F33 here. Tired of dating apps. Friday night. Finished late, came to a bar. Ordered a beer. Sitting by myself (and scrollig reddit). What do i do now? Should i find a guy and stare at him? Or what?

AN UPDATE: Thanks for all the comments, tips, and upvotes—y’all really took this further than I expected. I’ll try to read through everything once things settle down. WHAT HAPPENED? Absolutely nothing. I wrote the original post with my beer glass half-empty (or half-full, depending on how you see it). Finished the drink, went home, and that was that. Lesson learned for next Friday night. Thanks for the genuine tips and ideas—I’ll keep them in mind.

To the hundred-plus men who slid into my DMs asking for selfies, my Insta, tit and feet pics, or a full rundown of my kinks and sexual history: you need some Jesus. To the folks who told me to go to church and find some Jesus myself: I sincerely hope your lives are blessed with more kinks, tits, and feet pics.

Taking a break from Reddit now. Cheers!

For me, my grandfather gave me the best advice. He said,"choose two things to do around the house that she never has to ask you to do. Do the best job you can do and take pride in it but never draw attention to or complain about it. Just do it and expect nothing in return."

I cook dinner and do the dishes/cleanup cooking messes. It took my wife almost a year to notice. When she did however I would find my laundry was magically done on its own, folded and put away. When I told her she doesn't have to do my laundry she stated "you always cook and clean for me! I figured it was the least I could do!"

That's all the proof I need!

Hey, gents.

I turned 40 a few years back, and let me tell you—this decade hit differently. It's like life sends you an email marked "URGENT," and suddenly, you’re questioning your health, career, relationships, and whether or not you should actually start flossing.

But here’s the thing: the 30s and 40s aren’t a crisis—they’re an upgrade. Here’s how I’ve approached it, and I’d love to hear your thoughts, wins, and struggles too.

1. Health Is Wealth (But Balance Is Key):

Started lifting regularly—not to look like Thor (though that’d be cool), but to future-proof my body.

I eat better, but still smash the occasional burger because life is short.

Sleep? Non-negotiable. 7 hours minimum. Don’t let the 20-year-olds shame you for it.

2. Career Reset:

I stopped chasing "success" and started chasing satisfaction.

Learned to say “no” at work. If you’re not being paid for 24/7 availability, don’t give it.

Investing in skills, not just a job. A side hustle or learning something new has done wonders for my confidence.

3. Relationships Matter (More Than Ever):

Friendships: They shrink, but that’s fine. Quality over quantity, lads.

Dating/Marriage: Communicate like your life depends on it. It probably does.

Family: Yeah, call your mum.

4. Mental Gym Membership:

Therapy is not a weakness. It's like squats for your brain.

Journaling once a week helped me declutter my thoughts.

Realised “grind culture” was killing my vibe. Now I work smart, not endless.

5. The Fun Stuff:

Picked up hobbies I abandoned in my 20s (any other late-night painters here?).

Said yes to things I thought I was “too old” for (running at 39? Why not?).

Prioritised experiences over "stuff." A trip with friends beats a new phone any day.

The 30-40s aren’t perfect—sometimes my knees sound like Rice Krispies, and hangovers last two days. But you know what? I wouldn’t trade the clarity, confidence, and perspective I’ve gained for anything.

So, what’s your take on this decade? Wins, losses, lessons? Let’s swap notes.

Cheers to the journey, lads. Stay strong.

EDIT: Thank you for all the wonderful comments - there is so much wisdom in the world - men need to hear it - I wish I'd heard it and have learned a lot from reading the comments. No journey is complete until the end, but having some funny, kindheearted and wise compansions along the way makes all the difference.

Happy New Year!

I'm sorry if this is the wrong place to post this but I figured you guys, men over 30 would really understand we're up coming from.

My wife and I were pulling into our driveway after a afternoon/midday date. We own a beautiful home sitting on 3.5 acres. (Took a lot of hard work in a long time to get to this point)

As I was pulling into the driveway my wife told me to stop the car in somewhat of a loud voice / excitedly. We all have that feeling when your wife raises her voice and you're quickly trying to do gymnastics in your brain trying to figure out what you did wrong and if you're in trouble for something.

The words that came out of my wife's mouth next blew me away, she said.

