"Couples on Surviving Trauma and Loss: Five partners whose love has endured seismic changes, from refugees forced apart by war to a couple left with horrific injuries"
The first two stories in the article are legit: a couple in a terrible car accident and a couple separated by the Sudanese civil war. Then things start going to hell and get worse and worse. All of the things that FDS warns against are here: codependency, gaslighting, lying, cheating, excuse-making, blame shifting, martyrdom. Women continue to be conditioned to accept sub-par treatment by these kinds of narratives. The ladies of FDS refuse to help relationships "survive trauma" that is LITERALLY CREATED BY THE MAN IN THE RELATIONSHIP AND HIS SELFISH AND OVERALL TERRIBLE DECISIONS.

‘I was in prison for 2,192 days; she wrote to me almost daily’

Laure, 58, and Jerry, 62, survived his jail sentence for causing death by dangerous driving. They live in Alabama, and now run a support network for the families of prisoners.
Laure Jerry and I met in 1995 and married four months later. I tell him all the time I would marry him again, but faster. We’d both been married twice before and dating was the last thing I was looking for. But he ticked all the boxes.
I had two daughters and he had one. We moved our family from Tennessee to Alabama, to raise them in the country. We were living the dream. But on 17 March 2003, it was shattered when Jerry caused a head-on car collision which killed a young mother. He had been driving drunk.
I felt rage, betrayal. When we met, we were both recovering alcoholics, so I had only known him sober. Now a life had been lost. I didn’t want him dead, but I wanted him to hurt real bad. We lived in a small town, and I grieved for that family. I felt embarrassment. I had to get to the forgiveness part quickly so I could get through each day.
Jerry spent 10 days in the ICU. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to six years in prison and 19 on probation. I was scared – emotionally, practically, financially, spiritually. I wanted to stay married but didn’t know how. I didn’t know what you do when someone you love is in prison.

His first year home, we argued all the time. I’d put my hand on his shoulder and he’d push it away

I wrote to him almost every night. I could afford one dollar-a-minute phone call a week and petrol for the 100-mile drive to visit every two weeks. I felt a lot of anger in those first years. I remember burying the cat, crying, saying, “This is a dad job.” I tried to experience the girls’ graduations for both of us.
His first year home, we argued all the time. I’d put my hand on his shoulder and he’d push it away; he was still in survival mode.
We’re grandparents now and enjoy our family immensely. We run a support network for prisoner families, called Extended Family. I started it six months into his sentence.
Jerry will still say, “You stayed with me all those years,” but I don’t think of it that way. I’m not going to make him do the dishes for the rest of our lives. We spent six years without each other; we don’t want to spend another minute apart.
Jerry On our first date, I took Laure and her daughters to see Cinderella at the theatre. When I got home, I wrote “She’s the one” on the back of the programme.
We had a good life. I had a small engineering business, work grew busy, and we moved cities. But I was in a mess. I got into narcotics but hid it from my family. The night of the accident, I had stopped at a liquor store. I was in a blackout. Moments later, a young woman was dead and I was airlifted to hospital. I was shocked, remorseful, disheartened.
My wife has a big and kind heart. I tried to protect her from the police investigation and the likelihood of prison. I didn’t want our girls walking around with the stigma of a dad who had killed someone.
In Alabama, incarceration is uncontested grounds for divorce, but there was never a question of Laure leaving me. On an early prison visit, I told her I wouldn’t blame her if she wanted to leave. She looked at me and said, “I’d be more miserable than I am now.” I’ll never forget it.
I was in prison for 2,192 days and she wrote to me almost daily. There were guys that got nothing. I felt blessed and honoured. She would arrive every two weeks and I would put on a smile. But I pitied myself; I felt useless, unable to provide for my family.
When I came home, I was harsher than before. Meanwhile, this woman I loved had blossomed. I had to adjust. There’s a not a day that I don’t pay for my disastrous decision in some way, shape or form. We worked through the mess I made together, and we’re closer because of it.

‘It was a form of gaslighting. He led a double life’

Keith, 59, and Claire, 57, survived his gambling addiction. They live in Sussex.
Keith Claire and I had known each other in the 80s, and reconnected online 20 years later. Claire was living abroad, and I was on my way to broke. She’d make short trips to the UK, and we’d laugh through days out and long lunches. She was intelligent, full of life; a better person than I was.
I first entered a casino at 16. By 18, I’d borrowed, conned and stolen from everyone I knew. I was an addict. Through adulthood, I’d made and lost small fortunes and entire businesses. I’d play Monopoly for real money, or sit in a room of the club I owned, drinking brandy, snorting as much cocaine as I could.
I wasn’t a constant drug user or gambler. When Claire visited, I’d try to keep it together; but then I’d get desperate and make excuses to go to London for “work”. When she moved to the UK with her three kids in 2009, I’d disappear into a room of the home we shared for days, in a heady state of gambling, drugs and porn, too embarrassed to re-emerge. I had intermittent spells in Gambling Anonymous, but I found it hard to ask for help.
Claire paid for the house and put food on the table. I never stole from her, but I’m still surprised she didn’t walk out. By 2014, I’d had a heart attack and was nursing my mother, who had cancer. I would drive her to the hospital every day, off my tits, bring her home, make her food, then shut myself in another room and gamble online.
I couldn’t see myself in the mirror any more. I wanted to die. On 28 June 2014, I logged on to a website for people seeking affairs and used it for porn. That decision would almost end us: when Claire discovered the website in her search history, she sent me a Dear John letter. The next day, she drove me to residential rehab. The only rule I broke there was asking her to spend one night. I had to save the relationship.
I’ve been clean for six years now; Claire is part of the reason why. People talk about languages of love. For me those are quality time, acts of service. Boy, were there acts of kindness and service from Claire. Without her, I could well be dead.
Claire I was 18, and a poor student, when I first met Keith. He seemed glamorous, exciting, funny, intelligent. He was also a known gambler, but when we reconnected years later, that appeared to be in his past. Yet, with hindsight, nothing about the start of our relationship makes sense.
When I visited, he’d urgently have work or disappear into a room for days at a time. I’d spend hours on edge, struggling to trust him, but he would rationalise his behaviour, omitting huge details, claiming he’d simply drunk too much. It was a form of gaslighting. He led a double life.

When Keith decided on residential rehab, I knew that if I didn’t support him, there was no future

The first time I confronted him, I’d found an empty drugs packet, but he lied his way out of it. I became scared to ask, although we both knew he needed help. When his mother was unwell, he had the perfect alibi. He was an addict but he was responsible – and he took exquisite care of her. I was fearful but I had to get on with life.
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When Keith decided on residential rehab, I knew that if I didn’t support him, there was no future. I didn’t want significant time apart, but when an addict is serious about making changes, you have to put your own needs aside.
The most soul-destroying moment came when I found the affairs website. I had been betrayed by gambling and drugs, but my belief in the purity of our love had kept me going. I wrote to him saying it was over. From rehab, Keith proved to me it was only curiosity (there was no activity on his account), and I was open enough to reconciliation to visit him.
Emotionally, we’re more independent now, although we share bank accounts and he supports us financially. I’ve grown, too. I used to tell friends that Keith felt like an addiction to me. I’d waited years for a stable home life together: eventually, he walked the most difficult path in order to truly change.

‘Friends saw us as the perfect couple, but it was a lie’

Maryam, 31, and Amir, 33, survived his affair. They live in California.
Maryam When Amir had an affair, I had a thousand reasons to leave but looked for the one to stay. Our relationship had started as an affair, too. We had been couple-friends in our previous marriages and used to hang out as a group of four. Then, in February 2017, Amir and his wife broke up and he came on a trip with my husband and me. One night, we were up late, talking, while my husband slept. Amir opened up about his marriage and I began to sense he had feelings for me. I had relationship problems, too, and we started an affair. I ended my marriage.
Over the next 18 months, friends came to see us as the perfect couple. They would comment on how loving our relationship was. But I couldn’t forgive myself for how we’d started, and his divorce was a mess. He spent nights with his ex. I broke up with him several times. Things looked great on the surface but we both carried unresolved pain.
By the end of 2019, I became suspicious of his relationship with a co-worker. She was too intimate at the Christmas party and he was jumpy when she called. Then I found a credit card charge to a cafe, clearly for two people.

I loved him deep down but anger overwhelmed me. He asked over and over for a chance to prove he could change

It took me 10 days to get the full details from him. It had been going on for months and they’d slept together six times. I couldn’t breathe; I felt stupid. Everything that had gone before felt like a lie. I left him.
Amir telephoned non-stop and showed up at my parents’. I loved him deep down but anger overwhelmed me. He asked over and over for a chance to prove he could change. Eventually, I agreed to give him three months. We started individual and couples’ therapy and talked through every detail of our relationship. I couldn’t bear to sleep in the same room as him, but I could look at his face again. I agreed to more time.
I see the consistency and changes Amir has made, his commitment. When I discovered his affair, I was ready to give up on our relationship, but we have both grown. No one knows what the future holds and I have my fears. But, right now, I love the way he loves me.
Amir Maryam was the first time in my life I felt real love. But we were both married and I told myself it couldn’t happen.
As time passed, my ex-wife had an affair and my marriage died. Maryam had problems, too, and I made my feelings known. I admired her looks, the way she thinks. This wasn’t a game that I’d started; it was coming from the bottom of my heart.
I was born in the Middle East, in a war zone. As a child, I experienced sexual and physical abuse at the hands of my teacher, but told no one. The human psyche finds soothing mechanisms to alleviate pain. For me, that was sex.
I was in the most loving relationship with Maryam. The sex was amazing. We bought a house, enjoyed travelling. But the foundations were shaky and I unconsciously sought more.
When I got close to a co-worker, it turned into an affair, starting in May 2019 and lasting several months. It was pure sexual desire. This wasn’t someone I wanted to change the course of my life. We were opportunistic and, in those moments, I became blind to the consequences.
When Maryam found out, I tried to lie. I was naive about how much I was going to hurt her. She wanted nothing to do with me. She blocked my calls and texts, and told our family and friends all the details. Everyone who loved me looked at me as a monster. For the first time in my life, I started to wake up.
I made fixing myself and our relationship my only priority. I promised Maryam she would see a change, and started intense therapy, twice a week. I addressed my childhood trauma and sought support for sex addiction. I realised how much I was willing to do for Maryam.
At the beginning, it was simply about keeping Maryam; but it transformed into strengthening our bond. She has made sacrifices for me, been my guide and love. Every day, I’m more appreciative.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/jan/30/couples-on-surviving-trauma-and-loss

This writing was copied from my blog https://nope-its-lily.medium.com/. I write about the NOPE and other options and market things there and on my twitter https://twitter.com/nope_its_lily. Cheers!
Check out Part 1 first about my thoughts on the short squeeze thesis. To clarify — I do think shorts are being squeezed in Gamestop, although this is auxiliary to the main driver of the stock’s momentum (and not, in my opinion, the primary driver of Friday’s exponential rise).
So okay, let’s go to the obvious question — if hedge fund tears didn’t cause Gamestop to rocket, what did cause it?
Wew laddy, +71.25% at the peak.
Gamestop in many ways is an extraordinary story, and has all the properties of a successful meme stock (salience):

1. Personal name recognition/Nostalgia-For better or worse, we all know/remember Gamestop (primarily from childhood), which is similarly why Hertez performed so well in the afterlife while Mallinckrodt hasn’t.
2. A hero and a villain — Much like Tesla, Ryan Cohen represents the hero in the Gamestop narrative, where investors can paint whatever picture of the future they want and justify whatever price tag they pay. Similarly, Melvin and Citron (I mean, even the name Melvin) and the hedge fund industry are (perhaps well-deserved) villains in the arc, helping obfuscate feelings of greed or risk by presenting it as a righteous cause.
3. A cataly-ish — For obvious reasons Gamestop is benefiting from the console cycle, but perhaps to a lesser degree than before (its massive real world presence during a pandemic doesn’t help much).
4. Humor-What could be more funny than investing in a relic of the early 2000s? Except maybe investing billions into 3d renderings of hydrogen powered cars.

So it isn’t a surprise Gamestop captivated the attention of the internet; despite common belief, the legend of Gamestop extended far outside wallstreetbets (although the saga of DeepFuckingValue/RoaringKitty there helped bring substantial energy to the cause).
And how does the internet show some love?
Well, it buys calls.
For better or worse, most new investors have absolutely no concept outside of simple long call/put positions (probably for the best, from experience). In general, most new market positions view long options (and, let’s face it, mostly calls) as a highly leveraged bet on the underlying akin to a lotto ticket, which works beautifully for the following reasons:

1. Long options have asymmetric risk-reward, assuming risk-loving participants.

While in prior posts I’ve touched on the expected profit of options being zero, this is only true (it’s never actually true, due to seller’s, variance risk premium, and a host of other factors) under risk-neutral measure. In the real world, investors (especially on indices) tend to be risk-averse (weighting losses more heavily than chance of gain)… at least historically. The new class of retail investors, on the other hand, partly engendered by Robinhood’s extremely gamified UI tends to be risk-loving (“yolos”), favoring chance of gain over (higher) chance of loss.
For that type of an investor, options are akin to a casino due to convexity, or in layman’s terms, “the potential to go up a lot really fast” in value. This is of course true for stocks too (albeit less so, due to the implied leverage of options), but when an individual purchases a stock they have a rather large downside (the entire stock can become worthless). This isn’t the case for a call option, which only represents a portion of the total cost of the stock, but represents the entire upside.
2. Options have to be hedged… often in the underlying.
Before I get 1000 responses telling me this isn’t always true (especially on indices, where you have futures and all sorts of nice things) — it’s more or less true on a meme stock, which basically has no beta or correlation to any other stock (except perhaps other meme stocks). In general, one can anticipate that an option written by a market maker and sold to a retail investor (who owns a long position from that transaction) is hedged in the underlying stock, which obeys the same rules of buying and selling pressure. This is even more apparent in stocks with low float, which tend to move in price substantially with relatively low volume traded. You can imagine how few option contracts it similarly takes (given the implied leverage up to 100 shares worth of delta) to actually move the price (I’ve seen call options move the spot in real time, for instance, on Del Taco stock before earnings).
3. Option buying begets option buying.
What happens when a few individuals buy options on a stock? It moves up slightly (usually in proportion to how many options were bought, what time period they were bought in, and how large the underlying’s float is). This triggers the happy centers in peoples’ brains (yay, we’re making money) and triggers more buying of calls.
More interestingly, option convexity is largely due to the Greek gamma, which simply refers to the rate delta changes in response to changes in the underlying’s spot price. Delta more formally measures how much we expect the option price to change as the spot price changes, but more usefully for this example can represent how many shares equivalent the option contract controls at the given price. This is why delta represents the hedge ratio — if you, for instance, write a 100 delta (ITM) call option and sell it, you need to equivalently own 100 shares of that stock to neutralize your risk.
Delta is interesting (my favorite Greek) because it is heavily non-linear, and changes in response to:

1. Spot price (gamma)
2. Time to expiration of the option (charm)
3. Volatility of the underlying (vanna)

These are all second order derivatives, so you probably are lost by now if you didn’t take calculus at some point.
So why is gamma important here?
Source: quantik.org
Unlike controlling the equivalent delta’s worth of shares, the value of an option contract increases at a faster rate as it gets closer to in-the-money. This is (one of the reasons) why options have convexity — the value of an OTM call option contract goes up faster as it gets closer to ITM, with a potential for (5,10,100,200+)**-**baggers (multiples of how much you paid for the initial) if you play it right.
What’s even more interesting though than gamma alone, however, is pairing it with theta, the decay of an option’s value as the time-to-expiration draws closer. This tends to have a strong relationship to the implied volatility — theta represents the time value of the option (extrinsic), and implied volatility is largely the market consensus of the potential for the underlying to move in the time remaining on the option. However, as the days tick down, the time for that move to actually happen diminishes, and therefore the value of the option similarly goes down with it.
As IV increases, theta usually does (especially on short term options), and vice versa. (Helpful video by the tastytrade crew — https://www.tastytrade.com/shows/market-measures/episodes/theta-and-iv-05-17-2019)
So, given my tendency to ramble, the question is — why is this important? Let’s look at gamma and theta in the context of 0-day-to-expiration (0dte) options, and try to piece together what happened to Gamestop on January 22, 2021.

