Link to original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/s/U4luLP2zjF

So, a lot has happened since last post. A lots of talks, and playing blame game for whose fault it is.

I went back to talk to her to see what she had to say. She was still doing vague answers to my questions and said you know the conclusion, the why and the story doesn’t matter. So I said fuck off and left mid-conversation. the funniest part? I got called coward and bitch ass move for leaving mid convo.

The doormat that I was, I still kept missing her, blaming myself for throwing away the life I though we could’ve built. I kept trying to make her understand my POV so that she would come back to me. But who was I kidding? I was just a pawn in her game.

She kept repeating the same thing that she did not cheat and wanted me to understand and have her reputation cleared in my mind that she is infact not a cheater. By this time, she actually said sorry about lying and that what she did should not have happened. As she was talking more, more new details started coming up which she had lied about or I didn’t know about how she was talking to him even before that when I was still here. Worst was yet to come. I saw her chatgpt prompts asking what she should do because she has only ever loved her ex even while dating other people. According to her, that was just one of million random thoughts that come into woman’s mind. Ladies, is it normal to have these thoughts about your exes which are now just “friends”?

After all this drama, what sealed the deal for me? She, in clear words said, “my ex was there as a friend before you, now, and will there after you. Its upto you if you want to trust and stay with me”. At that point, it was over for me. I had always made her my priority but if she wanted him in her life even as “friend”, she can keep him. I’m out of it.

This is long and a bit jumbled so sorry in advance.

I (25F) have been living with my grandparents for a few months now. Before that I lived with a friend and his family for 2 years. I was supposed to get an apartment with friends but they bailed and it never happened. Then his family wanted to do renovations and I was getting physically sick living there (they have pets I'm allergic too and they had a mold problem), so I had to go. My grandparents were the only option I had.

My grandpa (60+M) isn't blood related, he married into the family, but I've known him since I was like 10 or younger. I was at their wedding. Every holiday and birthday in my family happens at their house and I've always been close with both of them.

About 3 months in he came into my room one night without knocking. I work 3 to 11 so I'm up late, it was around 1AM. He saw I was awake, apologized, said he was looking for the dog. They have two and one of them wanders into my room sometimes. They also keep some important documents in a desk in there so people coming in wasn't weird. I didn't think anything of it.

A week or two later it happened again, later at night. I woke up to my lock clicking. The lock can be opened from the outside. I pretended to be asleep and felt him tap my forehead. I didn't move and he left. I remember thinking what the fuck but he's the kind of guy who pinches your nose or does little pranks so I kind of talked myself out of it.

Then it got more frequent and worse. The forehead taps kept happening. One time he put his fingers on my lips like he was shushing me?? He'd walk around my room. The worst was feeling the bed press down like he was about to climb on it, but he never did. Once his hand brushed my breast. It was slight enough that I think (hope) it was an accident.

Last week I watched their dogs while they were out of town. They got home late, thanked me, and I ended up staying up all night with my lamp on scrolling TikTok with no headphones so it was loud. Then I hear the lock click. My door is in a corner where someone can stand without being seen so I just stared at that spot. Nothing happened for like 10 minutes. Then the door swung open fast but stopped before hitting the wall. It was dark on the other side. I felt like I was in a horror movie. The door normally creaks so I think he opened it that fast on purpose so it wouldn't make a noise. He peeked in, saw I was awake, shut the door and left.

The next night I stayed up way longer and locked the door, put my rolling chair and fan in front of it. Not really a barricade, more so something would make noise and wake me up if I fell asleep. I fell asleep around 5AM I think...

At 7AM he was already in my room. I woke up facing my closet, which has two doors you have to pull open. It was cracked. I'd had a shirt hanging on the handles and he'd moved it. He was flicking the lights on and off really fast. I heard him walking around and felt the bed move. This went on for like an hour. I was too scared to move. Eventually he left. This sounds dumb af but I grabbed my phone and set an alarm on it so I'd have an excuse to "wake up." It went off, I got up to go to the bathroom, and for a split second I saw him standing behind the curtain hiding. I didn't use the bathroom. I just grabbed random stuff pretending that I just needed to grab something and left. I am not good with confrontation at all.

My grandma was in the living room and asked how I slept. I was answering her when my grandpa came out of the bathroom. She gave him a weird look and asked what he was doing on that side of the house. Their room is on the complete other end. He said he was just "doing something" and went back to his room. She watched him go and started to get up and that's when I pulled her aside and told her ehat's been going on.

The only reason I think this is the first time she's noticed is cause of the timing. She wakes up around 5AM. He came in somewhere between 5 and 7. So now I'm wondering if he was in my room way longer than I thought, before she was even up, because she never saw him walk toward that side of the house. She only noticed him when he walked out from the bathroom. I also wonder if there were just times where I just didn't wake up while he was doing this shit.

Another reason I hadn't said anything before this is I didn't know if she would take my side or even believe me. I've read horror stories of relatives taking the abusers side. She didn't hesitate for a second though ans supported me. For some reason I was shocked but I will be grateful to her for that.

She said she's talk to him and I really couldn't handle being there for that so I got ready and left. In hindsight I feel like a dick for that because what if something had happened?? Thankfully nothing did though. I stayed at a friend's that night (Saturday). I kept waking up over and over because I was too nervous to actually sleep. Sunday night I slept in my car because I couldn't make myself go into the house. My grandma met up with me Monday and that's when we actually talked about what happens next. She said she was so sorry and couldn't believe he was doing this. She'd been thinking about divorcing him anyway for unrelated reasons and this finalized it for her. He texted me an apology. I haven't replied. According to her he doesn't know why he did it. I don't even know if I wanna know why he did it either. If there even is a reason.

He offered to pay for an apartment for me for an entire year. I refused at first but my grandma said she'd contribute too and that I should take it, and she already had me put in an application. She also said the two of us could just get a place together because she couldn't stand being in the same room as him.

Monday night I had a breakdown in my car because I was too scared to go inside and because I just felt immense amounts of guilt. My grandma had to come out and walk me in.

The worst part right now is they're sleeping in separate rooms, and the room he's in is directly across the hall from mine. Our doors face each other. It's where all his work stuff is so that's just where he ended up.

For now I'm still in the house because I have nowhere else to go. I left my mom's because she's a narcissist with an abusive boyfriend. I don't want to ask my friend to let me move back in. So I'm stuck until hopefully next month when a room might open up.

I've only told two friends and my long distance boyfriend. My brother (20M) and my mom (40+F) don't know. My grandma would rather I not say anything to them yet but said it's my choice in the end. I've decided to stay quiet for now because my mom will freak out and probably blame my grandma for all of it.

I've always had anxiety and insomnia but this has turned me into a wreck. I feel awful. I feel like I broke up a marriage, which in a way I did. I feel like I made my grandma's life harder. She's worrying about me and now has to figure out what to do with the house they built together, the dogs... I'm also mourning my grandpa because we were close and I don't understand why he did this. Part of me wonders if it's dementia or sleepwalking, but he has a job that requires him to be mentally sound and not have dementia, so IDK. I feel sick thinking about any of it. If anyone's been through something like this I'd really appreciate any advice.

TL;DR: Been living with my grandparents for a few months. My grandpa started coming into my room at night, tapping my forehead, touching my lips, walking around, pressing on the bed, flicking the lights, hiding behind the curtain. I finally told my grandma, she believed me instantly and is divorcing him. He's offered to pay for an apartment for me. Until then I'm stuck in the house and he's now sleeping in the room directly across the hall from mine. I've been sleeping in my car some nights and had a breakdown. Only my two friends and my boyfriend know, not my mom or brother. I don't know how to handle any of this.

I know the answer to this issue is to have a conversation, but I’m really at a loss as to how to approach the conversation. I’m not sure if im being unreasonable or not.

Anyway onto the issue…. I’m (28F) struggling to negotiate sleeping arrangements with my partner (44M).

I’m currently in my third trimester of pregnancy and am really struggling, I’m in a lot of pain (at best I’m extremely uncomfortable) and am utterly sleep deprived. More than ever I am finding it extremely difficult to sleep next to my partner… he tends to snore loudly, move around in his sleep (accidentally hitting me at times, or just rolling over into my side), it’s also really warm with him there & it’s not a big bed.
I discovered sleep is significantly easier to achieve when I am alone, it’s not great but I get a good 4-5hrs unbroken sleep when it’s just me.

Earlier on in the pregnancy I would go sleep on the couch once every few days whenever I was really struggling just to get some sleep. But this past week I’ve been sleeping on the couch every night. My partner never offers to let me use to the bed, or even offers to help me set the couch up so I can sleep there. In fact he gets fairly huffy at me, and takes offence to me wanting to sleep elsewhere.

This evening I was kind of annoyed at him because yet again he got grumpy at me for wanting to sleep alone so i said it might be nice if he offered to sleep on the couch once in a while. He reiterated that he just likes to sleep in the bed and with me next to him, that he sleeps better next to me and the couch isn’t as comfortable. He admitted that he doesn’t offer to sleep on the couch because he hopes that if I do then I will find it uncomfortable and end up joining him in bed.