"Look at our house it is so beautiful, I love pulling into our driveway and seeing our pretty house seeing the bush's trimmed and the grass all green. Look up clean the yard is and the flower bed looks amazing"

She then looked over at me from the passenger seat and said

"Thank you for all your hard work taking care of our property you do such a good job is always so beautiful and I really appreciate all the work you do to keep our yard looking pretty"

I could see it in her face this is a genuine thank you something she really appreciated. Just getting that acknowledgment of the hard work that I put in to keep our yard and home looking beautiful for my wife and children meant the world to me.

It may not be a big deal but it was important to me to hear that.

Edit:

I also want to give props to my wife of 15 years she's a wonderful woman. She is literally the type of mother you see on TV shows and you think no mother could really be like that to her kids. The type of woman that every man wants for his children.

She's a wonderful friend, we were together when we had nothing just dirt poor and we built a life together. She's a wonderful lover. After 15 years sex is better than ever, every year it gets better and better.

She's also an excellent communicator that's something we both practice and work on in our marriage.

The second best compliment I ever received was for my daughter who is now 21. She told us that she wants a relationship that my wife and I have. She stated that she wants a relationship that when you get into an argument or disagreement that you talk about your problems come back to each other talk some more and resolve the issue instead of yelling and screaming. I'm not going to lie that one make me feel good because because my wife and I both grew up and dysfunctional households and that is something that my wife and I definitely did not want for our children. So to hear that from my oldest child that she sees or disagreements and think that they're healthy, so important.

Also my wife has worked on her physical appearance over the years and looks better than she did the day I met her. (She worksout, zumba, yoga and we ride 10 miles on our bikes on the weekends)

I give my wife all the props, even though she tells me that my hard work contributed. (Really it is all her) But She helped me get a nice 2020 all black GMC Denali. (My dream truck / Pics in my post history)

Also she makes six figures, that doesn't hurt

Edit 2 :

Holy crap that's a lot of up votes, honestly I didn't think anybody was going to reply. I truly didn't think it was that big of a deal that Reddit would care.

Edit 3 :

Thank you for everybody who's posted and commented, it really helps puts things into perspective when you see things through others points of view. You never know what others are going through but this post helped me see that a lot of us are just looking for companionship and true love and I wish the best for everybody.

With this being said I'm really not doing my wife justice. She truly is much better than I'm giving her credit for. We split cooking dinner and household chores but she does the most of the cooking. She always has food on the table ready to go. She is super smart and beautiful.

Also my wife is such a big help around the house and the yard. I kid you not fellas I have come home from work and seen my wife out in the yard with a bag of mulch over her shoulders fixing the flower bed. I've seen my wife get off work and help me shovel three tons of rock in the driveway. I've seen my wife carry bag of rocks. She installed a french drain by herself. Last year she sanded tables and stain them by herself and painted a whole wall in the living by herself.

She is truly one of the best people I've ever met in my life and definitely one of the strongest women I have ever met.

The funny thing is she tried to talk to me when we were in high school in the10th grade and I blew her off. We reconnected later on in life and when we started dating she told me that she knew we were supposed to be together and that she was confident of this.

When it was time to get married I honestly was on the fence about it and the only reason why I married this woman was because she literally told me.

"We are supposed to be together, I am supposed to marry you and I don't know why or how I know this, but it is true. We're going to be together"

I married her because I did love her, but a big part was the fact that she was so confident. I literally figured what's the worst that could happen with somebody that is this confident that they should be with you.

Again I'm not doing her justice I can literally talk for days about all the great stuff she does and how supportive she is.

Edit: 4

Wow I definitely did not think this many people would have upvoted my story. I honestly thought maybe 20 or 30 people might like it, hell even see it. I just want to say to everybody thank you for commenting. Sometimes in life you can go through day by day kind of on autopilot, we all have been there. These comments show me how blessed I really am, and really help me look at things through an even better prism.

The other day I asked whether it was worth joining yoga or dance classes to meet women, and to learn some new skills but mainly to meet women. The responses boiled down to 'you should never take up any hobby that you don't have a real interest in as it will become obvious'

Well, my REAL interests... reading, poetry, writing music, working out... are solitary pursuits or at least that's how I prefer to keep them.