0 Days to Live

0dte options have long been a mainstay of the dopamine addicted day-trader community (including me, sometimes) given they represent the purest form of lottery ticket:

1. They expire at the end of the day — You don’t need to go to bed and worry about your position, because it’s either closed or worthless.
2. They’re cheap, generally-Theta in particular becomes exponential for 0dte options, and you can quickly buy positions on sale just to gamble as the end of the day grows closer.
3. They still represent implied leverage and have that tasty convexity-Like their more respectable brethren, 0dte options still represent the underlying and have all the neat Greeks (gamma, delta, vanna, pajamas, etc.) which make their payouts non-linear and fun.

In general, the optimal strategy to capitalize on 0dte long options is to buy as late as possible in the day, to allow theta to provide as much leverage to you as cheaply as possible.

Let’s Imagine a Scenario Here

Let’s imagine you have a high implied volatility stock that has been stable/slightly declining in price for multiple days. During that time period, theta is aggressively destroying the value of long options, while IV is similarly dropping (both due to theta and due to relative lack of movement). As we get to the final day (this is a weekly, for example), much of the option’s value has now disappeared.
This impacts both put and calls open, though. And let’s say a mean orange decided to start a war on your stock in the days before, causing a flood of short-term puts to hit the market during that week, which had minimal effect (largely due to continual call buying of longer-dated options coupled with actual shares buying pressure due to belief of a short squeeze/Ryan Cohen being the second coming of Christ).
What happens when those puts start to expire? As the days and then hours tick down, the hedges of those put positions (shorted shares) start to unwind, and buying pressure picks up.
Similarly, this buying pressure is noticed by market participants, who start to capitalize on the momentum by buying 0dte call options. These at first have minimal impact, largely because the inflow and outflow of call delta are roughly equivalent (somewhat of a bias towards inflow, pushing price up alongside share buying).
But towards the middle of the day, two interesting things happen:

1. Theta and charm become more and more prominent in both making new option positions cheaper and unwinding existing put and call positions.
2. Gamma starts to become more dominant due to the high implied leverage versus cost of 0dtes, leading to the virtuous cycle (option buying begets option buying).

These two effects tend to be complementary — as the hedges unwind (given the weekly puts from Citron/the short seller attack) for existing option positions, new 0dte positions can be bought and bought, each time pushing up the underlying as well as increasing the value and delta of other 0dte positions.
This can be neatly observed in the option volume versus open interest for the 1/22 series on GME:
This is fine.
Although more puts traded, the delta (for obvious reasons) of calls is much higher.
As the price of the stock goes higher and higher, this continues to attract more and more speculation, hoping to capitalize on the continued momentum. This continues in a loop:

1. The price of the underlying continues to increase as put hedges unwind, volatility spikes, and call options are bought (the initial delta hedge).
2. The increase in price leads to gamma of existing contracts increasing the delta of those contracts.
3. This leads to more shares being bought to hedge those increasingly higher delta positions.
4. This leads to more speculation and momentum.

An interesting property of $GME from Friday you can neatly observe is the highest strike in the series is $60, meaning that at Friday’s close, every single call option expiring 1/22 expired ITM. More interestingly is the relationship with gamma, again observable below:
Source: quantik.org
As a contract moves further and further ITM (at one point, GME hit $76 intraday), the gamma of the contract decreases as delta hits 100 on the position. This implies a cap on the momentum from the virtuous cycle described above — while continued call buying can of course drive up the price further, not only does the cost become prohibitive (given that a deep-ITM position is basically equivalent to buying 100 shares in payout), it becomes linear (and therefore boring). Once 100 delta is reached, there is no more cycle of increasing spot price causing increasing share buying, only normal share buying.
And that’s when it drops.
It’s hard to say whether the halt caused the drop (given the mental association halts have to pump and dumps for most investors). In this case the drop assuredly coincided with the halt, but more importantly, we can observe where the drop ended:
​
57.99 is such a pretty number.
In this case, we can observe the drop in price stabilized at $58, before rapidly jumping above $60. This is largely due to gamma and continued 0dte call buying buttressing the fall — as the positions fell farther OTM, shares used to hedge those positions are sold off, further driving the price down (in this scenario, the dealers are almost assuredly short gamma). However, similarly those positions-now closeOTM and close to expiry-become cheaper at a fairly exponential rate (due to theta and charm).
Speculators again gain conviction, pushing the price up above the highest strike (to the point where gamma provides no real extra push versus the clock ticking down).
This is what we call a gamma squeeze, and isn’t a terribly uncommon phenomenon. It largely follows similar patterns:

1. In general, gamma squeezes tend to happen closer to OPEX, due to both hedge unwinding (in the case of a previous put skew, for instance) and due to the 0dte effects mentioned.
2. In general, there is both a rapid rise (due to gamma looping and speculators joining) with a similarly steep cliff (especially if the available strikes is exhausted, like what happened to $GME).

Can it be continued forever, though?

In general, the answer unfortunately is yes.
Gamma squeezes in generally power meme stocks, and require a few elements to be true:

1. Continued supply of strikes and promise of convexity — Put gamma squeezes rarely happen because well, the maximum value of a put option occurs when the underlying hits 0. Calls, however, have an infinite potential payoff and strikes similarly can be added indefinitely. This allows continued creation of OTM options, which due to cheap premium and asymmetric risk-reward on longs power the gamma squeeze.
2. Continued momentum-In general, meme stocks follow the greater fool theory, despite promise of rocket emojis. When they drop, they drop hard.

​
Oopsies.
This is because, as previously mentioned, meme stocks are powered by long calls sold by market makers, who are chronically short gamma. Any selling begets more selling. Even periods of quiescence are dangerous, because without continued inflow of call delta, hedges unwind, and the selling pressure begins.

1. Continued attention-This is where salience shines. The major reason Tesla (the OG gamma squeeze) continued to rocket throughout 2020 was largely due to Elon Musk’s charisma and Tesla’s promise of a better world. It becomes a lot easier to stomach risk for an investor when following a strong personality with a killer story. This role was largely played in Gamestop’s saga by Ryan Cohen, and fed into (potentially unwittingly) by the battle with Citron and the mystique of DeepFuckingValue. It remains, however, to be seen if this will continue.

The moral of the story here is retail, for better or for worse, finally learned how to weaponize options. We’ll see what happens next.

Over the course of 34 days in the spring of 2018, three unsettling crimes played out in the city of Bakersfield, California. The families of the three victims realized their children all knew each other and ran in the same circles, and they began to suspect that all three crimes were connected. But what began as a crusade for justice among grieving parents took a shocking turn when investigators discovered that the so-called Bakersfield 3 were embroiled in a criminal underworld of black-market weapons smuggling, the Hells Angels, unspecified ties to drug cartels, torture and kidnapping, and a convicted felon nicknamed “The Boogeyman of Bakersfield.”
This is a genuinely bizarre case, and while I’ve never written up a case for this sub before, I’ve been following this story closely for the past couple years. The last time it was mentioned on here over a year ago, but there have been some huge recent developments in the last year that I thought deserved as comprehensive a telling as possible. And despite all that, it's nowhere near resolved. So without further ado...
Part 1: Missing
On March 23,2018, Micah Holsonbake, 34, went missing in East Bakersfield near the intersection of Flower Street and Mount Vernon Avenue. Micah was a clean-cut dad who worked in finance, a former high school debater who loved karaoke despite not being any good at it. He was presumed endangered missing until August 22, 2018, when teenagers swimming near a local park found an arm in the Kern River that was identified as his. The rest of his body has never been found.
On April 18, 2018, James Kulstad, 38, was murdered on a quiet block in Southwest Bakersfield. A father of two daughters, James was a serial entrepreneur described as the type of man who “could sell a dollar bill on the side of the road for a million dollars if he could just get 5 minutes with you.” His brother Ryan heard the gunshots from the next street over, but didn’t see the shooter, and he claims he held James as he died in his arms.
On April 25, 2018, Baylee Parrent-Despot, 20, disappeared from Rosedale, the upper-middle-class neighborhood in Northwest Bakersfield where she’d grown up. Baylee described herself as a “flower child” who had been born in the wrong generation. After facing a number of serious challenges, she was struggling to get her life back on track, and was said to be pregnant and trying to leave her boyfriend when she went missing. She has never been heard from again.
Local media christened Micah, James, and Baylee the “Bakersfield 3” after the victims’ families discovered that all three victims knew one another. In the wake of the links between all three disappearances coming to light, Micah’s father told a local news reporter, “Just to be blunt, something happened to Micah… and a month later something happened to Baylee, and I think it’s because she knew what happened to Micah.” And in between them, there was James Kulstad, who ran in the same drug-fueled circles as Baylee and had helped Micah move just weeks before they both were killed. Bakersfield is a city of half a million people, but on a social level, it can feel as insular as any small town — you’re rarely more than one or two degrees removed from anyone you meet — and even in a city where everyone seems to know everyone, it’s hard to buy three friends all going missing within the space of a month by sheer coincidence. But as time went on with few official developments in the investigation, it seemed like people largely lost interest in the case by late 2019.
Then, in 2020, the Kern County District Attorney’s office charged three people with a total of 34 different charges, ranging from first degree murder, torture, kidnapping, assault with a firearm, and illegal manufacturing of assault weapons. Two of the defendants were already in custody — and the third may not even be alive.
Part 2: Some Local Context
By every metric, Bakersfield is just a flat-out terrible place to live. It’s my hometown, I left for a reason, and the reason is that it sucks. Kern County suffers from a slew of serious socioeconomic and public health problems, the largest of which is probably related to economic and income inequality. A fifth of the population is under the poverty line, and crime rates are sky-high, especially drug-related ones. Opioid abuse is rampant, though it still falls second to methamphetamine, the most widespread drug in the area. There’s a significant issue with white supremacist gang violence. When I was 16, my 70-year-old next-door neighbor got stabbed in a biker gang fight at a tattoo parlor by a Hells Angel called “Delano Mike.” A high school chemistry teacher was literally arrested for trying to make meth in his classroom three months before Breaking Bad even premiered. This is a region with a lot of serious problems that go deeper than any one symptom, but suffice it to say, there’s a reason I moved away as soon as I tuned 18.
The other thing you need to know is that despite being one of the most conservative cities in California, there’s a widespread distrust of law enforcement outside of the police and courts themselves — and, frankly, for good reason. Corruption in the justice system is widespread, and basically a local tradition dating back to the tenure of longtime district attorney Ed Jagels, perhaps best known for ramming through 36 false convictions of ritual child abuse at the height of the satanic panic. (34 were eventually overtured, and the other two people convicted died in prison and never saw justice.) Jagels’ history of prosecutorial misconduct is also the subject of Mean Justice, a 600-page doorstopper by Pulitzer-winning author Edward Humes about the wrongful conviction of Pat Dunn, who is currently serving a life sentence for the murder of his wife despite a wealth of evidence that would suggest his innocence. In 2002, Jagels’ protege, an assistant district attorney named Steve Tauzer, was murdered by a former Bakersfield police deputy, Chris Hillis, after Hillis allegedly learned that Tauzer had a sexual relationship with Hillis’ 22-year-old son, an addict in recovery; facing first-degree murder charges, he pled out to manslaughter and received a 12-year prison sentence.
In 2015, The Guardian published an in-depth exposé about how widespread corruption within the local law enforcement community led to Kern County having the highest rate of police killings in the country: the deadliest cops per capita. And over the past several years, the Kern County law enforcement community has been mired in a police corruption scandal in which members of the BPD abused asset forfeiture laws to illegally seize guns, drugs, and money from suspects, which they in turn trafficked for personal gain. All this is to say that Bakersfield cops and prosecutors have not engendered much public trust outside of their own communities. In a city with high rates of violent crime, law enforcement has consistently put its own interests above public safety, justice, or victims’ rights. That's just something to keep in mind while reading.
Part 3: Down the Rabbit Hole
Micah
In the weeks and months prior to Micah Holsonbake’s disappearance, his family could tell that something was troubling him. Lance and Cheryl Holsonbake both recalled their son behaving erratically in the days before he vanished. But none of it seemed to make any sense coming from someone like Micah, whose family described him as intelligent and hard-working. He had a comfortable upbringing in Rosedale and worked his way into a lucrative career as a financial advisor despite only one year of college. In the photo his family circulated following his disappearance, he wore the suit and tie and placid smile of someone posing for a corporate headshot. But Micah was going through a dark time following a rocky separation from his wife and family, and had been struggling with a painkiller addiction for the past two years. The year before, he’d been laid off from his job after going on disability leave due to depression.
According to court documents, Micah owed drug-related debts to members of the Hells Angels as well as “the cartel.” One friend of Micah’s told police his life seemed to be headed in a downward spiral after he lost the ability to see his son, and often got in fights with others at bars. In one witness statement, an unidentified woman told police of a prior incident when she and Holsonbake were kidnapped at gunpoint and driven to an orchard in west Bakersfield. Holsonbake bolted from the vehicle as it was moving, she told police. That account was corroborated by a friend of Holsonbake's who told police that he said he had been kidnapped at gunpoint. He told his parents that he feared for his life, frequently thought he was being followed in his car, and rambled about various people he believed were out to get him, but they mostly wrote it off.
James
Micah had been hanging around with James Kulstad for some time before he disappeared. It’s not clear when they first met, but it appears they become friendly through the drug scene. Like Micah, James first became addicted to prescription painkillers after being hit by a car, before progressing to fentanyl patches and eventually heroin. He’d been a single father to his daughters Camryn and August. His obituary characterized him as a free-wheeling surfer who held a patent for an action sports product and earned the nickname “Joe Vegas” for his love of gambling and table games. Camryn, now 19, says she and James had an especially close relationship after her mother died when Camryn was an infant, and James often warned her against getting involved with drugs and partying in a clear-headed way, which made it even harder to watch him spiral downward in the years before his death. “I felt like I lost him before I even lost him, but I worked so hard,” she told a reporter. “I was working so hard on everything I could do to make him get better… I was hanging onto hope and whoever killed him took that away from me. I don’t have that anymore, I don’t have hope.”
In the wake of her father’s death, Camryn says that a number of stories and rumors about his life surfaced, further complicating her grief. “Some of the stories I’ve heard is that he was a really bad person these last 3 years,” she said in 2019. On the night of his murder, James reportedly drove to an acquaintance’s home in Southwest Bakersfield where his brother Ryan Kulstad was hanging out. Ryan claims that the homeowner allegedly owed money to James and told Ryan that if James came over to his house, he’d “call his boys and they’d come over there strapped,” which Ryan says he didn’t interpret as a serious threat. Ryan and James reportedly argued about this on the phone, and James showed up at the house a couple hours later. Ryan says he had just returned from driving someone else home and noticed a driver in a silver sedan behaving suspiciously as he returned to the house. Moments later, Ryan and his unidentified male passenger heard gunshots on the next block: an unknown gunman opened fire on James from another car, causing him to crash into a parked trailer. The same silver sedan was seen speeding away from the scene.
The owner of the home where this all took place was Dr. Sukhjeet Bajwa, who at the time was a chiropractor with a local practice. Bajwa lived in a quiet subdivision in Southwest Bakersfield. It was an unlikely setting for a drive-by, and according to initial news reports, police were at a loss for the motive behind the killing, or what James was even doing in the neighborhood at all. Then things began to unravel: Bajwa, it turned out, had been arrested twice in 2016 and 2017 after driving while impaired, and in addition to liquid heroin, Xanax, and hydrocodone, police also found two unregistered, loaded guns in his car, an AR-15 and a .22LR semi-automatic rifle with a fake silencer attached. All of this was detailed in a disciplinary complaint filed by the California Board of Chiropractic Examiners, and after Bajwa’s name began repeatedly surfacing in connection with the shooting, a rumor began to circulate about a black-market gun and drug trafficking ring in which Bajwa was supposedly a central figure.
It was the type of conspiracy theory most people instinctively write off as too bizarre to be credible. But it must have rung a bell to Lance Holsonbake. Before Micah’s disappearance, he told his father that he was “putting together guns for people,” according to a 2019 interview. Lance said he reacted in disbelief to this confession, because the idea that Micah would risk his career by getting involved in illegal gun manufacturing just didn’t make sense. “If you’re this afraid, just stop,” Lance recalls telling him. “And he’d say, ‘I can’t do that I can’t do that.’ He was afraid he did that they would hurt his family.” He wrote it off as paranoia exaggerated by his son’s drug use, and didn’t know how much of it was real and how much was in Micah’s mind. According to Lance, Bakersfield police initially suggested that Micah had left town of his own volition after getting mixed up in criminal activity and, from what I can tell, didn’t make much of an effort to investigate. Though the family says he was last seen on March 23, 2018, Bakersfield police claimed he wasn’t reported missing until April 4, and it appears they waited until April 13, when he’d been missing for almost a month, before BPD made its first public statement regarding his disappearance. After James was murdered a few days later, the Holsonbake and Kulstad families grew increasingly frustrated with the apparent lack of interest in investigating either case, and told the media later that as they began digging into the circumstances surrounding both cases, one name kept coming up with everyone they talked to: Baylee Despot. And within a week, Baylee Despot had also gone missing in Bakersfield.
Baylee
Baylee Parrent-Despot was 20 years old when she was reported missing in April 2018, and the families say that it was her disappearance that finally motivated the police and local news to start investigating the links between all three cases, for reasons that seem obvious to anyone who has ever seen the media react to a pretty white 20-year-old going missing. Her sister, Katelyn Parrent, describes her as “a girl that’s grown up in a good neighborhood, raised by good parents, had a good childhood, could’ve had everything she ever wanted,” much like James and Micah. And beneath the surface, she was as troubled as either of the men: after graduating high school, she’d run off to Vegas to marry her boyfriend, but their rocky relationship turned into an abusive marriage that ended just a year later in 2017. In the aftermath, she wrecked her car, lost her job, and in her mother’s words, “Her life just spiraled out of control.”
In July 2017, Baylee was arrested for disorderly conduct in front of her friend Micah Holsonbake’s house. This came as a surprise to her sister, who had at one point been friendly with Micah herself — she didn’t realize he and Baylee even knew each other. But even though he was 14 years Baylee’s senior, Katelyn remembered him as a clean-cut guy who worked at a bank, and their mother, Jane Parrent, says Micah helped her get a restraining order against an abusive ex-boyfriend. They didn’t see any cause for concern. Still, Baylee’s life continued to spiral out of control. The following month, she was drugged and gang-raped at an acquaintance’s apartment complex. She disappeared for days at a time and resurfaced with “horrible stories” or pleading phone calls begging to be picked up. On one occasion, Katelyn remembers, “She had none of her belongings, no shoes… A couple nights after that there were two vehicles that came to pick her up and we could tell by the look on her face that she didn’t want to go, but if she didn’t go, we didn’t know what would happen.”
Matthew
Not long after that incident, Baylee had a new boyfriend. Matthew Queen was 43 years old, a convicted felon, and an all-around bad dude. Not much is known about his background, with one major exception: in the early 2000s, he plead guilty to one count of making a false statement to a federal firearms dealer after he used a false address, but his real name, to purchase $11,000 in guns from dealers in Indiana. Many of those guns were later recovered at crime scenes in Detroit and Chicago. If you want an idea of what type of criminal mastermind we’re dealing with here, I recommend reading just the final ruling on that case from the 7th Circuit court of appeals:

