We both have feelings for each other, but too many factors show that we can't be together. Should we keep things ambiguous?

I wanted her to be happy, so I took her to expensive restaurants every day, gave her gifts, and regularly took her traveling. I hoped she would feel that our time together was happy and that I was making an effort. I also wanted us to have a fuller life, because we did not have enough to talk about. We had no mutual friends and not many shared experiences. Gradually, I realized that we often saw things very differently. She would become furious at restaurant staff if the food was slow, argue with strangers in public, or curse at drivers who honked at her. I felt that her behavior showed poor manners, but I could not openly take the other person’s side against her. Our attitudes toward money were different too. She often bought luxury goods or other expensive things far beyond her income. At first I helped pay for them, but eventually I could not afford to keep doing that. She never asked me to take responsibility for her spending. I did it because I thought that, as her boyfriend, I should pay. In the beginning, it also felt like a chance to prove that I could take care of her and be a good boyfriend. In the end, I realized that I had been putting in time, money, and energy, but I was still not happy. The main problem was that our values were different. Experiences and gifts could not support happiness between us, and she did not really pay attention to my thoughts or feelings. No matter how many things I gave, they could not bridge that gap. Nothing dramatic happened when we separated. I was the one who ended it, because I felt that continuing gave us no way forward. I had thought about it for a long time, so I was not especially sad; I felt relieved. Looking back, I do not think what I did was wrong. In a relationship where two people share the same values, those things can be advantages. But some things cannot be obtained through effort, even total effort—especially a good outcome in love. If two people are not suited to each other, forcing it might still lead to marriage and a shared life, but living that way would be exhausting.

For the past year, my siblings have often come to me to pour out their troubles, especially when something goes wrong in their lives or marriages. I usually listen. Once or twice, I am happy to help, but when it happens repeatedly, I start to feel irritated. I am often already physically and emotionally exhausted, yet I cannot bring myself to stop them in the moment. My sister’s marriage made this especially difficult. During arguments, her husband had sometimes responded by mildly harming himself rather than hurting her. Whenever something intense happened, she would message or call me. I began to feel that she relied heavily on other people to calm her emotions and had difficulty handling problems on her own. At the same time, I did not want to hurt her when she was already distressed. Recently, this has been happening about once a month, and I do not have that much energy to provide emotional support. I want to tell her that, instead of exploding inside each conflict and using the people around her to regulate her feelings, she could try to see what the problem is and work on it herself. I worry that continually consuming the patience and warmth of family and friends will eventually damage those relationships. I have wanted to talk with her deeply about this, but I have not known how to begin or found the right moment. I think she would hear me more easily when things are calm, rather than immediately after she has called to complain. So I may wait until after a family dinner, when everyone is relaxed and some genuine feelings have come out. I do not want to tell her that I will no longer listen. I want to be honest that I still care about her, while also admitting that I cannot keep carrying this much for her.

In 2018, I put all my money into a business property—a small plaza with several office and restaurant units. I was passionate about the investment and believed in it. Then the pandemic arrived. Most of the businesses shut down, I could not find new tenants, and I had to use my salary and stock investments to keep paying the loan. After I got married, my wife and I looked at the balance sheet and realized we were constantly losing money. We had already spent a lot on renovations, and things were beginning to improve, but we still worried about what would break next and what the future would bring. Maybe part of me wanted to prove that I had been right—that I could eventually recover the money. But I kept asking myself why I was staying in an investment that continued to lose money. We sold the property in 2022. The selling price was roughly what I had paid, after agency fees, but when we counted everything we had put into it, we had lost around $40,000 or $50,000. We had also lost the chance to use that cash elsewhere. Still, I felt very relieved. After we sold it, everything became much better: I still had a good job, some cash, and the freedom to invest differently. Sometimes you lose money, but when you cut something off and leave it behind, things can finally get better. I did not have to stay trapped trying to prove I was right.

I grew up hearing that when something fails, I should look for the reason in myself: What did I do wrong? What can I improve? That can be useful, but it can also become misleading. It can make every outcome feel like evidence about who you are. I remembered this because of a difficult period at a previous company. A new manager seemed determined to diminish me. At the time, I kept asking myself what I had done wrong. I assumed that if I worked hard, treated everyone well, and was capable, people would like me. But the situation was more complicated. I was one of the strongest engineers in the organization, and senior leaders already knew and trusted me. The new manager was also trying to establish authority and prove their technical leadership. Looking back, I can see that the conflict was not simply a performance problem or a failure on my part. I was young then, and eventually I decided to leave. Now I think the important thing is not to treat yourself as the dominating factor in everything that happens. The world is made of many people and many conditions, and you are only one of them. That applies to success as well as failure. When you succeed or lose, it is not just you. Remembering that makes life easier—and most of the time, better—because you do not torture yourself trying to fix what was never yours alone to control.

I worked on a project for several years. At the beginning, I was full of enthusiasm, but I felt the company culture slowly wore me down. The colleagues who had been with me from the start were laid off one by one. For about three or four months, we worked overtime every day without producing results. The project lead had no ideas of his own and mainly passed along the boss’s demands. Because he did not fully understand them, the project kept going off course. The communication was ineffective, and so was the overtime. In the end, we failed the first project acceptance, and management let a group of people go. I stayed. I could still see some hope, and I liked the new person in charge. They promoted working efficiently, and proved that this was more than a slogan. I also still believed in the hardware market. I was somewhat shaken at first, but the project eventually passed acceptance fairly successfully, and I felt a huge sense of relief. Then the operational problems became difficult. Because of the budget, the hardware product could not be updated or iterated. For a hardware company, that was fatal. After giving so much of myself to the project, I reached a simple conclusion: it was over.