Hey guys, just wanted a bit of advice as I’m sure my friends are sick of me constantly asking them for reassurance and to be there for me. I use to be very close friends with this girl who had kids with a complete an utter nasty piece of work, anyway when they were together I was friendly with him as he was with my close friend and that’s only right, even though most people despised of him, I never see the bad in people. Then when they broke up he came to my home a few times to chat and for advice, which I gave him, he then tried it on with me sexually and I obviously declined in which he didn’t like, I then had the decency to tell me friend the mother of his children and it back fired on me for trying to be the good friend by telling her the truth, she then took his side in which I lost all respect for her as I was trying to do right by her for telling her what had happened as o hate things like that on my mind. After this he came to my house and threatened, send me a whole load of abusive threatening voice notes too like the vile human he is because of course he got found out. I drifted away from her because of the situation and clearly trying to do the right thing was the wrong thing, we have briefly spoke since this happened a few times within the last three or so months. This caused me to have severe ocd and have the worst paranoia, I don’t want her in my life, I don’t even have her number saved but today she turned up at my door unexpectedly just to ‘pop in’ although I don’t want anything to do with her, the whole situation makes me feel ill, makes my ocd bad and bad paranoia. What can I do?

I try my best not to ask for reassurance, I really do. One thing has been bothering me a lot for a few hours now: A (former?) good friend of mine and I are meeting up next Thursday to talk about the situation our friendship is currently in (since I write a lot anyway and like to digress, I'll spare you the details for now). But to cut a long story short: it’s tense. Now, I've been "stalking" her on social media relatively often since the whole thing started, actually almost daily and on all socials. What really bothers me is the thought of whether I'm really stalking her at this point or not. I know that the term now has a pretty distorted meaning, especially on social media, but at its core, stalking is not only punishable by law, it's also morally wrong and indicates disturbed behavior. I noticed earlier that she somehow blocked me on Twitter/X. I have a very random user name there that she doesn’t know and I was also firmly convinced that you can't see when people visit your profile. It's stressing me out in two ways right now. On the one hand, I'm actually afraid that my behavior can now really be described as "stalking", and on the other hand, I'm confused and unsure about how she could even notice me on Twitter. Apart from social media activity, there were 2 "real" situations about 2 months ago in which I felt, in retrospect, that I had crossed a line. I "tracked" or checked (actually legally) the online activity on Whatsapp (EU) of her and a second person to see if they were online at the same time and therefore possibly writing together and she was lying to me. She knows about this since I told her. The second time was in person, when I went for a walk with another friend in the park behind my school and then saw said friend sitting there after she said (at school) that she was going home. I immediately panicked because I thought she was lying to me again, which is why I went up to her and pretended that I had just happened to pass her with the other friend. I didn't actively follow or spy on her on purpose in any way, however, up until a few weeks ago I did actually have the urge to do so. I'm quite aware of the legal boundaries and would never cross a line there, but I'm more concerned about the morality. I know that it probably sounds a lot like reassurance-seeking up to this point, but I don't really want to hear from others whether what I'm doing is directly considered stalking or not, because I'm going to have this heavy feeling either way. Instead, I would like to know what advice you would give me in this situation, either because you have actually been stalked yourself or simply because you have advice from a more distanced perspective than mine. I want to add that although I was officially diagnosed with OCD that I am sadly not in professional treatment yet and that I have been wondering for years now if I may fit the diagnostic criteria for BPD as I believe to have a lot of common “quiet BPD” symptoms, the friend mentioned being my FP.