“We reject Queen's argument that gun buyers may lie about a street address so long as they live within the state where the gun is sold . . . Queen in fact had once lived in an apartment at 2072 Egret Court, but he did not live at this address when he completed the forms and bought the guns because he was evicted on December 18, 2000, for nonpayment of rent."

Great. Sounds like a great guy.
Lest you assume Matthew Queen might have hypothetically seen the error of his ways and cleaned up his act after this early foray into gunrunning, he absolutely did not. In December 2017, just a couple weeks into Matthew and Baylee’s relationship, they were arrested after police found four unmarked, unregistered, loaded assault rifles in Matthew’s car during a traffic stop. Neither he or Baylee said a word to the police, but while Matthew (who, as a convicted felon, was prohibited from carrying any guns or ammunition at all) was charged with several felonies, while Baylee pled no contest to a lesser misdemeanor and received three years probation. Later that month, she moved in with Matthew, his mother, and his estranged wife. Baylee’s family saw and heard even less from her. And in April, a month after Micah’s disappearance and just one day after she and Matthew attended a court date for the weapons charges, Baylee went missing. Her mother believed she was pregnant with Matthew’s child and was trying to leave him at the time. Matthew told police that she had connections through her father's side of the family with a Mexican drug cartel and believed they had something to do with her disappearance.
Local interest in the case reached an even greater frenzy after Micah’s severed arm was found in the Kern River in Hart Park on the east side of town, not far from from where he was last seen. It was positively identified in late December 2018. By this point, the family of the Bakersfield 3's investigation had amassed around 10,000 followers on Facebook and another 5,000 in a private group, and the story was a fixture on local news. Another curveball came around this time too, when a former friend of Baylee’s named Sara Wedemeyer, 21, filed a restraining order against Baylee’s mother, Jane Parrent. As it was reported, Sara had moved in with Matthew mere weeks after Baylee disappeared, and she was four months pregnant with his child when she attempted to take out legal action against Mrs. Parrent, whom she claimed was harassing her and her “fiancé” by hanging up missing person fliers in their neighborhood. The restraining order wasn't granted, but Queen allegedly began making disturbing social media posts about Baylee, Micah, and the Parrent family, with Mrs. Parrent as the primary target. And in mid-2019, the investigation seemed to grind to a halt.
Part 4: New Developments
On May 27, 2020, roughly two years after the first developments in the Bakersfield 3 case, the Kern County District Attorney held at a press conference to announce they believe Baylee Despot and Matthew Queen “deliberately and with premeditation" murdered Micah Holsonbake. Despot and Queen, along with a third man, Matthew Vandecasteele, were charged with the alleged kidnapping, torture, and first degree murder, as well as unlawful manufacturing of assault weapons, conspiracy relating to the murder and torture plot, and a slew of other assault and gun charges (34 in total). Queen and Vandacasteele were both in custody at the time the charges against them were filed, but even though Baylee still has not been seen or heard from since 2018, the DA’s office issued a warrant for her arrest, leading some to speculate she may still be alive.
According to court records, Matthew Queen allegedly believed that Micah Holsonbake had stolen a .44-caliber revolver from him. He and Baylee Despot kidnapped Micah, zip-tied him to a chair in Matthew Vandecasteele’s garage, and attempted to torture him in order to extract information from him. A blood stain in the garage matched Holsonbake’s DNA. Vandecasteele told police that he didn’t see or hear Micah on the night he was killed, but knew that the other two had brought him there to question him. After several hours, Baylee allegedly returned to the apartment seeming “flustered” and changed her clothes in a back bedroom. Before they left, “Queen told Vandecasteele that he had cleaned everything up and it was OK to go inside the garage.” The next day, Queen returned to Vandecasteele’s apartment and said he “needed help disposing of something” in a large black storage container in the trunk of his car. Vandecasteele claims he refused to help with disposing of the body, but according police reports, his Google history during that period of time included searches for “lye chemical formula,” “lye for sale” and “how long does it take to dissolve a human body,” as well as browsing for lye on the Home Depot and Lowe’s websites.
Queen, Despot, and Vandacasteele allegedly manufactured and sold AR-15s from gun build kits. Other witness testimony released by the courts described various kidnappings that witnesses allege Queen, known as “the boogeyman of Bakersfield,” committed. In one incident, Queen allegedly handcuffed one victim to a chair and put an electric dog collar around his neck because he believed the man had stolen a gun part from him. Another witness said that Queen and Vandacasteele showed up armed at his hotel room after the witness told Baylee where he was staying, and that he believed they intended to kill him because he’d been arrested “with a large quantity of narcotics that he was fronted or given without paying for them and the people who had gave him the narcotics could have been upset.” (According to the police report, surveillance footage from the hotel corroborates this account.)
It’s also believed that he made anonymous calls to the police tip line to misdirect the investigation away from himself: one such caller referred to Baylee as a “sugar momma,” a phrase which Queen reportedly used to describe her when he spoke to investigators in August 2019, and he also used the same pseudonym on the tip line that he did on social media. When police questioned him around this time, he denied being part of a criminal enterprise and claimed he could barely pay his bills. Then, while out on bail for unrelated gun charges in January 2019, Queen allegedly kidnapped another man at gunpoint and forced him to walk into the Kern River while Queen accused him of snitching to the cops. He’s been in custody since July of 2019 due to this kidnapping.
Part 5: No Body, No Crime
So where is Baylee Despot?
According to official statements from law enforcement, no one knows. After the warrant was issued for her arrest, a wave of speculation followed that she had faked her own death or fled to Mexico with the help of unspecified “cartel connections.” That story seems less and less likely as more details have emerged from court documents. Vandecasteele told the police that Despot was “falling apart mentally” after murdering Micah. He and Queen both suspected that she was cooperating with police on an investigation relating to the illegal weapons charges, called her a “snitch” in one interview, and told investigators he believed Queen “made her disappear.” In one interview, a female witness said Queen kidnapped her at gunpoint, took her to an orchard, and held an AR-15 to her head while he questioned her about whether Baylee was faithful to him.
When police questioned him about Baylee’s disappearance in July 2019, he said was depressed and off her medications, and she had said she wanted to die. When the investigator told Queen there had been allegations of domestic violence involving him and Baylee, some of which resulted in bruises, Queen said he never laid a hand on anyone. He told the detective she was clumsy. Despite all of this, Jane Parrent says that police have told her that they don’t consider Matthew Queen a person of interest in Baylee’s disappearance, and that there is "no known physical evidence that definitively confirms her possible death." She is now offering her own personally-funded $1000 reward for information about her daughter’s location.
The rest of Micah Holsonbake’s body has not been recovered, though according to court documents, investigators believe Queen may have buried him in the hills near Taft, a rural area about 45 minutes west of Bakersfield.
There have been no developments in the investigation of James Kulstad’s murder since 2018. Anyone with information is urged to contact the Bakersfield Police Department at (661) 327-7111, or the Kern Secret Witness program at (661) 322-4040. A reward of up to $10,000 is being offered for information leading to an arrest in this case.
Ultimately, what really frustrates me about this case is that even after this avalanche of charges, so many questions remain unresolved, and not just what happened and who did it, but why. If the investigation concluded that James Kulstad’s death was unrelated to the disappearances of Baylee and Micah, who ordered his murder, and what was the reason? To what extent was the chiropractor involved with Queen and Vandecasteele’s trafficking racket? Was Sara Wedemeyer involved with Baylee’s disappearance, and if not, how’d she end up living with Matthew and expecting his child just two months after her “friend” went missing? Why did Sara and Matthew harass Baylee’s mother for months after the disappearance?
More than anything, I’m still lost as to Baylee Despot’s motivation for any of this. Did she just find herself in too deep with no way out? Did she actively make the choice to become a gunrunner? Did Matthew, looking to settle a grudge against Micah, seek out a relationship with Baylee with the intention of using her to get to him? Did he kill her because she was cooperating with the cops, because she attempted to leave him, or because he was just a sociopath who felt she was no longer useful?
Or is there a chance that law enforcement knows more than they’ve let on? When investigators told Mrs. Parrent that Matthew isn’t a suspect in her disappearance, was that an indication that she may, in fact, be alive?
Probably not. But at this point, anything is possible.
Sources:

1. Baylee’s page on The Charley Project: https://charleyproject.org/case/baylee-cheyanne-despot
2. First news story about Micah Holsonbake’s disappearance, 4/13/20: https://www.bakersfield.com/news/breaking/man-reported-missing-april-has-medical-condition-family-says/article_8af62936-3f73-11e8-a82e-4b2ef30f031f.html
3. “Baylee Parrent-Despot reported missing for more than a month,” 6/8/18: https://www.turnto23.com/news/local-news/baylee-parrent-despot-reported-missing-for-more-than-a-month
4. “The Bakersfield 3: Reward offered in Baylee Despot case,” 9/18/18: https://www.kget.com/news/the-bakersfield-3-reward-offered-in-baylee-despot-case/
5. “Bakersfield 3 mothers recall their last contact with children,” news article dated 10/24/18 https://www.bakersfield.com/news/momma-loves-you-bakersfield-mothers-recall-their-last-contact-with/article_418f70a8-d7e0-11e8-ac3c-67a7fc8df3d1.html
6. “BPD: Missing man in Bakersfield 3 believed to have been killed, and his death shares similarities with disappearance of missing woman,” 10/20/18: https://www.bakersfield.com/news/breaking/bpd-missing-man-in-bakersfield-believed-to-have-been-killed/article_fbeb8eb4-04b8-11e9-bb07-17e07813288b.html
7. “Mother of missing woman fights harassment claims stemming from her daughter’s disappearance,” 12/18/18: https://www.kget.com/news/mother-of-missing-woman-fights-harassment-claims-stemming-from-her-daughters-disappearance/
8. “Micah Holsonbake dead; DNA test confirms arm found in river his,” 12/20/18: https://bakersfieldnow.com/news/local/bpd-believes-a-man-missing-since-march-was-murdered
9. “Stories behind the Bakersfield 3,” 12/20/18: https://www.kget.com/news/homicide-news/stories-behind-the-bakersfield-3/1669785945/
10. Ryan Kulstad appearance on Dr. Phil, 1/14/19: https://www.drphil.com/videos/a-young-man-describes-what-led-up-to-him-holding-his-older-brother-in-his-arms-as-he-died/
11. “A closer look at the Bakersfield 3: Where is Baylee Despot?,” 3/5/19: https://www.kget.com/news/local-news/domestic-violence/a-closer-look-at-the-bakersfield-3-where-is-baylee-despot/
12. “A closer look at the Bakersfield 3: Who killed James Kulstad?” 3/6/19: https://www.kget.com/news/a-closer-look-at-the-bakersfield-3-who-killed-james-kulstad/
13. “A closer look at the Bakersfield 3: What happened to Micah Holsonbake?” 3/7/19: https://www.kget.com/news/a-closer-look-at-the-bakersfield-3-what-happened-to-micah-holsonbake/
14. “One year later, mothers of Bakersfield 3 continue their search for answers,” 3/23/19: https://www.bakersfield.com/news/one-year-later-mothers-of-bakersfield-3-continue-their-search-for-answers/article_528a7650-4cfc-11e9-886c-23d55ec3c32d.html
15. “One year since death of James Kulstad, one of the 'Bakersfield 3’,” 4/8/19: https://www.turnto23.com/news/local-news/one-year-since-death-of-james-kulstad-one-of-the-bakersfield-3
16. “Mother of missing Baylee Despot speaks out on arrest of kidnapping suspect Matthew Queen,” 7/15/19: https://www.kget.com/news/local-news/mother-of-missing-baylee-despot-speaks-out-on-arrest-of-kidnapping-suspect-matthew-queen/
17. “Investigating the mysteries of what happened to the Bakersfield 3,” 11/3/19: https://www.turnto23.com/news/crime/investigating-the-mysteries-of-what-happened-to-the-bakersfield-3
18. “Defendant in alleged kidnapping waives right to preliminary hearing,” 11/9/19: https://www.bakersfield.com/news/defendant-in-alleged-kidnapping-waives-right-to-preliminary-hearing/article_b5a3274c-00c4-11ea-a1e9-635cd4a35c9e.html
19. “More charges filed against accused kidnapper Matthew Queen,” 1/1/20: https://www.kget.com/news/crime-watch/more-charges-filed-against-kidnapping-suspect-matthew-queen/
20. Press release announcing charges filed against Queen, Despot, and Vandacasteele: https://www.kerncounty.com/home/showpublisheddocument?id=4595
21. “Matthew Queen makes a court appearance in connection to 'Bakersfield 3' case,” 6/12/20: https://www.turnto23.com/news/crime/matthew-queen-make-a-court-appearance-in-connection-to-bakersfield-3-case
22. “‘Bakersfield 3’ member Micah Holsonbake believed killed by Matthew Queen over alleged stolen gun, defendant says in court documents,” 6/18/20: https://www.kget.com/news/crime-watch/bakersfield-3-member-micah-holsonbake-was-killed-by-matthew-queen-over-alleged-stolen-gun-defendant-says-in-court-documents/
23. “Documents suggest Micah Holsonbake was afraid of suspect Matthew Queen; suggest Queen attempted to mislead investigation,” 6/17/20: https://www.turnto23.com/news/crime/documents-suggest-micah-holsonbake-was-afraid-of-suspect-matthew-queen-suggest-queen-attempted-to-mislead-investigation
24. “Documents detail depth of investigation into suspected murder of Bakersfield 3 member,” 6/19/20: https://www.bakersfield.com/news/documents-detail-depth-of-investigation-into-suspected-murder-of-bakersfield-3-membearticle_ac1fb9a4-b278-11ea-962b-6b8ee0b03647.html
25. “Bakersfield 3 update: Matthew Queen appears in court, pleas not guilty to all charges,” 6/11/20: https://bakersfieldnow.com/news/local/bakersfield-3-update-matthew-queen-appears-in-court-pleas-not-guilty-to-all-charges
26. “‘Bakersfield 3’ member Micah Holsonbake was afraid of murder suspect Matthew Queen, became increasingly paranoid before he disappeared, documents say,” 6/17/20
27. Appellate court decision against Matthew Queen: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/408/337/509670/
28. Obituary of James Kulstad: https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/bakersfield/obituary.aspx?n=james-john-kulstad&pid=188771330&fhid=6140

Hi. My name is Peter. I'm not yet a recovering gambling addict, but it's by far the biggest goal I have in my life. Just to mention, I also have a goal to be accepted into a university in Finland. Here is a the complete story about my gambling addiction:
I come from quite a wealthy and loving family. I consider myself considerably intelligent. I was performing well at school and I was extremely happy all the time. Until the age of 17 I hadn't shown any kind of interest towards gambling. I played football and enjoyed watching it with my dad. One day he asked me if I wanted to put a bet on a Champions league game where Barcelona played against Roma (Spring 2019). That was my first introduction to gambling. We started to place some bets, very irregulary, but I kinda started to like it more and more. By the age of 18 I moved away from my parents to live with my girlfriend and the betting stopped (Fall 2019). I heard and read some news articles about Finnish people going into debt spiral because of gambling away thousands and even tens of thousands of euros. I remember how I despised them and always thought that how could anyone be so stupid.
Half a year later (May 2020) I was working as a co-driver in a local electronics store. I spent most of my working days with my coworker Alex. One day we started to discuss about gambling and Alex told me that he had a serious gambling addiction, but was now recovering from it. He told me a story about how he lost 2k in day. No one close to me had never talked about their own gambling addiction, but when I finally met a friend who had one, the only thing that came to my mind was just like before: "How can someone be so stupid?".
The same year my military service started (September 2020). There I started to place some little bets with my military friends and I started to like betting again. The bets were from 1 to 5€ and I remember winning 300€ and feeling like a champion. I had 5k on my savings account and I had never been happier in my life. One weekend (October 2020) when I was on a break from military we went drinking with my girlfriend and our friends out of city. Four of us had a hotel room there and I still don't know the reason why I did it, but I placed a 500€ on roulette on red color. Remember, I had never placed a bet more than 5€ , not to mention 500€. I won that bet. I continued. I cashed out 4,5k just from playing roulette and switching colors. I felt like the biggest champion in the world. It was 5am and everyone was asleep so I woke everyone up and told them what I had just won. Even though it was 5am and I had woken them up while they were still a bit drunk and obviously not feeling that well, they were extremely happy for me, for real. The following morning I woke up, I had to check my bank account just to make sure it wasn't a dream and there it was, a 4,5k withdrawal from Unibet. The same day I also told my parents that I had just won 4,5k, and they told me not to gamble ever again. On Monday I went back to military service and I listened to their words and never gambled again. For the next two weeks.
The next vacation came. I had 9,5k in my savings. Somehow I got a urge to climb my balance up to 10k and when I'd get to that, I'd completely stop gambling. I placed one bet. I placed another bet. I placed another bet. I soon noticed that I had not only gambled all my winnings away but also my whole balance. I had literally zero euros in my bank account. I didn't even realise it that night but the following morning I remember waking up checking my bank account just to make sure it wasn't dream (again). I felt like my world collapsed. I had three months left of my compulsory military service and my salary was like 400€/month. Every morning I woke up I had the same feeling, I felt like my world had collapsed. I told my military friends about what had happened and they pretty much just laughed at me and had exactly the same thought as I had had: "How can anyone be so stupid?". I couldn't tell any of my real friends or my family, because I felt humiliated. When my military salary came I tried to climb back up to 10k. Of course it was near impossible with 400€, so I lost them all. I continued like that for the rest of the military service. I had never took a loan from any of my friends or any other lender and that was the only good thing that I could think about that time. I have always had had a bad habit for lying and this significantly increased it. I've always been quite good at lying so my lies were believed.
Then I got off from military service (December 2020). I had got a new job as a salesman. My first month wasn't great and I only got like 800€. I once again tried to climb back up to 10k. I immediately lost it. Taking a loan came to my mind. I did some research and a local bank offered me a 4k loan which I took. I lost it that same night. I felt like my world collapsed even further. I sta I was completely lost and the only solution was to gather myself and finally tell my parents and also my girlfriend that I have a serious gambling addiction. They were extremely understanding and thanked me for daring to tell them. My parents lend me 500€ for me to survive the following month and I promised them that I'd never gamble again. Just like I promised them four months ago.
Now here I am with 7k in debt and zero euros in my bank account. I betrayed my promise again. Today I told my parents and my girlfriend about my current situation with gambling and after all this, they still managed to be extremely supportive. I've always been a positive person and I still tend to be. I have a loving family and a girlfriend, I have many close friends, I got accepted into a business university, I'm healthy, I'm not in a financial distress because I know that my parents can lend me money if I really do need it and I have a full-time job. I'm in a better situation than many many other people. I just can't find the right solution for myself to stop gambling. And I really do want to do so. I feel like I've thrown away the latest four months of my life, and I don't want to lose a single day anymore. I want to stop the constant lying and made up excuses for justifying my gambling, my mood swings and reckless behavior. I want to continue living my life as such a happy young man as I was last summer and before that.
Sorry for the long post, but getting the full story this off my chest felt awesome.

1. There's a spot on the dining room's wall that's always moldy in spring. Probably because the apartment faces the sea. Though it's not really too close to it. The molds just keep coming back the next day after being removed. Somehow it just reminds me of a documentary I watched on Netflix weeks ago, Dancing With The Birds. The birds in the documentary all tried, day after day, to find someone. They just don't give up. Just as resilient as the moldy spot on the wall. I wanted to see if you are here.
   
2. I once got an internship at a company in a neighborhood I am not familiar with. I asked a friend of mine, who did an internship there the year before, about where I should avoid and things like that. Then she was like, "My boyfriend took care of everything for me. I think he um...." I asked my next door neighbor the same question because he got an internship in the same neighborhood I did. The first thing he said was, "If you can't figure things out on your own I don't think you should do an internship at all." For some reason the conversations I had with them still strikes me even until this day. People rarely care. People rarely understand. Even rarer to have someone who both cares about and understands you. Most people don't give a shit about the fact that you are in a bad spot. Some people might say, "Oh man I am sorry that you are in such a bad spot." A few people might pause whatever they are doing and offer you some help. Only one person, or maybe two or three, won't go until they get you out of the bad spot. I would like to be that person for my SO.
   
3. I just started watching Fargo. The second season. I looked up the cast of the show before I started watching it. Kristen Dunst is in it. When I was younger I heard people making fun of Dunst's teeth. I felt really bad for her. In an interview she did in 2019 she told the reporter that she was asked by some producers to have her teeth fixed, but she refused. Though she probably had dental work done at some point because her teeth do not look the same as before. I wondered what would have happened if she never had it done. And why can't we even accept an actress with "imperfect" teeth. David Bowie also had crooked teeth which he later fixed. I have heard many people claiming that his teeth did not bother them. I wondered if they would have said the same if it is just some random person with crooked teeth. I would be sad if their logic went like, the more talented a person is, the more crooked their teeth I could accept. My friend had a car accident in London some years ago and that messed something up. I am sure some men would have chosen to leave but hers did not. Her husband did not tell her to fix anything. A side note, fixing and repairing, in a relationship, are some essential skills. I do not want to be with someone who constantly thinks about jumping ship. Though we all know that some mistakes are simply beyond repair. "Would it be so bad if I slept with this girl, only once, behind my wife's back?" Yes, it would be over. I would like to find someone who not just likes the beginning of things but also the things after that. Someone who I could share both the best and the worst years of my life with. And, you know, someone to watch Fargo with.
   

