I can’t recommend his scifi trilogy enough! The first book (“Out of the Silent Planet”) is my favorite, but the 2nd is also pretty good. The 3rd book is COMPLETELY different from the first two, but still enjoyable.

There are clear allusions to monotheistic faith in each of them, but I believe he was a philosopher first and foremost. Great reading for over winter holiday if you get a break from school/work at all.

“A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, Hmán, as if pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing.” - CS Lewis’ Sci-fi Trilogy

Your nostalgia for the game is just as much a part of your experience of the game as when you originally played it. Enjoy feeling the good memories and that desire to go back to them, but know that you can never go back. Remembering good times is just those good times becoming “fully mature”.

I’m no Hallmark apologist, but there is actually a lot to be said for the common theme of “downshifting” by leaving an unbalanced career to a more sustainable, less materialistic life.

Hey, that really sucks and I’m sorry it’s happening to you. You sound very competent and like you take pride in your work.

Here’s my advice:

1. Don’t quit without another gig lined up.

2. Start looking for a new job now. A bad boss can ruin even a great job, and managers in particular are hard for a company to get rid of. She’ll likely be in that position awhile. You’ve got a boss who is incompetent and has already displayed some loose ethics. You don’t want to stick around that.

3. Incompetent bosses can sometimes be a good thing because they’re easy to fool. Consider pulling back on your work production so you can focus on designing a great resume and prepping for interviews.

And remember the most important rule: “A company will get rid of you just as soon as it’s convenient for them to do so. You should be ready to do the same to the company.”

Fake: Anon meets a girl Gae: Anon likely loves male shrimp

Thanks so much!

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The nice thing about opening up to friends about it is that they can help you baseline.

For instance: when things were really peaking my anxiety a few months ago, I was in distress because I felt like I wasn’t important to my SO anymore. I communicated my fear and the situation to a friend and he was able to give me a different perspective: that the way I was thinking about relationships was zero-sum, but that my SO’s heart may have enough room for both all the love I needed AND her new friends. I just need to communicate with my SO if I’m actually feeling neglected or not.

It was good for me to hear from another person that the way I perceived the world isn’t necessarily the way everyone does.

About 10 years of marriage and your situation reads just like one of mine that started a few months back. I’ve even been through the same frantic spiral you described with the condoms.

I haven’t figured it out fully yet, but here are the things I’ve found have helped:

1. Checked out the book “Insecure in Love” by Leslie Becker-Phelps. My feelings of jealousy almost definitely stem from my insecure attachment and I needed to recognize when that fear was being activated so I could practice responding better.

2. Therapy with EMDR - turns out my family of origin was kinda effed up and that was bleeding over into my beliefs about relationships. It can be fixed with therapy (but you may need to shop around for a therapist that fits you — it takes time and that’d okay because you learn something useful from every therapist you try). This gave me the tools to fight when those anxiety attacks came around.

3. Getting my own friend group - I was like you and really didn’t NEED or WANT other friends besides my SO. That said, I took the past 6 months or so to try and branch out and I can’t tell you how great it is to have someone to call when those negative feelings hit who can talk you off the ledge (or, to my surprise, let me know that they have also had these feelings, but that it doesn’t mean anything). Being there to support someone else as they go through life is also incredibly rewarding.

4. Prayer. I’m a person of faith, and I believe prayer has helped calm me down and surrender as well as look at the situation through fresh eyes.

5. Journaling - getting into the habit of writing down your thoughts in a secure location was huge for me getting to work out those “intuitions” that were causing me some anxiety. I always thought I was an intuitive person, so when I had an intuition that led me wrong, I needed to process it.

I hope some of this helps because I know the anxiety sucks. I don’t think it will get better on its own, so if you want to stay in this relationship (and for the sake of your future relationships), decide to do the work and make moves to do it. It’s not your fault, but sometimes life shits on us and we have to go clean up the shit so it doesn’t stink so much.

Go to bed Thor Ragnarok! I don’t care if The Mummy is farting up the room — it’s taco Tuesday, what did you expect?!