it’s not bad hardware at all.

I enjoy top down stealth games, and haven’t seen this game get discussed much, but it was pretty fun - Serial Cleaner (and sequel, Serial CleanerS)

You play a guy who cleans up murder scenes for an unknown serial killer, all the while evading guards and other security measures. It’s a pretty fun experience, and I do recommend giving it a go if that’s your kind of thing.

There’s also the Marvelous Miss Take, a game where you play a woman on a mission to perform a series of heists. Also a top down stealth game, you get to use some gadgets to distract guards while you sneak past and to your goal.

Both are older indie games, but enjoyable for at least one playthrough.

No, but I understand that. I’ve been on bad terms with my own mother following an incident last October where I swore at her when she refused to hear me out when I tried to explain myself. The full thing is obviously a bit more complex.

Our only interactions since have been arguments where she’s said very verbally abusive things and it’s hard. She’s done better than her own mom, who’s just generally verbally abusive by only doing so while mad, but there’s some things you can’t say without having to make amends later, and she’s run up a list.

Difficult families are difficult. I hope things improve for you as well.

True, I think in Japan kids weren’t considered human until they survived to a certain age due to how child mortality just worked in the past (the exact number slips my mind atm).

Based on Linfamy’s video here, sometimes parents would even “return” children shortly after birth, just because childbirth was safer than abortion measures of the time.

Good point. I do agree it’s more of a modern idea.

Though in a way, you do have to care for your retirement account. You have to make deposits regularly and ensure investments are done responsibly to ensure the best possible outcome.

If you don’t take care of them, then you’ll only get a poor outcome, like not receiving the best possible care but just the bare minimum necessary or even nothing at all, if things are bad enough.

After all, the bible also says “Love they neighbour as thyself”. When your children grow up and become your neighbour, the way you’ve treated them has a possibility of coming home to roost, especially now.

It’s a matter of education and how they understand the situation I suppose. I was a Reddit refugee moving over from the official app because the news really showed how anti consumer the company was being. It’s not much of a protest, but I only go on Reddit now if I really need certain information, so I don’t think it’s a total failure.

Bots and trolls will probably follow as Lemmy grows and gains traction, but I hope by that time moderation will have improved and will be able to scale to handle that.