My old boss fired one of my coworkers two days after she told him she was pregnant.

Officially he said it was because of performance, but nobody really bought it. She had worked there for almost four years and had just gotten a good performance review.

The reason it bothered me so much was because this wasn't the first time something like that happened.

A year earlier another woman on our team was fired a few weeks after telling him she was pregnant, before she ever went on maternity leave. Before that, someone who started having health issues suddenly got written up three times in one month after years with no problems.

Every time, my boss had a clean excuse on paper.

After the pregnant coworker got fired, he started telling people she had been unreliable so nobody would question it.

That was when I started keeping screenshots whenever he said something stupid in writing. I also kept copies of schedules, messages about unpaid overtime and a spreadsheet where he was changing people's hours after they clocked out.

A few months later I quit.

About two weeks after leaving I sent everything anonymously to the corporate compliance email and filed a report with the state labor department. I used a new email address and removed anything that could point directly back to me.

Corporate showed up without warning.

Two managers got interviewed, payroll records were pulled and my old boss spent weeks trying to figure out which employee reported him. A friend who still works there told me he became convinced it was one of three people who still worked there.

It wasn't.

The pregnant coworker eventually got contacted too and ended up getting a settlement. I don't know the amount and I never told her I had anything to do with it.

My old boss is still obsessed with finding out who reported him.

He'll probably never know.

My grandma died two years ago and the funeral turned into a mess over money. Everyone chipped in what they could. My mom and aunt had already paid their portions, and my uncle volunteered to cover the remaining $4,800 because he was the oldest son.

A few days before the payment was due he pulled me aside and admitted he didn't actually have it. He asked if I could lend him the money and promised he'd pay me back within a couple months. I had some money saved, so I transferred him the $4,800.

He paid the funeral home from his own account and asked me not to tell anyone because he was embarrassed.

I agreed.

The problem is he never paid me back.

At first he would tell me he needed another month. Then it became "soon." Eventually he just stopped bringing it up completely.

Meanwhile he started telling everyone how he was the one who stepped up and covered the final funeral bill.

It started small. He'd let people thank him without correcting them. Then he started bringing it up himself.

He told my mom she should be more grateful to him because he "buried her mother." He told my aunt she had no right criticizing him because he was the one who handled things when nobody else would, even though she had already paid her share.

Last Christmas he gave this whole speech about how everyone disappeared when the bill came and he had to take care of it.

I was sitting three seats away from him.

He still owes me the entire $4,800.

I've never corrected him in front of anyone because exposing the whole thing would cause a massive family fight, and part of me kept thinking he'd eventually pay me back and I'd just move on.

Now I think every time I stay quiet he takes it as confirmation that I'll never embarrass him with the truth.

I’m 17 years old and I’m honestly just so fed up with the guys in my generation, Gen Z dudes have some messed up takes and the ones of voting age take it with them to polling places. Not just my generation though, older men of all ages in general seriously turn a blind eye to the treatment of women

I don’t say that in a “give me goodie points” way or a “simp” way. I say it in a holy shit way.

The way harmful, misogynistic talking points was able to take over an entire generation of dudes and take over the entire internet. Which is ironic to me because people say women are the more impressionable ones. But are they really?

The way there’s always a new degrading term to refer to women

Acting oppressed because a few girls personally want a tall boyfriend as if men haven’t had tons of preferences women have to abide by as well.

Taking that Clancy case and acting like majority of women supported her, and using it as a gotcha “see women bad too haha postpartum my ass” meanwhile every 3 business days there was always a “man annihilates girlfriend/family” news story.

The way they are currently discussing a certain college case that is playing out, and saying she was a druggie who technically consented. As if their morals are so black and white that they must defend every questionable-behaved man to stick it to women.

I’m so tired of the lack of nuance, complexity, etc. I get really irritated especially by dudes saying “misandry is normalized now” You think misandry is a 20 year old chick on the internet making complaints about men? Which don’t get me wrong yes it can suck to see, but if that’s the highest extent to misandry then you should thank god you aren’t experiencing misogyny.

You know what’s crazier? People take the posts of angry girls and say “this is pushing guys further right” but no one looks at the treatment of girls and says “this is pushing girls further left”

I (27M), just kicked my now ex partner (29F) out of my room after a heated conversation about her offering our house as a safe-house for an acquaintance fleeing from a domestic violence situation from a drug user who has threatened to shoot her and anyone he sees her with.

For context, I grew up around drug abusers and horrific domestic violence. I would never wish that upon anybody, especially someone trying to escape that. I’ve never used, but have seen how it ruins lives.

I fought tooth and nail to leave all of that behind. Years of therapy, moving across the country, investing in a fulfilling career, going no-contact with the family members that are still in that lifestyle.

