A chimney is a chimney, so they all tend to look similar. There were no concentration camps here where people were burned. We did have prison camps for POWs, but they did not include the atrocities of the concentration camps of the Nazi regime. There were interment camps for people of Japanese descent during WWII, citizens of our own country deprived of liberty and property simply because they were Japanese ethnically. Their treatment was unjust, but still didn't involve the atrocities of the Nazi concentration camps, or of the Japanese prison camps (the ones run by Japan, not the U.S. interment camps).

For some odd reason, it is not uncommon to find the ruins of a building where the chimney is left standing. That's all that remains of a brewery in New Ulm, Mn, for instance. Near where I live there is row of chimneys where there used to be, IIRC, a munitions plant; all the other structures are gone.

Some of this is your paranoia from a past experience, and some of it is based on observations of how this guy behaves. That first guy you mentioned was a fool and a tool. He thought he was being clever and putting you down, but he was revealing the shallowness and untrustworthiness of his character. He demonstrated how small of a person he was. He basically showed all his friends that he was a fake, willing to use other people and hurt them for his own gratification, and that he could never be trusted. In truth, it was himself that he made a fool of.

The very nature of romantic relationships requires taking risks and being vulnerable. There is always the possibility of being hurt or embarrassed, but this can be minimized by taking the time to really get to know a guy, so see if he is a mature, safe, trustworthy, genuine person before pouring all your insides into his hands. What kind of friends does he hang out with and how does he treat them? This will give valuable clues as to how he is likely to treat you.

It is a good thing to become independent whether your friends are involved or not. You need to learn to approach life and relationships in a disciplined, focused way. You need to be proactive in your life, rather than being reactive. That means looking at where you want to go in life and making decisions and behaving in ways that will help you achieve those goals. You need to seek out friendships that are healthy (and it doesn't sound like your current friendships have a healthy dynamic). You need to think through the likely outcomes of your impulses and respond to them accordingly.

Find people who are succeeding in life, people who are doing well in their careers, professional relationships, personal relationships, etc. Watch what these people do and how they act and emulate that. Talk to them about how they approach life and listen very carefully to them.

Self-discipline often requires hard work, but few worthwhile things in life come easy. If you want to win a race, you have to run harder and faster than the other people. To run harder and faster, you have to condition your body, learn efficient running techniques, eat right, and when you become tired, you just keep on running. The same principle applies in other areas of life.

One thing you could try is focusing on the easy parts of the test first (unless it's something like an oral exam where you must answer each question one at a time as it is given). This should help you to gain confidence and calm down for the more difficult parts of the test. On the harder questions, focus first on what you can remember and work from there. If it is a complex calculation, plug in the things you do know and work the parts you can recall, that should help your mind to remember the other parts.

It would be irresponsible for anyone on this site to suggest methods of suicide or to encourage that as a solution to the things going on in your life. You really need to talk to a professional. A call to your local social service agency, mental health clinic, or hospital should put you in touch with someone who can help you or refer you to help.

I know you feel hopeless right now, but it's too early to give up on life. People do overcome depression and go on to lead fulfilling lives and I would hate for you to miss out on what could be a bright future. Your option to commit suicide will always be there, so why not put that off a while and explore some other options first?

You need help to work through this, so you need to talk to someone who can help you work through your emotions, so please call one of the places I mentioned earlier.

It can be done, but it is not easy. i wish my daughter were here to answer this as she hasn't seen her husband since January. He's in Iraq and she's in Korea in separate deployments. But let's see if I can make a few helpful suggestions. Number one is to maintain frequent communication. This is not as natural to men as it seems to be to women, so I am aiming this primarily at your boyfriend:dude, she needs to hear from you often, so make an extra effort. Fortunately this is easier these days with cell phones and the internet. Secondly, avoid temptation. Be careful of your contacts with single people of the opposite sex, when you're lonely and alone you're more prone to emotional entanglements and confusion or even outright cheating. And thirdly, make every effort to make your communication positive and enjoyable. Don't be superficial or fake, but do your best to ensure that your texts, letters, emails, or calls are uplifting. This will boost the confidence of the other person and will help to maintain the good feelings between you.

I can't tell you if he loves you or doesn't. Maybe he does but is just poor at communicating, or maybe he just isn't that into the relationship, hard to say. But what is evident is that you are not getting what you want out of this relationship. Maybe it's time to cut your losses and start looking for someone who will be more attentive and communicative. It sounds like you have tried to talk to him and he hasn't responded. There are men out there who will give you the kind of attention you want, but you won't find them as long as you keep hanging onto this guy hoping to find the magic key that will transform him into the kind of guy you'd like him to be. Odds are he isn't going to change anytime soon, so it is up to you to decide how much longer you want to continue investing in this relationship.