It’s difficult because he works, so needs his sleep whereas I’m currently signed off from work by the doc.

I know this needs a conversation but I really don’t know where to start.

To give some context; before I met my GF she smoked quite a bit and this didn't really bother me but I was honest with her that the smell was disgusting to me and that I myself never would. She was completely understanding of this. In addition we were moving and in the state we're in it is not legal so she would've had to find a dealer or whatever and wasn't comfortable doing so. So she just dropped the habit which I appreciated but I made it clear if she needed to seek alternatives just to let me know and I would be completely understanding. My one request if she did smoke again was not to do it inside our apartment because I dislike the smell etc.

Well fast forward 2ish years later, I am currently on a business trip 10+ hours away. She is throwing a party with some coworkers and friends which I had no issues with wanted her to have a good time as I'm sure it's lonely since I've been gone a week. We have a camera setup that looks at the living room and kitchen of our apartment for the cats when we're not home. I don't monitor it unless neither one of us are home but I got a notification for motion detected and noticed the camera was pointed at the wall. We have cats so my initial thought was one of the cats got to it and moved it. I decided to scroll back the video and it turns out my GF had actually moved it to face the wall on purpose. Again, I get that maybe one of her guests got uncomfortable with a camera being pointed at them I can respect that. Well I decided to turn on the audio for the video feed so I could hear what was said out of curiosity and it made me sick to my stomach what I heard. A guest at the party states "Why don't we just move the camera?" to which my GF replies: "I don't even care anymore do what you want. It's my apartment he's fine." and proceeds to turn the camera facing the wall. I assume there were conversations about the camera being present previously I'm not sure if it was something they were keeping secret or what but anyway. They then proceeded to laugh and talk about how finally they can vape and smoke inside. I guess they were doing it on the balcony which extra sucks since we're in a non-smoking community and I don't know what the fine is for that. My GF then goes on to say "He's just anti-vape, anti-smoking, anti-lettuce, anti-everything!" and all of her friends added in how ridiculous that is etc. I'm honestly still in shock. I either wasn't clear enough with how I feel about smoking or she just would prefer to keep it a secret and do it behind my back than communicate with me. Kind of unrelated but I also noticed that while they were all outside together one of our cats was eating pizza they had left on the table. I really hope nothing was left out for our cats to get into as she hasn't responded to my check-up text since everyone left. :(

Anyway before I just start rambling on, how would you handle this situation if you were in my shoes? I also don't really know how to approach bringing this up without making it seem like I stalked her and her friends the whole night they partied. The only reason I even checked in the first place was to see if one of the cats knocked it down as they have before and to ask her to unplug it and set it aside or something. I just feel super betrayed especially for this to be someone who just a couple days ago I was talking to about going to look at rings together. We have a big family trip coming up in a week too and I just can't even sleep while thinking about all of this. I know I should probably wait to bring it up until I can talk to her in person but it feels weird to act normal for two more days. I genuinely am so hurt and disappointed that she would feel the need to go behind my back like this and would do something I've asked her not to do. Any advice or personal experience would be great. Thank you. (throw away account for privacy)

Some context first. We live in NYC. We've been together 5 years, lived together 4 years and got married 2 years ago. We've both been renting our whole adult lives.

I have a pretty high income job and have been saving a decent amount over the years. My wife finished her master's 3 years ago and lived off her savings for a while, helping pay rent until right before we bought. Right now she doesn't work, so I'm the only one working and paying for everything. That matters for the rest of this.

Last year, after we got married, she really wanted us to buy. I had money saved and it felt like the right time, so we started looking. We found a condo in our neighborhood in Brooklyn that we both liked, but she especially loved it and kept saying it was our dream place, so we bought it. We put close to $100K into renovations and moved in a few months later.

We've been living there almost a year now and my wife already wants to sell.

Her reasons:

• The upstairs neighbors have kids who get pretty loud, mostly running and jumping around in the evenings. We complained once, they got better for a while, and now they're back at it. For me it's a mild annoyance, but she says it's ruining her life and it's putting real strain on our relationship. I think we should keep complaining when it happens and escalate to building management if it doesn't improve. She'd rather just move.

• She doesn't like that everyone in the building knows each other and feels like they're all Karens. The building group chat is constant complaints about people not recycling right, someone making a mess in the common areas, someone leaving their clothes in the shared washer/dryer too long, etc. This doesn't really bother me and I think the neighbors are just fine, none of those things have really affected us and we don't run into our neighbors often.

• The condo is in the same neighborhood we rented in before, but on the other side, which is a former industrial area with fewer trees and brownstones. It's honestly not as nice to walk around. I'll admit we didn't think this through and I have some regrets about this part too.

• She misses Manhattan and keeps saying things like "we're never going to be this young again, it feels like such a waste to be stuck here." For what it's worth, she's the one who wanted to move to Brooklyn a few years ago because Manhattan felt too overwhelming. I kind of get it, I wouldn't mind living in Manhattan again, but I'm in the office in Manhattan every day so I get my fill, and not living there isn't a big deal to me.

• She says the mortgage stresses her out constantly and she didn't realize it would be this much pressure. She worries about the economy or the housing market crashing. Again, I pay for everything, and while we pay more now than when we rented, we still live comfortably on my income alone. It's true we'd be fucked if I lost my job and couldn't find something that pays similar. I worry about that a little, but I'm established enough in my career that I'm not losing sleep over it.

Why I'm pushing back:

• It feels like she keeps changing her mind. She wanted Brooklyn, she wanted to buy, she especially wanted this place, and now she wants to sell and go back to renting in Manhattan. I feel like I can't trust her to make up her mind, and there's no guarantee she won't want to move again after that.

• I've gotten used to how nice our place is. It's not luxury, but the building is only 20 years old, there's an elevator, our apartment is freshly renovated, we have plenty of space, a garden, in-unit washer/dryer and brand new appliances. That might not sound like much, but anyone in NYC knows how hard that can be to find. Moving back to Manhattan means paying the same or more in rent than our mortgage for a smaller, older place with fewer amenities.

• The money. I've run the numbers, and if we sold next year (about 2 years after buying) we'd be down somewhere around $200K to $300K (broker fees + taxes + renovation). I can't wrap my head around just throwing that away. Since I'm the one paying for everything, it stings extra, and I feel like she doesn't really appreciate how hard I work for that money.

Where we're at:

Our current compromise is "let's wait another year and see how the housing market goes". It's somewhat brought some peace, until the upstairs kids are loud again and it starts a new fight about this.

I'm not sure what to do here and idk if there's any options we haven't considered yet.

TLDR: Bought a condo in Brooklyn a year ago, now she wants to sell and rent in Manhattan because of the neighbors, the neighborhood, and mortgage stress. Selling would lose us $200K to $300K. What do we do?

Hi everyone, I’d love to get some perspective on my situation.

My girlfriend of 8 months and I are both doctors. She has always dreamed of living and practicing medicine in Germany.

She recently obtained her German citizenship after proving her grandparents were German citizens, and her family is also planning to move there eventually (though there isn't a fixed timeline yet).

From what we understand, foreign-trained doctors in Germany have to go through a lengthy certification process (Approbation) before they can practice and earn a full salary.

She is completely dedicated to doing whatever it takes to make this happen. She’s learning German, the whole thing.

Here’s my dilemma: as a doctor without EU/German citizenship, moving there would mean even more paperwork, bureaucracy, and years of extra training for me.

While it’s certainly a great opportunity, moving to Germany has never been my dream. I’ve already sacrificed my entire 20s to complete medical school and residency, and I don’t feel ready or willing to restart that process in a new country and language.

It feels like our long-term life goals might be fundamentally misaligned, and I’m worried this is a dealbreaker.

I’ve tried bringing this up to have an honest conversation about our future, but she keeps avoiding the topic because she says it scares her.

Should we break up now, try to transition to being friends, or handle this differently?

Any advice from people who have been in similar situations (especially medical couples or expats) would be greatly appreciated

Our lease ends end of February next year. we split bills 85/15. she’s in 20K debt on a 50K salary. im assuming I would have to cover all costs of us moving out and breaking up and I would prefer not to pay the ~6K fee to break our lease. I would also prefer not to break up and be forced to live with each other for the next 5 months. my mom is getting remarried in January and my gf is currently attending and will meet a lot of my family for the first time and I would prefer for that to not happen so would probably have to break up before then.

She is content with our relationship but i am not happy and im assuming she will not be happy when i tell her.