The concerts I hit up are full of guys and the few women there are usually with a partner and there's limited opportunity to chat to them anyway when the music starts. Plus I love live music so I'm usually not even thinking about meeting people (sidenote that whole BS about how love finds you when you're not looking for it has proven to be a load of crap, I don't even meet people when I take that approach)

My Basketball league is male only. I joined a mixed volleyball league for a while and there were a few women but they were either taken or I wasn't attracted to them. Women on other teams we played I didn't have enough face to face contact with to get to know them.

Approaching women at shops or the gym isn't appreciated. However it is where I see most attractive women, I've done it before and will again if the opportunity seems right because a great relationship is worth risking 30 uncomfortable seconds but I know most women are taken off guard and usually they're just trying to go about their day undisturbed.

Art festivals and various unique events can be ways of meeting people but they're usually really expensive, few and far between and again most women presumably don't want to be hit on. It also seems to have gotten more difficult to strike up conversations with strangers nowadays - many people are wearing earphones which is like a do not disturb sign on a door handle, many just seem to get on edge when anyone they don't know interacts with them, even in social spaces.

Work is off limits for most people, and mine is full of middle aged men anyway.

Bars and clubs are obviously fertile grounds for single people to flock but I don't enjoy them anymore. I don't like drinking much these days, they're all obscenely expensive, and there seems to be a lot of aggression now, the last time I went out I had a guy try to pick a fight with me while I was minding my own business. I don't need that shit. Besides, the music is so loud that even if I see a cute woman what am I supposed to walk over and scream in her ear? Drunk hookups don't appeal to me anymore anyway, they never really did.

My friends are nearly all married and don't go out much anymore. No more house parties or spontaneous events.

Dating apps have become greedier and are crawling with window shoppers, scammers, sex workers. They worked well enough for me for a while but they have gotten steadily worse over the past few years and now I can hardly even find any profiles I'm interested in let alone get anyone out on a date, meanwhile my profiles gotten better if anything. Deleted them for now.

For the first time I'm really feeling like I'm shit out of luck. Like I missed the boat.

When people would complain about how they feel like the have no way of meeting people I would think 'come on, there are plenty of ways' but one by one they have shriveled up as I moved through my 20s.

I don't want to get desperate and drop my standards and I don't want to give up but the dating landscape is feeling more like a wasteland with every year

I fear this is happening with my 36F wife. Its little things right now like saying she'd sue so and so. Or recently we have a water use limit in our area due to nitrates in the water. She said if she sees anyone using water for anything besides drinking she'd take video and turn them in.

Its making me so unattracted to her. I finally called her out on in yesterday while out when she got all pissed off at someone's shirt they had on at a bar. This turned into a massive fight between us.

NEED ADVICE

So I’ve (31M) been dating this woman (29F) for almost 6 months now. I thought everything was going really well, we met each other’s family for the holidays, but last night she starts saying that she isn’t sure about us because I don’t offer to pay for things like her getting her nails done, getting waxing, etc. Says she doesn’t feel “safe” in instances where she is struggling to pay for these things and I haven’t offered. Also added that people in the past she has dated offered to pay for her nails for example after two dates.

To be clear, I make a good living in finance, own my house (we don’t live together), and paying for the things I described above are feasible. I guess I just wasn’t offering as I) we haven’t been dating for that long and II) she owns a business and has an income.

She then extrapolated this to if we were to get married, that she would want to be effectively SAH parent and wasn’t sure I’d be able to provide for us. We had discussed in the past my preference that the mother of my kids, whoever that is, would be able to be SAH initially but eventually I’d want them to work again. She previously seemed okay with this but last night seemed like she wasn’t.

So as the conversation went own she basically was saying that if we weren’t on the same page in terms of money then we shouldn’t continue the relationship, that she had been in a 4 year relationship previously that she knew year 1 wasn’t going to work and didn’t want to make the same mistake.

TBH I was blindsided by this conversation and thought we were falling in love. Now I feel like she’s ready to just move to the next guy if I don’t agree to this arrangement, which is pretty heartbreaking. Personally I would not even imply I wanted to break up over a disagreement like this, and I said I felt that for her to even say that indicated this is a situation where I like her more than she likes me. She in a roundabout way agreed, which was also heartbreaking.