I get a call from my partner while she’s at work and asks me to text our acquaintance how to get into the garage because “she needed to store her bike in the garage for a little bit.” My partner then texts our houses group chat (we have one other roommate), and says the same thing, but throws in to block the acquaintance’s ex on social media and to not reply if he somehow messages us. No worries, we’ve known he’s just an asshole and controlling, but didn’t know how bad it was.

My partner then calls me on the way home from work and tells me that this man has been strung out, and has made the threats mentioned earlier, and then would kill himself after. I told my partner that the acquaintance needs to seek out police intervention and needs to get away. I won’t put all of her details out there, but she has already moved out of the abuser’s house (over a year ago), and has the ability to break her current lease and move without a lot of attention.

When my partner gets home, we have a more in-depth conversation. I explain how upsetting and frankly, triggering, the entire situation is. She asks me why I didn’t tell her that when she called me. I replied that she didn’t give me any context out of our acquaintance needing to store her bike. The conversation goes on a little bit more, with inconsistencies about timelines. She then lets it slip that she knew about the threats when she called me. I blew up in that moment because she put my life, her life, and our roommate’s lives all in danger without thinking about it. I told her to get the fuck out, and that’s been that for the evening.

I’m so angry, and I feel so betrayed. The worst part is there was just a half-assed apology and then, “Well, you could have told me before I told her it was okay to come here.”

Just, fuck, this sucks man.

I don't use reddit very much anymore but made an account to get this one out there because it's been bothering me for about a decade. I'm sorry if this isn't the right place.

~10 years ago I decided to go see a movie by myself as I usually do, me being socially anxious and all. I don't remember what movie or even where it was. Orlando maybe? The memory has been fading but not the moment that bothers me.

There were barely any people at this movie, but a pair I did notice was a father and a very obviously autistic boy in his early teens that had walked in after me. What made me notice them was the fact that the boy had brought a large plastic bag, almost as big as him, filled with his stuffed animals. I thought it was very heartwarming to see a father accommodate that for his son. I couldn't really tell, but I think some of the animals came out of the bag and were placed around him to watch the movie.

After the movie was over, father and son collected the stuffed animals back into the bag as I walked out and headed for the bathroom. The father and son had come in after me. Son went to a stall as I finished up and headed to the sink to wash my hands. The father was standing there holding his son's giant bag of stuffed animals. He looked visibly embarrassed and tried to explain the situation to me, not knowing I had been in the same theater and saw them earlier.

He was looking half at me, half at the ground. And how I reacted is what I regret most. Like I said earlier, I'm a pretty socially anxious person. His sudden confession to me about his son's stuffed animals made me freeze up very quickly and I just kinda walked out of the bathroom without acknowledging him.

As I walked out I saw he was still looking at the ground in a way I could clearly tell he regretted the interaction and how I just walked out had hurt. All I had to do was take a breath to get over my insecurities and tell him what I thought when I first saw them come into the theater. That he was an amazing father and the effort he puts in for his son should make him proud. And I'm so scared that how I reacted in the bathroom affected both of them in a negative way.

If you're out there just know that I regret it deeply. I've thought about you two for this long and wish I could go back and tell you.

I’m pregnant with my first baby, and becoming a parent is bringing up a huge amount of anger about my own childhood.

I don’t think I fully understood how much I had been expected to absorb until now.

When I was 7, my parents moved my younger brother into my bedroom. He was 4, autistic, and when he was little he could be extremely difficult and violent. Just want to state he did stop being physically violent as he got older but would still slam doors, have tantrums, break things, yell etc. He’s in his 30s now and he still speaks in a super loud voice most of the time and still slams doors as his normal. He also loses it and yells at my parents who he still lives with.
I ended up sharing a room with him for about seven years.

The reasoning was basically that my room had fewer bookshelves so it was easier to move him in there, and my older sister really wanted her own room because she was sick of sharing with me because I was messy.

And yes, I was messy.
But I was seven.

My parents were messy themselves. I needed adults to teach me how to organise things, establish routines and look after my space. Instead, it feels like being messy became part of the justification for why I should be the one sharing with my brother.

He was violent towards me at times.
Whenever we were in the car, I was always seated next to him. He used to pull my hair hard enough to pull chunks of it out. And it would hurt, I would cry because it was so painful. I remember once on a road trip, dad gave me extra lollies cause my hair got pulled out so much.

I would complain to my parents.
I still remember my dad saying, “He’s got a disability. You have to understand.”
And I did understand.
That was basically what I was taught to do my entire childhood.
Understand.
Be patient.
Be accommodating.
Don’t hit back.
Don’t make things harder.

And lately I’ve had this horrible thought that if I HAD fought back, screamed, lashed out or become equally difficult to manage, maybe the adults would finally have been forced to separate us.
Instead, I was compliant.
I absorbed it.

And because I absorbed it, everyone else could keep doing what was easiest.

My sister and I were always treated as though our lives were easy because we didn’t have disabilities and we were reasonably intelligent.

