u/Adventurous_Jump8897

I (26f) have been with my boyfriend (29m) for about three years now. We live together in the house he bought before I met him. Overall, the expenses are the mortgage, internet, and electric. He pays mortgage and internet, and I pay the electric. We made this decision based on the reasoning that I shouldn’t be paying towards equity in the house since it’s not mine and we’re not married. Electric expenses varies month to month and can be from $200-500 depending on the season. His mortgage is $400 a month and internet is about $115.

For about the past 6 months, I have not been paying electric as he said I should be focusing on paying off my student loans and starting to build up my savings. While at first I didn’t like this arrangement as I felt like a freeloader, it has actually helped my financial situation recently so I understand the benefits. To note, he makes double the salary I do.

Fast forward to now, where we just had an argument about household chores and responsibilities. We have had similar ones in the past based on who does what and how much around the house. What spurred this specific argument was his parents coming to visit for the weekend. I wanted to make sure the house was in an acceptable state for them and talked about how the bathroom and downstairs needed to be cleaned. With the hours at my job this week, I was explaining how I was concerned I couldn’t get everything done by the time they arrive and he offered to clean those areas to help mitigate my stress. A few days later I have to remind him to compete those tasks as his parents come the next day and he says yes. Then comes the day that his parents arrive. I get home at 9:30 pm and they have already been to the house. I see that neither chore has been done.

At this point I am frustrated, but don’t say anything and start cleaning the bathroom. About halfway through I reconsider what I’m doing and decide to tell him how I feel since he has mentioned before that he would prefer me to tell him when I have a problem rather then just stay quiet and distant. I say “I am feeling frustrated that the chores weren’t done before your parents arrived after I asked you multiple times this week to make sure they were done.” His is visibly upset that I said this, sighs and then starts cleaning. 10 minutes in I probe him on why he’s upset that I said this as he asked me to be vocal about things like this. Then he unloaded on me saying that I don’t appreciate him, he feels like he’s taken advantage of, and that he feels like when I get home his relaxation immediately has to end because I always ask for help getting things done around the house. He said if I had just asked him to do it instead of saying that I was frustrated that he would have been perfectly fine doing it then and there. The issue is that I asked multiple times this week! I have a right to be frustrated. I feel like he gets very defensive whenever I have a negative emotion and that he believes I shouldn’t express them. This really invalidates my feelings in my opinion.

I was pretty taken aback by all of this. He continued that since I don’t contribute as much financially, he feels I shouldn’t be asking him all the time to do things around the house. On top of this, he feels that the burdens of housework fall more unevenly on him. I feel the exact opposite. I feel that I am the one doing most of the work or having to continuously initiate cleaning by asking him.

Him bringing up the unequal financial split was exactly what I feared happening when I stopped paying electric. I immediately made it clear that going forward we were splitting finances evenly so that he couldn’t hold this over my head and that each day we should write down what we did around the house to see if it’s really a 50/50 split or if one of us is doing more work. He agreed and said he appreciated me contributing more to the finances of the house.

After this conversation, I am having very mixed feelings and have kind of distanced myself from him when we’re at home together. I feel like if he ever had an issue with the split of finances, he shouldn’t have offered I don’t pay electric. I also was very hurt when he said that he doesn’t look forward to me coming home because his relaxation ends. Ultimately, am I overreacting by pulling away from him? This has changed my perspective of our relationship when it comes to feeling seen by him. I feel like I can’t express any negative emotion to him when it comes to things in our relationship or ask for any help without getting immediate pushback or defense from him. Obviously I know we should have another conversation about this but I feel like if I tell him anything I typed here he will get defensive and not try to understand me. I’m left not know what to say or do.

UPDATE: Thanks for all the helpful replies as this helped me get to the bottom of the issue which is our communication. I took a lot of the advice and prompted the discussion of if we view financials and housework separate or connected. We agreed that they should stay separate and have calculated a percentage rate based on my income that I will pay monthly. We also are working on a list of all housework and how we would like divvy the day to day tasks up. We both are of the same opinion that the house is a shared partnership. He also did apologize for bringing up the financial disparity in that moment. We agreed to be better communicators so that resentment doesn’t build on either end and for us to put more effort into appreciating each other. Attack the problem, not each other! I told him about this post and now we are reading the comments and laughing at the absurdity of some. Thanks Redditors for giving us the push we needed to communicate like adults haha.