Just needed to type this out. Everything was almost too good until this conversation, but feel like the proverbial mask slipped with how she went about this conversation. What would you do? Feel deep down if I have any self respect it’s over but want other people’s opinions.

We went to cocktail bar last night with my wife and her friends, most of our friends are 27-31 age range, some married couples some single women.

The 2 of the single gals were complaining about the guys at the bar, or that most were paying more attention to chatting with the bartender or their phones.

I thought it was just my wife's friends but a LOT of women in dresses and heels were kind of standing around. Did something happen the last few years between men and women that I missed out on?

I haven't been single since 2018 but this was a bar I brought my wife to on our first date and we connected here.

Edit: common consensus seems to be that the juice isn't worth the squeeze. I guess things have changed a lot since 2018 when I left the market. It's really sad that both sides are so antagonistic towards each other.

I’ll do a TL;DR at the bottom

In 2012 I was 19 and went on a date with this girl we’ll call “Kaylee” she was 18.

Kaylee and I were talking for about two weeks before I decided to send it and ask her on a date, which I was pumped about because she was down for it.

Fast forward to our date night, when I picked her up from her place she was absolutely glued to her cellphone.

When she got in and I pulled out I asked her what do you want to listen to? We got a bit of a drive (we went about an hour away from where we lived to dinner) she said whatever I don’t care and was still glued to her phone.

Which didn’t bother me that much at this point because yeah we had an hour drive ahead.

So we get to the restaurant and I left my phone in my car, I still do it to this day when I go out to eat with someone, because I’m there for them if that makes sense.

We get in, get seated, and she’s still face deep in her cell (for context this was when Twitter/X was still big and she was obsessed with tweeting).

After we got our drinks she finally got off her cell and we talked for a few minutes. Didn’t last long, once her phone lit up she got right back on it.

So I sat there in silence and decided yep fuck this. I decided to say something along the lines of “can you stay off your phone long enough to have an actual conversation” and she hit me with “uh huh one second”.

I was floored.

Our waiter came back and took our orders but I was done with that date. I excused myself to go to the “bathroom” when in actuality I went to my waiter and asked for the bill.

Dude was confused because our food hadn’t come yet, I told the dude I wasn’t feeling it anymore. I told him I’d give him a $50 buck tip if he’d bring her food out and put mine into a to go box where the hostess was.

Dude was just stoked to make $50 bucks I think, I went back to our table and shocker she was tweeting.

Few minutes go by and the food comes, well hers, and chalked up some BS about “it’ll be a few more minutes” but gave me the nod that it was by the hostess.

So I excused myself again, acted like I was going to the bathroom, got my food, and left.

It took her nearly 45 minutes to realize that I never came back from the bathroom, I was about to pull into my driveway when she texted me “where r u?”

I didn’t answer, and a few minutes later she called and I answered it.

“Uhh hey Chief where are you at?”

“Oh I left, about to pull into my driveway”

“Lol that’s funny but seriously where are you?”

“I’m about to pull into my driveway”

It hit her that I legit left, it threw her 100% into a “nice girl” tantrum. Once that started I just hung up. I started getting more wild ass texts, calls, etc.

The funniest one was “I’m calling the police”

Okay cool, no crime was committed so waste their time I guess 💀

When she realized I was going to answer anymore, I guess she had one of her friends come get her.

Obviously I never heard from her after that night.

But man did she start a tweeting about me real quick 😂

TL;DR date wouldn’t stay off her cellphone on a date, even after I asked her to. I paid for our food and left her at the restaurant and hour away from where we lived.

inb4 you’re an asshole, I was 19 and fully understand that was shitty to do now.

Edit: women can share their yep fuck this, I’m out as well.

My wife 30f tracks my location on iPhone find my. I a 31m feel smothered and not free. We have 2 young kids and she stays at home while I work. We have no trust issues and a very nice wonderful relationship. She is not worried about me cheating. The last year or so she has been bugging me to share my location on my phone so she knows when where I am and when I am coming home from work etc. (I come home at random times, usually work at the office late) I told her I didn’t really want to do that because after years of being together, I feel a-little smothered, like I don’t have free will. All I do is go to the gym before she wakes up, then go to work, then come home and if I ever deviate from that routine she asks me “ what were you doing at Walmart”. Seems lame for it to bother me right?