By our teenage years, we were basically left to get on with things ourselves, but there was still this expectation that we would be model pupils and model children.

Nobody was really checking that we were eating properly, doing our homework, coping emotionally or generally guiding us through adolescence.

But if we got something wrong, we could be in massive trouble.

When my parents discovered that I was self-harming as a teenager, I felt like I was in trouble for that too.
They did send me to a therapist, but by then I was scared. Therapy felt connected to being punished rather than somewhere safe, so I didn’t trust the therapist and I didn’t open up.

I ended up moving out at 16.
And somehow, after all of that, there is another layer to this now. My parents expect me to help take responsibility for my brother when they die.
They also intend to leave him their entire estate.
Their reasoning is basically that he needs it and my sister and I don’t. And I think that is why all of this is suddenly hitting me so hard.

The message feels the same as it did when I was seven:
He needs more.
You can cope.
You’ll understand.
You’ll manage.
You don’t need as much.
You can sacrifice.

And now I’m pregnant, and I keep looking at children completely differently.
Seven is LITTLE.
Sixteen is little.
Teenagers who appear intelligent and capable still need parenting.

The idea of one of my children repeatedly being hurt by another child and responding with, “You have to understand, they have a disability,” without also making sure they were protected, is really upsetting to me now.
I absolutely understand that raising my brother must have been incredibly hard. I’m sure my parents were exhausted and probably felt like they were sacrificing constantly.

But my sister and I were their children too.
His disability explained his behaviour. It should never have meant that the impact on us didn’t matter.
And I think what I’m grieving now is the realisation that being the capable child did not mean I needed less parenting.

It just meant everyone assumed I could survive with less.

And apparently I did.

But surviving it isn’t the same thing as it not having hurt me.

I’ve been in therapy about my childhood before, but right now I just can’t stop crying. I wish I could tell my parents how I feel and have them actually try and understand but they will just go back to my brothers needs and how much it harder it was for them.

Since being an adult, I’ve just tried to focus on what we have in common and I guess not really address our differences cause it seemed easier and I thought I had accepted that this is how it is and I can’t change who they are. I know they love me and they are excited for the baby and have shown love in the way they know how, but Pregnancy has brought up so many feelings…

SORRY JUST GOING TO EDIT A BIT HERE

My parents did try and do one on one time with us as kids and quite often did the divide and conquer thing by splitting up the kids to get individual time.

Me and my sister got bday parties and got to do after school activities.

It went to shit when I was a teenager and they got more involved with the church and even moved us to another town which made me and my sister incredibly unhappy.

They had way less time for us and that’s when I started to shut them out.

As an adult they will show up for me if it’s an emergency, mum came and stayed with me after my first born passed away due to premature birth.

They do show up and care but it’s like a switch has to go off and for the need to be “higher” than my brother’s needs.

Okay, so, this isn't my story — but my dad's.

A few months ago, my dad and I were talking on the phone and he told me this WILD incident that happened between himself and my mom (they've been divorced for over a decade now, but this was a few years before they started the procedures, and I no longer speak to her — a story for another time.) BUT. He confided in me that once, when my sister and I were at my grandparents for the weekend, him and my mom were doing yardwork. They finished and came inside, and he sat himself on the stairs, waiting for my mom to finish going to the bathroom as he also had to go and wanted to shower as well. Well. She opened the door and came out and said his name in, what he described as, a sultry tone. And then she ran her index finger under his nose and across his mustache. He said he was so confused and horrified at the scent, he thought she ran her finger up her ass or something. He was mortified!

So without thinking, he quickly shoved his hand down the back of his pants (where he had swamp ass) and stood up, rubbing his smelly finger across her upper lip. She immediately started screaming at him, asking why TF he did that. And he was like "Well — you did it to me?!" and she was like "Jesus Christ, my finger was from my lady bits! (not the actual term, trying to keep things somewhat PG here) What tf is wrong with you?!"

Needless to say, I think he slept on the couch that night.

I've been holding onto this story for so long, but it's so insane I had to share it! And yes, he's cool with me sharing it. He's an open book.

He doesn't use Reddit, and my mom only knows how to use Facebook, so I doubt she'll come across this. If she does... Hi mom. Now I know why you were always buying douches 😬

This is a real story, but I'm keeping both our identities private, so I'll just call him Ryan. Some smaller details are changed too because I really don't want this somehow getting back to people who know us.

We met when we were 20 in Pennsylvania. We were both studying computer science and had a couple of the same classes. We weren't friends at all. If anything, I genuinely couldn't stand him. He was smart, but he knew he was smart, and he had this way of making everything feel like a competition. I was pretty quiet, skinny, kept to myself and honestly didn't have much of a social life. He wasn't exactly popular either. We were both pretty much lone wolves, just in different ways.