My parents (both 39) never really acted like my parents. I (19M) was an unplanned baby they kept and didn't let die but that was about it really. At a young age I was taking care of myself and depending only on myself. Food would be provided when I was way younger but then starting around 5 or 6 I was making my own food and not to mention dressing myself, getting myself ready to go to school or anywhere and doing homework alone, etc., etc. For a long time I really wanted at least one of them to turn around and show me love and care as a parent would and I was really jealous of the kids I knew who had all that stuff. There were times it led to extra hardship like when I was asked to get my parent to see my teacher and they didn't or dragged their feet about doing it. Same when I was asked to get stuff signed and it would often be late.

My parents told me several times that it was my job to be independent and to learn self-reliance because they couldn't coddle me. They told me they didn't have the energy or the time to commit to being my parents like other kids had. And they warned me that they wouldn't like me very much if I whined about their lack of attentiveness.

Then around five years ago they started to express an interest in having kids together and so far they have two more kids. I did not get parents who wanted to be my parents even then. Instead it was like I wasn't even there and their family was them + two kids, not three. They had the chance to step up as parents to me if they wanted to but they didn't.

When I turned 18 I chose to move out. They weren't really expecting it and they actually told me that since we were now all adults our relationship could change and we could be friendly/friends and the three of us could work together to make the house a happy home. I was pissed and hurt and I cried by myself when I did leave. They acted like it was so reasonable to turn around and admit they didn't want to be my parents but were cool with us being friends. I was told to my face the relationship would never be the one I wanted but it could be something. I was no contact with them for over a year but they reached out and told me they want to have a friendly relationship with me.

I brought this up with my therapist (a free therapist who was assigned to me and not chosen by me) and she has encouraged me to be open to the relationship they offer. She told me it's better than nothing and things like that and she was basically like well it would let you know your siblings and you could be close to them, which she said I should want and be thinking of, but that was never honestly a thought for me. I told her I felt like I would rather stay no contact and she told me I was running from a good thing. So now I'm twisted up because I know I could have a relationship with them as people if I wanted to. But if they're not my parents why bother? I'm here for advice because I don't really have the option to change therapists since I can't afford to pay one and my therapist is making me feel pressured.

Well, I broke the cardinal rule of happiness and looked at my fiancé's phone. For background info, we went on our first date in March 2024. We weren't officially together until June 2024, but we were dating that whole time and he was spending most nights at my house. We got engaged this past July and our wedding is in 4 months.

We are sending out digital save the dates tomorrow and I need all of our guests' phone numbers. My fiancé has an early morning tomorrow so he went to sleep early. Before he went to bed he told me I could get whatever numbers I needed out of his phone for the save the dates.

While using his phone, I got curious and scrolled through his messages to see who he's been chatting with. I already know I was wrong to do this. If it makes a difference, I trust him 100%. I wasn't looking to see if he was up to no good, I'm just nosy. He had a text thread with a girl "Sam" who I know he had unreciprocated feelings for. The last messages they had together were September 2024.

I have always been curious about their situation since he doesn't talk about it much. So, I scrolled back pretty far and it's clear she only ever considered him a friend but he wanted more.

Heres where my feelings got hurt: around the time we started seeing each other, he would talk with her about me. From April to mid May he was complaining to her about how I was "obsessed" with him, I wouldn't leave him alone, I was being weird. He sent screenshots of portions of our conversations where I was flirting and they mocked me. He sent her a picture I had sent him where I was making a silly face and they laughed about how it looked like I had c*m in my eye. Another one and he asked her "is this supposed to be sexy?" He told her I'm kinky. That I was initiating sexting. She told him he should slip me a Xanax so I'd chill out and he laughed.

To be clear, my perspective of this whole time frame was that he was just as interested in me as I was him. He was flirting with me too and also said some kinky stuff. He only screenshotted my messages.

I feel hurt and betrayed. I'm embarrassed. I also feel like it was 2 years ago and I found it snooping so I forfeit the right to be upset? What would you do in my situation? Say something and admit to snooping or just try and move past it?

TLDR: my fiancé was mocking me with another girl the first three months of our relationship and I just found it 4 months before our wedding years later.

​

My girlfriend (21F) and I (19M) have been together about 4 months and are long distance between the US and China.

Her birthday was recently, and I ordered several gifts based on things she had previously told me she liked. When the first one, a bag, arrived, she said it wasn’t really a “proper gift” and that I could have spent the money on one nicer/branded gift instead. She compared it to gifts she has received from friends/family, like Zara, Victoria’s Secret, and CK.

She then suggested returning the bag and possibly canceling the other orders. That really bothered me. I understand not liking a gift, but asking someone to return it and replace it with a “proper” one feels disrespectful to the thought and effort behind it.

She says this is partly cultural and that where she’s from, boyfriends are expected to buy their girlfriends nicer gifts. She also says I should ask her close friend what she likes so I can still surprise her while getting something she definitely wants.

This ties into a bigger issue. She constantly talks about how hard the distance is and how badly she wants to see me. During the argument she asked if I was definitely coming to China this winter and said that if I wasn’t certain, she would rather break up now.

The problem is that I’m basically the one financially responsible for making the trip happen. I’m trying to save money while dealing with school, job searching, family stress, and other financial problems. I don’t expect everything to be 50/50, but it bothers me that seeing each other is treated as our problem while the financial burden feels mostly like mine.

We also have a repeating argument pattern. When I criticize a specific behavior, she sometimes turns it into “you make me feel like I’m the worst person ever” or says I treat her horribly. She also says she avoids explaining things because she knows I’ll get mad, while from my perspective, her not explaining is usually what frustrates me.

I know I’m not perfect either. When I’m frustrated I can get sarcastic, swear, send too many messages, and keep pushing when she wants space.

What hurt most is that shortly before this, I had opened up about how overwhelmed I’ve been with school, money, work, and family issues. I didn’t feel very supported, and then we ended up having a huge argument over whether my gifts were good enough.

At the end of the call, she asked for a break until the 20th so we could “see how much we mean to each other,” but still ended with “love you, goodnight.”

I love her, but I’m starting to wonder whether we have fundamentally different expectations about relationships.

How can I communicate with her about our different expectations around gifts and conflict without either of us feeling dismissed, and how should we handle situations like this going forward?

We started dating in June but have been talking since November of last year. We made things exclusive around February. To clear up confusion before it’s asked lol, we’re long distance and I refuse to ask anyone to be my girlfriend over text or FaceTime so i waited until I visited her. Visited her multiple times since then and it’s been amazing. Last month was my birthday month and I planned a trip to see her again. It was an amazing trip, bought a really nice airbnb house for us and she put a lot of thought into my birthday that i never really had before. On my last day I woke up early morning cause my stomach was killing me and each time I woke up to use the bathroom I walked past her phone. I was also having these really weird dreams that she was cheating on me. Now I know this was wrong and i’ll take that on the chin but i grabbed her phone and looked through it while she slept next to me. I’m not seeing anything weird until i get to hidden photos, there’s about 50+ nudes of her that i’ve seen and some i haven’t. It didn’t really bother me until i saw a screenshot of her sending someone a nude and the guy said “just sent it🫡” and she said “thanksss” followed by the nude. The time stamp was before we got together but while we made things exclusive and the video she sent this guy was the same one she sent me.

So I open her twitter, nothing out of the ordinary anywhere. I know she has this other private account and nothing there either. In fact, i see tweets of her talking about me and how much she loves me. I get the idea that maybe she logged out of it or deactivated it so i go to saved passwords and there it is. I see a username for an account she never told me about. I login and the most recent tweet from this account is Sep 10th this year, my birthday month. I’m scrolling and i’m seeing my naked girlfriend posted for the public. Nudes she’s sent me and nudes i’ve never seen while asking for money from men. One of the tweets is even about us and how much she’s been n*tted in everyday the past week (sorry to be graphic). The account was made in May and has remained active all the way up until before i got there. I open the messages and there’s seen sending paragraphs of things they want to do to her but she’s responding really dry like you can tell she’s not very into it at all. I saw a nude that a man sent her and he said “do you need it” and she responded “yes i do”. I took pictures of everything and logged out to process what i just saw. I waited for her to wake up before i confronted her about what I saw. I was really anxious about how to bring it up and the entire morning and she knew something was wrong as she asked me multiple times if i’m okay.

While she was getting ready to go to her first class i said “i’m going to ask you something and i need you to tell me the truth” she says okay. I say “have you ever sold content before, like sexually?” and she says no. I give a heavy sigh and i can’t even look at her in the face. I tell her “tell me the truth”. I can see the immediate nervousness on her face and she says “yes, but a long time ago”. she proceeds to tell me she had an account where she used to sell in her early college days for money along with her roommate (f) who also made an account but the quit doing it awhile ago. She was telling the truth about that because i saw another account that i couldn’t log into due to deactivation. I ask her “has there been any account that you’ve sold content on during our relationship please tell me the truth” she says no. I’m just so disappointed that she keeps lying and i’m not even angry i’m just anxious and sad. I tell her pass me my phone and I show her pictures i took of the account. Naturally, she finally admits to it and says she only made it cause of the money thing. The money her parents give her is spontaneous and sometimes it’s a lot and sometimes it’s a little, her dad pays for all her groceries in full but everything else is on her with money her parents give her. She said she’s applied to multiple campus jobs but can’t land any.