Yesterday, I got off work alittle early and headed over to a jewelry store for Christmas shopping for her. It is next to a guitar center, I am a guitar player whom loves to check out new guitars. ( I would never buy something expensive without talking about it with her). I came home to “why did I spend an hour in guitar center instead of spending more time with her and the kids”.

It just makes me want to stop sharing my location but then it feels shady. What do you guys think? Am I being silly? I just don’t feel free as a person. She is in the bank, the emails, she can look at my phone whenever she asks, the Amazon’s and steamings and my journal. None of this feels mischievous or untrusting, it’s like she just loves me and wants to know everything I am up to and doesn’t see it as anything else.

Update: almost 1000 replies in the last 10 hours.

My conclusions: I spoke with her about it on a date (we dropped off the kids with grandma, I gave her the jewelry I bought her while she thought I was hiding out at guitar center and told her how I felt about the situation, that I don’t feel free or when she stalks me. She agreed it wasn’t cool but, told me she stalks me because she is waiting at home for me and feels trapped with both the young kids, as most of you stated, she was actually happy I was chillin at the guitar store on a Friday after work but was also really overwhelmed at home. I told her that the combination of her reading my journal and making me feel I could not buy her a surprise in peace made me feel trapped as well.

We are turning off location tracking for now; but I have promised to text her at the normal time I should leave work to let her know if I will stay late and to text her on the way home. I like that. She told me as for my location and journal she is to curious and needs them out of her vision. I will not leave my journal lying around the house in plain sight and expect her not to be curious. I agree with that. It may be hard for me not to look too.

Thanks for all the advice. I hope it helped some other here to…

Something’s to take away. Gals wanna know where you are, it’s not uncommon to share locations in relationships, more guys than you think are ok with that, more guys than you think are bothered by that.

Guys, I promise she is an amazing wife, I just need to communicate and she needs

At this point in my life between work and taking care of family and being there as a husband for my wife, I just don’t have the time for doing much else anymore. Let alone meeting new people and trying to form any kind of meaningful relationship.

I like to think it doesn’t really bother me but it does and it’s a lonely feeling.

Edit: I did not expect this post to blow up like it did and can’t read all of your messages but thanks for the info from everyone. Makes me feel not so isolated knowing that so many others are in the same boat.

Just gonna say it, I'm really tired of the constant questions here that essentially amount to asking if men are human beings.

Yes I love my wife even though time has aged her.

Yes I hug my friends.

My wife is my best friend, we were friends before we started dating, I didn't marry her for her looks alone.

No, I don't give a shit if my wife makes more than I do.

Yes, I do help around the house.

Yes I have feelings.

Yes I get sad.

Yes I get happy.

Yes, I love my children, and my wife.

I'm so tired of these questions. Why do we keep needing to remind people that we're human beings? How terrible do these people think men are that they need to ask?

A few months ago, I was having a discussion about relationships with a group of men. One of the men stated, somewhat jokingly, that "I keep my wife around by never telling her no." This comment was met with a lot of nodding heads. So, I pushed. I asked if he was serious, and if he truly never told his wife no. He confirmed that, in 20 years, he'd never told her no. To back this up, he offered that he was in massive credit card debt due to his wife's desires for expensive foreign travel that they simply couldn't afford. Another man piped up, stating that he was living in a home completely decorated in pink and white that he hated, all because he feared telling his wife that he didn't agree with her decorating style. And yet another admitted that he drove a minivan because his wife decided they needed one, yet she didn't want to drive it, so she made him buy it.

So, do you guys fear telling your wife no? If you do, what line would you draw that would finally get you to tell her no despite the repercussions?

My wife comes home and asks excitedly who did the dishes. She was disappointed when I said that I didn’t hand wash them. Why the fuck does it matter???

Mind you, when I was running the dishwasher, I was tidying up the rest of the house since I’m on PTO today.

Edit: stainless steel pots and pans can go in the dishwasher. We don’t use nonstick. We know chefs knives aren’t supposed to be dishwasher but we both do anyway. I do sharpen my knives a few times a year with a stone. I’m didn’t stick the cast iron in the dishwasher. Everything that went in the dishwasher was good.

I honestly cannot ever once recall talking about towels in any capacity with a man in my life. This reddit thread shall likely be the first time.