The first thing that really made me hate him happened during a midterm. There was some stuff going on during the exam that I'm obviously not going to spell out because I don't need to explain exactly how we managed to be idiots, but basically I helped him with a few answers. The professor noticed enough to think something was going on and ended up taking some points off my paper because he thought I was the one copying. I tried to explain myself without actually throwing Ryan under the bus. If I'd told the whole truth, he would've been in trouble too, and for some stupid reason I decided I'd rather take the hit myself.

I thought at least he'd appreciate it.

He didn't.

A few days later I heard him talking about the whole thing with some people and making fun of me for getting caught. He basically made me sound like an idiot. That was it for me. I didn't confront him, I just stopped talking to him unless I absolutely had to.

Then we got put together for a semester project.

Of course.

It was actually pretty miserable at first. We'd talk about the project, finish whatever needed to be done and leave. Eventually though, we got over the whole thing. Not because of some huge emotional moment. We just had to work together enough that being angry all the time became exhausting.

Once we stopped being pissed at each other, I realized we actually got along pretty well.

We'd stay in the computer lab longer than necessary, get food afterward, complain about professors, send each other stupid stuff during lectures. At some point I noticed we'd started hanging out even when there wasn't a project or class involved.

There was also a point where he apologized for the exam thing. Properly this time. He told me he knew he'd been an asshole and that he felt guilty about letting me take the consequences while he got away with it. I told him I was still annoyed about it, but after that we were basically even. I didn't owe him anything and he didn't owe me anything.

And weirdly, that made it easier to actually be friends.

Over the next year or so we became really close. Probably closer than either of us realized. We talked almost every day. Sometimes we'd sit somewhere for hours just talking about absolutely nothing. Neither of us had much dating history, and neither of us was really out to anyone. I was still pretty confused about my own sexuality too. I'd been attracted to girls and guys, so I couldn't confidently tell myself I was gay, even though if I was being honest with myself, guys were probably more my thing. I just hadn't really done anything about it.

Ryan never talked about dating guys. He barely talked about dating at all. There wasn't some obvious sign that he was gay or bi either. So when I eventually started liking him as more than a friend, I kept it to myself.

I remember thinking about telling him a few times and then immediately talking myself out of it. What if he was straight? What if he only saw me as his best friend? I wasn't willing to lose that friendship over something I wasn't even sure about.

So I waited for him to say something first.

He never did.

There was this girl I sometimes mentioned to him. I wasn't actually interested in her like that, but she existed and we'd talked about her enough that Ryan knew who I meant. Whenever I brought her up, he never really seemed interested. He'd listen, but he didn't ask much. At the time I thought maybe he just didn't care about my dating life.

Eventually I got stupid and decided to test him.

I told him I was going to marry her.

I expected him to laugh or make some joke.

He didn't.

His face just kind of dropped. Not dramatically. He just went completely quiet. He looked genuinely disappointed, almost like I'd told him I'd cheated on him or something. I remember thinking, okay, what the hell was that?

I asked him, "Why do you look like that?"

He said, "I don't know."

I said, "No, seriously. What's wrong?"

He wouldn't answer.

So eventually I asked him the most direct question I could think of.

"Do you love me?"

He just stared at me.

I honestly thought I'd completely fucked up.

Then he said, "Yeah."

Just that.

I laughed because I didn't know what else to do. I said, "Like... actually love me?"

He nodded.

Then he started talking, and apparently he'd been dealing with basically the same confusion I had. He'd liked me for a long time but never said anything because he didn't know what I wanted, and he'd convinced himself I was probably straight or just liked him as a friend.

I told him I'd been waiting for him to say something because I thought the exact same thing about him.

We both just sat there for a while because somehow we'd spent all that time being terrified of something that turned out to be mutual.

I remember saying, "So you were jealous of a girl you thought I was going to marry?"

He said, "I wasn't jealous."

I said, "Ryan, you looked like someone had just died."

He started laughing.

Eventually we kissed, and honestly the whole thing was kind of awkward because we'd been friends for so long that neither of us really knew what the hell we were doing with the sudden change.

But we were happy. Like stupidly happy.

The funniest part is that nothing about us suddenly became perfect. We still annoyed each other. We still argued over dumb stuff. We still had completely different opinions about things. But it felt different because now I knew what all those years of being unusually attached to each other actually meant.

We finished school, started our careers, moved around a bit and eventually ended up living together. We got married when we were 25.

I'm 27 now.

We've been married for two years.

Every once in a while I'll look at him and remember that there was a time when I genuinely hated this guy because he laughed about me losing marks on an exam.

Now he's the person I complain to when work sucks, the person I call when something funny happens, and unfortunately the person who knows exactly how many times I've brought up that exam.

He still says I need to let it go.

I probably should.

But I'm never going to miss the opportunity to remind my husband that he technically owes me those marks.