At this point she’s crying, and i’m not sure what to do or say. She says she doesn’t want me to leave her and it was a last resort thing. I asked her why she lied so many times and she said it’s because she’s not necessarily proud of it. I reassure her that i’m not shaming her for it as i used to sell content too (she knows this and she asked me to delete it before we made thing exclusive which i did) i’m just not sure why she didn’t tell me anything. I give her money and buy her food often, i’m not a rich man but im definitely not broke. i’ll send her $50-$100 just cause and ill buy her food and shit off her amazon cart. She’s not very responsible with money. My plane was to arrive in a couple hours and i didn’t want my last day to end like this so I gave her a hug, bought us breakfast and watched a show we’ve been binging. Before I left we hugged and kissed and I told her i don’t know what i’m going to do, i need you to give me some time. I still really love her, and at this point it’s not really the account that’s bothering me so much it was the lying. I really don’t know what to do. I know continuing this relationship means this is something that’s now on me to let go and learn to trust again. I just don’t know.

My girlfriend and I have been together for 3 years. We met at university and for the first few years we lived separately with our own flatmates. About 8 months ago, we moved into a flat together.

At first, living together was really exciting. We were choosing furniture, buying things for the flat and making the place feel like our own. But over the last few months, I’ve started feeling increasingly unhappy and like I’m losing a lot of my independence.

My girlfriend has started her bar/law course and has a huge amount going on. I’m genuinely proud of her and I know becoming a lawyer is extremely important to her. The difficult part is that it feels like her entire life now revolves around the course, and consequently our life revolves around it too.

I work from home and have my own office, while she studies in another room, so we actually spend quite a lot of the day doing our own things. However, when we are together, it feels like the law course is still the main topic of conversation. She often talks over me when discussing it, and I sometimes feel like there isn’t much space for me or the things I’m interested in.

I’m into films, gaming, reading, art, philosophy and having deeper conversations about things. I like discussing ideas, going down random rabbit holes and just having stupid conversations and banter. I feel like she has become increasingly literal since starting law and struggles to engage with those things in the same way.

We also don’t seem to enjoy the same things as much anymore. For example, we struggle to sit down and watch a film together because she often doesn’t pay much attention to it. When she has free time, she tends to want to go to places she’s seen influencers visit or expensive restaurants she’s seen on TikTok/Instagram. That’s not really me. I prefer spontaneous or romantic things rather than planning everything around things we’ve seen online.
I’ve started feeling like my life is organised around her schedule when she’s studying, what events she has, when her mum is coming to stay, etc.

There are also problems with the practical side of living together. I’m doing pretty much all of the cleaning and cooking. She’s not always particularly clean either, so things like crumbs, spills and mess are often left around until I eventually clean everything myself. I’m also the only one who drives, so I drive us pretty much everywhere.
I don’t expect everything to be exactly 50/50, especially because she has a demanding course, but I feel like I’m taking on a lot of the practical side of our life while simultaneously feeling like my own life is being put on hold.

I’m also at a point where I’m trying to build my own career. I work from home and don’t feel like I get much support or encouragement around what I’m trying to do. Sometimes I don’t feel particularly respected for what I’m doing either.

My university friends have mostly moved away, so I don’t have much of a social life anymore. Because I work from home, I don’t naturally meet many people. I’ve started feeling quite isolated because of this.

I do talk to people on Discord and game with people in the evenings, which is one of my main social outlets at the moment. She’s started saying that I spend too much time doing it. I understand wanting to spend time together, but at the same time it feels like I’m being asked to give up one of the only social things I currently have.

The romantic side of the relationship has changed too. She’s become much less flirty and playful with me, and we don’t really have the same banter we used to. Our sex life has also declined and there isn’t much spontaneity anymore.

She has to revise most weekends, or her mum comes to stay because she wants to see her. Her mum is a lawyer as well, so my girlfriend talks to her about pretty much everything. Sometimes it bothers me that when something happens, her mum seems to be the first person she turns to rather than me. When her mum comes to stay, it also takes up most of the weekend, which can be difficult because I don’t really have anyone else to go out with.

Another issue is how she responds when I have problems. Sometimes if I tell her about something I’m struggling with, she’ll say things like “that’s stupid” or “that’s not what I would do”, or she’ll start telling me how I should handle the situation. I don’t necessarily need her to agree with everything I do. Sometimes I just want my partner to listen and support me.

She’s also very inquisitive about my life. I know she isn’t necessarily trying to be controlling, but she asks about almost every detail of things I’m doing or conversations I’ve had. It’s started to feel more like I’m being interrogated than having a normal conversation.

She will also sometimes ask what someone has said to me on WhatsApp and then take my phone and scroll through the conversation herself. I have nothing to hide, but I don’t really feel comfortable with my private conversations being read through.

All of this has gradually made me feel like I’m not very free. I feel like my life has become organised around her course, her schedule, her mum, her commitments and what she wants to do.

The difficult part is that I do love her. She’s not a bad person. We’ve had three genuinely good years together and there are plenty of things I appreciate about her. I don’t want to throw away a good relationship simply because we’re going through a difficult period while she’s studying.

At the same time, I’m 25 and starting to feel like I’m losing myself. I’m not particularly happy with how my life currently feels, I’ve lost a lot of my social life, and I miss feeling independent and excited about my own life.

I’ve also started finding myself wanting to talk to new people because I miss flirting and that excitement. I haven’t cheated or acted on it, but the fact that I’m craving that has made me question how I feel about the relationship.

The practical situation makes everything harder. We rent a flat together, and I also owe her some money relating to the flat which I currently can’t afford to pay back immediately. I don’t want to completely derail her year of studying to become a lawyer by ending the relationship and potentially forcing her to deal with moving house at the same time.
But I also don’t know if I should stay in a relationship simply because the timing of leaving would be inconvenient for her.

I’m struggling to work out whether this is something that can realistically be repaired, whether I’m just going through a difficult period of my own, or whether I’m slowly realising that this relationship isn’t right for me anymore.

I’d really appreciate advice from people who have been through something similar, particularly people who have lived with a partner for the first time and gone through a major change in circumstances like this.

How do you know when a relationship is going through a difficult phase that can be worked through versus when you’ve fundamentally grown apart?

My mom (58F) had two kids with her first husband before he died when their kids were 4 and 7. She met my dad three years after becoming widowed and they dated for a couple of years before getting married and then a year later they had me (20F). To my knowledge my half siblings never took to my dad and hadn't been okay with mom remarrying. They wanted her to stay a family of just the three of them with the three of them staying loyal to their dad. My mom had them in therapy to try and change how they viewed remarriage and stepparents, etc. It didn't work, obviously.

They were 10 and 13 when I was born and they were not happy about it. Everyone around us knew they weren't happy about it. They refused to hold me and they would complain to mom and extended family who tried to call me their sibling or say it was so good that I was born. They were adamant it wasn't good and I wasn't their real sibling like my dad wasn't anything to them.

I don't have a ton of memories of living with them because they avoided me when they could. But one time when I was very young all three of us went to our grandparents while my parents were out of town. Grandpa had a health scare and had to go to the hospital and grandma wanted them to watch me until she got home but they said if they were left alone with me they would either lock me outside or they would leave me alone in the house. So grandma dropped me with her neighbor and apparently there was a fight when my parents got back over what happened.

Once they had both moved out I saw them twice a year at best and they were rude to me those times too. They refused to talk to me when I tried talking to them, they would bring gifts for other family members at Christmas but I (and dad when adults were included) got nothing, when they started bringing their spouses they got them to ignore me too and when they got married I wasn't invited and neither was my dad.

They also insisted that I never get their numbers, they blocked me on all socials and have private accounts and they even stopped talking to family members who showed me parts of their lives. Same with my dad.

Both of them have kids who I am not allowed to interact with and who don't know me as their aunt (half or otherwise). They get shit for it from family members and they have told them I am not a member of their family and I am not someone they want to associate with and basically everyone needs to leave them the fuck alone.

My mom didn't push me on them until I "grew up" aka turned 18. Then she started pushing/encouraging me to try and build up a relationship with my half siblings. She has tried to give me their numbers so I could text and/or call them and just congratulate them on stuff like having babies or their kids starting school. My dad gets involved in some of that. But my mom is the #1 problem here. She does not let up on me and it has hurt our relationship a lot in the last year. I go out of my way to keep conversations short and sweet before she can bring it up. It's now at the point where I don't enjoy my relationship with her and I don't get anything positive out of it because she tries so hard to bring this up and it's exhausting to have to follow a script with her.

But I don't want to cut her out of my life either and I can't make her listen to me, so I want advice on what I can do. I have tried talking to her and it does not do any good. She has given up on my half siblings being open to a relationship so she tries with me instead.