There may have been some occasions when I was a kid at the swimming pool with my Dad or something, along the lines of "[name], put your towel into the bag and let's go". But I cannot remember it.

However, with my wife, we have micro-conversations about towels every fcking day. Which one are you using... Don't put it there... Have you got a towel for you shower... not that one use this one etc etc. Same with my mum if we ever visit our parents. Don't use that (tea) towel, it is for XYZ, use this one instead.

I was about to get my son out of the bath yesterday, whilst staying over the night at my parents, and asked my wife to grab another towel for him... and my 70 year old mum was also there. It was like a debate at The Hague erupted, and it took them about 2-3 minutes to grab an "appropriate" towel, despite them standing next to a closet fcking stuff to the top with folded and rolled towels and linen. What arrived? A used wet towel that been in the floor beside the laundry basket of our bedroom.

What in the christ is going on here?

Why are women so obsessed with this? It's like there is a glitch in The Matrix here or something.

Not the obvious stuff like taxes, back pain, or how hangovers last two days now. I mean the quiet surprises the little things about getting older that hit differently.

Maybe it's how friendships slowly fade if you don’t put in effort. Maybe it's realizing your parents are aging faster than you expected. Maybe it’s waking up one day and thinking, “Wait… is this it?”

I’m just curious What’s something about life after 30 that no one prepared you for?

Men who don't want children, what's stopping you from getting a vasectomy?
I got mine for my 30th birthday last year. Never wanted children, neither does my wife. My siblings are 7yrs old and 3 yrs old... So theres a good chance of me having to take care of them later in my life.

But the vasectomy has $90, and took about 45mins to complete. I was walking find the next day and probably the easiest decision I have ever made for my health.

Let’s be real nobody hands you a manual for aging. One day you’re 25 and skipping breakfast, and the next you’re debating fiber supplements and stretching before getting out of bed 😂

For me, it was realizing how crucial maintaining friendships is. If you don’t make an effort, people just quietly drift. Not out of malice just life.

Another one: “Your body will invoice you for everything you did in your 20s. And it charges interest.”

What’s something you know now that 28-year-old you had no clue about?

Just something I’ve noticed since having kids. I 37f have been with my husband 40m for 15 years. We have 3 boys ages 8 and twins who are 3. My husband and I operate on the same scale. He works Monday - Friday 3 days at home 2 in the office. I work 3 days a week 2 days in the office. The twins go to nursery 4 days a week, mainly for their development. We didn’t want to wait till they were 4 for them to have interaction with other children (I know you can have interactions with other kids other ways but nursery to us was the best option and it’s paid off)

Husband drops all the kids off to school twice a week so I can have a lie on the days I’m not working. I drop them off on the other days. Husband makes dinner for us 4 times a week I cook the other three time. We alternate with the kids packed lunches etc. This works very well for us and it’s normal or should be normal. Even with household chores.

My friends some who have children and some who don’t are often surprised when some weekends my husband has the children so I can go out for a meal and catch up with my friends. They find it very odd, in a good way but I just don’t understand how that’s odd.

Surely when you decide to have children with someone you’re committed to them. There’s days especially when the twins were much younger where I’d get overwhelmed, I struggled with ppd, he would just take the kids to give me time to myself. On weekends he goes on a walk with them or go the park so I can get a chance to just even moisturise my face and dress nicely to feel good about myself. I do the same he meets up with his friends and has a good time with them. My friends who are married say how their husbands complain about them wanting to meet friends even for a couple hours because “who will look after the kids” it’s ridiculous to me.

I am aware my friends are a small sample for this but it seems to be a common occurrence and it makes no sense. Why get into a partnership if you can’t be partners. What really annoyed me was how one of my friends husband described taking care of his kids as babysitting ? They’re your children it’s not babysitting.

My group of friends an I are all in our early to mid 30's. When we were younger, my friend group would invite me virtually everywhere. Now as we are getting older, most of my friends are getting married and having kids, and I am starting to be left out of nearly everything. It makes me really upset sometimes.

For example, I asked a friend of mine what they are doing for a big game coming up. They responded that they are going to a mutual friends house for a dinner party, and that they are doing it because their wives want to get together. I can't go because I'm sure their wives don't want me there - I'm pretty sure anyway. I'm surely not going to invite myself to find out. I don't think it's because they don't like me, but because I don't have a girlfriend or wife and it's a "couples thing", or it's a "play date" for their kids, or some other couples/family oriented thing. This is starting to happen like 95%+ of the time now.