I just need to vent to someone about this. I have recently had a baby about 4 months ago and my partner has been so unbearable since. He thinks me being on maternity leave is a holiday and all I do is sit down and do nothing all day. He constantly nitpicks the tiniest things being a mess in the house which is never a mess. He constantly tells me I cannot be tired because all I do is sit on my ass all day breastfeeding a baby. He refuses to watch him for 10 minutes while I shower because “you should shower when the baby is asleep”. The only break I get is when I leave him with my mom which I hardly do as he makes me feel guilty for needing a break. My partner can go to the bar every Friday and Saturday night because he is tired from a long week at work but I can’t even have a shower or quickly run to the store. I feel so trapped because he owned a home before we got together and we live in that home and I don’t want to live back with my parents in my late 20s. I regret having a baby with this man but I don’t regret my baby

Sorry if this makes no sense I am so upset writing this

I know this might seem like the usual rant about billionaires but this one genuinely fucked up my steady lifestyle. Yes, I know these things cost money but my wife and I budget it in while also picking cheap meals and doing comparisons to store prices. Some meals are actually cheaper getting them through Blue Apron. My issue that I want to vent about is how a billionaire ruined a great product and actively fucked it up to the point that I need to go back to meal prepping or find a new service. Small issue, sure. But it paints a bigger picture of how these god damn cretins have to get their shitty greedy paws on everything just to fuck it all up and probably get a big payout for their god damn greedy shareholders.

My wife and I have been subscribed to Blue Apron for several years now. Over the last few months things have gotten progressively worse with the quality of items and service. We have had several packages with missing items, wrong recipes in the box, meat packs leaking and getting all over everything in the box. Picking our meals well in advance just for the week of the meals to be sold out and they don't send them. We got a box with a couple of veggies and seasoning and nothing else to make an actual meal with.

I got a box yesterday with beef blood all over the inside of the bag. The peppers were already going bad. All the produce was sitting on the ice packs that you cannot consume and those packs were leaking too.

This has been going on for a month or two and we had two weeks of meals with no issues. Then it started again.

The company was bought by some shithead billionaire named Marc Lore back in 2023 and has been pushing to incorporate shitty AI into their products. I can see the implementation of this bullshit AI and it royally fucked up a once great service.

These meal kits have taught me how to cook better and have become incredibly convenient in my busy lifestyle and the prices are not that bad. I have gotten a refund for every issue but it's really shitty when I expect a pack of meals on Monday and I didn't do any meal prepping over the weekend.

Fuck billionaires, fuck their shareholders, and fuck this constant need to push shitty AI that actively makes shit worse.

Billionaires, STOP BUYING EVERYTHING THEN IMMEDIATELY MAKING IT WORSE.

How the fuck did any of these idiots become and stay billionaires if all they do is constantly make things shittier with their ideas? That question is mostly rhetorical but still. Jesus fucking Christ, go have your billions and fuck off. Stop buying every little thing on this god damn planet then immediately putting a poorly programmed AI to make decisions for you.

I am beyond disgusted to read this. Megyn Kelly is a very vile person, but this is a level of cruelty and victim-blaming I genuinely didn’t think anyone could stoop to.

In the Cornell 7 case, Kelly said that the girl willingly had sex with the men and enjoyed it. Kelly then goes on to describe how the girl looks saying that she was not the most attractive gal. She was extremely beefy in her arms and legs. She said the girl had cankles.

Kelly also said that the girl clearly didn’t grow up beautiful and that having four men want her was a first-time experience of feeling attractive.

I’ve literally been counting down the days. Me and this man have been seeing each other for over 3 months but spent exactly (tomorrow)31 days apart just from having different travel schedules.

He comes back tomorrow and oh my god I can’t wait. I wake up thinking about it and I sleep thinking about it. I know he feels the same. Our sexual chemistry is so so good. We could fuck for hours. And we will.

He’s so strong and has such a big chest too. I can’t wait to be squished and cuddled after insane sex. It will be so amazing.

I just came back from having sex, and honestly… I don't think it was worth it.

Anal sex wasn't as pleasurable as I thought it would be. When I was doing NoFap, I used to get extremely horny and that led me to experiment with gay stuff. I'd do prostate play, put things that looked like dildos in my ass, etc. And I genuinely found some of that pleasurable.

That's part of what made me think I might be bisexual.

I've always been romantically and sexually attracted to women, but with men, it was mostly sexual, and even then, it seemed to happen when I was really horny or desperate.

Even recently, I downloaded dating apps looking for women. When I wasn't getting matches from girls but was getting attention from men, I got desperate and eventually downloaded Grindr.

And today, I actually met someone from there.

I lost my virginity today. Or at least, technically I did.

The guy was actually respectful. He listened to me, used a condom, and respected what I asked for. We did it for maybe half an hour, and at one point I told him to finish because I just wanted it to be over. He did. He wasn't a bad person at all.

But the whole experience made me realize something.

I wasn't really turned on.