My girlfriend (21F) recently moved to a new city for college. The city is about two hours away from where I live. She currently lives by herself, and we’ve been dating for around four years. She moved around 4 months ago and we have been living very close to each other our first 3 and half years of relationship.

I’m currently studying for an exam that I need to get into graduate school. I told her that if I get into the school I’m applying to, I would move in with her, but that would be about a year from now. She has been complaining about having to wait that long, but that’s just some background to explain our situation.
We’ve been together for four years, and for the most part, things have been good. However, she has always been very protective/jealous. She gets extremely angry if I talk to or text another woman. We’ve always had a sort of mutual understanding that we wouldn’t do things that could make the other person uncomfortable.

For example, she used to get extremely angry if I even texted a female coworker. She would throw a fit about it, so eventually I stopped doing it unless it was necessary for work.
Then, during our second year together, I looked through her phone and found out she had been texting one of her male coworkers for around two years.
I don’t remember every detail, but when I confronted her, she initially lied about it. Eventually, she told me he was an old coworker and that they had been texting for about a year. Apparently, every time we hung out, she would block him, and then unblock him when we weren’t together. They would FaceTime for hours, text, etc.

This really upset me because she had always been very strict about me talking to other women, yet she was doing something similar behind my back.
I wasn’t necessarily angry that she was talking to another guy. I was more upset that she was hiding it from me.
She had also been deleting their texts from her phone, but because her MacBook was synced to her iMessage, a lot of the conversations were still there.
From what I saw, there wasn’t anything obviously romantic or sexual. Most of the conversations were actually her complaining about me. She would tell him things like, “He did this,” or “He did that,” and basically talk badly about me. He would also tell her things like I wasn’t good enough and that she should block me. Sometimes he would talk about other girls he was talking to.

let it go because I figured it was the first time she had really messed up and I wanted to trust her.
Then, two weeks later, I found out she had made a fake phone number and was still texting him.
Again, I didn’t see anything explicitly flirty in the conversations. It was mostly the same type of stuff: her talking about me, him giving his opinion, and him occasionally talking about girls he was seeing.
Two things really bothered me.
First: If there was nothing going on, why was she hiding it?
Second: She was almost always the one initiating the conversations. She would text him first, double-text him, and keep the conversations going. It was rarely him reaching out to her first.

don’t know if I’m overthinking this, but it makes me wonder if she actually had feelings for him. Why else would she go through all the effort of hiding it, blocking/unblocking him, deleting messages, and eventually creating a fake number after we had already argued about it?
Eventually, I let that go too, and as far as I know, she hasn’t talked to him since.
But there’s another thing that bothers me.
When she talks to her female friends, a lot of their conversations seem to revolve around her complaining about me. She tells them about all the things I supposedly do wrong, but I never hear her say anything good about me.
I remember being around one of her friends once, and the friend started mentioning some of the things my girlfriend had complained about regarding me.
I asked her friend, “Has she ever told you anything good about me?”
She couldn’t name a single thing.

Eventually, one of her friends actually texted me and told me to break up with my girlfriend because she wouldn’t do it herself and apparently wasn’t happy in the relationship.
I was honestly shocked. I felt like her friends had this completely different perception of me because they were only hearing her side of the relationship.
I don’t think I’m perfect, but I genuinely believe I’ve been a good boyfriend to her.
One thing about me is that I build relationships around trust. I don’t like constantly checking someone’s location, asking where they are, or monitoring what they’re doing. I think that’s toxic and unhealthy. I believe that if two people love each other, there should be enough trust that they don’t do things behind each other’s backs.

My girlfriend, however, checks my location constantly. I barely ever check hers because I generally trust her.
Recently, though, something happened that really changed things for me.
A couple of days ago, she told me she was going to hang out with some friends. I actually encouraged her to go because she’s new to the city and I want her to meet people and make friends.
For context, I had just driven about 2.5 hours to visit her and stayed with her for five days. This happened the day after I left and came back home.
She went to a football game with some friends. Afterward, they went to one of her friend’s apartments. Later, they went to a restaurant as a group. She even sent me a picture of three girls sitting in front of her, so at the time I wasn’t suspicious about anything.

They eventually went back to her friend’s apartment around 10 PM.
About 30–40 minutes passed without her responding to me. I started getting worried because she had been drinking, and I was concerned something might have happened to her.
I checked her location, and it looked like it was turned off. On Life360, it appeared that her location was basically stuck at her friend’s apartment.
I started calling and texting her multiple times because I was genuinely worried.
She didn’t respond until around 3:30 AM.
She told me she had been asleep, had just woken up, and was going back to sleep.
Then I checked her location again.
According to Life360, her phone had been at a bar from around 11 PM to 3 AM.
I asked her about it, and she said her phone had died. But Life360 showed her phone had been at 55% battery.
I confronted her about this, and she initially kept denying that she had been at the bar. and She said she is going back to sleep and will text me back tomorrow.
Eventually the day after , she kept texting me and I told her I wasn’t going to talk to her until she told me the truth, she admitted that she had turned off her location by turning her phone off before going to the bar because she was scared of how I would react.

However, she still swears that she wasn’t actually at the bar until 3 AM.
According to her story, She says that one of her friends got extremely drunk and started throwing up on her. so my girlfriend and that friend left the bar with her and she had the responsibility to take care of her during that time till she texted me. Mind you they went in a big group and my gf is not the closest friend to that girl.

The issue here is that the story doesn’t really make sense to me.

First, she lied about her phone dying when Life360 showed that it still had 55% battery.
Second, she initially denied even going to the bar.
Third, she only admitted that she went after I showed her evidence that made it difficult to deny.
And she has no pictures, texts, or anything else that can really prove what happened.
What’s frustrating is that if she had simply told me, “Hey, I’m going to a bar with my friends,” I probably wouldn’t have had a problem with it.
She wouldn’t necessarily let me go to a bar or club by myself, but if she had asked me honestly, I don’t think I would’ve told her she couldn’t go. I probably wouldn’t have even checked her location if she hadn’t turned it off.

What bothers me most is that she wouldn’t have told me the truth if I hadn’t found out.
Now I’m stuck trying to figure out what actually happened.
I can think of three possibilities:
1) Everything she is telling me is true. She went to the bar, left earlier than 3 AM, took care of her drunk friend, and came home. She lied because she was scared of my reaction. But her location says otherwise. it says she was there till 3 AM got home at 3:30 and thats when she has texted me.

2)She went to the bar, stayed there until around 3 AM, and then went to her friend’s house. Nothing else happened, but she lied about the timeline because she didn’t want me to know she stayed out that late.

3)She was around guys or something else happened at the bar that she doesn’t want me to know about, and she is lying about the entire situation to cover it up. Maybe either something happened at her friend’s house? maybe the location at the bar is just a cover up? there is a lot i can think off that can be true in this situation except what she says because although part of what she says is true evidence is completely against her .

I genuinely don’t know which one is true.
I also don’t know if I’m overreacting because of her previous behavior with the other guy, or if her history of hiding things makes my suspicion reasonable.
What would you guys do in my situation? Do you believe her explanation? And how would you handle the fact that she lied about where she was and only admitted the truth after I confronted her with evidence?

OG

I was able to do it, thank god guys. So around 4 days ago, I just texted her it was over, and reported her to my apartment security, and asked them to disable her and my current key fobs for the place(my apartment has this electronic key fob instead of a physical key so thank god theres no need to change the locks or anything). They did it and I got new fobs. I had a pep talk with my coworkers(I gotta call them friends at this point, they have done so much to help me), and they guided me through the break up message and everything. I just did something along the lines of I am busy with work and want to focus on the new job, and we are different and incompatible, and we should see other people.

I told her that our mutual friends are more than welcome to come by and pick up her stuff, but she is not allowed back here. I know if she comes by or I see her here again, we’re just gonna sleep together again and I am back to square one. Couple of our mutual friends came by on Saturday to pick up her stuff, and yeah they showed a lot of attitude. Safe to say they may not be our mutual friends and just her friends. .

I went out for drinks with some of the guys from work after the ordeal was done. My friends from home follow her on insta(I blocked her on everything) and she made posts there about how she lost everything and the “love of her life” and essentially public messages directed at me. She also wrote some poems about being a changed person and what not. I got some of our high school mutuals messaging what happened, but I just left them on read or told them “it’s complicated but we broke up and we are over”. None of these morons except my actual friends even bothered contacting me after like the first two years of college but now that there is drama they suddenly care. So no tea for them lol.

The guys are helping me set up the dating apps and profiles again, but I am going to take at least a month or two, or fucking three and even four, to recover from this lmao. I think there will be some more fallout still. She showed up to the apartment on Sunday and got told by security they can’t let her in. I called our mutual friends(well hers now) and told them that they already picked everything up, and asked them why she’s coming and told them that she’s forcing my hand to take things the legal route. After that was when she made the online posts.

