u/3568anon

for a little context: my dog is 11 years old. I have had her since I was 10 years old and she is my baby. she has always had pretty severe environmental allergies and her vet care has been entirely my responsibility since I was like 17. the parent who got this dog for me never took care of her medical needs properly or helped me with bills pertaining to the vet care and still doesn’t to this day.
anyways it’s just been me and my dog on our own for a long while now and as she ages her issues seem to get worse. she requires me to cook her food (randomly stopped eating and refused any food no matter what I tried which costed me $500 in blood tests) (tests came back normal and nothing was wrong) as well as a monthly allergy shot that costs about $200. if I can’t afford the shot every month, she quickly deteriorates and ends up with a uti from the immune system compromise and constant licking and biting which of course costs more at the vet and is very hard on her aging body.
I have been able to keep up with the shots monthly for years now but recently I have had many unexpected financial challenges and I wasn’t able to afford her shot for about three months.
today we went to the vet to treat the normal allergy issues and check for a uti (surprise surprise she had one) and I expected to spend just under $300 because that’s how much this situation typically costs.
she is up to date on all mandatory vaccines and like I said, had a clean bill of health blood wise just a few months back.
all of that to say, they tried to charge me $800 and shove all of this extra shit down my throat that I never asked for while desperately trying to convince me that I don’t know what is causing these issues in my dog and that it could be A, B, C severe things that they NEED to check for.
they sent me home with a dewormer I never asked for, flea and tick meds I never asked for, and I didn’t even end up getting her allergy meds because I could not afford them alongside everything else. they tried to give her a steroid shot that I had to very sternly refuse due to its risk factors which include potential kidney and liver damage and I simply wasn’t willing to risk that while she has an active UTI. they didn’t give me a clear answer as to why they even wanted to give that to her.
they also insist upon doing another blood test (same exact panel as last time) so they can “rule out a number of things for sure” and tried to claim that they do not have any blood tests on record for her when this is the only vet she has ever seen her entire life outside of emergency vets.
Her monthly vet care + food and supplement costs are more than my rent at this point. I have tried pet insurance but it’s too expensive for me right now and most of them don’t even cover chronic issues such as monthly allergy treatments so it would not even be worth the cost.
I have friends having similar issues with different vets in my city and I really just don’t know what to do at this point. obviously I will continue treating her allergies and UTI’s when/ if she gets them but holy shit. as much as I adore my puppy, I feel like the responsibility emotionally and financially has been completely offloaded to me and when I moved out at 17, she was just out of sight out of mind as far as the rest of my family goes. I work two jobs to barely maintain basic needs for us and the vets are scam artists who pull on your heart strings for their personal pocket money.
it hurts me so deeply to watch my dog suffer because there aren’t enough hours in the day for me to work enough to afford all of the shit these people INSIST is mandatory. I’m so close to taking out a credit card just to be able to make payments for her vet care when necessary.
I know this post is super long already and this may not seem relevant but I recently had a medical emergency of my own that I cannot afford to follow up on/ receive care for outside of my er visit at the time of the emergency because I need to be able to afford meds and food for my dog. I feel like I’m working myself to the bone while myself and my dog suffer because I just don’t make enough to do all of this shit.

I’m in my early 20s, I have worked so so hard for as long as I’ve been able to. saving my money, avoiding debt, buying assets outright in cash. all of this was to try to put myself in a better situation for my future. It could be my naivety speaking when I say this but I just don’t see how this has helped me at all. all of this saving and working has allowed me to buy my car and home outright but they are the bare minimum of what they need to be. Both of them have major issues constantly and I’m broke now even with two jobs and using the same logic I always have about saving a frugality. I’m broke because things constantly need to be fixed and there aren’t enough hours in the day to work enough to stay ahead of it.

I feel like I just want to sell it all and start over in a cheap studio apartment or something. I feel like I did it wrong by rushing to get it all as fast as I could when I could’ve paced myself and had nicer things a little later. I didn’t rush all because I wanted them right here right now, I was homeless before I had these things and my sense of urgency came because of necessity. now it all feels like a huge bunch of burdens and I don’t really know where to go from here.

I have been looking for more side gigs and better paying jobs but I swear people see that you’re in your early 20s and just consider you dumb and incompetent and therefore unfit for better paying positions. I’m too broke to go to school right now so that’s not an option until I can find myself in a better situation.

I’m so so tired and I feel like all of this work has basically been for nothing at this point. I feel like I’m running on a treadmill perpetually going nowhere.

For some context, myself, my boyfriend, and my best friend all lived together for the last year in a home that I own. Everything for the most part was going pretty well except for a few minor things that could have been solved with better communication but were never really an issue anyways. My best friend recently moved out for a plethora of reasons but the main ones being a lack of space (the home is very small) and that my boyfriend and her became really good friends within the first few months but fell out over something super stupid imo involving the lack of space in the house.

The thick air of the falling out never resolved despite my efforts to unbiasedly help and talk with both of them. This conflict caused friction between all of us even though I wasn’t involved in the situation or even home when it happened. I thought her moving out would basically mend the relationship between us all considering the space was really the cause of the issue in the first place.

My boyfriend has just gotten more and more bitter about her since then and they hardly ever speak even when we are all together. My best friend has made numerous efforts to include him and resolve the conflict since then and he pretty much just refuses to let it go.

Now when she invites the both of us places, he acts like she’s doing it out of guilt or pitying him or using him as an accessory in his words. He excludes himself saying that he would participate if he “was actually included in the plans” even though she explicitly invites the both of us. When I inevitably just end up going alone, he is bitter towards me and makes a whole thing of feeling excluded.

