I believe you need to uninstall the key from the old device. https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/transfer-windows-license-to-new-pc

However, if that doesn’t work, you could always install an unlicensed version of Windows, which will have the ‘please activate’ watermark, and then, if you search for ‘Microsoft Activation Scripts’, who knows what GitHub might have.

NTA

Sounds like he’s heavily on the autistic spectrum, and you may find online resources that handle that to be really useful.

I’m a computer guy, introvert and very much see Z’s point of view. When I go through a difficult time with a partner, I get nervous about any message they send me. I find that if I spend too much time, even with the people I love most, I get absolutely drained and need to run away and hide, often for days at a time. Hell, I even still live with my ex. I see his side.

You’ve tried to do the right thing here by coming forwards and communicating. Any other relationship, that’s gold star behaviour. He, however, was already overloaded from things and needed to quiet the gremlins in his brain before he could have that conversation. As such, raising any issue would likely have set him off. All the voices in his brain are screaming, and you just handed him one more.

To be clear, you still did nothing wrong. In a relationship, you can’t just ignore problems. The issue is that communicating with people like us can be a nightmare.

People like us need a lot of space, and it’s really hard (but important) for us to learn that every communication a proper partner starts with us comes from a place of love. When overwhelmed, we feel attacked by absolutely any comment at all. Even a simple question like if we’re hungry or want anything from the shop can feel like we’re being made to process more burden. Learning how to not see things that way is a skill we simply lack, and need to actively and consciously apply. I often find myself reading a message from my partner, having to stop, change my frame of mind, and start again. I had to learn how to do that.

To help him, when you approach a topic, reassure him as much as you can that he’s not done anything wrong. Tell him he doesn’t have to deal with something straight away. That the two of you can deal with this in your own time, but you want to help both of you be happier by dealing with this problem.

If you want a relationship with him, you’ll need patience, and he will need to learn how to handle his emotions in these situations. It won’t be easy, and he will likely reject help from a councillor or some other person (introvert, remember?) so it will be a very personal battle.

He may also benefit from having an office or man-cave, somewhere that he can retreat to, where you don’t go without a good reason, don’t talk through the door, don’t go in without knocking, and don’t go in without waiting for you to invite him in. Yes, it’s your house too, but this will give him a space to decompress where he doesn’t need to worry about having another person in his space. If you’re really short on space, a screen door dividing up the room may create that space. This will give him a space to quiet the screaming in his brain.

I mentioned online resources at the start of this, and I would highly recommend going through all sorts of material. See what he agrees with, and see what helps you both communicate. Here’s a starting point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3tTYlPuGH0

About 28 or 29. I’m currently mid 30s and starting to have a bit less energy than I used to.

Would the dark Eldar GF not keep you alive and torture you for as long as possible, possibly even keeping you alive long past when you’d normally die, just to use up as much of your soul as possible?

Would she not basically be a Cenobite?

+200%☠ chance of survival. Expression is still appropriate.

Correct. If an American can’t do it, James Bond will. :)

There’s a lot of reasons why people will respond negatively to someone deciding to excise themselves from reality, and part of that is because there are a lot of different types of people, but we’re almost all of us inherently social creatures.

Some people may feel sad that the person who ceased to be didn’t think to reach out to them, or didn’t clarify what was going on. This often comes with a strong feeling of guilt, a feeling that the former individual was let down by their friends who ‘should have seen the signs’. The signs can however take many forms, and be easy to miss.

Some people may feel that life is so amazing and wondrous that’s a straight up insult to discard it. Anyone doing so is almost invalidating their optimism, and it feels like a personal attack.

Yet other people, much like the first group, will feel like they were indeed given up on, like they weren’t given the chance to support the no longer present individual. A slightly different perspective that can feel like disrespect.

Finally, there are people who don’t want to acknowledge the option even exists, and anyone who uses it is making it more real. We want it to be so last-resort, that it’s never considered an option.

At the end of the day though, it’s always a permanent solution to a temporary problem, no matter how big. If you’re really considering it, you’ve spoken to the helplines, tried to get the support of all your friends and you’re out of ideas, sell all your shit, hitchhike 3 states over, and spend 3 months trying to live there. You literally have nothing to lose, and it’s worth trying every fix before making what is literally the last decision you will ever make.

Same reason we do today, they’re cool. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_Arch

There’s one hell of a lot of people go through the same kind of thing you’re going through, and it’s not fucking easy. If you don’t fit the ‘default’ settings for the world, many people will struggle to communicate comfortably with you, and that can feel annoying to them.

Going through such a tough childhood no doubt instilled a lot of coping strategies that can be hard to overcome, and which may make it harder for you to accept yourself as yourself, or to look for solutions to certain problems. If you’re able to find counselling or a therapist, do, and try a couple different ones because they need to be able to connect with you.

If you’re able to stick around, you will, sooner or later, find a group who are your brand of crazy. Who won’t get annoyed at any quirks you may have. It’s worth looking for these groups, even if you look online. It’s also possible that you find your group or groups change over time. It can be sad to lose friends as you all find a different path in life, but the diversity of friendships can be part of the beauty and wonder of a full life.

I should say, the trans side isn’t a quirk, that’s just who you are. You are experiencing, it seems, some of the bodily concerns that many women, including cis women, have been fighting for decades, specifically with how women are expected to look. Take the Olympic boxer recently who, despite being a cis woman, is being shamed because ‘they’re clearly a man’. Bullshit, they’re not even trans, so if people can’t tell that someone who’s born a woman is a woman, they’re going to completely fail to identify anyone else’s gender. Gender is a very personal thing, so the only person who gets to judge that about yourself is you.