Ideally, you need someone to counsel and mentor you on an ongoing basis, because this isn't likely to be a quick fix. You have already realized that your life is spinning off in a direction that will end badly and want to get back on track, that's a good start. Getting your act together involves making healthy decisions that will lead to the goals you have in life. That means avoiding all contact with pedophiles and other sexual predators. It means paying attention in school. It means avoiding alcohol and other drugs. It means not listening to voices in your head telling you to do destructive things. These are the kinds of things that are going to steer you in the direction of a successful and fulfilling life.

It is difficult to do this alone, so I would suggest that you find a mature adult (preferably a woman)who is navigating life well to support and mentor you. Some possibilities include a teacher, school counselor, maybe someone from church, a friend's mother. It would also be helpful to speak to a mental health professional (counselor or therapist)if that is possible. If you don't know of anyone who can be a support person, try calling your local social services agency or a mental health clinic and tell them your situation. They should be able to help you find someone.

I don't know all of your history, but you obviously have a lot going on in your life right now. Associating with sexual predators, drinking alcohol, neglecting school, and surfing inappropriate websites are all negative influences. They are working against you, holding you back from your goals and dreams. You need to fill your life full of positive influences. Read good books, get educated, develop friendships with healthy people, get some therapy, engage in hobbies and activities which build you up, do some volunteer work helping other people. These things will make you strong; they will develop competence and confidence; they will connect you with people and resources that will help you to achieve success and joy.

You don't say what mistake you made, so I can't be as specific as I would like to be, but there are things you can do. If your mistake caused harm or offense to one or two people and everyone else is just dog-piling, start with the people you directly offended. Offer a sincere apology acknowledging that what you did was wrong and that their being offended is understandable. Ask them what it would take to mend fences. If your mistake directly affected a whole bunch of people, making up to all of them would be difficult, but not impossible. The best thing you can do, in my opinion, is to treat everyone with respect and kindness. Be open and friendly and positive. If you are consistent in honest, considerate, thoughtful behavior, people will begin to warm up to you.

Here's a secret: everybody wants acceptance, validation, recognition, and respect. If you can offer this to people (without losing yourself in the process), it will change people's perception of you over time.

I'm sorry you've found your counselors unhelpful. I wish they could have helped you see that if you think you are ugly and incapable, it's because you are looking at yourself wrong, measuring yourself by the wrong standards. You CAN have a bright future with a little guidance and perseverance.

Make sure you are eating and sleeping well. Proper nutrition and rest will help you to focus. The brain actually does some important processing during sleep, so adequate sleep will not only help you to focus and be alert, but will help you to retain what you study. Give yourself permission to take breaks every so often. When you feel tird and fuzzy, get up, stretch, and walk around a bit. This will help relieve muscle aches and stiffness as well as stimulate blood circulation, which will help your mind to feel fresher. Being well rested and eating properly will also help you to feel more relaxed and alert for the exams.

Maybe change your study style every so often. Find a fellow student and quiz each other on the material for a while; maybe work out problems that have been giving you difficulty.

I took all of those subjects in school and found them all interesting in their own way. They can get pretty heavy at times, though, so you have my sympathy.

Just because your boyfriend is confused and unwilling to make a decision and commit to that decision doesn't mean you should be confused. If you are the one who had to lie low whenever his ex was in town, then I think the situation is quite clear. You're involved with someone who shows a pattern where he does what is good for him. He breaks up with his ex, has a relationship with you, but is unwilling to let go of his ex, in fact, gives that relationship precedence over yours when convenient for him. He says he wants a kid and a family; wait, doesn't he already have kids? If you want to continue a life filled with this kind of drama, then this is your guy. If you want someone who will commit to you and build a healthy, stable family, this guy is nowhere near ready for that kind of adult responsibility.

You're afraid to tell your parents about your relationship with this guy. That seems rather odd for a 20-year-old. You are an adult, after all, and it's hardly an unusual thing for someone of that age to have a romantic relationship. What would they do if they found out about your dating a boy?

This guy is pressing you for a relationship, even to the point of lying to your parents because HE wants to "make it work"?

I wonder about your statement of the problem: "I am scared to be with him." What's the scary part? Your parents' reaction, this boy's rather aggressive approach to the relationship, or the prospect of putting off dating/romantic relationships for a while to work on yourself?

I can't tell you what to do, but a relationship which involves secrecy and lies is not off to a promising start. I'm reading between the lines here, but this guy sounds like he's putting a lot of pressure on you to do things that are likely to benefit him far more than they will benefit you. Let me just say, if you can't do something with confidence that it is consistent with who you are and what you want in life, proceed with extreme caution.

