Except the masons are a real group, just much more boring than Hollywood and conspiracy leads you to believe.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Some religious people are extremely rigorous with science and knowledge. Historically, a lot of major scientists and academics were religious in some manner. Many got into science to "understand the heavens" so to speak.

And, for many religious people who actually study religion(which is academic in it's own right), they understand where myth, legend, and codified religious beliefs are in the texts and follow them accordingly.

For example, most Christian theologists know that creation myths exist to explain the world to early societies and should be taken with a pile of salt, so Genesis is seen less as "historical" and more "metaphorical" or just culturally relevant.

This is also the case for a lot of religious texts.

It's definitely a process for sure. Whenever you think of your ex, try to find something nearby to distract yourself for a moment. Maybe a Youtube video or a game, or a movie you adore. Literally just anything to push it out of your mind. Activities are the easiest since they require constant attention, but eventually you just learn to push it out with something else.

Not a red flag, a giant red fireworks display that says "GTFO"

Your SO, be it boyfriend, girlfriend, fiancé, or spouse needs to have your back. I'd be appalled with myself if I let my family poke and prod my SO like that, and if I found out afterwards I'd be livid that I wasn't told earlier so I could chew my families ass off.

I'm a dude, and I'd have done the same as OP. I'm left leaning, and if my SO's family started picking me apart and my SO joined in, sorry, it's over. You're supposed to have each other's back, not... this...

This is me and some of my best friends, basically.

My best friend from middle school's whole family are massive GOP fans, and he's more moderate but still leans a bit more to the right on a lot of things.

Me and him? We can discuss and debate, then have a beer and laugh at how we can get along better than professional politicians while watching a stupid movie or anime.

Another friend is similar, with mostly left leaning views but has a few things he feels strongly about that are right leaning. He tries to stay apolitical because he hates the country's politics, but every now and then we talk politely about things.

My ex was similar as well. She was super liberal, more so than even me(and I'm a diehard BernieBro), but her whole family was death before Dems. I did not get along well with her family, but neither did she.

The thing is, you can.

You can't choose what pops into your head, true, but you decide if you want to keep thinking about it and let it drag you down. You can choose to think about anything else you want, be it a game, a movie, having a drink with friends next week, or drawing something. Moving forward takes work, it's not instant, and you have to choose to do it.

Similar story with me and my mom.

I own a sex toy shop online, and 3D print my molds. My mom has, after 25 years, FINALLY taken an interest in what I do and starts asking me constantly what it is.

It's a furry sex toy. I'm a furry. I hadn't told her that yet.

She's a Baptist, deeply religious, and thinks anime is porn.

I tried to tell her repeatedly I just wanted privacy in my business, and to please respect that.

Nope. Constantly tries to see what I make, until one day I just drag a 10 pound hunk of silicone and slap it down on the kitchen table, tell her I'm a furry and people pay a lot of money for this, and that she can do what she wants with this information.

Her response? "I think you were right. I really didn't need to know this. But good luck?"

I'm a religious person, and discussions on religion with atheists were some of the things that made me dig deeper and questions things more. Every time they posed a question I didn't have a good answer for, I read and studied until I did.

Humans can lose a shocking volume of blood without it being a major problem. And, TBH, the bigger issue is the lost hydration for most people.

Yep, tonsillectomies are awful.

20 days of hydrocodone and basically being in a 20 hour coma day in and day out only waking to piss and eat jello was certainly... an experience...

As an Eagle Scout, you did good.

Knowing how to survive in an emergency is critical, and you taught them all the tools they need. You did good.

The thing about tools, however, is that you can't control how others use them. This goes for every tool, be it a car, skis, a hammer, or a gun. You can teach how to use them safely and properly, but you cannot control another person's actions.

However, if their family life is this bad, there's other problems that need addressed that you are most likely not qualified to handle. If she was going to run away, she was going to do it regardless of what you taught. You gave her tools to take better care of herself during that, however, which is a good thing. I'd rather have a runaway who knows how to not die than one who grabs their Switch and perfume and treks off into the wilderness.

This.

I was with my last longterm partner for six years, from the start of college until I was 24.

We hit it off, and our personalities were a perfect match.

But much like this story, we slowly drifted and talked less and less.

What started as a romance fit for the greatest novels just ended with us moving apart emotionally and in our life goals.

It sucks, but it happens. And unfortunately, dwelling on such things only brings you down. It cuts off your chances to go back out and be your full self.

You have to move on. Maybe not immediately, but sooner rather than later. It's what's best for your own health and social life.

I told myself to wait one month for each year at most. Six months tops. I was moving on in two, and back out in life in three. I took my time to process and evaluate, but came out knowing how to improve and ready to hit life head on like a bullshark.

I am not a bullshark, I'm more a fidgety raccoon, but you get the idea.

Yup.

It's a very clearly abusive step-father, and she seems to have needed the wakeup call on it. Losing a child, emotionally or otherwise, can be incredibly hard. Losing them because your partner is a piece of shit gives you a bright, neon target to channel all that frustration and lights them up as the piece of shit they are.

So lets take a moment to step back a bit.

A lot of modern Christians take the first few books as mostly being creation myth. As in it's a story made thousands of years ago to explain things, not hard and fast truth. Stories meant to inspire and make the world easy to understand.

Most Christians consider the parts afterwards to be more factually based, though even then it depends on the church and individual which parts and how much so.

The part to also remember, and in fact related to your last sentence, is that the books were written by differing authors sometimes hundreds of years apart. The bible is basically an anthology of related works from people who believed in the the same god(and to some degree, potentially intermarrying similar religions in the area). They all believed in the same god, and combined the literature into a single book. So, really, it's not one book. It's dozens, written by different authors for different purposes aimed at different people/cultures.

The way I've seen most describe it is a divine intent. That, instead of outright making mankind in a moment, the divine intent was for mankind to come to being through a selected path.

Kind of like when you build a character in an RPG. When you start out in a game, you may decide you want to be an archer. So you pick perks, talents, items, whatever that compliment becoming an archer. Over time, you may realize some of those choices were mistakes and redo them(a species dying out) or add in new things to help(Evolution or hybridizing). Eventually, though, you reach the end build and are now an archer.

So basically, God had a plan for humans to exist, and so set down a path for them to exist.