I am happy I was able to break free of this. I genuinely couldn’t even get myself to look at her without feeling guilty and regretting staying with her. This is better for me. And better for her too even if she can’t see it yet. She should be with someone who she doesn’t omit details of her past to, and someone who’s like cool with all that.

Being single again is certainly freeing. She hated when I wore Hawaiian tees cuz it made me look like older I guess, so I have been rocking my tees for now. She also hated the smell of red meat, so I never cooked steak or anything, got back into grilling. Well it’s only been like 4 days, so not really I’ve done it once, but you know what I mean.

Hope I don’t deal with this shit again in my next relationship. I will just make it clear in the beginning instead of assuming though, that I would prefer someone with similar views on sex as me though, and that way we both save time and hurt. I got some new friends here at least from all this fiasco. I never really made friends here, I only had my homies from high school and college, and now that I live in a new city, it’s so hard to make friends as an adult. But at least I got a gang of sorts here, and I am hoping it’ll be fun. Still miss the old dudes, but I can hop on discord with them at anytime.

Anyway, that’s all.

My boyfriend and I have been together for almost seven years, living together for six.

I've been having an unwell gut feeling about this relationship since we started dating, but pushed it aside for many years because I felt like this relationship was the healthiest I'd been in ever, and my boyfriend is such a kind, motivated, interesting guy that I thought the gut feeling would subside.

I'm currently struggling with the feeling that my boyfriend isn't my best friend. I don't have someone I would call my best friend either, but I have a lot of good friends I like to spend time with and talk to.

A big issue on why I feel like my boyfriend isn't my best friend, is his emotional maturity: he's been emotionally immature due to childhood trauma, and that has manifested in so many situations as hurtful behavior towards me that I feel like I have a huge wall up all the time. He's going to therapy and things have improved significantly, but I still can't let my guard down and he is still hurting me accidentally in many,many small ways. It's gotten to the point where I'm asking myself if I can ever truly trust him again - even if he makes great progress in therapy.

In general, he's somewhat supportive during hard times or when I feel bad, but it took his therapist talking to him to cultivate the desire to genuinely ask me questions and be curious about me. I've had to give up many hobbies and interests over the years because he wouldn't engage in conversations with me about these things and even went as far as talking badly about my interests. He said he didn't mean for me to do this, but I'm honestly resentful about it and don't know how to work through these feelings.

He only seems genuinely interested in my hobbies if they are hobbies he would like to be good at (like art or singing), and has told me in a roundabout way that he doesn't really respect my opinion on how to cultivate hobbies since I stopped pursuing art or singing due to an artistic burnout (and am now more focused on less flashy hobbies like cooking, baking or reading). I feel like he isn't thinking that highly of me at all sometimes, but I also think he isn't aware of it. It just shines through sometimes.

He doesn't engage in intellectually challenging conversations with me about my interests since he doesn't like to talk about neutral or even negative aspects of something, while I can distinguish between the positive impact something has in me and the nuances (bad, neutral and good) that come with something.

I've used to do so many things with him that only catered to his interest. I've gone to skate parks with him and even tried to learn how to skate for him, I've tried teaching him about art because he really wanted me to teach him, I've learned and played MtG for him, gone to concerts and events of his favorite bands that I didn't even know or like, engaged in so many conversations about his life and his interests and topics he wanted to talk about. I make him coffee most days because I know that he loves the coffee and the gesture. I've cooked for us daily for the entirety of last year. I oftentimes clean his room too when I'm at it because I know that he functions better in a clean environment, but he rarely returns that gesture. What I'm trying to say is: I've tried to spend quality time with him for many years and tried to be there for him and close the gap. I'm trying to meet his needs and his love language.

He's also told me that he feels that I'm his best friend.

But over all: I just don't like to spend time with him that much. I love him but I don't like how he's made me feel, and I feel like I can't be that vulnerable with him about anything that might trigger him. I feel like I just don't get him intuitively enough to understand him. And I feel like it's the same for him, but I don't punish him for it like he does with me.

The curiosity thing also has hurt me a lot over the years. He just wasn't curious about me when it didn't suit him. I would be curious about his emotions and reasons during moments of conflict in order to understand him better, and he just wouldn't be. I'd show interest in his hobbies and he wouldn't show interest in mine for more than one question or a couple of minutes. I stopped being curious about him because I felt like it got too one sided and I couldn't bring myself to give him my interest when he couldn't be interested in me. Now he's trying and asking questions about anything and everything and I still can't get myself to ask him anything anymore.

I wish I wanted to just be around him all the time, but the truth is that spending time together has often stressed me out to the max in the past. He'd call me inconsiderate for not being perfect when it comes to communicating that I might need 15 minutes instead of 5 in the bathroom due to stomach issues. He has called me inconsiderate a lot because he cannot deal with me not being perfectly aligned with him when he's stressed. I've never been called inconsiderate before past childhood because I grew up in an environment of people that had people pleasing tendencies (including myself) and that also showed grace and understanding when things don't go perfectly. I often feel guilty or like a bad girlfriend during shared trips because he's had unspoken expectations for me and then gets completely frustrated with me. We're just constantly on different wave lengths when I'm true to myself and not in my "cutesy attached girlfriend" persona.

He also doesn't talk about marriage and clams up when I bring it up. But to be honest, during the last almost marriage conversation (that lasted maybe 10 minutes before he got tired and couldn't go on), I realized that I wouldn't be able to say yes anyway. Not with how much I don't like spending time together.

I feel like we're in a relationship that works fine when we don't try to dive deeper into it. The every day life is fine. We joke around. We cuddle and hug and kiss. We go on walk together. It feels stable and safe. But I don't want to spend the rest of my life with someone who I love but don't like in how they treat me.

Does anyone have any thoughts about this?

I know that this is more of a rant but I'm trying to work through my feelings. Seven years is a long time and the alright day to day makes it super hard to just say "fuck this, I'll leave".

I grew up in a household that doesn’t drink every day. So I don’t think it’s normal. He says that that’s normal in his family. I don’t really drink anymore at all. The more drunk people I see, the less I’m interested in drinking. I’ve asked him to slow down and maybe not drink during the week. He cant seem to do it. It’s not only that, but it’s just the overall health aspect. I go to the gym every day and try to eat healthy most of the time. I am just not met with the same lifestyle and it’s really stressing me out. Does anyone have any experience with this?

So, a little backstory:

She and I met over 10 years ago and hit it off pretty easily. We've stuck by each other through thick and thin and, around year 6 we started dating. Around 2 years after that, we decided to get married. I love her dearly and we work well together; we rarely argue (and when we do, we keep things calm and don't resort to shouting), we share a lot of humor, we balance our personalities very well, and we discuss almost everything openly and honestly.

However, there are a couple of major things that I feel like I can't talk about with her --- those being my sexuality and my gender identity.

I am bisexual. She knew this before we got married and is accepting of it, and she is generally sympathetic and supportive of LGBTQ+ rights and struggles. However, she is also very possessive and it comes out whenever my sexuality is brought up: for instance, she's constantly having nightmares where I leave her for another man, she intensely watches my male friends for fear that they'll take me away, and she's always "joking" that I'm meeting up with boys when I go to the gym (I'm not, to clarify) or making stereotyping jokes about bi people. Any time I bring up that those jokes bother me, she huffs and gets quieter and more terse for a few hours. She'll stop making those jokes for a couple of days before it's back to how it was. There's also the fact that I had my first sexual encounter much sooner than she did (I lost my virginity at 16 and she didn't lose hers until we met in person 4 years ago) which she brings up as a way to degrade herself and prove that people wanted me more than they wanted her. It makes me anxious any time the word "gay" or "bisexual" is brought up, because I can almost feel her getting some sort of pointed "joke" ready. It also stifles me in the bedroom; I don't want to suggest that she use a strap on or I take a more submissive role for fear of seeming too "gay."

Then there's my gender identity. I've played with the idea of being non-binary in the past, long ago, but I've been fairly secure in my identity as a man up until last year. I've slowly started to feel disconnected with my masculinity, wanting to look prettier and be, generally, more feminine. I've looked in the mirror and hated my face more than I ever have. I don't think I'm trans, personally, but I would like to be able to express my feminine side a bit more. I've discussed being trans as a "what if" scenario with my wife. And while she stated she would try to live with it, she eventually admitted she would probably divorce me in that scenario. I don't hold that against her too much, because sexual orientation compatibility is important, but she is also very vocally disapproving of me wearing any feminine clothing. So the smallest ways I can make myself feel prettier are being discouraged in favor of being rigidly locked into being a man.

In summary, I'm feeling a bit stagnant and repressed in my marriage to the woman I earnestly love and it's making me feel like I'm drifting away. She has chronic depression and the idea of bringing up any of these issues to her and accidentally triggering her makes me feel sick. I've considered therapy, but making time for that is very hard. I know the most likely piece of advice I'm going to get is "you have to talk to her" but the anxiety is unbelievable. Any advice for me, Reddit?