Super triggering set of events that’s been unfolding for some months now. I’m going to try and not seek reassurance but grounded advice or support is appreciated. A couple months ago, I had a close friendship with a female friend who was also new to town and we had a nice friend group. I developed feelings for her, articulated that to her, and she kind of breadcrumbed me until there wasn’t much of a friendship left unfortunately. I had a conversation with her about the impact that the situation had on me and the toll it took on my mental health. I was calm but assertive and was proud that I stood up for myself. This was sad but hey that happens sometimes as you’re growing and making new friends/trying to find your people. I took space this summer from that group and it was awesome. I felt so much better, my ocd symptoms decreased, I met a bunch of new people, things were good. I am now trying to jump back into my grad school community of students and I had felt a weird tension between me and some subsets of people. Yesterday I was told that the people she is friends with say that I am “unsafe to be around” and that I “blew up at her.” This hurts for a number of reasons. All I did was say that she hurt me by not communicating. I was vulnerable and I feel like I’m getting ostracized and dismissed as a nut case. I never ever spoke ill of her to this community. I kept my opinions to myself and tried to move on. Add on the harm ocd/real events ocd/ relationship ocd and I truly feel at my lowest. There’s certainly times where I have let my emotions and ocd dictate my reactions to situations like this in the past, but from the beginning of this one I made it a point to notice what was coming up and calmly respond with action based in my values. I am super proud of how I handled it and stood up for myself. Idk I’m human and I understand that everyone is entitled to their thoughts and feeling but this just feels messed up and disrespectful. Trying to get this out here because it’s hard to talk about rn

Ok...so I need help navigating a relationship I have. I met this guy in trade school bc he kept following me around to talk to me and so we became friends and we kept in contact after leaving the school. He occasionally visits for a few hours maybe a few times a year and most of our interactions are over text. That's essentially all the necessary background. 2 problems 1. This person once had feelings for me, which I did not return because I just didn't feel the same way. He jokingly called me cruel because of it and one of my loved ones even joked that I was racist for rejecting him. Now I can't stop thinking about those things, even though I'm 80% sure they weren't serious. I know I'm not cruel for not having caught feelings for him, and I was extremely careful to let him down as gently as possible and as soon as possible so as not to give false hope. I also know that his race was not the reason I didn't catch feelings. Regardless, these comments still stick in my head. 2. This person is draining to me unintentionally. Our senses of humor kind of clash and our conversations are stiff and awkward because we have little in common and can rarely find things to talk together about that aren't sad or about our relationships with people who treated us poorly. It doesn't feel natural even after years of talking. He doesn't seem to understand me half the time but will pretend to and I've noticed I avoid starting conversations with him when we're not in person, so neither of us are perfect to one another. Major views of ours are also conflicting as well, as in, I am not exactly accepted around this person as a non-binary person, and this person defends those who want my rights taken from me. This is political, and I don't like to break relationships over politics, but it ads this undercurrent of tension. This person is also often taking risks and getting into accidents, so even more stress there in worrying about his safety. Every time we talk, I feel a pit of anxiety in my stomach and I worry I'll hear of another accident. I have trouble understanding him and he has trouble understanding me as well. We both struggle to communicate with frequent misunderstandings and I'm unsure why. It stresses me out when I struggle to read his meanings and tone and because of that, I particularly misunderstand him a lot, especially over text. His levels of sarcasm and irony are often too advanced for me to interpret and so I don't know when he's joking vs when he's serious vs when he's upset. Because I have so much trouble telling his emotions and he's not the type of person you really open up to about stuff like that, it's hard to navigate so I get very stressed and anxious never knowing if my responses are socially appropriate to the mood of the conversation. This is really frustrating, because from what it seems, he's a great person and there is no reason why we shouldn't be friends. He's different from me and interesting and tells great stories that make for thoughtful conversations to follow, yet I often wish he would never contact me because of the stress, and that he would not like to visit me or leave sooner, and that makes me feel really evil and a terrible friend. Right now I feel like I'm talking behind his back too. It feels bad. And now my OCD wants to tell me that not only am I a bad friend and person for this, but also racist, because a friend put that idea in my head after I rejected his romantic advance. Idk how to feel about this and what to do moving forward. Why does being friends with him stress me out so much? I only ever felt this way with one other person, but that was in highschool, and because the person was extremely high energy and extroverted while I'm very much not. This guy is not as extremely extroverted. Just a risk-taker who likes to poke fun a lot and confuse people for giggles. Idk. I want to stay friends because he's done nothing wrong, and he's a good guy, but it's draining and overwhelming.