Polls: Family & Friends

Oh dear, your experiments into auto-asphyxiation have gone badly wrong, and now you're a ghost in your own home. They've removed your maggoty corpse, sprayed fabreze, and sold your house to a family.

But your going no where so where do you hide?

Am I the only one who thinks this has a high chance of being a recipe for disaster waiting to happen? We can pretend to live in a fair fantasy world all we want, but the truth is that most male and female friendships aren't 100% platonic. Usually at least one of the two develops feelings or at least a crush for the other, and I'm sure that most of us have experienced this with the majority of our friendships of the opposite sex. For me, many (NOT all) of my male friends had liked me at some point for example and I even had to end some friendships because they wanted more than I could offer.

So this brings me back to my point, how fair or wise would it be to make new friends of the opposite sex once you're in a committed relationship? It's not even just about trust (even though I do believe in trust but not blind trust) but the fact that no relationship is perfect and during difficult relationship moments it could become easy for some think that the grass is greener on the other side and even if they don't act out on it, cheating isn't always sexual. Keeping friends you already knew is one thing, but making new ones seems kind of sus... I don't know 🤷‍♀️

But I'm open to different opinions, even if I don't share them. How do you see it?

I've heard of bullies always going for someone weaker that can't physically fight you back and they're seen as cowards.

How about if the bully is weaker than the victim? The victim has the capacity of knocking out the bully if they wanted to but doesn't want to. The bully knows you don't have the guts and takes fully advantage of the situation, even of your morals. Is that bully also a coward?

I think I love being a best friend the most. While I love my family, I've bonded more with my bestie over the years. If she died, I would be a wreck.

Not that I wouldn't be a wreck if my mother, grandmother or sister died, but my bestie is like my other half.

Am I wrong to be frustrated by people who do this? All my life all my parents have ever really done is talk ‘at’ me. My mum’s idea of a conversation is giving me a run down of her day whether I asked for it or not, a run down of what she’s watching if I walk into the living room, yet another update on a family member that I didn’t ask about or what she plans to do at work that day.

Not once in my life has she actually outright asked ‘how are you?’ or asked about my day. It’s exhausting to the point I just want to avoid.

Am I wrong for feeling that way?

I mean adult or child. They could act like the nicest person in the world, smile at all the right times and meet your eyes. But what are the common tells that someone actually isn’t a good person? And how often are you right about when it comes to judging a person’s character?

The older I get, the more I realize that I've grown closer to my friends than my family. While I love my family dearly, it's just not the same as the love I have for my friends.

I know that may be messed up to say seeing as these are the people that raised me, but I've built such a strong connection and bond with my friends. Something that wasn't forced but just happened unlike with family where you're kind of forced to have a bond with them.

Not saying that you shouldn't have a bond with family, but I just noticed the bond is a lot stronger with my two closest friends.

For the past two years, I’ve decided to go on a solo holiday during the summer time - which has been great.

However last year when I mentioned to my parents that I was going, my dad was like ‘oh I could come with you!’ And I just automatically thought no…because for me it would be weird going alone with my dad. So I just didn’t really respond and ignored the comment.

This year, same again. He made a joke about going with me by saying ‘oh I could just come along and you could pretend you’re my carer’ sort of thing. I just ignored that comment as well and thought no way.

Just before I left for my holiday, my dad was suggesting to my mum that they should go to the Maldives. To which my mum declined and said ‘she’ll go with you’ meaning me. To which I got angry and said ‘don’t be so stupid’. She laughed but I genuinely didn’t find it funny.

Am I overreacting?