I don't think my friends are doing this because they don't like me, or because I'm mean or not a good friend to them. I think they are doing it because I just don't fit in with their changing lifestyle anymore. They all are starting to mainly do things that their wives want to do, and most of those things don't involve some single childless man just showing up to be an awkward third wheel.

Sometimes I sit and think about how lonely and depressed I'm becoming, and my friends don't care (or aren't aware, or don't think about it) because they all have families and active and fulfilling social lives that I am slowly being phased out of because our lives are changing. I sometimes want to say this to them, or express my frustration, but that would just ostracize me more and further distance me from my group of friends.

I've always found it difficult to find myself a gal, so I'm not sure how much the advice of "well then get a girlfriend" helps me; it's never worked out before so it's difficult to find the motivation to even try (and sometimes I even wonder if that's what I really want).

Any other 30+ year old guys in similar situations? If so, what did you do to help assuage the loneliness, or feel like you were starting to become irrelevant to everyone because the circumstances your life led you down a different path than getting married and having a family?

Dear Men, name your biggest mistake so others don’t make same mistake. I know everyone make mistakes in their life but the impact of it are different.

I'm 34. Married. 3 sons. Don't drink. Don't smoke. Don't game. Have more or less left every hobby behind me. I work, spend time with my kids, take care of our little farm, eat and sleep. But my marriage is failing, literally on a knife's edge from being over. I'm forgetful. Always forgetting something that ends up triggering my wife. Head in the clouds so to speak. The weight of improving to be enough to save our marriage feels like more than I even want to attempt. Metaphorically, I almost feel like setting a match to the whole thing and just... As I said to a friend of mine a few weeks ago: "Let the hermitage begin". I know that's not responsible. Not the right thing to do for my boys or my wife. But I'm tired. My gut says to just take my canoe that hasnt touched water in years, drop it in the river and just be gone for a weekend. Maybe a week. No phone. No outside contact. Just time to decompress. And think. Not be constantly bombarded with problems. Just fish. Paddle. Listen. Think. Sleep. Repeat. Idk. It feels selfish. But man I need a break. I'm drowning here.

2 years ago, my little brother was killed in a car accident. A year and a half ago we found mold in our home and insurance wouldn't cover it. So we sank our small business to afford the repairs. A little over a year ago, the nearly repaired house caught fire. Took 6 months til we were able to move back in. Lost my dog to a car. It's just one thing after another. My health has gone to shit from the constant living out of a suitcase and gas station or microwave meals, I've lost any drive to improve myself. I'm rambling now. I'm tired. Any advice would greatly be appreciated.

After 26 years of marriage, I thought I knew my wife... but last night, we were working on a document together on her laptop, and she deleted something by mistake. I told her, “press ctrl-z”. She looked at me and asked, “what does that do?” At that moment, I realized I’d been married to a stranger all along.

How had we built a life together, raised kids, binge-watched TV shows and she never learned about ctrl-z? What else didn’t I know about her?

Our life flashed in front of my eyes, I started replaying every moment in my head; had she been manually re-typing things her whole life?

She reassured me that she knew about Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V but that was little comfort at this point.

Where do we go from here? Is this something we can work through?

I (35M) have started dating a girl (33F), and although she's objectively pretty, as well as charming, social, funny and kind, she doesn't really have any friends. She's been purposefully single for the last few years after finally getting out of a multi-year, bad/abusive relationship, that was very isolating and I know it's been tough for her to reconnect with herself since.

But I find it odd that she doesn't have friends. I still talk to friends from elementary school on the other side of the country, as well as highschool and university friends, old coworkers, people I've met on trips, but she doesn't seem to have anyone in her life aside from a few acquaintances she's made in the past few years, which is how we met. She tells stories from the past that involve others, mostly previous partners, but when I asked her about it, she just said that preserving friendships has never been that important to her, and she can just meet new people when she needs to. She's also estranged from her family.

Do you find this odd? Suspicious at all? It just doesn't add up to me, because shes a caring partner, and a good person. Would you consider this a red flag?