What I am looking for -
Short version (there is a long version, with explanation, follows) -
A single, monogamous, adult (stop asking me for an age range. If you can get married without your parents’ approval, you are welcomed to message me) man who is looking for a lifelong relationship, has time to be in a committed relationship, will become my best friend, is in shape/ not too out of shape, is reasonably healthy, is mentally healthy and stable/ mentally unhealthy and unstable but has been monitoring the progress, mentally available, is a meat eater, is a non smoke rarely smoke, is a non drinke social drinker, is a non drug addict (weed is fine), is a non gambling addict, is a non porn addict, is a virgin/ non virgin but was always responsible to their exes (always wore condoms and never had STDs), is okay with no cohabitation, is okay with no premarital sex, is not into anything kinky, wants kids (biological kids/ adopted kids), is okay with your spouse not taking birth control pills, is okay with your spouse not wearing an IUD, is debt free/ with justifiable debt, is religious/ non religious, is eligible to apply for a passport (and meet each other)
If you do not agree with everything I said above then we are not compatible. “I agreed with most of the things you said.” What does that even mean? I have had enough messages telling me that they do not entirely agree with what I said but would like to see where things go. The answer is nowhere. I do not have time nor do I want to build a castle on sand. I also have had enough messages telling me to reconsider things. I won't.
What I like -
Sun
Snow
Trees
Woodworking
Agriculture
Plants
Good food
Hot food
Hot soup
Warm words
Laughing
Wool yarn
Wool clothing
Names with stories, say like, street names
Dining wares
Trains
Photography
Old stories - old movies and shows
Good stories - movies, shows and documentaries, books, music with good lyrics
Good arts
Thrift stores
Flea markets
What I am looking for - Long version -
A strictly monogamous relationship that is happy, healthy, supportive, and lasts forever. I am not looking for dick pictures, chat buddies, dirty chat buddies, hookups, love affairs, friends, friends with benefits, sugar daddies, sugar uncles, sugar sons, rebound dating, short-term dating, several years dating, polyamorous, open, or online-only relationships.
Communication - I would make time to talk to my SO every day, and very much prefer so, even just to hear that they are safe and sound. But I would be understanding if they are out in Antarctica and the satellite Internet at the work station does not always work properly, or something like that. I would like to deal with all the hardships in life together as a team. Having arguments in a relationship is somewhat unavoidable. I like straightening things out, right away, in a logical, non violent, and non abusive way. I apologize when I make mistakes. Giving silent treatment is really not my thing. I am not saying that I do not have a temper. I do. I do get angry, but within reason. Keeping promises and being punctual are important to me. I always say “Gotta go” when I need to end a conversation.
Mental health - The amount of toxicity I could take is arguably higher than average, but please alert me if you are struggling mentally. On a side note, I hope you do not like watching porn. It is a poor choice, and is both physically and psychologically damaging. I am not asking everyone of you to agree with me on this, or any other things I say in this post. Whatever floats your boat, strangers; just let me have the freedom to find whatever I am looking for.
Distance - I am not looking for an online marriage. Future faking is a fucked up thing to do to another person. If you need nude pictures, phone sex or Skype sex to make a long distance relationship works, I am not the person you are looking for.
Meeting for the first time - I have given this a lot of thoughts, still I do not really know when and where would be good to meet up. We could meet either before we go into a relationship or after. It would probably be fairer for us to fly to a foreign place to meet, it means we would have to trust each other enough to do that. In that case it would make more sense to meet after the relationship has already been established. Also we would have to deal with this whole “OMG covid is deadly!” thing. I think it is doable to fall for someone just by talking. Though I am aware that people are often not who they claimed they are. Those who say they are loyal could be experienced cheaters. But we will see. When in doubt, I ask questions.
Marriage - I have never been married but I would like to get married. The last thing I want is a divorce. The word marriage has sort of become a dirty word now but I am old fashioned. I like relationship labels, and I hope you are the same. A side note, I'm not into having a big wedding. Or a diamond ring. Or to dress fancy for a pre-wedding shoot. The National Gallery of Art has three self portraits of a Hungarian photographer and his wife. I would like to have a wedding like theirs. Which means I would just like to hang out with my SO somewhere, take some pictures ourselves, and call it a wedding. If you never had a proper family, fear not, we would have one on our own. However, having a toxic childhood should not be an excuse for exhibiting toxic behaviors. I would never set myself on fire to keep you warm. It would not help.
Sex - It would be too intimidating if you have had unsafe sex, a lot of sex, or many sexual partners in the past. And I do not want to be intimidated. Don’t give me that classic “oral sex/ cyber sex is not really sex” BS. Premarital sex is off the table. People make fun of those who have never had sex, which I do not get. I do not have a past, and would strongly prefer someone who also does not. It seems fairer that way, and in that way I would not have to grieve over your past. But, then again, grieving is a part of life. It is alright if you are not a virgin, just do not lie. I do not really have a sex drive. Mentally speaking, I would be okay if you never wanted to have sex, I would also be okay if you wanted to have a lot of sex. Because I do not specifically crave for sex; I crave for love. In other word, I count all types of affection as a whole, and sex does not specifically stand out from all the rest. Physically speaking, I would not be compatible with those who have a high sex drive, as I think overindulgence in sex is destructive. I am not really a robot, and so daily sex sounds off putting as fuck to me. I would not be compatible with those who are into kinky sex/ filming sex tapes, also. There is nothing wrong with those, they are just not my thing. I think having boundaries in bed does not mean I do not love them, or love them less than those who have no boundaries. I would never take birth control pills/ wear an IUD, because they have many side effects that I do not want to deal with. Respect my choices.
Kids - I do not have kids. But I would like to raise kids. Ask yourself, honestly, if you are mature enough, and ready to be a father. "But I am not ready, just yet; there are things I want to achieve before I become a father." Find someone younger, then. I would like to add that I have no reason to doubt my fertility as I take reasonably good care of myself. I have no, and never had any, chronic diseases or illnesses. Am at a healthy weight, somewhat slim even. 5 feet 7 inches tall. In the event that I was infertile, surrogacy would not be an option. It goes against my morals. So, again, think twice. I would like to raise adopted kids, and treat them like they are my biological kids. I would not dump my husband if, he was found to be infertile at any point of the marriage. Technically I would be okay if you do not want to raise kids at all, but providing a home for some orphans is something I could do, and I do not want to pass that on.
Living together - I have always, and still am against the idea of living together before marriage. There is nothing wrong with cohabitation, it is just again not my thing. I would gladly introduce my roommate when I was in school to you if you are worried that I have some weird quirks. I might or might not bribe her before I introduce her to you.
Living with parents - Sure, I would not think less of you. There are reasons why people choose to live with their parents.
Cars - I do not care whether you have a car or not.
Money - I am not rich, and was not born rich, but I have no debts. Never had debts. I am aware that some debts are justifiable, like student loan. I worked in the academia. I just started doing something new, related to my field of study, and that makes me happy. Whether you are a postdoc, or a high school drop out, makes no difference to me. For those who think that throwing me a sentence like “I am a lawyer” would be enough to make me talk, have some self respect. I am fine with my Reddit inbox collects only dust.
Religion - I suppose I have always been mostly an agnostic. My parents sent me to a Christian middle school, then a Christian high school. It would be great if you are a God believer and do not mind me being a non religious person. We could read Bible together. It would also be great if you are a non religious person but follow traditional values.
Smoking, drinking and doing drugs - I do not smoke cigarettes. Or vape. Or whatever. I do not do soft/ hard drugs. Have no past addictions. I do not take over-the-counter drugs even. I do not drink alcohol. If you drink responsibly, then I do not have a problem with that.
Dietary choices - I am an omnivore. Have no food allergies. Please be a meat eater. I do not want to get into an argument with you over a tuna egg sandwich I make for our kids. I would not raise my kids vegan. They should be able to make their own choices when they are old enough. I like cooking quite a bit. Would learn to cook all your favorite dishes.
Pets - I do not have any pets.
Gaming - I do not gamble. I have never played any video or computer games. Game soundtracks though I do often pay attention to.
Tattoos - Sure, why not?
Earrings - Why not? I would buy you earrings.
Long hair - Why not? I would braid your hair when you are asleep, though.
Politics - I am against communism, and totalitarianism. Trump 2020. Please read my reddit history. I pretty much stopped using this account altogether, except posting on Foreveralonedating, because this account has 33 male followers, and that is creepy, and makes me feel very uncomfortable. But my reddit history should give you a hint on what kind of a person I am. (Update: 68 followers now, which shows you how disgusting and creepy some, if not most, men on this site are.)
P.S. This is Reddit, a wonderful yet utterly dangerous place, strangers. Especially for women. So many people prey on the weak. Even scammers would spend an hour writing and tell you that “you are everything I have been looking for since forever”. I laughed out loud at “I would relocate for you but it depends on where exactly you are” messages. “I am 100% (insert a race here), and I couldn’t aim to have kids with a wife who isn’t (insert a race here).” messages are laughable. Don’t bother, kiddos. The only time I accept people bringing up the skin color thing is when it concerns our adopted kids, if you understand what I mean. Canned messages are easy to spot, because I am smarter than you imagined. There were people who messaged me from throwaway accounts, which I noticed later filled with porn posts. Accounts with no post history are fishy. Anyhow at some point let's do a photo verification. Maybe we could take a selfie while holding a piece of paper with something like "Today's February 33 1920" written on it. Thank you all for sending me a selfie right off the bat. But I do not trust you enough to click on it. Also please do not ask me to talk to you over the phone/ do a video chat with you right off the bat. If you absolutely do not know what to write, check out "pinned post II", there's a list of 30 questions. I talk to one person, if even there was one, at a time.
TL;DR - I am a non religious person who holds traditional values and beliefs, which for obvious reasons give me a hard time these days. If you see this post, message me, no matter when.

1. “Physical attraction is important. So I’d want to have a picture of you. If I don’t like how you look, I would not respond.”

I mean, you don’t always get what you want.
I was on some dating site for a while. I had maybe 4000 likes. I don’t know if that’s a lot, or not much. Have never compared the number with another girl. I should point out that I didn’t upload a proper picture of mine because I had no desires to help improving their facial recognition system. Also because their rules sicken me. “Only frontal pictures of your face are allowed”. Oh okay. One day I noticed that they had my profile picture removed. And warned that if it was being removed repeatedly, the whole account will be banned altogether. I deleted my account the same night.
Beauty, to me, is plainly objective. Some people are good looking. And some people are ugly. Which is okay. It’s basically just lottery. Don’t blame yourself. Don’t blame your parents. At the same time beauty is largely subjective. Your personality and brain should be enough to make up for your shortcomings in your appearance. “Find someone who loves you for who you are”, your looks, personality and brain all included. While your looks being the least important one.

1. There's a spot on the dining room's wall that's always moldy in spring. Probably because the apartment faces the sea. Though it's not really too close to it. The molds just keep coming back the next day after being removed. Somehow it just reminds me of a documentary I watched on Netflix weeks ago, Dancing With The Birds. The birds in the documentary all tried, day after day, to find someone. They just don't give up. Just as resilient as the moldy spot on the wall. I wanted to see if you are here.
   
2. I once got an internship at a company in a neighborhood I am not familiar with. I asked a friend of mine, who did an internship there the year before, about where I should avoid and things like that. Then she was like, "My boyfriend took care of everything for me. I think he um...." I asked my next door neighbor the same question because he got an internship in the same neighborhood I did. The first thing he said was, "If you can't figure things out on your own I don't think you should do an internship at all." For some reason the conversations I had with them still strikes me even until this day. People rarely care. People rarely understand. Even rarer to have someone who both cares about and understands you. Most people don't give a shit about the fact that you are in a bad spot. Some people might say, "Oh man I am sorry that you are in such a bad spot." A few people might pause whatever they are doing and offer you some help. Only one person, or maybe two or three, won't go until they get you out of the bad spot. I would like to be that person for my SO.
   
3. I just started watching Fargo. The second season. I looked up the cast of the show before I started watching it. Kristen Dunst is in it. When I was younger I heard people making fun of Dunst's teeth. I felt really bad for her. In an interview she did in 2019 she told the reporter that she was asked by some producers to have her teeth fixed, but she refused. Though she probably had dental work done at some point because her teeth do not look the same as before. I wondered what would have happened if she never had it done. And why can't we even accept an actress with "imperfect" teeth. David Bowie also had crooked teeth which he later fixed. I have heard many people claiming that his teeth did not bother them. I wondered if they would have said the same if it is just some random person with crooked teeth. I would be sad if their logic went like, the more talented a person is, the more crooked their teeth I could accept. My friend had a car accident in London some years ago and that messed something up. I am sure some men would have chosen to leave but hers did not. Her husband did not tell her to fix anything. A side note, fixing and repairing, in a relationship, are some essential skills. I do not want to be with someone who constantly thinks about jumping ship. Though we all know that some mistakes are simply beyond repair. "Would it be so bad if I slept with this girl, only once, behind my wife's back?" Yes, it would be over. I would like to find someone who not just likes the beginning of things but also the things after that. Someone who I could share both the best and the worst years of my life with. And, you know, someone to watch Fargo with.
   

What I am looking for -
Short version (there is a long version, with explanation, follows) -
A single, monogamous, adult (stop asking me for an age range. If you can get married without your parents’ approval, you are welcomed to message me) man who is looking for a lifelong relationship, has time to be in a committed relationship, will become my best friend, is in shape/ not too out of shape, is reasonably healthy, is mentally healthy and stable/ mentally unhealthy and unstable but has been monitoring the progress, mentally available, is a meat eater, is a non smoke rarely smoke, is a non drinke social drinker, is a non drug addict (weed is fine), is a non gambling addict, is a non porn addict, is a virgin/ non virgin but was always responsible to their exes (always wore condoms and never had STDs), is okay with no cohabitation, is okay with no premarital sex, is not into anything kinky, wants kids (biological kids/ adopted kids), is okay with your spouse not taking birth control pills, is okay with your spouse not wearing an IUD, is debt free/ with justifiable debt, is religious/ non religious, is eligible to apply for a passport (and meet each other)
If you do not agree with everything I said above then we are not compatible. “I agreed with most of the things you said.” What does that even mean? I have had enough messages telling me that they do not entirely agree with what I said but would like to see where things go. The answer is nowhere. I do not have time nor do I want to build a castle on sand. I also have had enough messages telling me to reconsider things. I won't.
What I like -
Sun
Snow
Trees
Woodworking
Agriculture
Plants
Good food
Hot food
Hot soup
Warm words
Laughing
Wool yarn
Wool clothing
Names with stories, say like, street names
Dining wares
Trains
Photography
Old stories - old movies and shows
Good stories - movies, shows and documentaries, books, music with good lyrics
Good arts
Thrift stores
Flea markets
What I am looking for - Long version -
A strictly monogamous relationship that is happy, healthy, supportive, and lasts forever. I am not looking for dick pictures, chat buddies, dirty chat buddies, hookups, love affairs, friends, friends with benefits, rebound dating, short-term dating, several years dating, polyamorous, open, or online-only relationships.
Communication - I would make time to talk to my SO every day, and very much prefer so, even just to hear that they are safe and sound. But I would be understanding if they are out in Antarctica and the satellite Internet at the work station does not always work properly, or something like that. I would like to deal with all the hardships in life together as a team. Having arguments in a relationship is somewhat unavoidable. I like straightening things out, right away, in a logical, non violent, and non abusive way. I apologize when I make mistakes. Giving silent treatment is really not my thing. I am not saying that I do not have a temper. I do. I do get angry, but within reason. Keeping promises and being punctual are important to me. I always say “Gotta go” when I need to end a conversation.
Mental health - The amount of toxicity I could take is arguably higher than average, but please alert me if you are struggling mentally. On a side note, I hope you do not like watching porn. It is a poor choice, and is both physically and psychologically damaging. I am not asking everyone of you to agree with me on this, or any other things I say in this post. Whatever floats your boat, strangers; just let me have the freedom to find whatever I am looking for.
Distance - I am not looking for an online marriage. Future faking is a fucked up thing to do to another person. If you need nude pictures, phone sex or Skype sex to make a long distance relationship works, I am not the person you are looking for.
Meeting for the first time - I have given this a lot of thoughts, still I do not really know when and where would be good to meet up. We could meet either before we go into a relationship or after. It would probably be fairer for us to fly to a foreign place to meet, it means we would have to trust each other enough to do that. In that case it would make more sense to meet after the relationship has already been established. Also we would have to deal with this whole “OMG covid is deadly!” thing. I think it is doable to fall for someone just by talking. Though I am aware that people are often not who they claimed they are. Those who say they are loyal could be experienced cheaters. But we will see. When in doubt, I ask questions.
Marriage - I have never been married but I would like to get married. The last thing I want is a divorce. The word marriage has sort of become a dirty word now but I am old fashioned. I like relationship labels, and I hope you are the same. A side note, I'm not into having a big wedding. Or a diamond ring. Or to dress fancy for a pre-wedding shoot. The National Gallery of Art has three self portraits of a Hungarian photographer and his wife. I would like to have a wedding like theirs. Which means I would just like to hang out with my SO somewhere, take some pictures ourselves, and call it a wedding. If you never had a proper family, fear not, we would have one on our own. However, having a toxic childhood should not be an excuse for exhibiting toxic behaviors. I would never set myself on fire to keep you warm. It would not help.
Sex - It would be too intimidating if you have had unsafe sex, a lot of sex, or many sexual partners in the past. And I do not want to be intimidated. Don’t give me that classic “oral sex/ cyber sex is not really sex” BS. Premarital sex is off the table. People make fun of those who have never had sex, which I do not get. I do not have a past, and would strongly prefer someone who also does not. It seems fairer that way, and in that way I would not have to grieve over your past. But, then again, grieving is a part of life. It is alright if you are not a virgin, just do not lie. I do not really have a sex drive. Mentally speaking, I would be okay if you never wanted to have sex, I would also be okay if you wanted to have a lot of sex. Because I do not specifically crave for sex; I crave for love. In other word, I count all types of affection as a whole, and sex does not specifically stand out from all the rest. Physically speaking, I would not be compatible with those who have a high sex drive, as I think overindulgence in sex is destructive. I am not really a robot, and so daily sex sounds off putting as fuck to me. I would not be compatible with those who are into kinky sex/ filming sex tapes, also. There is nothing wrong with those, they are just not my thing. I think having boundaries in bed does not mean I do not love them, or love them less than those who have no boundaries. I would never take birth control pills/ wear an IUD, because they have many side effects that I do not want to deal with. Respect my choices.
Kids - I do not have kids. But I would like to raise kids. Ask yourself, honestly, if you are mature enough, and ready to be a father. "But I am not ready, just yet; there are things I want to achieve before I become a father." Find someone younger, then. I would like to add that I have no reason to doubt my fertility as I take reasonably good care of myself. I have no, and never had any, chronic diseases or illnesses. Am at a healthy weight, somewhat slim even. 5 feet 7 inches tall. In the event that I was infertile, surrogacy would not be an option. It goes against my morals. So, again, think twice. I would like to raise adopted kids, and treat them like they are my biological kids. I would not dump my husband if, he was found to be infertile at any point of the marriage. Technically I would be okay if you do not want to raise kids at all, but providing a home for some orphans is something I could do, and I do not want to pass that on.
Living together - I have always, and still am against the idea of living together before marriage. There is nothing wrong with cohabitation, it is just again not my thing. I would gladly introduce my roommate when I was in school to you if you are worried that I have some weird quirks. I might or might not bribe her before I introduce her to you.
Living with parents - Sure, I would not think less of you. There are reasons why people choose to live with their parents.
Cars - I do not care whether you have a car or not.
Money - I am not rich, and was not born rich, but I have no debts. Never had debts. I am aware that some debts are justifiable, like student loan. I worked in the academia. I just started doing something new, related to my field of study, and that makes me happy. Whether you are a postdoc, or a high school drop out, makes no difference to me. For those who think that throwing me a sentence like “I am a lawyer” would be enough to make me talk, have some self respect. I am fine with my Reddit inbox collects only dust.
Religion - I suppose I have always been mostly an agnostic. My parents sent me to a Christian middle school, then a Christian high school. It would be great if you are a God believer and do not mind me being a non religious person. We could read Bible together. It would also be great if you are a non religious person but follow traditional values.
Smoking, drinking and doing drugs - I do not smoke cigarettes. Or vape. Or whatever. I do not do soft/ hard drugs. Have no past addictions. I do not take over-the-counter drugs even. I do not drink alcohol. If you drink responsibly, then I do not have a problem with that.
Dietary choices - I am an omnivore. Have no food allergies. Please be a meat eater. I do not want to get into an argument with you over a tuna egg sandwich I make for our kids. I would not raise my kids vegan. They should be able to make their own choices when they are old enough. I like cooking quite a bit. Would learn to cook all your favorite dishes.
Pets - I do not have any pets.
Gaming - I do not gamble. I have never played any video or computer games. Game soundtracks though I do often pay attention to.
Tattoos - Sure, why not?
Earrings - Why not? I would buy you earrings.
Long hair - Why not? I would braid your hair when you are asleep, though.
Politics - I am against communism, and totalitarianism. Trump 2020. Please read my reddit history. I pretty much stopped using this account altogether, except posting on Foreveralonedating, because this account has 33 male followers, and that is creepy, and makes me feel very uncomfortable. But my reddit history should give you a hint on what kind of a person I am. (Update: 68 followers now, which shows you how disgusting and creepy some, if not most, men on this site are.)
P.S. This is Reddit, a wonderful yet utterly dangerous place, strangers. Especially for women. So many people prey on the weak. Even scammers would spend an hour writing and tell you that “you are everything I have been looking for since forever”. I laughed out loud at “I would relocate for you but it depends on where exactly you are” messages. “I am 100% (insert a race here), and I couldn’t aim to have kids with a wife who isn’t (insert a race here).” messages are laughable. Don’t bother, kiddos. The only time I accept people bringing up the skin color thing is when it concerns our adopted kids, if you understand what I mean. Canned messages are easy to spot, because I am smarter than you imagined. There were people who messaged me from throwaway accounts, which I noticed later filled with porn posts. Accounts with no post history are fishy. Anyhow at some point let's do a photo verification. Maybe we could take a selfie while holding a piece of paper with something like "Today's February 33 1920" written on it. Thank you all for sending me a selfie right off the bat. But I do not trust you enough to click on it. Also please do not ask me to talk to you over the phone/ do a video chat with you right off the bat. If you absolutely do not know what to write, check out "pinned post II", there's a list of 30 questions. I talk to one person, if even there was one, at a time.
TL;DR - I am a non religious person who holds traditional values and beliefs, which for obvious reasons give me a hard time these days. If you see this post, message me, no matter when.