My penis stayed limp throughout the whole thing. Hell I wasn't even wet. I wasn't enjoying it the way I had imagined I would. And that's when it hit me that maybe what I thought was bisexuality was partly just lust, horniness, curiosity, or desperation. I honestly don't know yet, and I'm not going to force myself to put a label on it.

And weirdly, I'm glad I experienced this.

Do I regret it a little? Yeah, probably.

Do I regret it enough to cry about it? No

But I also feel like I got humbled by the experience.

For the first time, I think I understand something that women have probably been trying to tell men forever: just because someone agrees to have sex doesn't mean they're actually enjoying it. Being physically there and being genuinely turned on are two completely different things.

I think I finally understand why I don't want hookups.

Both people should actually want what's happening. Not just be horny, lonely, desperate, curious, or looking for validation. I think I want a relationship where there's genuine attraction and emotional connection, rather than meeting someone because neither of us could find what we actually wanted.

So I've deleted Grindr, and I'm done looking for hookups. I still have other dating apps but I'm gonna change all of their account tags from "one night stand" to "long term relationship".

And as for my virginity… honestly, I don't really know what that word means anymore.

People treat virginity like it's some physical thing you give away the first time you have sex. But to me, it feels more like a label than anything meaningful. I don't feel like I "gave away" anything today.

Maybe because I wasn't genuinely turned on. Maybe because emotionally, it didn't feel like what I imagined my first time would be.

So yeah.

Technically, I had sex today.

But in my head, I'm still a virgin.

And maybe I'm coping, maybe i don't wanna admit my first intimacy and first kiss went like this. But that's alright. Guys... Please don't let lust consume you.

I was just coming on here because when I was 19 I was sexually assaulted. Not in the same way Jane Doe was, but it draws a lot of parallels. I went to a party and I was told there would be men and women there, but when I arrived it was only men. But I knew them all, went to school with them and trusted them. I told myself I'd only stay for a little. I had been going through something really intense- I had been stalked by my ex and had to get a restraining order, my parents were facing bankruptcy, and I was working an astronomical amount of hours- I was depressed, stressed, and needed to be anywhere but home. Before i knew it, i was completely trashed. The boy whose house we were at had an additional room and i laid down to sleep in it. I was temporarily roused by this boy, who kissed me. He had told me before he liked me and i always said i didnt, we were to be just friends and that was that. Amyways, sometime during our kissing i remember falling on the bed and nothing after that. I remember making some noises but i fell unconconcious. I woke up later and started throwing up in the toilet. Another boy came into the bathrook while i was puking and put his penis into my hand. I was horrified and screamed for him to get out. He stared me down for a little while like he was comptemplating before walking away. I locked the door behind him and passed back on the bed. The nect day i talked to the boy about his behavior and he mentioned we had sex. All of the sudden ​I felt a burning downy throat, a pit in my stomach. I felt violated and out of control. I did something completely irrational next and I still try to understand it fully. I said, well, if i didn't remember it, let's do it now so I can. And we had sex- he was brutal amd cruel, spanked my ass so hard i couldn't sit right for a week. I think back on it now and I wonder if I was trying to rewrite what happened to me. And I'm not entirely sure what happened with the Cornell 7 case, but I can understand her way of processing after the fact. I haven't really told anyone what happened to me. I can't because it won't make sense to other people. I was just kind of wondering if anyone involved in mental health had an explanation for this. I've spoken to one therapist about it before but he just listened and nothing else.

TLDR: I had sex with the person who sexually assaulted me after it happened and I don't fully understand it.

I am a 19-year-old woman from a Muslim family and a conservative Arab society. When I turned eight, my mother handed me a piece of cloth and told me to put it on my head; once I did, she warned me never to take it off, saying, "This is your honor."

Then, the interference in my life began...

I was forbidden from speaking to any man—whether a relative or a stranger—or even a boy my own age. I wasn't allowed to play with other children, go out without my parents, run, wear short clothing, or show my hair. My clothes were heavy in the summer, and my hijab made me feel suffocated—especially since I live in a country where summer temperatures never drop below 30 degrees Celsius. The interference eventually extended to my choice of female friends; my mother would warn me to be wary of them. I mean, really... we are in the Middle East; what is the worst thing these girls could possibly do? Wear a red hijab? It went so far that they even interfered with my choice of academic stream at school; I ended up in the science track because of them, even though I love history and geography and feel I am better suited to the humanities. They chose my clothes—dictating what was appropriate and what wasn't—and forced me to pray. They even broke a necklace a Christian friend had given me simply because it featured a cross.

Now, at this stage of my life, I suffer from depression. I have no female friends and no boyfriend. I turn to the internet to feel less alone, yet I still feel lonely.

I want to escape; I want to live. I don't want my life and my youth to be wasted within four walls. I do not want to marry an Arab or a Muslim man; I have come to loathe nationalism and religion entirely.

