Im wondering if Ive acted a bit weird. Basically I have a male colleague/boss (im female) who ive not worked with/contacted in a month as i moved work places (tho still with the same company ) He is married and im single but ive always felt a bit awkward around him in a socially anxious way not because of him but ive never had great social skills in general. I want to be friendly with people but worry about being inapproprriate as at the end of the day collegues are not friends. This is the line I'm afraid of accidently crossing and being too friendly, Id hate people to see me as clingy/overfamiliar but I do want friends. I feel that peopleim singlepeople will judge and see me as clingy when im just trying to be friendly. An example today.. I knew that the collegue had a birthday yesterdaybut noone else had mentioned it and i felt awkward being the only one to text so i didnt. However it just so happened that today I needed some equipment from the base he worked at so i thought id ring him and wish him happy belated birthday in the process.   He answered and was friendly with me but said 'are you just ringing for a chat or' I asked if it had been his birthday this week he said yes and told me what he did for it and helped me with the equipment however it turns out he was on annual leave. I apologised then found out no one else in the team had done anything. I then felt id acted inappropriately and worry he thinks im too overfamiliar. Another example.. I do stupid things, the colleague was once talking with another male colleague and asked him if he wanted to go to his running club. He didnt answerhim but I like running so automatically said 'i'l go' i said it twice as i was ignored, my collegue looked at me awkwardly and just said 'well you 2 sort something and let meknow'. I then felt awkward as i knew he wasn't asking me really and it would be inappropriate for me and him to go anyway as im female.

It makes me feel like an idiot or my opinion doesn't matter. It's like a double standard because they only donit to me and they have said the same thing before. It's like they always want to disagree with me and shut me up and I am already shy and timid. How do I stop it because every time I do stand up to them they tell me to let it go like I am overreacting and start yelling.  They always want to call me out in front of someone what are you thinking about and stop being so negative when I was actually in a good mood and they turn around and start complaining about their life. They complain about their silly boy trouble but don't want to hear about the death in the family or when I was attacked because their problems are more important. 

Serious response only 

What could be bringing this on and what should I do? (I'm her father)

Hi there, So im thinking back when I was in high school I was 16 and I was in a drama club. I just remembered about something happening with my drama teacher after watching some true crime! Anyways, my teacher had an idea to film footage for a play we were putting on. The weird part was that I remember he only wanted to film me he didn't invite any other students and I remember he said he wanted to go to his house to film. This happened years ago now so my memory is a bit hazy, but I remember I was really nervous about it and didnt have a good feeling that it was ok. I also didnt tell my mom or anyone else about it. I remember the day we left another student came not sure if i told her to come or if he had invited her, but yes the other student came and we WENT TO HIS HOUSE! i remember we were filming and nothing inappropriate happened, we even walked around downtown filming, but anyways nothing happened, but thinking back now IF i would have been ALONE, would he have tried to do something bad to me? THank god nothing bad happened and now I feel so stupid about having gone! Now, its definitely such a WEIRD THING THAT A TEACHER WOULD HAVE EVEN INVITED ME TO HIS HOUSE?! we were there alone with him in his house, but like i said we just acted some parts of the play which was nothing inappropriate, but did he have bad intentions?? it terrifies me thinking about this now