Long story short, today I will stop my sports betting addiction after losing 1500$ on a single day, while being part of the small minority of gamblers that have made a profit.
It all started a few months before the end of 2019 when I had discovered the churning/manufactured spending hobby and I thought, since I used to watch a lot of sports, I could deposit a few thousand $ for the cashback at the local betting website, make a sure bet with low odds and then withdraw it.
So I did that, made some 1.01 bets on basketball for a few dozen and guess what, it worked. I gradually upped the bets to a few hundreds to several thousands on matches where the top team played against the worse teams, normally games with 30-40 points difference. I figured out I could manufacture spend 5000 a month like that. But since it seemed so easy to win those bets, why not bet them multiple times to win a few additional $ per month? So I started betting more, now also on football and volleyball. Until my first big loss, while being on the website looking for my next bet, saw Ajax winning by 3 goals against Chelsea and betting still open for 1.02 profit. So I bet 950, and before you know it, 2 players from Ajax get sent off with red card and the game ends 4-4. In the next few weeks I place some riskier bets to chase losses and luckily I win, while in the meantime losing another 300$ on a football match. But 2019 ends with 40$ profit, plus a few hundred for credit card rewards.
I keep the same strategy in 2020, some big bets on basketball and volleyball, plus some small bets on live football. I win some and lose some, but am overall 100-200 ahead until covid happens and the matches stop for a few weeks. When some championships restart, with a lot of time at home, I start betting on live football,again on ‘sure’ bets. After some wins the second big loss comes. I lose 40, then bet 300 to recover a bit of the loss, then 900 to start recovering the second loss, lose all three bets, 1240 total loss. After the shock, and a few days later, I set a goal to keep playing until I recover the losses or I lose another thousand. So I start betting again hundreds, and when I got confident even thousands, on live football ‘sure’ bets. Luckily it works again, and in the next 2-3 months until the end of the season I managed to recover all losses and end up with a few hundred profits. But since it seems to work and bad times have passed why stop? So I keep playing in the next season and I end 2020 with a profit of around 4000$, around 1000-1500$ in each of the last three months.
Since I have found a way to win easy money I naturally keep playing in 2021, although I realize more and more that I need to stop because I spend tons of hours on this. And just in 2-3 few weeks I had won almost 1600$ in 2021 until yesterday, when I lost 900$ on football, bet on Tottenham scoring up to 2 goals in the final 5 minutes, they scored 3. I commit to either recovering profits or ending this for all without any losses in 2021. I make a bet for 600$, I win 12$, make another 600$bet on a South American match with teams I had never heard of, the wrong team scores on 99th minute and I lose. Total loss for the day 1500$, total win for 2021 70$. With previous losses, even 100$, I was angry or sad. But with this one the feeling is different, kind of numb, kind of relieved that it ended.
And here are my thoughts. I’ve read that only 5% of gamblers win with sports betting, and I am part of that 5%. But reality that no more than 0.5% make anything to remotely allow them to make a living. The rest, including me, make much lower than the minimum wage of even the crappiest job, while spending a lot more energy. I would spend more than 20 hours a week, 8 hours at each weekend day. And all that for tiny profits. Last summer I planned to get back home from the beach just in time to follow the matches to recover my second loss instead of allowing myself to enjoy the day. That should never happen next summer. In all that time I spent gambling I could have improved my skills and looked for a better job, which is one of the reasons why I started sports betting since I’m very bored and relatively underpaid.
Fact is, you can never win with sports betting. Unlike lottery or scratches where you usually realize that the probabilities are tiny but you might get a big win that will change your life. But with sports betting you can only win relatively small amounts, which you will naturally further bet because with each win you get more confident and you feel that you are leaving money on the table otherwise. Even if I made 100000$ with sports betting I’m sure that I would bet more to reach 200000$
And as everyone here knows, with gambling you completely lose the value of money, especially when you win. I’m very frugal in real life, even though I’m relatively affluent. 1500$ is more than my yearly grocery spending but I lost that in just a few hours.
So now I commit to withdraw all money from the website and never make another deposit. And also cancel my credit cards with annual fees, since manufactured spending is also not worth the time in Europe as the rewards are much worse than US.
I’ve earned around 4000$ from this shit but I lost tons of hours and energy, so this comes to an end, lesson learned.

1. There's a spot on the dining room's wall that's always moldy in spring. Probably because the apartment faces the sea. Though it's not really too close to it. The molds just keep coming back the next day after being removed. Somehow it just reminds me of a documentary I watched on Netflix weeks ago, Dancing With The Birds. The birds in the documentary all tried, day after day, to find someone. They just don't give up. Just as resilient as the moldy spot on the wall. I wanted to see if you are here.
   
2. I once got an internship at a company in a neighborhood I am not familiar with. I asked a friend of mine, who did an internship there the year before, about where I should avoid and things like that. Then she was like, "My boyfriend took care of everything for me. I think he um...." I asked my next door neighbor the same question because he got an internship in the same neighborhood I did. The first thing he said was, "If you can't figure things out on your own I don't think you should do an internship at all." For some reason the conversations I had with them still strikes me even until this day. People rarely care. People rarely understand. Even rarer to have someone who both cares about and understands you. Most people don't give a shit about the fact that you are in a bad spot. Some people might say, "Oh man I am sorry that you are in such a bad spot." A few people might pause whatever they are doing and offer you some help. Only one person, or maybe two or three, won't go until they get you out of the bad spot. I would like to be that person for my SO.
   
3. I just started watching Fargo. The second season. I looked up the cast of the show before I started watching it. Kristen Dunst is in it. When I was younger I heard people making fun of Dunst's teeth. I felt really bad for her. In an interview she did in 2019 she told the reporter that she was asked by some producers to have her teeth fixed, but she refused. Though she probably had dental work done at some point because her teeth do not look the same as before. I wondered what would have happened if she never had it done. And why can't we even accept an actress with "imperfect" teeth. David Bowie also had crooked teeth which he later fixed. I have heard many people claiming that his teeth did not bother them. I wondered if they would have said the same if it is just some random person with crooked teeth. I would be sad if their logic went like, the more talented a person is, the more crooked their teeth I could accept. My friend had a car accident in London some years ago and that messed something up. I am sure some men would have chosen to leave but hers did not. Her husband did not tell her to fix anything. A side note, fixing and repairing, in a relationship, are some essential skills. I do not want to be with someone who constantly thinks about jumping ship. Though we all know that some mistakes are simply beyond repair. "Would it be so bad if I slept with this girl, only once, behind my wife's back?" Yes, it would be over. I would like to find someone who not just likes the beginning of things but also the things after that. Someone who I could share both the best and the worst years of my life with. And, you know, someone to watch Fargo with.
   

What I am looking for -
Short version (there is a long version, with explanation, follows) -
A single, monogamous, adult (stop asking me for an age range. If you can get married without your parents’ approval, you are welcomed to message me) man who is looking for a lifelong relationship, has time to be in a committed relationship, will become my best friend, is in shape/ not too out of shape, is reasonably healthy, is mentally healthy and stable/ mentally unhealthy and unstable but has been monitoring the progress, mentally available, is a meat eater, is a non smoke rarely smoke, is a non drinke social drinker, is a non drug addict (weed is fine), is a non gambling addict, is a non porn addict, is a virgin/ non virgin but was always responsible to their exes (always wore condoms and never had STDs), is okay with no cohabitation, is okay with no premarital sex, is not into anything kinky, wants kids (biological kids/ adopted kids), is okay with your spouse not taking birth control pills, is okay with your spouse not wearing an IUD, is debt free/ with justifiable debt, is religious/ non religious, is eligible to apply for a passport (and meet each other)
If you do not agree with everything I said above then we are not compatible. “I agreed with most of the things you said.” What does that even mean? I have had enough messages telling me that they do not entirely agree with what I said but would like to see where things go. The answer is nowhere. I do not have time nor do I want to build a castle on sand. I also have had enough messages telling me to reconsider things. I won't.
What I like -
Sun
Snow
Trees
Woodworking
Agriculture
Plants
Good food
Hot food
Hot soup
Warm words
Laughing
Wool yarn
Wool clothing
Names with stories, say like, street names
Dining wares
Trains
Photography
Old stories - old movies and shows
Good stories - movies, shows and documentaries, books, music with good lyrics
Good arts
Thrift stores
Flea markets
What I am looking for - Long version -
A strictly monogamous relationship that is happy, healthy, supportive, and lasts forever. I am not looking for dick pictures, chat buddies, dirty chat buddies, hookups, love affairs, friends, friends with benefits, rebound dating, short-term dating, several years dating, polyamorous, open, or online-only relationships.
Communication - I would make time to talk to my SO every day, and very much prefer so, even just to hear that they are safe and sound. But I would be understanding if they are out in Antarctica and the satellite Internet at the work station does not always work properly, or something like that. I would like to deal with all the hardships in life together as a team. Having arguments in a relationship is somewhat unavoidable. I like straightening things out, right away, in a logical, non violent, and non abusive way. I apologize when I make mistakes. Giving silent treatment is really not my thing. I am not saying that I do not have a temper. I do. I do get angry, but within reason. Keeping promises and being punctual are important to me. I always say “Gotta go” when I need to end a conversation.
Mental health - The amount of toxicity I could take is arguably higher than average, but please alert me if you are struggling mentally. On a side note, I hope you do not like watching porn. It is a poor choice, and is both physically and psychologically damaging. I am not asking everyone of you to agree with me on this, or any other things I say in this post. Whatever floats your boat, strangers; just let me have the freedom to find whatever I am looking for.
Distance - I am not looking for an online marriage. Future faking is a fucked up thing to do to another person. If you need nude pictures, phone sex or Skype sex to make a long distance relationship works, I am not the person you are looking for.
Meeting for the first time - I have given this a lot of thoughts, still I do not really know when and where would be good to meet up. We could meet either before we go into a relationship or after. It would probably be fairer for us to fly to a foreign place to meet, it means we would have to trust each other enough to do that. In that case it would make more sense to meet after the relationship has already been established. Also we would have to deal with this whole “OMG covid is deadly!” thing. I think it is doable to fall for someone just by talking. Though I am aware that people are often not who they claimed they are. Those who say they are loyal could be experienced cheaters. But we will see. When in doubt, I ask questions.
Marriage - I have never been married but I would like to get married. The last thing I want is a divorce. The word marriage has sort of become a dirty word now but I am old fashioned. I like relationship labels, and I hope you are the same. A side note, I'm not into having a big wedding. Or a diamond ring. Or to dress fancy for a pre-wedding shoot. The National Gallery of Art has three self portraits of a Hungarian photographer and his wife. I would like to have a wedding like theirs. Which means I would just like to hang out with my SO somewhere, take some pictures ourselves, and call it a wedding. If you never had a proper family, fear not, we would have one on our own. However, having a toxic childhood should not be an excuse for exhibiting toxic behaviors. I would never set myself on fire to keep you warm. It would not help.
Sex - It would be too intimidating if you have had unsafe sex, a lot of sex, or many sexual partners in the past. And I do not want to be intimidated. Don’t give me that classic “oral sex/ cyber sex is not really sex” BS. Premarital sex is off the table. People make fun of those who have never had sex, which I do not get. I do not have a past, and would strongly prefer someone who also does not. It seems fairer that way, and in that way I would not have to grieve over your past. But, then again, grieving is a part of life. It is alright if you are not a virgin, just do not lie. I do not really have a sex drive. Mentally speaking, I would be okay if you never wanted to have sex, I would also be okay if you wanted to have a lot of sex. Because I do not specifically crave for sex; I crave for love. In other word, I count all types of affection as a whole, and sex does not specifically stand out from all the rest. Physically speaking, I would not be compatible with those who have a high sex drive, as I think overindulgence in sex is destructive. I am not really a robot, and so daily sex sounds off putting as fuck to me. I would not be compatible with those who are into kinky sex/ filming sex tapes, also. There is nothing wrong with those, they are just not my thing. I think having boundaries in bed does not mean I do not love them, or love them less than those who have no boundaries. I would never take birth control pills/ wear an IUD, because they have many side effects that I do not want to deal with. Respect my choices.
Kids - I do not have kids. But I would like to raise kids. Ask yourself, honestly, if you are mature enough, and ready to be a father. "But I am not ready, just yet; there are things I want to achieve before I become a father." Find someone younger, then. I would like to add that I have no reason to doubt my fertility as I take reasonably good care of myself. I have no, and never had any, chronic diseases or illnesses. Am at a healthy weight, somewhat slim even. 5 feet 7 inches tall. In the event that I was infertile, surrogacy would not be an option. It goes against my morals. So, again, think twice. I would like to raise adopted kids, and treat them like they are my biological kids. I would not dump my husband if, he was found to be infertile at any point of the marriage. Technically I would be okay if you do not want to raise kids at all, but providing a home for some orphans is something I could do, and I do not want to pass that on.
Living together - I have always, and still am against the idea of living together before marriage. There is nothing wrong with cohabitation, it is just again not my thing. I would gladly introduce my roommate when I was in school to you if you are worried that I have some weird quirks. I might or might not bribe her before I introduce her to you.
Living with parents - Sure, I would not think less of you. There are reasons why people choose to live with their parents.
Cars - I do not care whether you have a car or not.
Money - I am not rich, and was not born rich, but I have no debts. Never had debts. I am aware that some debts are justifiable, like student loan. I worked in the academia. I just started doing something new, related to my field of study, and that makes me happy. Whether you are a postdoc, or a high school drop out, makes no difference to me. For those who think that throwing me a sentence like “I am a lawyer” would be enough to make me talk, have some self respect. I am fine with my Reddit inbox collects only dust.
Religion - I suppose I have always been mostly an agnostic. My parents sent me to a Christian middle school, then a Christian high school. It would be great if you are a God believer and do not mind me being a non religious person. We could read Bible together. It would also be great if you are a non religious person but follow traditional values.
Smoking, drinking and doing drugs - I do not smoke cigarettes. Or vape. Or whatever. I do not do soft/ hard drugs. Have no past addictions. I do not take over-the-counter drugs even. I do not drink alcohol. If you drink responsibly, then I do not have a problem with that.
Dietary choices - I am an omnivore. Have no food allergies. Please be a meat eater. I do not want to get into an argument with you over a tuna egg sandwich I make for our kids. I would not raise my kids vegan. They should be able to make their own choices when they are old enough. I like cooking quite a bit. Would learn to cook all your favorite dishes.
Pets - I do not have any pets.
Gaming - I do not gamble. I have never played any video or computer games. Game soundtracks though I do often pay attention to.
Tattoos - Sure, why not?
Earrings - Why not? I would buy you earrings.
Long hair - Why not? I would braid your hair when you are asleep, though.
Politics - I am against communism, and totalitarianism. Trump 2020. Please read my reddit history. I pretty much stopped using this account altogether, except posting on Foreveralonedating, because this account has 33 male followers, and that is creepy, and makes me feel very uncomfortable. But my reddit history should give you a hint on what kind of a person I am. (Update: 68 followers now, which shows you how disgusting and creepy some, if not most, men on this site are.)
P.S. This is Reddit, a wonderful yet utterly dangerous place, strangers. Especially for women. So many people prey on the weak. Even scammers would spend an hour writing and tell you that “you are everything I have been looking for since forever”. I laughed out loud at “I would relocate for you but it depends on where exactly you are” messages. “I am 100% (insert a race here), and I couldn’t aim to have kids with a wife who isn’t (insert a race here).” messages are laughable. Don’t bother, kiddos. The only time I accept people bringing up the skin color thing is when it concerns our adopted kids, if you understand what I mean. Canned messages are easy to spot, because I am smarter than you imagined. There were people who messaged me from throwaway accounts, which I noticed later filled with porn posts. Accounts with no post history are fishy. Anyhow at some point let's do a photo verification. Maybe we could take a selfie while holding a piece of paper with something like "Today's February 33 1920" written on it. Thank you all for sending me a selfie right off the bat. But I do not trust you enough to click on it. Also please do not ask me to talk to you over the phone/ do a video chat with you right off the bat. If you absolutely do not know what to write, check out "pinned post II", there's a list of 30 questions. I talk to one person, if even there was one, at a time.
TL;DR - I am a non religious person who holds traditional values and beliefs, which for obvious reasons give me a hard time these days. If you see this post, message me, no matter when.