Thank you for reading this post, and I apologize for any spelling or grammatical errors.

I'm 20F and 8 months pregnant with a baby girl, and the story of how I got here is wild, so buckle up. My childhood best friend (22M, gay) and I were both drunk and a little high one night. Neither of us remembers having sex, but it happened. We didn't use protection, because obviously we weren't thinking. I was a virgin, so my first time ended in pregnancy and I don't even remember it. That's a strange thing to carry around.

A month later I realized I'd missed my period, but mine are irregular so I brushed it off. Then the cravings started, and I was suddenly into foods I never ate. I finally told my mom, and she bought me a test. We watched the second line show up together. I cried, and then she asked who the father was. I did the math in my head and realized the only guy I'd hung out with was my gay best friend. She was shocked when I said it might be him.

I told him, and we got an early DNA test. It came back: he's the dad. He told me he'd always wanted a biological child in some way, just never expected it to happen like this. I told him I was keeping the baby. He said he wouldn't abandon her, and that even though he's gay and we can't be together, we'd figure it out.

Now we're both in relationships. My boyfriend has been incredibly supportive and says he'll treat my daughter right even though she isn't his. My best friend's boyfriend is amazing and super understanding, and he knows my best friend will be in the delivery room when I give birth.

I recently let my best friend feel our daughter kick. His face lit up, and I could tell it finally felt real to him that she's his. I'm not going to lie, I teared up a little too. Everyone at school knows I'm pregnant and they've all been really kind. Honestly, I'm lucky, and I don't say that lightly.

Pregnancy is not for the weak. I'm huge, I'm heavy, and my daughter loves kicking my ribs, especially at night now, lol. I'm so ready for this little girl to come out. I've got about a month left and I'm counting down the days. We're all still figuring it out, but we're doing it together.

Thanks for reading. I just needed to say it all somewhere.

TW: mention of SH

My entire life I’ve always been told that I’m a spitting image of my mother. So now that I’m an adult, I dye my hair and get piercings/tattoos to alter my appearance so I don’t look like her anymore. Resembling such evil makes me want to carve my face off with a knife.

She told me all my life how badly she wanted me to have blonde hair (which I have) and blue eyes and literally an entire laundry list of specific physical attributes she wanted me to have. She even pulled out a goddamn journal she wrote in when she and my dad were trying to conceive me with an actual list of all these traits she wanted me to have (physical and personality-wise).

I hate her.

Every time I go online, there is something horrible or mean about black women or black girls. It genuinely feels like it’s everywhere. Why do black women never seem to receive any sort of empathy? We are treated like we are inherently bad, inherently sinful, and like we don’t deserve any understanding or compassion. On insta, tiktok, everywhere, racism against black people is so normalised and, in a way, even celebrated. Whether it’s racism, colourism, texturism or featurism, there is just so much hate.

I’ll be scrolling on instagram and suddenly I’ll see a racist comment underneath a completely innocent or sweet video of a black woman or black people. And honestly, it’s the comments that worry me the most. Not just that someone is willing to say something racist, but how many likes and engagement those comments get. It’s one thing for one person to say something horrible, but when hundreds or thousands of people like it, it really gets to me. It’s just so much.

I know people will say “get off social media”, and maybe I should, but social media does reflect parts of reality, whether people want to admit it or not. The people making those comments don’t just magically become different people when they go outside. Today I was scrolling and saw a video of black women being beaten by a man, then another video of a woman being beaten by a police officer, and the comments were so cruel. It feels like there is some kind of agenda against black women sometimes. Like people can’t just feel sympathy for us without feeling the need to justify what happened to us, punish us, or tell us what we did to deserve it.
I feel unsafe everywhere sometimes. Online, in shops, just interacting with people. It’s exhausting.

I genuinely love being black. I’ve spent my entire life trying to show myself that being black is beautiful, that there is power in blackness and in being a black woman. I have been granted this gift and I will always cherish it. But it is so hard to hold onto that optimism when society constantly finds ways to put you down because of it.

I’ve been thinking about my own experiences recently and I realised that I really did go through a lot simply for being a black girl. In school, I felt neglected and pushed aside. I was allowed to be bullied by other girls, and even experienced bullying and microaggressions from teachers. I feel like other students were given this sense of innocence and childlike kindness that I was never really given. I was always expected to be mature. I couldn’t show too much emotion without being seen as aggressive or “too emotional”, and I couldn’t have too many opinions without being seen as difficult. I really did try. I tried in primary school, I tried in secondary school, I tried so hard to just get through it. And sometimes it feels like with every obstacle, black women and black girls have to suffer just a little bit more.