You have made a good start by recognizing your behavior. The best advice I can offer is to take a purposeful approach to your relationships. Picture yourself as a calm, confident, caring person and picture how that kind of person interacts with others, then practice interacting with people that way. If you need help with what that looks like, observe other people who have those characteristics and emulate their behavior.

Talking to a therapist or a couselor would also be helpful as he or she can help you gain insight into the cognitive and emotional roots of your current state of mind. Coldness is a defense mechanism, for instance. Overreacting in anger is rooted in a sense of threat. If a person taps you on the shoulder you turn to see what they want. If your shoulder is sunburnt, you're likely to yell at them. The gesture is the same in both cases, but in the second case pain resulted in an angry outburst. When you overreact to little things, a very similar thing is happening; a relatively benign gesture, statement, or event touches something painful in you and you react to the pain. A counselor can help you sort through these things.

A one-time event doesn't make you a slut. It's a useless label anyway. Even if you did fit the definition of a slut, how would applying that label be in any way helpful?

Please take this event as a wake-up call. You are too young to be drinking and having sex. Continuing that sort of behavior will only lead to trouble. Soon enough you will be old enough and mature enough to both drink and have sex in a responsible way. It's a lot easier to get into trouble than to get out of it, and some choices have life-long consequences. Enjoy your teen years, but please be careful so you can also enjoy your adult years.

Maybe you need to find something else to keep you going every day. It's fear and insecurity that keep you hanging on. Trouble is, you're hanging onto something that is holding you back. It's keeping you from moving on to healthy relationships and a healthy sense of self.

How much is enough, you ask? You passed that point long ago. This guy is lying to you, cheating on you, and causing you pain. You cry yourself to sleep every night. You describe your experience of relating to him as "punishment". Please tell me what it is you are getting out of this relationship that is worth the misery. What is it about this abuse that "keeps you going every day"?

This is not,karma, this is you hanging on to a false security. You will never find happiness, contentment, support, and joy in this relationship. Your feeling of love for him will eventually turn to hate, but in the meantime considerable damage will be done to your psyche. Every moment spent in this relationship delays a healthy, happy relationship that much more. Every moment spent in this relationship further damages you in ways that will make it more difficult for you to find and enter into a fulfilling relationship.

Find someone who is emotionally healthy, strong, and mature to support you in breaking away from this guy. Possibilities include: A teacher, school counselor, therapist, a church leader, a family member or relative who has demonstrated success in relationships, preferably a woman in all cases.

It's scary to leave the familiar for the unknown, but for you the familiar sucks. There is much better out there, and letting go of this guy is the first step freeing you to go out and find it.

Give the guy a chance to take a breath or two. Guys generally don't communicate the same way girls do. They don't feel the same need for constant emotional communication that girls often do. I can't speak for all guys, especially being of an entirely different generation, but I would find constant texts to be an annoying distraction, especially if it interrupted a conversation or activity I was engaged in at the time. I wouldn't get too worried about going one day without texts from him.

Back off a little. Keep in touch in a fun way a couple times a day. You don't have to stop talking to him, just don't smother him. Relax and enjoy your time with him; again, have fun and don't be overly "emotionally demanding". If the guy enjoys his time with you, he will want to be with you.

Here's the deal, if you stick with this guy, you will eventually come to hate him, and probably yourself, too, for wasting your time with him. You're in love with a fantasy version of him. Sooner or later you will fully wake to the reality that he is a manipulator, a player, and at times spiteful.

You need to gain some self-respect and stop allowing any man to treat you this way. There are men out there who will treat you respectfully. The only man (really, to be honest, he is merely a boy and has a LOT of growing up to do) who makes you genuinely happy is someone who hooks up with you when it is convenient for him, and also hooks up with any other gal that happens to be convenient at other times? That's sad. I think you need to explore why you find someone so appealing who treats you with such disdain.

It is not your responsibility to keep him from being depressed or thinking suicidal thoughts. He needs to talk to a professional about these thoughts. You may be the focus of his suicidal thoughts, but if it is a genuine suicidal mindset, he would fixate on someone or something else if you were out of the picture. Urge him to get help from someone qualified to deal with his issues. You are not equipped nor are you in a place where you can "fix" his issues. Bottom line is that there is nothing you can do or say to keep him from being suicidal. Even if you had some magical power in this regard, it would still be a sick, codependent relationship.

He really needs to talk to a pro: a therapist, a spiritual leader, a local mental health professional. A call to Social Services, a local clinic or hospital, or a suicide hotline will put him in touch with people that can help him.