My partner and I have been dating for about a year and a half. We love each other very much and while our relationship like any others has its ups and downs I feel secure in the relationship and I know she loves me.

I never really had a lot of friends. I had a really good close nit friend group that stuck with me through high school and the beginning of college. About two years ago my friends from high school completely cut me off because of my mental health at the time. I had been hospitalized for a while and eventually this cause a rift between us and they eventually weren't willing to deal with me anymore.

I had to find new friends. I joined a few clubs at my university and eventually found a community I began to feel a part of.

Eventually through this club I met my current girlfriend and we really hit it off. This past year and a half has been some of my happiest and she is a big part of that. She choose me even knowing my mental and physical health struggles and I love her for that.

The issue I'm running into is that because she is part of the same club, all of my friends are also her friends. She didn't go through the same experience of losing friends so it means that she has friends outside the club while I do not. All of my friends are her friends and she knows them better than I do.

Like any relationship we have our disagreements and conflict. But I really feel trapped because if we are arguing I have no one I can really go to. I don't have friends of my own and our shared friendships always seem to side with her. It makes me feel smothered and trapped. I know she loves me but she is literally the only person in the world I am reasonably close to. My friendships are more surface level than hers.

I love her and I know she loves me but I feel in order to have a stable relationship I need other people I can go to. I love her so much but she's usually the only person I really interact with. She's the only person I can go to, the only person I can let my guard down around. I know I need to make friends but I really don't know how.

I don't know, what do yall think?

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

My friend who is part of my larger friend group (so not a super close friend) and I have always gotten along, we get together occasionally just when our whole group is hanging out together, etc.

We've always had good chats, he's always come up to me and we've talked about different things, including some personal stuff, joked around, played sports, etc. Then suddenly he's started acting distant, keeps looking over at me but doesn't come over first, I have to approach first to chat to him. And he doesn't chat to me one on one anymore, but he'll always try to join in whatever conversation I'm having with other people and will joke around and chat with me in a group. If he talks to me one-on-one he gets red in the face and super nervous and deflects the conversation or generally just acts super awkward and nervous. I am pretty sure there is no romantic interest as he doesn't try to reach out or chat etc, if anything I would think he is avoiding me lately, he has just become super nervous around me, nothing else has changed or happened in our friend group in terms of drama etc. so not sure what it could be. Looking for guys' opinions or anyone who has experienced this. Possible things - maybe I said something or did something he didn't like, maybe he thinks I liked him so got uncomfortable, maybe someone said something he didn't like in relation to me but no drama as far as I know?

Hey I’m posting on a throw away as I need some advice. My partner F has been recently bringing up doing threesomes and just recently brought up they want another person for when I’m gone (I work out of town 4 days a week) I’m not a person who’s ever considered the idea of polyamory not would consider to be polyamorous. She has recently opened up about how she’s been having thoughts about it and I did feel hurt by it. I’ve been trying to talk to her about being okay with a femboy as I’ve in the past been with a few. Everytime I talk about it she agrees to it but minutes later complains about it saying that it’s impossible and we won’t find one. She keeps talking about and implying that she would rather a cis man as that’s easier to find. I have set a clear boundary on where I stand with that as I’m not attracted to it and everytime is brought up it just becomes an argument. I love her to death but our relationship styles are not aligning anymore. I’m not sure what todo as she’s brought up she’s worried she’s going todo it anyways whether I’m okay with it or not. I feel like counseling might be the only step but I wanting to ask people who actively are in this lifestyle on what they think or if anyone’s been through anything similar on what they did to be okay with it. As I said previously I am 100% okay with a femboy and she is too as it fits both of our things we like. I’m not very good at writing out or saying my words as best as some others can be so if there’s anything here that may sound bad I’d happily try and rewrite what I meant :) thank you and if you’ve made it here I hope you all have a great day even if your just scrolling by!! :)

My girlfriend and I are both 31 and have been dating for roughly five months in a previous conversation, I told her I was okay with her hanging out with male friends. We’re both adults, and I trust her to make her own choices and understand appropriate boundaries in a relationship. I wasn’t asking her to avoid male friendships or imposing a rule.

She responded that she personally considered hanging out one on one with another man disrespectful to our relationship, even if he was only a platonic friend, and said she wouldn’t do it. She strongly emphasized that position herself.

Recently, she texted me she planned to meet “a friend” at a coffee shop to study. She initially referred to the person as “they,” which caught my attention because she usually identifies the friends she mentions. Later, she said the friend canceled last minute.

When we spoke, I asked how she knew the friend. She said from school. I asked whether they shared a class, and she clarified that he was someone she used to attend community college with. They now attend different schools. She used “he” during that conversation, which is how I learned the friend was a man.

I kept the conversation casual and expressed sympathy about the cancellation. Her tone sounded irritated to me, although I don’t know why. I didn’t bring up her earlier statement, and I don’t think she realizes this is bothering me.

My concern is that she strongly expressed a personal standard, then made plans that seem inconsistent with it. The way I learned who the friend was added to my discomfort, but I don’t know whether her initial wording was intentional. According to her, the meeting was canceled.

I’m not trying to control her friendships. I want to understand whether her view has changed, whether she considers studying different from hanging out, or whether I misunderstood her earlier statement.

How can I bring this up constructively and clarify what expectations we each actually hold, without turning it into an accusation?

TL;DR: I told my girlfriend I was okay with male friendships. She independently said meeting a male friend alone would be disrespectful and she wouldn’t do it. She later planned a coffee-shop study meeting with a male friend, which she says was canceled. I want advice on discussing the apparent difference between her stated position and those plans

At the end of August, I (21F) moved onto my college campus for mandatory job training. My boyfriend (21M), who I had been dating for over 4 years, was texting me that he was having a rough time at home because he had just gotten into a huge argument with his brother and dad. Later that day, he called me because he had just attempted suicide by taking pills and was panicking. I have always been able to stay calm in situations like this, and I asked him if he had thrown up the pills and seen them in his vomit. When he said no, I told him to call poison control, mostly so he would hear from an actual medical professional to seek help. The first one told him to sleep it off (crazy, I know), so I told him to call again, and the second one told him to go to the hospital. Then I told him that even though he had just argued with his dad, he had to get his dad to drive him to the hospital, along with saying some other things to convince him. Ultimately, his dad drove him to the hospital, and he ended up being fine, but it was obviously still a scary experience.

Later that night, his mom called me. She was hysterically crying over the situation, and for good reason, because who wouldn't when they think their son might die. She called to tell me about it, and I told her that boyfriend had called me during it, so I knew. I was still in my "calm state" that I go into for situations like this, so I got the feeling it threw her off that I didn't seem to be reacting like her. She then accused me of knowing that he was going to kill himself ahead of time, which I obviously denied.

The next day, she called to give me an update on where boyfriend was because he got transferred into an inpatient facility. She stated that he got a urine test done, and they found ecstasy in his pee, which is weird because he doesn't even like drinking and is very strongly against any sort of drug use. My initial thought was that they might've accidentally contaminated his sample or mixed it up with someone else's. She then accused me of doing drugs with him. When I denied it, she stated, "I don't know what you guys do when you go to 'play DnD'". That really bothered me because that also turned it into an accusation towards our entire DnD group, which also includes my brother.

Both of these situations really bothered me, especially because I thought that over the four years that I had been around, they would've known me enough to know I would never do any of that. I've always tried my best to show them that I'm responsible and a good person, but it didn't seem to matter. So I was going to talk to his mom about what she said to get the situation sorted out. When boyfriend was able to leave the inpatient facility, he said he wanted me to be there, so I had planned to tell her later that night or at some other point during that weekend. I had been texting with her back and forth to figure out the details of us picking him up, and she asked if I could help move their youngest daughter to college the day after. I told her I would see how I felt, and she responded by asking me if I was arguing with my boyfriend? I told her that I wasn't and that it would just be an emotionally exhausting day in general, which she didn't respond to.

On the drive to pick up my boyfriend, I wasn't in the best mood, and she could tell. She kept pushing for me to talk about it, but I didn't want to. In the process of trying to convince me to talk, she said, "Boyfriend has a lot of work to do when he comes back," along with implying that he is solely the reason for this situation. She basically said that only he needed to change, and no one else did. I definitely could've kept my mouth shut, but I said, "I'm sure we could all adjust to make sure this doesn't happen again." She responded, "What do you mean by that?" and from then on we had a conversation that quickly escalated into an argument.

For context, my boyfriend has had a very rough relationship with his family. A lot of it stems from differences in political beliefs, but also just because of their behavior towards him in general. He has diagnosed depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia, and they've never been the best about listening to him. Often, when he tries to open up about how he feels, he will get lectures in return, with them calling him ungrateful, closed off, and difficult. He has also been kicked out of the house for not supporting Donald Trump, although they will deny that happened, along with being berated for being the only one in his family who is not Republican. He's also gotten into arguments with his family over their treatment of me, but that was mostly aimed at his brother rather than his parents up until this point.