Please read the first comment for the whole story PLEASE READ THE FIRST COMMENT BEFORE COMMENTING He has social anxiety that's why I am concerned but please do read the comment so you will have a full understanding of the matter Since many cannot read the comment, I'll post it herem bits by bits, sorry about this!  So my bf wants to join the army. The thing is that is something that he had thought about before, true, but never being too serious about it. But now he just graduated and he's desperate because he doesn't want to study anymore or at least not immediately, and he wants to make loads of money by working, and his mother came out with the army idea again.  His parents are nice but they do guilty trip him a lot; he finished his exams just few weeks ago yet every time he was in the bed chilling, like you're supposed to when you finish your exam and have a whole summer in front of you, they made him feeling lazy and they keep constantly pressuring him to get a job.    The army in their head would be the perfect fit because they wouldn't need to pay for him nor to feed him anymore, he would have to do "solid labour work" (being two people who never went into education they value the labour work way more than studying), he would be trained to be efficient, hard working and always wake up early, and he would make loads of money, given the fact that, having a degree, he could aspire for a career as an official. But they do not consider how tough is it to be in the army. My boyfriend has social anxiety (he was never diagnosed with it but having lived with him for all the last 1 year and half I can tell), he struggles to feel comfortable around people he doesn't know (and sometimes even with the ones he knows best as well), he's constantly thinking that everyone (even people in the streets that he has never seen before) talks s.h.i.t. about him... ... and he tends to overthink about lightly statement made by people, associating completely unreasonable meanings to them just because he's so insecure he thinks people see him as a weakling. Plus he gets very anxious that ppl manipulate him, and he directed this insult even to me more than once,just because sometimes I suggest him what we could do. He doesn't always do that of course, but there are days in which he's in a bad place and he just cover me with all of these nonsense insults. I'll give an example: back in January (when we were living alone, far away from his parents) I proposed him we could go to live abroad, because I am a foreigner myself and I know how nice this experience can be, even to broaden your views in terms of your career path. At first he enthusiastically accepted, but then with time his interest faded away more and more, especially once we went to live with his parents because of the pandemic. I wasn't too bothered about it because I don't mind, it was just a suggestion, as long as I can live with him it doesn't matter where we go, and I made that clear to him too.Yet when in the last month he started to talk about the army thing(which he hided from me for days, he was secretly speaking with his mom about it, and I though they were both being funny but I couldn't understand what it was happening)... ... the day he told me everything he also got annoyed to me because I wasn't really happy about it, and he started to say how manipulative I was because "I tried to trick him into going abroad. I made him notice that if I was so manipulative then we would have been already there, and he couldn't reply anything if not admitting that he was wrong.  The problem is that when he doesn't speak to me he fills his head with these bad thoughts about me, of me being selfish, manipulative, and he's incapable of thinking logically about it unless he speaks to me. Only then he understands that he's being paranoid. But sometimes if he doesn't let me in I just can't speak to him, because he would quickly shush me, getting arsy if I try to tell him anything. More than a week ago he told me about the army thing and we were on the merge of breaking up,because I wasn't happy about it.He started to get really annoyed at every tiny mistake I made to the point that he asked me to leave and go back to my country.That night I couldn't sleep and when he woke up I told him that since I knew clearly my feelings for him, but he didn't, it was best for me to go back to the flat I used to live in before coronavirus, and if he could drive me there... ...so he could have some time to himself to think.  After I asked this not only he didn't want me to go, but his behaviour changed entirely. He understood how much is parents were manipulating him and we had a fantastic week in which we were both together relaxing and the army thing went from being something about which he was sure of to become one of the many options he could have pursued, not even the most prominent.  You need to understand that on one side I don't want him to join for selfish reasons: of course I would like to live with him and have the life we were leading before the pandemic, and of course I am scared of the thought of him leaving for 4 months and coming back only for few weeks, in which I could even barely spend time alone with him because he would probably like to see his family too.  You need to understand that on one side I don't want him to join for selfish reasons: of course I would like to live with him and have the life we were leading before the pandemic, and of course I am scared of the thought of him leaving for 4 months and coming back only for few weeks, in which I could even barely spend time alone with him because he would probably like to see his family too.  But the thing that scares me the most is about his social anxiety. He struggled even to go to uni many times because he was obsessively thinking that everyone there (teachers included) were speaking ill of him. Many times I was there, helping him and trying to make him feel better. Once, in February, I went back to my country to stay for a month there, and we were constantly on the phone because he was always anxious and needed comfort from me. It wasn't the same thing of me being there, even if I tried my best to make him feel well again, so sometimes he was very down. Now since we have being staying into his parents house for so long (a familiar environment) he feels more relaxed and confident but I am afraid it's just an illusion. I fear of him going into the army because I think he won't be able to cope well with the life there, where you live 24h with people you don't know... probably many people full of testosterone and of themselves, during your training you get shout at many times for every single mistake, and I also researched a lot on the matter and many people say that is a bad mistake to get into the army if you have already mental health problems going on in your head, because it will only enhance the disturb, leading him to even become suicidal.  Also once you get into the army you can't get out unless you pretend to be severely ill or suicidal, but this could also mean to be dismissed with dishonour and that many careers would be precluded to him. So basically a total disaster which could have been avoidable if only he researched more into the matter (and not just into how much is the pay going to be) and listened to me more.  His parents are manipulative, and it is not the first time he falls into the trap; for example when he was 16 as a normal 16 years old he didn't want to study much, and his parents made him feel like he needed to work because he was a weight for them. So he left school, and started to work with his dad for 2 years, until he realized that he didn't want to lead that life, and he went back into education (with both of his parent's great discontent).  But he paid an harsh price for his parent's decision, because when he went to uni everyone was much younger and immature, and he couldn't fit in, and this ruined entirely his experience at university, making him also enhance his internal discomfort with himself and his social anxiety.  I really don't want this to happen to him. I already told him the day I asked him to drive my back to my flat, that even if he gets into the army I'll be with him, at least I would try, I can't abandon him. But yesterday it only took him few hours of work with his dad to have this idea of the army going back into his head, and he was very pissy with me for the whole evening, and this morning opening his laptop ... I found he was reading a question asked by someone which was saying "my girlfriend doesn't want me to join the army, what should I do?" and everyone in the comment was like "yeah bro dump her" and I felt so bad because I even told him I was willing to stay with him, but I feel like since he's being pressured by his parents (which are also trying to separate us) ... ... he's trying to push me away and come up with every possible excuse he can to depict me as a terrible selfish girlfriend, which I never been! I wanna speak to him clearly, but I am so scared he's gonna say that I am manipulative again! Please help me I am really desperate and broken. Little update: I spoke to him very quickly telling him that I saw his laptop and that he should tell me if he feels like this from me, but he's wrong because I am not backing off because of him thinking on going into the army. Then I asked what does he think his life is gonna be, and he shared with me this idea of the army which I don't really think fits with the truth. Can someone who has been in the army share their experience? He doesn't see it as an harsh evironment but I am afraid it is