He sounds like he likes to have his cake and eat it, too. He likes to have you as a constant in his life that he can always fall back on, like a security blanket, while he goes on and does what he wants. A healthy, committed relationship involves considering each other's needs and sometimes not doing things you would like to do for the sake of the relationship. It's convenient to blame you for the failure of the relationship. A relationship, by definition, is what happens as the result of the actions of both people involved in the relationship. He's doing what he wants now because that's what he wants to do, it's not "all your fault" that he's doing what he wants to do.

I don't know all the dynamics of what has happened with the two of you. It would be interesting to get his perspective - how he views things that you have done and said. But here's where the problem of maturity comes in. He does what he wants, but it seems to be based on impetuous reactions rather than reflection and honest communication and decision making.

Maybe it's time for you to move on. There are other men out there. I know you've invested 2 years in this relationship, but maybe it's time to cut your losses. Maybe he'll regret his behavior, maybe he'll grow up in time, but I wouldn't get back together with him before he demonstrated a more honest and mature approach to relationships; one which involves consideration for what "she wants" and what "we want" as much as what "he wants".

I really dislike the limitations of text. This situation is best served by dialogue in "real time", but I'll do the best I can with this format.

Let's look at this in a somewhat different light for a moment. How much different would this situation be at its core if this pastor buddy were a woman? This kind of situation happens all the time in a heterosexual context. A man is friends with a woman and they come to a moment of indiscretion and things happen and then there is emotional confusion and guilt as well as other fallout. How would you counsel someone in that situation? My guess is that you would not advise him to "follow his heart" further into trouble. You would advise him to disentangle himself from the affair and to go about the business of building up his marriage and his family. You would look hard at the factors that led up to the affair and address those issues. Truthfully, the dynamics of your situation are not significantly different from those of a heterosexual affair. That's not to say there aren't a couple of extra twists here, but the answers are pretty much the same.

What's at stake, here? There is tremendous potential for damage to your family, your ministry, and your friend's ministry if you allow your feelings and confusion to guide your actions. So, at the very least you need to step back and go "whoa! What's happening here?" You need to gather your wits about you and plan your next moves with a cool head. This means avoiding contact with your friend and avoiding situations which would feed this "affair". You have a wife to whom you made vows, you have a family for which you are responsible, and you have a ministry involving the oversight of a number of souls, and for all of these you will answer to God. This is about way more than what you think you may want in the heat of a given moment. Which is why it is so vital to "get your head on straight" right now. Again, this is less about the possibility of your having gay tendencies than about sexual behavior, romantic entanglements, relational responsibilities, and obedience to God in general. In fact, it goes to the very nature of sin itself. One homosexual act is hardly the sum total of all the base urges within your being that would love to express themselves. Just in the sexual realm, many men succumb to the temptations of affairs, porn addiction is rampant even among Christian men, pedophilia and other asymetrical relationships are becoming more evident all the time. Hardly a week goes by without a story in my local paper about someone caught with child porn on their computer or a coach having an affair with a student. These specific situations are merely slightly divergent manifestations of man's basic urges, weaknesses, and failure to exercise good judgement and self-discipline.

Now, if we were sitting in the same room, having a conversation, I would engage in a probing dialogue about what's happening in your marriage and family life right now. I would look at the sequence of events that led up to the incident with your friend. I would look at the things all this tells you about yourself which would help you walk into the future with clarity. I would look into your faith and relationship with God and look to what it will take to reestablish it on a firm foundation.

For now, let me speak to your last few words, "not really sure what to do". First, you need to talk to God and repent of this sin. Once again, the homosexual nature of this encounter is only secondary to the fact that it was a sexual encounter outside of marriage. Regardless of what you or I or society thinks of homosexuality, this was an act of adultery and is therefore sin on that basis. Then you need to ask God to restore you in Him. No matter what decisions you make, the road ahead is going to be difficult and you're going to have to walk it closely with God if you want to navigate your way to victory.

Secondly, you need to avoid feeding the temptation, which means disciplining your thoughts and avoiding contact with your friend. It is best if you can find someone mature and trustworthy in whom you can confide and who can lend you strength and support in doing the things you need to do, and in not doing the things you need to not do. Someone who will build your faith rather than undermine it.

Thirdly, you need to be proactive in building on the positive. What I mean is, much of what you need to do involves restraint and discipline, which can be draining. Invest your energy in your relationship with your wife and children. Invest it in restoring your relationship with God. Invest it in those things which will build strength in you and the things you value, and in the things God values.

I'll stop here for now. This should be enough to chew on for the time being. In the meantime, I will be praying for you.

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