And since a lot of you were so curious about the mortgage and electric, we live in a small town on a small island so it was a great deal to begin with but he initially did have his parents help so that’s why it’s so low. Winters are tough where we are and we also have 90 gal and 25 gal aquariums so in the chilly seasons it can get up to $500!

EDIT: Man so many people are commenting about the mortgage and electric so here’s more context that I know. House is a two story, 1 bed 2 bath. I have no idea the square footage. His parents originally bought it in 2021 or 2022 for about $120,000. Great deal but the place needed a lot of work (water damage and such). He bought it from his parents in late 2024 at the price of only the remaining balance owed on the house. Mortgage equaled out to $400 then. Does not include property taxes which equal out to about $215 a month as it’s paid semi-annually (and yes we did include this in the cost breakdown of what rent for me is going to be set at) and I have no idea about insurance, he has never brought that up to me. We also wonder why electric is so high at times especially since we limit baseboard usage and our window AC to what is absolutely essential for our comfort. It fluctuates every month but there is nothing we can do aside from the limitations we already put on ourselves. Doesn’t matter if it’s high because it needs to get paid. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Looking for inspiration - are there any (obscure?) routes or itineraries people have done and enjoyed?

Trips I’ve enjoyed so far (and very happy to do trip reports!)

September 2018: London - Brussels - Prague - Berlin - London
September 2019: London - Barcelona - Madrid - Paris - London
2020-1: Covid…
April 2022: Palermo - Milan - Lake Como - Bernina Express to Zurich - Rhine route to Cologne - Nuremberg - Vienna - Budapest
June 2023: Madrid - Lisbon - Porto - Vigo - Santiago de Compostela - FEVE narrow gauge to Oviedo, Santander, and Bilbao
September 2023: London - Paris - Zurich - Vienna - Nuremberg- Bonn/Phantasialand - Delft - London (via Hoek-Harwich ferry)
June 2024: Belgrade - Uzice - Kolasin - Lake Skadar
June 2025: Bucharest - Cluj-Napoca - Braşov - Bucharest
June 2026: London - Paris - Strasbourg - Stuttgart - Salzburg - Vienna - Bucharest - Rousse - Sofia - Istanbul

Location: England.

Late last year I was at home when I heard a loud crash. A man was dangling from my loft hatch. He'd torn off the loft hatch, made a mess and left scuff marks on my walls. He said that he was doing some roof repairs next door and fallen through as it wasn't marked.

My neighbours were fairly good about it. They dont speak English so they call their son and send him around to deal with it. The hatch was repaired immediately. They said they'd come around later to clean the mess, but I cleaned up the mess myself as i was going out. It wasn't ideal but we were mature and got the issue sorted.

Zoom forward to last week. I come home and my loft hatch is hanging open and theres debris on my landing floor. Theres a wooden board covering the loft hole. Plus an unopened new black bin bag thrown down.

I go round and the workers explain that when they were building a dividing wall they accidentally stepped on the hatch (without falling through). They tried to knock on, I wasn't in, so they threw down a black bin bag so I could clear it up. The son was very apologetic and said to talk to him if there's any issues.

Today. Ive noticed some screws, from my side, have been pushed down from above. But this is past where any dividing line should be. Im gonna borrow a pair of ladders so I can venture up and see whats going on. If they are doing what I think theyre doing. What should my course if action be? Insurers? Solicitors? Talk to them first?

It's important to note that whilst the son is alright to deal with the rest of the family aren't ideal. They're loud at all hours. Let rubbish pile up. The mother has some issues. I also think the extension they've done at the back was dodgy.

Reddit’s algorithm has shown me about 5 million posts of “my dad / grandpa left me this watch, what is it”.

Firstly - half the time, it says on the front, or a reverse Google image search will find it

Secondly - who are all these dead dads with Rolex Datejusts? My dad’s nicest watch was a Seiko 5 (that I got him!)

It’s getting up there with r/AITA for plausibility…

Edit: a hotter take than I imagined! 🔥 my general read is that a lot of it is karma farming or similar - not that people never inherit a nice watch :)

My little family has a tradition of naming our cars. Our last one was a Toyota Yaris, and the first thing my best friend said when he saw it was."It looks like a turtle!" Naturally, we named it Yurtle.

Three years ago we got a Toyota RAV4. Carrying on the tradition, we named it Ravi. It was an obvious play on "RAV," and it was fun and easy for our then 2 year old.

I never gave it a second thought. But today, while picking my daughter up from summer camp, she asked, "Mom, did you bring Ravi?"

Another mom overheard and asked, "Oh, who's Ravi?"