So... day 32. It may not seem like a lot, but it's a lot for me. I've never reached 32 days without gambling in my entire life, and I'm currently 23 years old, almost 24 years old, and I finally feel the brain fog going away from my gamble addiction. And it's all because of an old hobby of mine that I recently picked up... Here's my story as of now:
So, back before I got myself into gambling, I collected Pokémon cards. And I mean, a LOT of Pokémon cards. I bought packs in store and opened them, this actually falls under gambling too but I'll get later onto that. I also had a big video game collection, which I sold when I was 21 (2018). At least I didn't spend over €200 every month on gambling like I did a month ago. Back to where we were: I saw my sister gambling on a casino online when I was 16, she was playing slots and she won a huge amount when I was there. I was hooked, I tried to make casino accounts everywhere, but I couldn't since I was 16, obviously. So I made up a fake identity and played under that. All went great, won some, lost some, until I needed to cash out. They asked for an ID, which I obviously didn't have. I let the account for what it was and didn't look back into gambling until I was 18.
Fast forward to when I was 18 years old. The first ever day I was 18, I went to a local casino where I lived. They let me in, and holy smokes, I was excited. There were roulette tables, slots and much more that I could do and I was happy. Until I lost €20. It may seem like a really small number, and it is now, but for me, it was devastating to say the least. I lost my own money which I saved up for a week within 5 minutes... It hurt, I wanted to chase my losses and I couldn't get my €20 back, instead it was €50 lost and I needed to get groceries... I lived on noodles and bread the whole week, and I decided to never do this again. Boy, was I wrong. Over the next two years, 2018-2019, I spent around €30 each month onto the casino, and that slowly became more and more. I sold my laptop, computer, TV, everything that I bought, went away to the casino. I still feel really bad about this, but I'll get to that later on too.
Looking at me right now, 2020 was the worst year gambling wise for me. Due to COVID, I couldn't visit any casino since there's a lockdown back then. But, online casino's exist, so I decided to put in a lot of money over there... Around €400 combined in the last 2 months of 2020. I had a mental breakdown when I lost everything, and decided this needed to change once and for all. So I made a promise in 2021, to not gamble again. But how? Every time I had a bit of money, I would just throw it on Blackjack or the Roulette table. If you remember, back in the day I collected a lot of Pokémon cards and I thought: "I'm going to collect Pokémon cards again". Now, with a binder full of Pokémon cards (that I bought seperately and a few packs when I felt like gambling) as a investment but mostly personal collection and me being a full month free of gambling, I feel better than I've never felt before. I'm not quickly pissed off anymore, I feel confident and I don't have any urge of gambling anymore. And if I do, I just buy a pack of Pokémon cards or I buy a bunch of cards that I still need for my collection! I'm also actually saving up money that I have left over from grocery shopping, and I actually feel happy that I have money left over in the week.
And the thing I'm most happy with, is that my family (mother and my sisters) see that I'm growing as a person. I hurted them a lot because of my gambling addiction and they're still really careful. But I notice that my mother is a lot more relaxed when I visit her, simply because I don't gamble anymore. I don't want to gamble ever again, simply because it's a big, big rabbit hole that you fall into. The first time you feel okay, but when you gamble more and more you fall into this big rabbit hole. And I don't want to ruin my relation between me and my family anymore. I never borrowed any money from them, luckily, and I would never borrow any money so that I can gamble. It's something that is strictly forbidden for me and I would never do this, and never did. Anyhow, thank you so much for reading this, I highly appreciate if you did. Let's get to a full 2 months of being gamble free.

1. There's a spot on the dining room's wall that's always moldy in spring. Probably because the apartment faces the sea. Though it's not really too close to it. The molds just keep coming back the next day after being removed. Somehow it just reminds me of a documentary I watched on Netflix weeks ago, Dancing With The Birds. The birds in the documentary all tried, day after day, to find someone. They just don't give up. Just as resilient as the moldy spot on the wall. I wanted to see if you are here.
   
2. I once got an internship at a company in a neighborhood I am not familiar with. I asked a friend of mine, who did an internship there the year before, about where I should avoid and things like that. Then she was like, "My boyfriend took care of everything for me. I think he um...." I asked my next door neighbor the same question because he got an internship in the same neighborhood I did. The first thing he said was, "If you can't figure things out on your own I don't think you should do an internship at all." For some reason the conversations I had with them still strikes me even until this day. People rarely care. People rarely understand. Even rarer to have someone who both cares about and understands you. Most people don't give a shit about the fact that you are in a bad spot. Some people might say, "Oh man I am sorry that you are in such a bad spot." A few people might pause whatever they are doing and offer you some help. Only one person, or maybe two or three, won't go until they get you out of the bad spot. I would like to be that person for my SO.
   
3. I just started watching Fargo. The second season. I looked up the cast of the show before I started watching it. Kristen Dunst is in it. When I was younger I heard people making fun of Dunst's teeth. I felt really bad for her. In an interview she did in 2019 she told the reporter that she was asked by some producers to have her teeth fixed, but she refused. Though she probably had dental work done at some point because her teeth do not look the same as before. I wondered what would have happened if she never had it done. And why can't we even accept an actress with "imperfect" teeth. David Bowie also had crooked teeth which he later fixed. I have heard many people claiming that his teeth did not bother them. I wondered if they would have said the same if it is just some random person with crooked teeth. I would be sad if their logic went like, the more talented a person is, the more crooked their teeth I could accept. My friend had a car accident in London some years ago and that messed something up. I am sure some men would have chosen to leave but hers did not. Her husband did not tell her to fix anything. A side note, fixing and repairing, in a relationship, are some essential skills. I do not want to be with someone who constantly thinks about jumping ship. Though we all know that some mistakes are simply beyond repair. "Would it be so bad if I slept with this girl, only once, behind my wife's back?" Yes, it would be over. I would like to find someone who not just likes the beginning of things but also the things after that. Someone who I could share both the best and the worst years of my life with. And, you know, someone to watch Fargo with.
   

What I am looking for -
Short version (there is a long version, with explanation, follows) -
A single, monogamous, adult (stop asking me for an age range. If you can get married without your parents’ approval, you are welcomed to message me) man who is looking for a lifelong relationship, has time to be in a committed relationship, will become my best friend, is in shape/ not too out of shape, is reasonably healthy, is mentally healthy and stable/ mentally unhealthy and unstable but has been monitoring the progress, mentally available, is a meat eater, is a non smoke rarely smoke, is a non drinke social drinker, is a non drug addict (weed is fine), is a non gambling addict, is a non porn addict, is a virgin/ non virgin but was always responsible to their exes (always wore condoms and never had STDs), is okay with no cohabitation, is okay with no premarital sex, is not into anything kinky, wants kids (biological kids/ adopted kids), is okay with your spouse not taking birth control pills, is okay with your spouse not wearing an IUD, is debt free/ with justifiable debt, is religious/ non religious, is eligible to apply for a passport (and meet each other)
If you do not agree with everything I said above then we are not compatible. “I agreed with most of the things you said.” What does that even mean? I have had enough messages telling me that they do not entirely agree with what I said but would like to see where things go. The answer is nowhere. I do not have time nor do I want to build a castle on sand. I also have had enough messages telling me to reconsider things. I won't.
What I like -
Sun
Snow
Trees
Woodworking
Agriculture
Plants
Good food
Hot food
Hot soup
Warm words
Laughing
Wool yarn
Wool clothing
Names with stories, say like, street names
Dining wares
Trains
Photography
Old stories - old movies and shows
Good stories - movies, shows and documentaries, books, music with good lyrics
Good arts
Thrift stores
Flea markets
What I am looking for - Long version -
A strictly monogamous relationship that is happy, healthy, supportive, and lasts forever. I am not looking for dick pictures, chat buddies, dirty chat buddies, hookups, love affairs, friends, friends with benefits, sugar daddies, sugar uncles, sugar sons, rebound dating, short-term dating, several years dating, polyamorous, open, or online-only relationships.
Communication - I would make time to talk to my SO every day, and very much prefer so, even just to hear that they are safe and sound. But I would be understanding if they are out in Antarctica and the satellite Internet at the work station does not always work properly, or something like that. I would like to deal with all the hardships in life together as a team. Having arguments in a relationship is somewhat unavoidable. I like straightening things out, right away, in a logical, non violent, and non abusive way. I apologize when I make mistakes. Giving silent treatment is really not my thing. I am not saying that I do not have a temper. I do. I do get angry, but within reason. Keeping promises and being punctual are important to me. I always say “Gotta go” when I need to end a conversation.
Mental health - The amount of toxicity I could take is arguably higher than average, but please alert me if you are struggling mentally. On a side note, I hope you do not like watching porn. It is a poor choice, and is both physically and psychologically damaging. I am not asking everyone of you to agree with me on this, or any other things I say in this post. Whatever floats your boat, strangers; just let me have the freedom to find whatever I am looking for.
Distance - I am not looking for an online marriage. Future faking is a fucked up thing to do to another person. If you need nude pictures, phone sex or Skype sex to make a long distance relationship works, I am not the person you are looking for.
Meeting for the first time - I have given this a lot of thoughts, still I do not really know when and where would be good to meet up. We could meet either before we go into a relationship or after. It would probably be fairer for us to fly to a foreign place to meet, it means we would have to trust each other enough to do that. In that case it would make more sense to meet after the relationship has already been established. Also we would have to deal with this whole “OMG covid is deadly!” thing. I think it is doable to fall for someone just by talking. Though I am aware that people are often not who they claimed they are. Those who say they are loyal could be experienced cheaters. But we will see. When in doubt, I ask questions.
Marriage - I have never been married but I would like to get married. The last thing I want is a divorce. The word marriage has sort of become a dirty word now but I am old fashioned. I like relationship labels, and I hope you are the same. A side note, I'm not into having a big wedding. Or a diamond ring. Or to dress fancy for a pre-wedding shoot. The National Gallery of Art has three self portraits of a Hungarian photographer and his wife. I would like to have a wedding like theirs. Which means I would just like to hang out with my SO somewhere, take some pictures ourselves, and call it a wedding. If you never had a proper family, fear not, we would have one on our own. However, having a toxic childhood should not be an excuse for exhibiting toxic behaviors. I would never set myself on fire to keep you warm. It would not help.
Sex - It would be too intimidating if you have had unsafe sex, a lot of sex, or many sexual partners in the past. And I do not want to be intimidated. Don’t give me that classic “oral sex/ cyber sex is not really sex” BS. Premarital sex is off the table. People make fun of those who have never had sex, which I do not get. I do not have a past, and would strongly prefer someone who also does not. It seems fairer that way, and in that way I would not have to grieve over your past. But, then again, grieving is a part of life. It is alright if you are not a virgin, just do not lie. I do not really have a sex drive. Mentally speaking, I would be okay if you never wanted to have sex, I would also be okay if you wanted to have a lot of sex. Because I do not specifically crave for sex; I crave for love. In other word, I count all types of affection as a whole, and sex does not specifically stand out from all the rest. Physically speaking, I would not be compatible with those who have a high sex drive, as I think overindulgence in sex is destructive. I am not really a robot, and so daily sex sounds off putting as fuck to me. I would not be compatible with those who are into kinky sex/ filming sex tapes, also. There is nothing wrong with those, they are just not my thing. I think having boundaries in bed does not mean I do not love them, or love them less than those who have no boundaries. I would never take birth control pills/ wear an IUD, because they have many side effects that I do not want to deal with. Respect my choices.
Kids - I do not have kids. But I would like to raise kids. Ask yourself, honestly, if you are mature enough, and ready to be a father. "But I am not ready, just yet; there are things I want to achieve before I become a father." Find someone younger, then. I would like to add that I have no reason to doubt my fertility as I take reasonably good care of myself. I have no, and never had any, chronic diseases or illnesses. Am at a healthy weight, somewhat slim even. 5 feet 7 inches tall. In the event that I was infertile, surrogacy would not be an option. It goes against my morals. So, again, think twice. I would like to raise adopted kids, and treat them like they are my biological kids. I would not dump my husband if, he was found to be infertile at any point of the marriage. Technically I would be okay if you do not want to raise kids at all, but providing a home for some orphans is something I could do, and I do not want to pass that on.
Living together - I have always, and still am against the idea of living together before marriage. There is nothing wrong with cohabitation, it is just again not my thing. I would gladly introduce my roommate when I was in school to you if you are worried that I have some weird quirks. I might or might not bribe her before I introduce her to you.
Living with parents - Sure, I would not think less of you. There are reasons why people choose to live with their parents.
Cars - I do not care whether you have a car or not.
Money - I am not rich, and was not born rich, but I have no debts. Never had debts. I am aware that some debts are justifiable, like student loan. I worked in the academia. I just started doing something new, related to my field of study, and that makes me happy. Whether you are a postdoc, or a high school drop out, makes no difference to me. For those who think that throwing me a sentence like “I am a lawyer” would be enough to make me talk, have some self respect. I am fine with my Reddit inbox collects only dust.
Religion - I suppose I have always been mostly an agnostic. My parents sent me to a Christian middle school, then a Christian high school. It would be great if you are a God believer and do not mind me being a non religious person. We could read Bible together. It would also be great if you are a non religious person but follow traditional values.
Smoking, drinking and doing drugs - I do not smoke cigarettes. Or vape. Or whatever. I do not do soft/ hard drugs. Have no past addictions. I do not take over-the-counter drugs even. I do not drink alcohol. If you drink responsibly, then I do not have a problem with that.
Dietary choices - I am an omnivore. Have no food allergies. Please be a meat eater. I do not want to get into an argument with you over a tuna egg sandwich I make for our kids. I would not raise my kids vegan. They should be able to make their own choices when they are old enough. I like cooking quite a bit. Would learn to cook all your favorite dishes.
Pets - I do not have any pets.
Gaming - I do not gamble. I have never played any video or computer games. Game soundtracks though I do often pay attention to.
Tattoos - Sure, why not?
Earrings - Why not? I would buy you earrings.
Long hair - Why not? I would braid your hair when you are asleep, though.
Politics - I am against communism, and totalitarianism. Trump 2020. Please read my reddit history. I pretty much stopped using this account altogether, except posting on Foreveralonedating, because this account has 33 male followers, and that is creepy, and makes me feel very uncomfortable. But my reddit history should give you a hint on what kind of a person I am. (Update: 68 followers now, which shows you how disgusting and creepy some, if not most, men on this site are.)
P.S. This is Reddit, a wonderful yet utterly dangerous place, strangers. Especially for women. So many people prey on the weak. Even scammers would spend an hour writing and tell you that “you are everything I have been looking for since forever”. I laughed out loud at “I would relocate for you but it depends on where exactly you are” messages. “I am 100% (insert a race here), and I couldn’t aim to have kids with a wife who isn’t (insert a race here).” messages are laughable. Don’t bother, kiddos. The only time I accept people bringing up the skin color thing is when it concerns our adopted kids, if you understand what I mean. Canned messages are easy to spot, because I am smarter than you imagined. There were people who messaged me from throwaway accounts, which I noticed later filled with porn posts. Accounts with no post history are fishy. Anyhow at some point let's do a photo verification. Maybe we could take a selfie while holding a piece of paper with something like "Today's February 33 1920" written on it. Thank you all for sending me a selfie right off the bat. But I do not trust you enough to click on it. Also please do not ask me to talk to you over the phone/ do a video chat with you right off the bat. If you absolutely do not know what to write, check out "pinned post II", there's a list of 30 questions. I talk to one person, if even there was one, at a time.
TL;DR - I am a non religious person who holds traditional values and beliefs, which for obvious reasons give me a hard time these days. If you see this post, message me, no matter when.

