Hello,

I am writing it all for my boyfriend. He is seventeen years old and has gone through quite a lot of bad things when he was younger. He was abused by older guys in a sexual way and other people his age belittled him, made fun of him, made him believe that everything was his fault and that he had nothing to complain about, and they told others that he was a liar, they threatened to drown him and other bad things like that. He lost everyone, was out of school for I believe one year and a half, even two years, fell into depression, and pretty stopped socializing except with his mom.

Him meeting me thanksfully meant the end of those bad things, but as you may guess, the trauma remained. He made incredible efforts over the years I spent with him, even though he also developed mental health issues. We are planning on trying to get an appointment at a psychiatrist's for him so that he could get professional help, but there are things that deeply disturb him and he would like to get answers quick, which is the reason why I am writing this.

Since the abuse stopped, he cannot help but checking his abusers' lives through social media. He is not stalking, at least I do not think one could call that "stalking". He actually genuinly wants to check if their lives are better than his. If they are happy with who they are and what they did to him, if they regret it or if they just do not care. Most of the time, they do not care at all, and seeing that his abusers have a perfect and happy life compared to his hurts my boyfriend. He admitted that he does that because he wants to get hurt, even if now it became a habit. He checks their lives and how perfect they are without thinking or actually noticing that it does him ache.

He has tried not to do that and it has worked fine but only over a short period of time. He always ends up checking again his abusers' lives even when he has taken the time to think about it and about how miserable it makes him. Yet he cannot stop and he does not understand why. He wants it to stop and is sick of getting hurt without even noticing that he is hurt. He feels stupid to do it but I can tell that he cannot help but checking his abusers' lives and how happy they are.

We would like to know why he feels obligated to hurt himself by such a way, and if there is something he can do against it while we are trying to get an appointment at a psychiatrist's. He really cannot wait to get the appointment, that habit of his disturbs him and makes him really depressed.

Thank you so much for your precious help!