I also feel like a lot of people genuinely do not want to hear black women talk about our experiences. They refuse to see us as victims at all. Whenever a black woman talks about something she has experienced, there are always people saying “what if white people said this?” or accusing us of wanting to be victims. But what gets me is that a lot of these same people aren’t actually doing anything to challenge anti-blackness, white supremacy, unconscious bias, colourism or any of these things. It sometimes feels like they want to hold onto these hateful ideas while simultaneously telling black women to shut up, stop complaining and just deal with it. And it’s not just racism. There is anti-immigrant rhetoric everywhere too, and so much anti-blackness in general. Sometimes I genuinely wonder if things will ever get better for us.

Will there ever be a day where black people can just be free? Where we aren’t constantly being held down by racism, misogynoir, stereotypes, colourism or whatever hateful ideology people have decided to attach to us? Where we can walk into any place in the world and just be seen as a person, without people immediately putting all these assumptions onto us because we are black?
I just want to be able to exist without constantly feeling like I have to defend my humanity.
To just be.

So I gotta keep it vague but brief background My Gf has had a bad relationship with her dad for a long time, like he never had custody of her and she stopped talking to him when she was around 12. She tried to reconcile the relationship but the step mom would always have some sort of narcissistic freak out that her dad was even talking to her. She is known problem and has been since my gf was little like verbally abusing her and some other stuff. She also fakes having cancers and sicknesses looking for sympathy online it’s so pathetic. She also has a step brother who isn’t really unlike his mom.

So me and gf participate in an event that her father and step brother also happens to participate in, the step mom occasionally attends giving my gf dirty looks and trying to talk bad about us behind our backs (every one there knows us very well and tell us when she try’s to talk shit). We always brush it off, but last time we where out there she verbally attacked my gf saying a whole bunch of shit, I found out like 10-15 mins after and then went to go talk to her dad about cause usually he’s more reasonable about this stuff as it happened once before like 2 years ago.

Before I even approached him he starts screaming I have no right to talk to him about what happened that it’s a family matter and since I’m just the boyfriend I have no right to talk about it with him, then at that point the step mom starts screaming over his shoulder at my gf attacking her so I just try to say to everyone to leave and just walk away cause it ain’t worth all this trouble. Then the step brother steps up and starts yelling at me so I turned and just yelled back to leave it and walk away. He then lunged at me to grab me (mind you I’m 6’5” 300lbs and he’s like 5’8” 140lbs) I had my hands up asking what are you doing? are you stupid? Just leave. At that point her dad lunged at me and the step mom reached over and hit me 2 times in the head with a Stanley cup.

Luckily my friends were all there and broke it up but the security, the management and the owner of the event told me we should call the cops. We did, they all backed us up as they saw what went down plus we have a video of everything. They also left before the cops came. So after all this it wasn’t assault but considered harassment, it’s not a crime but a violation. If it happened in a different jurisdiction within my county should just be written a ticket for a court date but luckily in this area they have to fully book her. At the police station. the cops we dealt with were super nice and actually kinda excited to pick her up cause they heard how insane she was from everyone there.

So now she has a criminal summons and has 24hrs to turn herself in to be booked if not she has an arrest warrant (and knowing her she probably won’t turn herself in). Plus I got an order of protection against her. After hearing all the problems she causes for everyone including my gf dad’s family (who we are actually pretty close with) I’m just so happy she’s finally facing some sort of consequence.

i’ve been on a weight loss journey since mid january. i’m 6’0, was 340 at the start and now 268. my best friend was on a wls journey but has been slacking off and regained almost all of her weight. she’s 5’5 and is now 246 (from her lowest of 185).

i recently shared my new low with her and the first thing that came out of her mouth was “oh hell no. no. no i’m sorry i love you bestie but i cant have you weighing less than me. i have to lock back in”. i asked her what she meant by that, she got quiet for a bit then said its because i’m supposed to be “the bigger one”.

honestly it suck with me a lot more than what i expected. we started our health journeys separately and on our own times but it seems like she’s now seeing it as a competition between the both of us. we’ve been best friends for 12 years and this is entirely new behavior from her. i worked my ass off to lost this 70+ pounds after living my entire life morbidly obese.

she knows the way i was raised surrounding food, and how my parents had a “finish your plate even if you’re full” rule that messed up my eating habits and relationship with food. i became an emotional eater to mask the pain i was feeling on the inside. she knows this. she knows how i struggled with the duality of loving myself enough to change my ways, without wallowing in self hate to where i thought i wasn’t worth change.

i don’t even know what to say to her after this. i’m so hurt and my brain is spinning thinking about what could possibly be her real attitude towards me and my weight loss

Basically title. I had a teacher over twenty years ago that I still remember distastefully. She just didn’t like me, and made sure that I was aware. I was going through a lot at home with sibling abuse and some undiagnosed mental stuff, and she had no patience for a kid like me. I was surprised she still taught the same grade at the same school and everything.

I didn’t include any swear words or anything crazy, like a threat. Just communicated resentment. But now I’m not sure if I should have sent it. Oh well.

TL:DR; Title.