I said, "Our car," but didn't elaborate because I was busy gathering my daughter's things.

She kind of scrunched up her face and said, "Well... that's a choice."

I laughed awkwardly and said something like, "Yeah, we have a weird family tradition of naming our cars."

She replied, "No, I meant calling it Ravi. As a privileged white person, I'd be embarrassed to tell people that."

I was honestly so caught off guard that I just finished packing up and left.

Now it's been rattling around in my head. For context, my husband, daughter, and I are all white. The other mom was white as well. We live in a suburb of a large Canadian city. The area is still majority white, but there are plenty of families from many different cultural backgrounds. I genuinely value living in a diverse community and want to teach my daughter to respect and appreciate people from all cultures.

I completely understand that Ravi is a very common South Asian name. But when we chose it, we were honestly just looking for a cute nickname based on "RAV4." We've been calling the car Ravi for three years, and this is the first time anyone has ever reacted negatively.

If this is genuinely disrespectful, I absolutely want to know and we'll stop using it. I'm just not convinced by one strangers reaction.

I'd especially love to hear from people from cultures where Ravi is a common name (or, even better, from anyone actually named Ravi!)

AITAH?

I love my wife and we’ve been together for 15 years. Something that’s always kind of turned me off though is how much my wife farts and how unbothered she is about it, at times. My wife clearly has some type of digestive issue because most of the time her farts smell really really bad like rotten eggs or sulfur. I think she has a dairy intolerance. Any time I bring up maybe seeing a doctor about it she just laughs and says “let me live.” Honestly it’s not even the farting itself that’s annoying. It’s how cavalier she is about it and how she goes about doing it. We’ll be at the dinner table eating and she’ll let it rip while laughing. I know we should all be comfortable in our own homes but that doesn’t mean we can’t have basic etiquette about certain things. I don’t think anyone wants to have their meal soured because of someone dropping gas next to them. We also have a 7 year old and I personally don’t think thats modeling good behavior for him.

Today she was really gassy and instead of taking it easy from a dietary perspective she just kept pouring gas on the flame (no pun intended). I was getting ready for bed and she came to the room with a yasso ice cream pop in her hand. She goes “my booty is on fire tonight”, takes a lick of her ice cream while letting one rip super loud. I was just repulsed by the whole thing. I would never leave my wife over something like this but man id be lying if i said this wasn’t a turn off.

Update: I’m overwhelmed by how much engagement this got. I did not expect it to blow up like this lol but thank you everyone for the thoughtful responses. I think the general takeaway for me is to establish boundaries with my wife and to communicate to her that I’m not ok with what she’s doing.

One of my favourite bits in the continuity is that for all of his general terribleness, Alan is occasionally permitted to be in the right. Not necessarily to have the last laugh (although this post got me thinking - https://www.reddit.com/r/AlanPartridge/s/ydZZp6GhGa)

A few faves for me -

“The fuel in the turbocharger” on This Time - told to him by a lady mechanic!

Kicking the racist kitchen salesman (who cannae cook!) out of his farewell party

Any time he gets one up on Jennie - especially the John Baskell memorial

A bit of a provocative title, but I’ve been in Paris for a couple of days and it just… isn’t as good as TfL. The ticketing is baffling (a bespoke app, on which you have to buy individual tickets or a day pass) and the metro is rammed because of inefficient seat layout and long gaps.

Similarly Berlin has a fairly baffling ticketing system, and big gaps in service - although at least has cottoned on to longitudinal seating.

Is it just good practice that is found accidentally (like grab handle layouts on tube trains), early investment (like oyster and then contactless), or is it a broader push for passenger experience?

There’s clearly some cultural dimension as other cities have perfectly good off-the-shelf per ticket contactless payments unlike Paris or Berlin, but I’m curious how much it’s deliberate prioritisation by TfL vs how much it’s just happy accidents (or that I’ve lived in London for 15 years whereas I only visit Paris or Berlin every year or two)

Edit/addition: I am super happy to see people engaging with this, thank you all! Never realised my view on fares was such an extreme one 😅 for me - I love the TfL price capping as I tend to travel irregularly, and it’s a very intuitive thing (plus as a nerd I love the cleverness of the Oyster system).

The bit that really gets me is the bay seating on deep tubes here - surely we’ve all learned by now that doesn’t work (however cute it is on the Bakerloo!) and the lack of grab handles.

I also wonder whether a lack of ticket barriers is a driver or a sign of higher trust society. If nobody is leaping the barriers, there’s less obvious sign of fare evasion being normalised?