1. There's a spot on the dining room's wall that's always moldy in spring. Probably because the apartment faces the sea. Though it's not really too close to it. The molds just keep coming back the next day after being removed. Somehow it just reminds me of a documentary I watched on Netflix weeks ago, Dancing With The Birds. The birds in the documentary all tried, day after day, to find someone. They just don't give up. Just as resilient as the moldy spot on the wall. I wanted to see if you are here.
   
2. I once got an internship at a company in a neighborhood I am not familiar with. I asked a friend of mine, who did an internship there the year before, about where I should avoid and things like that. Then she was like, "My boyfriend took care of everything for me. I think he um...." I asked my next door neighbor the same question because he got an internship in the same neighborhood I did. The first thing he said was, "If you can't figure things out on your own I don't think you should do an internship at all." For some reason the conversations I had with them still strikes me even until this day. People rarely care. People rarely understand. Even rarer to have someone who both cares about and understands you. Most people don't give a shit about the fact that you are in a bad spot. Some people might say, "Oh man I am sorry that you are in such a bad spot." A few people might pause whatever they are doing and offer you some help. Only one person, or maybe two or three, won't go until they get you out of the bad spot. I would like to be that person for my SO.
   
3. I just started watching Fargo. The second season. I looked up the cast of the show before I started watching it. Kristen Dunst is in it. When I was younger I heard people making fun of Dunst's teeth. I felt really bad for her. In an interview she did in 2019 she told the reporter that she was asked by some producers to have her teeth fixed, but she refused. Though she probably had dental work done at some point because her teeth do not look the same as before. I wondered what would have happened if she never had it done. And why can't we even accept an actress with "imperfect" teeth. David Bowie also had crooked teeth which he later fixed. I have heard many people claiming that his teeth did not bother them. I wondered if they would have said the same if it is just some random person with crooked teeth. I would be sad if their logic went like, the more talented a person is, the more crooked their teeth I could accept. My friend had a car accident in London some years ago and that messed something up. I am sure some men would have chosen to leave but hers did not. Her husband did not tell her to fix anything. A side note, fixing and repairing, in a relationship, are some essential skills. I do not want to be with someone who constantly thinks about jumping ship. Though we all know that some mistakes are simply beyond repair. "Would it be so bad if I slept with this girl, only once, behind my wife's back?" Yes, it would be over. I would like to find someone who not just likes the beginning of things but also the things after that. Someone who I could share both the best and the worst years of my life with. And, you know, someone to watch Fargo with.
   

What I am looking for -
Short version (there is a long version, with explanation, follows) -
A single, monogamous, adult (stop asking me for an age range. If you can get married without your parents’ approval, you are welcomed to message me) man who is looking for a lifelong relationship, has time to be in a committed relationship, will become my best friend, is in shape/ not too out of shape, is reasonably healthy, is mentally healthy and stable/ mentally unhealthy and unstable but has been monitoring the progress, mentally available, is a meat eater, is a non smoke rarely smoke, is a non drinke social drinker, is a non drug addict (weed is fine), is a non gambling addict, is a non porn addict, is a virgin/ non virgin but was always responsible to their exes (always wore condoms and never had STDs), is okay with no cohabitation, is okay with no premarital sex, is not into anything kinky, wants kids (biological kids/ adopted kids), is okay with your spouse not taking birth control pills, is okay with your spouse not wearing an IUD, is debt free/ with justifiable debt, is religious/ non religious, is eligible to apply for a passport (and meet each other)
If you do not agree with everything I said above then we are not compatible. “I agreed with most of the things you said.” What does that even mean? I have had enough messages telling me that they do not entirely agree with what I said but would like to see where things go. The answer is nowhere. I do not have time nor do I want to build a castle on sand. I also have had enough messages telling me to reconsider things. I won't.
What I like -
Sun
Snow
Trees
Woodworking
Agriculture
Plants
Good food
Hot food
Hot soup
Warm words
Laughing
Wool yarn
Wool clothing
Names with stories, say like, street names
Dining wares
Trains
Photography
Old stories - old movies and shows
Good stories - movies, shows and documentaries, books, music with good lyrics
Good arts
Thrift stores
Flea markets
What I am looking for - Long version -
A strictly monogamous relationship that is happy, healthy, supportive, and lasts forever. I am not looking for dick pictures, chat buddies, dirty chat buddies, hookups, love affairs, friends, friends with benefits, sugar daddies, sugar uncles, sugar sons, rebound dating, short-term dating, several years dating, polyamorous, open, or online-only relationships.
Communication - I would make time to talk to my SO every day, and very much prefer so, even just to hear that they are safe and sound. But I would be understanding if they are out in Antarctica and the satellite Internet at the work station does not always work properly, or something like that. I would like to deal with all the hardships in life together as a team. Having arguments in a relationship is somewhat unavoidable. I like straightening things out, right away, in a logical, non violent, and non abusive way. I apologize when I make mistakes. Giving silent treatment is really not my thing. I am not saying that I do not have a temper. I do. I do get angry, but within reason. Keeping promises and being punctual are important to me. I always say “Gotta go” when I need to end a conversation.
Mental health - The amount of toxicity I could take is arguably higher than average, but please alert me if you are struggling mentally. On a side note, I hope you do not like watching porn. It is a poor choice, and is both physically and psychologically damaging. I am not asking everyone of you to agree with me on this, or any other things I say in this post. Whatever floats your boat, strangers; just let me have the freedom to find whatever I am looking for.
Distance - I am not looking for an online marriage. Future faking is a fucked up thing to do to another person. If you need nude pictures, phone sex or Skype sex to make a long distance relationship works, I am not the person you are looking for.
Meeting for the first time - I have given this a lot of thoughts, still I do not really know when and where would be good to meet up. We could meet either before we go into a relationship or after. It would probably be fairer for us to fly to a foreign place to meet, it means we would have to trust each other enough to do that. In that case it would make more sense to meet after the relationship has already been established. Also we would have to deal with this whole “OMG covid is deadly!” thing. I think it is doable to fall for someone just by talking. Though I am aware that people are often not who they claimed they are. Those who say they are loyal could be experienced cheaters. But we will see. When in doubt, I ask questions.
Marriage - I have never been married but I would like to get married. The last thing I want is a divorce. The word marriage has sort of become a dirty word now but I am old fashioned. I like relationship labels, and I hope you are the same. A side note, I'm not into having a big wedding. Or a diamond ring. Or to dress fancy for a pre-wedding shoot. The National Gallery of Art has three self portraits of a Hungarian photographer and his wife. I would like to have a wedding like theirs. Which means I would just like to hang out with my SO somewhere, take some pictures ourselves, and call it a wedding. If you never had a proper family, fear not, we would have one on our own. However, having a toxic childhood should not be an excuse for exhibiting toxic behaviors. I would never set myself on fire to keep you warm. It would not help.
Sex - It would be too intimidating if you have had unsafe sex, a lot of sex, or many sexual partners in the past. And I do not want to be intimidated. Don’t give me that classic “oral sex/ cyber sex is not really sex” BS. Premarital sex is off the table. People make fun of those who have never had sex, which I do not get. I do not have a past, and would strongly prefer someone who also does not. It seems fairer that way, and in that way I would not have to grieve over your past. But, then again, grieving is a part of life. It is alright if you are not a virgin, just do not lie. I do not really have a sex drive. Mentally speaking, I would be okay if you never wanted to have sex, I would also be okay if you wanted to have a lot of sex. Because I do not specifically crave for sex; I crave for love. In other word, I count all types of affection as a whole, and sex does not specifically stand out from all the rest. Physically speaking, I would not be compatible with those who have a high sex drive, as I think overindulgence in sex is destructive. I am not really a robot, and so daily sex sounds off putting as fuck to me. I would not be compatible with those who are into kinky sex/ filming sex tapes, also. There is nothing wrong with those, they are just not my thing. I think having boundaries in bed does not mean I do not love them, or love them less than those who have no boundaries. I would never take birth control pills/ wear an IUD, because they have many side effects that I do not want to deal with. Respect my choices.
Kids - I do not have kids. But I would like to raise kids. Ask yourself, honestly, if you are mature enough, and ready to be a father. "But I am not ready, just yet; there are things I want to achieve before I become a father." Find someone younger, then. I would like to add that I have no reason to doubt my fertility as I take reasonably good care of myself. I have no, and never had any, chronic diseases or illnesses. Am at a healthy weight, somewhat slim even. 5 feet 7 inches tall. In the event that I was infertile, surrogacy would not be an option. It goes against my morals. So, again, think twice. I would like to raise adopted kids, and treat them like they are my biological kids. I would not dump my husband if, he was found to be infertile at any point of the marriage. Technically I would be okay if you do not want to raise kids at all, but providing a home for some orphans is something I could do, and I do not want to pass that on.
Living together - I have always, and still am against the idea of living together before marriage. There is nothing wrong with cohabitation, it is just again not my thing. I would gladly introduce my roommate when I was in school to you if you are worried that I have some weird quirks. I might or might not bribe her before I introduce her to you.
Living with parents - Sure, I would not think less of you. There are reasons why people choose to live with their parents.
Cars - I do not care whether you have a car or not.
Money - I am not rich, and was not born rich, but I have no debts. Never had debts. I am aware that some debts are justifiable, like student loan. I worked in the academia. I just started doing something new, related to my field of study, and that makes me happy. Whether you are a postdoc, or a high school drop out, makes no difference to me. For those who think that throwing me a sentence like “I am a lawyer” would be enough to make me talk, have some self respect. I am fine with my Reddit inbox collects only dust.
Religion - I suppose I have always been mostly an agnostic. My parents sent me to a Christian middle school, then a Christian high school. It would be great if you are a God believer and do not mind me being a non religious person. We could read Bible together. It would also be great if you are a non religious person but follow traditional values.
Smoking, drinking and doing drugs - I do not smoke cigarettes. Or vape. Or whatever. I do not do soft/ hard drugs. Have no past addictions. I do not take over-the-counter drugs even. I do not drink alcohol. If you drink responsibly, then I do not have a problem with that.
Dietary choices - I am an omnivore. Have no food allergies. Please be a meat eater. I do not want to get into an argument with you over a tuna egg sandwich I make for our kids. I would not raise my kids vegan. They should be able to make their own choices when they are old enough. I like cooking quite a bit. Would learn to cook all your favorite dishes.
Pets - I do not have any pets.
Gaming - I do not gamble. I have never played any video or computer games. Game soundtracks though I do often pay attention to.
Tattoos - Sure, why not?
Earrings - Why not? I would buy you earrings.
Long hair - Why not? I would braid your hair when you are asleep, though.
Politics - I am against communism, and totalitarianism. Trump 2020. Please read my reddit history. I pretty much stopped using this account altogether, except posting on Foreveralonedating, because this account has 33 male followers, and that is creepy, and makes me feel very uncomfortable. But my reddit history should give you a hint on what kind of a person I am. (Update: 68 followers now, which shows you how disgusting and creepy some, if not most, men on this site are.)
P.S. This is Reddit, a wonderful yet utterly dangerous place, strangers. Especially for women. So many people prey on the weak. Even scammers would spend an hour writing and tell you that “you are everything I have been looking for since forever”. I laughed out loud at “I would relocate for you but it depends on where exactly you are” messages. “I am 100% (insert a race here), and I couldn’t aim to have kids with a wife who isn’t (insert a race here).” messages are laughable. Don’t bother, kiddos. The only time I accept people bringing up the skin color thing is when it concerns our adopted kids, if you understand what I mean. Canned messages are easy to spot, because I am smarter than you imagined. There were people who messaged me from throwaway accounts, which I noticed later filled with porn posts. Accounts with no post history are fishy. Anyhow at some point let's do a photo verification. Maybe we could take a selfie while holding a piece of paper with something like "Today's February 33 1920" written on it. Thank you all for sending me a selfie right off the bat. But I do not trust you enough to click on it. Also please do not ask me to talk to you over the phone/ do a video chat with you right off the bat. If you absolutely do not know what to write, check out "pinned post II", there's a list of 30 questions. I talk to one person, if even there was one, at a time.
TL;DR - I am a non religious person who holds traditional values and beliefs, which for obvious reasons give me a hard time these days. If you see this post, message me, no matter when.