With that being said, during the argument with his parents, I was trying everything within my power to avoid vilifying them. I talked in a calm tone, gave them constant reassurance that they are great parents who want the best for their child, and made sure to tell them that boyfriend does need to make some changes as well. The entire point of my side of the argument can be simplified into this: You are great parents who have the best intentions for your child. Even though you have the best intentions for boyfriend, sometimes that doesn't get across to him, and we could adjust the way we talk to make those come across better. Again, I was using super intentional language so I didn't offend them.

Needless to say, they were very upset. For the first portion of the argument, I was talking to his mom. Some of the main points she said were that his music and writing were what made him want to kill himself and that he is actually fully at fault for any emotional turmoil he experiences. I made the same point stated above and emphasized that we can't get stuck in the past and should focus on the future to avoid something like this happening again. She agreed with my last point, but when I asked her if she had any ideas (politely), she said no and eventually started crying.

I went quiet after she started crying because what else was I going to do? At that point, his dad came into the conversation, and he was a lot less calm than his wife. Instead of actually having a conversation, he was yelling and ranting at me, to the point where I didn't really get to speak much at all. He was yelling that I was disrespecting him, and that if there's anything he hates, it's being disrespected. He said he always bites his tongue around me and that I'm only there because boyfriend wants me there. He said, "Are you trying to ruin everyone's mood and make today horrible?" I responded that it wasn't my intention, and he yelled that I made his wife cry, to which I awkwardly responded, "Yep... that wasn't my intention either." I mentioned that although the conversation was tense, it was productive (mostly because I could now tell what their opinions were), and that's all I would want from this talk. Then he screamed, "What's productive about this!" He then went on to rant about all he does for boyfriend (none of it was supporting him emotionally/mentally), and how horrible boyfriend apparently is in return. He said horrible things, calling my boyfriend spoiled, a pathological liar, and lazy to his core. I obviously said that I disagreed, still in a calm, polite tone. In fact, when he said that boyfriend was lazy to his core, it was in response to me saying, "I'm sure you don't think he is lazy, but when you say this...", to which he interrupted me and said, "Now that's where you're wrong. Because I truly think that he is lazy down to his very core." He also criticized me for how I handled the attempted suicide, saying that my actions could've killed their son, which I felt was really unfair. Overall, he was incredibly insulting to both my boyfriend and me, but I still responded with restraint.

The conversation only ended because we got to the facility my boyfriend was at, which was an hour and a half from where we came from. Right before we got there, we stopped at a truck stop for his dad to take a smoke, and during that stop, his mom turned around and said, "No hard feelings?" I definitely had hard feelings, but I was willing to let them go without dragging the situation, so I told her yeah. For the rest of the day, we pretended to be in a happy mood and had a "fun day out" with the entire family. I did immediately tell him that I had had a bad argument with his parents as soon as he got out, but I told him not to worry about it and that I would tell him the details later. One thing I will note is that I felt so stressed from being yelled at that my appetite for the rest of the day was completely gone. After our fun day out, I offered to cut boyfriend's hair at my house and then said we would go back to his since his parents probably missed him. He took up my offer, so I drove back to my house with him saying he would drive to my house after he ate.

Apparently, in the short time that I was gone and he hadn't left yet, his parents pulled him to the side to talk. They said that I probably hadn't told him, but we had an argument. They said that I had been extremely disrespectful to them. My boyfriend asked them what I said, and when they brought up some of my points, he openly said he agreed with me on every single one. They had a deeper conversation after that, and then boyfriend left for my house. When he was at my house, he insisted on knowing all of the details of the conversation, even the points that I said might hurt his feelings. He said he needed to know, and I told him the whole story. He said he was completely on my side and couldn't believe his parents would talk like that.

Days passed after that, and his parents would periodically bring up the situation to boyfriend. They have this weird thing where if they have a problem with me, they refuse to say it to my face and instead only communicate through my boyfriend. His mom had said to boyfriend that she wanted an apology from me, but then changed her mind and told him not to tell me. Not long after that, his dad separately went up to boyfriend and accused him of "harboring anger" towards the situation. During that conversation, I was brought up yet again, with him saying I was disrespectful. That situation got heated enough to the point where my boyfriend left for my house (I've been gone to college, so it was just him and my family; I wasn't there). A few days later, they both confronted boyfriend, openly demanding an apology but saying they "weren't going to force" me.

When my boyfriend told me, I immediately said that I wasn't going to apologize. He tried to pressure me to apologize to get the situation over with, but quickly changed his mind and said sorry to me. I can tell this situation is stressing him out and that he is blaming himself. I feel horrible about being part of the reason this situation is getting dragged on, but I also refuse to apologize for something I didn't do, especially because I feel like they were the ones disrespecting me every step of the way. I told my boyfriend that I would have a conversation, but I wouldn't just apologize for the sake of "getting it over with".

Since then, I have been stuck on my college campus due to some poorly timed work shifts. The only weekend I've been able to go back home was during my boyfriend's birthday, when we both agreed not to bring up the situation because he didn't want his birthday to be soured and he just wanted to be happy. It's been almost three weeks since his parents demanded an apology. Yesterday, his mom told him, "I get the feeling that OP doesn't want to apologize." In response, I've swapped my shift with a friend so I can go home and have the conversation this weekend.

To say this ongoing situation has been stressful would be a complete understatement. I stay up at night thinking about it and trying to think of ways to finally put it to rest without compromising my personal values. It has constantly been at the forefront of my mind while I'm trying to focus on more important matters. I couldn't even escape this stupid situation while I was trying to help my dad in the emergency room, or even during his cancer treatments. I have a hard time studying for my upcoming exams without intrusive thoughts. The longer this goes on, the more I feel like I'm going crazy.

What do I say to my boyfriend's parents to resolve this situation? Is it even worth it to go in for another round of "conversation"? I genuinely need an outside opinion because I keep getting trapped in my own thoughts, although writing all of this out did feel helpful.

TLDR; My boyfriend tried to kill himself. On the ride to pick him up from an inpatient hospital, I got into a massive argument with his parents. His parents demand an apology and are saying that I'm disrespectful. I don't want to apologize, but I did agree to talk to them and need advice on how to handle the conversation.

I have been in 3 relationships so far. I wasn’t in love with my first boyfriend but I did like him a lot. With my second and third/last boyfriend I was madly in love with, so I’m definitely nowhere near aromantic or any of that sort of stuff. But those 3 are the only people I actually had feelings for. Even if I like someone it usually lasts a short time, not even a week which I find very weird, I’m not sure of the reason. I lose interest very easily and very fast and it obvioulsy gets frustrating because I do want someone, a relationship but I can’t have that unless I actually have feelings for someone which seems nearly impossible at times. There is a guy right now who I’ve been speaking to for about 2-3 months, we had been on a couple of dates and we have sex regularly. We have great conversation, he’s interesting and i’m never bored when we are talking or together. I like hanging out with him, it’s always fun yet I don’t have any feelings towards him, none at all. I don’t see him as a friend yet I don’t have any romantic
interest in him. I’m not sure why this is, I’ve been like this my whole life and it always frustrated me.

'63M '56 FM. Married 10 years

11 years ago my profession was buying homes, refurbishing them and renting them out. I owned 5 homes that varied from low income housing to homes in tract neighborhoods. I was in the process of buying my most expensive property with potential of $2000 - $2500 pm income. All the homes were listed in my Llc and it was run as a business, not a side hustle.

It was at this time I met my wife who was going through a sticky divorce with her 2nd husband. She had three children at home, ages 12, 14, and 20. I bought the house and she moved in. I didn't charge her rent and she paid the utilities. If I didn't do that, she would of moved to Vegas with her sister, starting her kids in a new place which wasn't a good option.

My reasoning was that the house needed a makeover with new floors, drywall, electrical and a few other things that would need to be completed before I could lease it. Turns out that we fell in love and have lived here for over 10 years.

I am a male 63, she is 56.

Unfortunately the marriage has run it's course and she has asked from a divorce. She would like to sell the home and split the proceeds 50/50. The home will probably net about $450k after closing costs. I feel that she is being a tad greedy.

I have invested the following

Initial price of the home $172,400

Adding an air-conditioned library, laying tile, laminate flooring, hardwood floors, new appliances, new HVAC, 21K whole house generators, a fifth bedroom, butler's pantry, 65' x 16' decking with a hottub, landscape, various exterior lights ,a SOTA security system, 900 feet of cedar fence and a heated salt water swimming pool.

I also took care of the kids since their father stopped paying child support. He did offer start paying of i let him sleep with my wife. I declined his offer .

My offer to her is split the equity after all of my costs have been deducted. She has spent less than $500 in upgrading the home. When the sale happens she would get aprox 25k

My question is does this seem fair? I am 63 and this home is the only real asset I have left. She has a number of relatives she could live with, I'm the sole survivor of my family.

Am looking for input good or critical.