I have no idea how to resolve this or if there even is a way to resolve this. I really don’t know what the problem even is. It leaves me feeling super weird about hanging out with her because she always asks why he didn’t come and most of the time I have to make up a bullshit excuse because there really is no good reason. I also feel bad because when I get back home I have to deal with passive aggressive hostility from him for again, no good reason.

Generally the consensus is that it’s a breach of trust and a violation of privacy. Under normal circumstances, do agree with that wholeheartedly. In the same vein, if there are breadcrumbs of suspicions activity or blatant “symptoms” of cheating, is it justified?

If it isn’t considered justified then, how would you come to know the truth? If they are cheating clearly they are lying and hiding things to begin with. What makes you think a hard conversation will bring the truth to light?

Some might argue that the lack of trust in even asking that question is grounds to leave your partner. Often times though, it is extremely difficult to justify leaving a committed relationship when there is no solid proof of a genuine reason to leave.

Any thoughts or advice on this subject?

We have been together for a little over two years now and we had one conversation about the addiction about a year ago.
I kept accidentally finding things and then eventually I went through his phone and found so much right on the surface that I never even got around to reading dms or anything personal.
The build up of smaller things and then of course the extensive blatant evidence I found made me spark the conversation one evening which quickly devolved into a pretty nasty argument and ended with him deleting everything off of his phone in front of me.
I knew that wasn’t going to be the end of it just from the sheer extent of content I found as well as his reaction to being confronted initially.
things got better for a while and of course he promised to work on it and check in with me about his progress which is has occasionally done through the last year.

Here we are a year later and more recently, things have gotten worse than ever between us as far as lack of intimacy and connection goes and I keep accidentally stumbling upon more things on a regular basis. I have not and will not go back through his phone because I really don’t think I could recover again from the things I would find. The breadcrumbs I am accidentally finding are already heartbreaking to me and devastating to my self esteem.

How should I go about confronting this again? Should I brother confronting this again? What do I even say that could be productive considering the last confrontation was so bad?

I can’t stop ruminating about old friends that I no longer have contact with.
most of those friendships ended on bad terms.
I can’t let go of the fact that a lot of them are out there living it up while I remain stuck seemingly where it all ended.
I’m not in a good place mentally or literally, part of this is I guess jealousy? Jealousy that they get to go on living with no consequences for how they treated me and that I am stuck reliving it all constantly.
Jealousy that they are living their best lives while I rot in a constant loop of depression about the past.

the rumination isn’t just about those friendships but a lot about past trauma too that I just can’t get passed mentally for some reason. I can’t live like this every day. I do not know how to move on and change my life following all of this.
I don’t know how to process all I’ve been through and use that to better my current life without getting stuck on a train of rumination.

Someone redirected me here
this is what I previously posted:

Every time I catch him wether that be next to me in bed when he thinks I’m sleeping, walking off into another room and going radio silent for half an hour, walking in on him, accidentally catching a glimpse of his phone, or getting a random router notification about another blocked porn site I feel so incredibly defeated. I can’t help myself from feeling like I have no choice but to leave.

I truly do love him and I’ve offered everything from deep emotional understanding conversations, to independent and couples therapy. Just bringing up the topic pisses him off and immediately puts him on the defensive and we never get anywhere.

I have cried to him so many times now about how this crushes my self esteem and self image. We’re only two years into this relationship and our bedroom is virtually dead because even if I am feeling confident enough to engage, he can’t perform because the PA has either caused ED, or he simply can’t bring himself to find anything about me attractive enough to perform.

It wasn’t always like this, I guess I was new and exciting enough in the beginning for a little while. But honestly I think it’s gotten really really bad. When he isn’t watching porn he is playing games and making excuses or apologizing for “not doing enough” yet making no effort to change in the same breath.

I am the only one between us who currently works and I feel like my only value in this relationship is my financial contribution. every time I catch him I am reminded about just how little me and my efforts in this relationship truly matter to him.

I don’t know what else to do on my end except an ultimatum and everyone knows that doesn’t work for addicts. I feel like I have exhausted every resource I have and I’m still left feeling empty and used and neglected.

Every time I catch him watching porn weather it be next to me in bed when he thinks I’m sleeping, walking into the other room randomly and going silent, me literally walking in on it, accidentally catching a glimpse of his phone while we’re hanging out, getting a random router notification of a porn site being flagged as unsafe, or him being completely unable to perform even after weeks of not being intimate. it crushes me all over again.

I convince myself I can forget about it and that we can move on and have a healthy relationship despite it but it just keeps coming up and I can’t keep pushing it away. My self esteem has never been lower. my self image is completely destroyed. I look nothing like any of the women he looks at and I can’t perform anything like them if I tried. He swears he loves me and then turns down sex to watch porn.

Every time something like this happens it makes me heavily contemplate splitting up because I honestly don’t know how I can mentally recover after so much of this. not to mention the lying and trying to hide it or excuse it when I try to have conversations about it.

I’ve offered therapy and couples counseling but none of that interests him and instead, seemingly the only thing that matters is the porn and when it’s not that, it’s games. I don’t know what else to do or how much more of this I can take mentally.

It feels like my only value in this relationship is my financial contributions as I am the only one currently employed. It feels like I’m just here to take care of the adult responsibilities while he indulges all day in fake women and video games and neglects me in every way that matters.

I am more burnt out than I’ve ever been. I work 6-7 days a week every single week and I can’t stop even for a moment because I’m barely making ends meet as it is. I bought an old house last year that needs so many repairs that I can’t afford right now and my partner has helped absolutely none with financial support. I don’t know what to do anymore. My mental health was bad before any of this even started and it’s just pretty much almost the lowest it’s ever been right now. If I stop, everything crumbles and falls apart, I would become homeless as well as my partner and my pets.

I don’t know what to do except what I am already doing and I just don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this.