u/AshWasHere_859

So my manager kind of blew up at me today over requesting time off for next week. I’ll admit, I probably submitted it a little late, but honestly I didn’t even expect it to get approved in the first place. 

What’s confusing me is that tomorrow is literally my last scheduled shift before I leave, and the schedule for next week has already been posted with me completely off it. He’s also the ONLY person who makes the schedule. Yet today, right before I left, he suddenly asked if I was going away next week.

I told him yes, because my mom is going to Tennessee and I’ll be over an hour away staying with my grandmother from the 16th–25th. Then he immediately started going on about how this is supposed to be a “black out week,” how everyone always requests this specific week off for vacations, and how next year nobody will be allowed to request it off no matter the reason.

The thing is… nobody ever told me this was a blackout week. It’s not posted anywhere, nobody communicated it to me, and my request has literally been sitting in the system since May 1st without ever being approved or denied. So how exactly was I supposed to know this was some forbidden vacation week?

What also irritates me is that I’ve worked there for almost two years, rarely call out, and constantly stay later or fill in when other people can’t work. My coworkers literally joke that I’m the “superhero” or “number one cashier” because I’m always covering shifts or helping out when the store is short staffed.

So hearing this lecture from someone who has been in retail for over 40 years, while somehow only noticing my time off the day before my last shift, feels ridiculous. Especially when he’s the one making the schedule every single week.

I understand being annoyed about late requests. That part is fair. But this whole situation feels incredibly poorly handled.

I (20F) am struggling with whether or not I should break up with my boyfriend (18M), and I need outside perspectives because I feel like I’m stuck looping the same thoughts in my head.

We’ve been together about 2–3 months (May 12). In the beginning, things moved fast emotionally. He was very affectionate, flirty, used pet names constantly, asked for selfies often (“I NEED my gallery full of you”), talked about future plans, invited me out to meet his friends, and overall made me very hopeful about the relationship.

The issue is that the relationship itself feels very inconsistent and one-sided. We barely see each other — maybe once a month — and most of our communication is through texting. I feel like I’m the one maintaining things. I’m usually the one initiating conversations, sending good morning/goodnight texts, checking in, asking questions, and trying to keep conversations alive. If I stop reaching out, we can go days without speaking. At one point I waited almost four days before he texted me first. Later, he told me I haven’t been putting in enough effort because I “leave him on read.”

I’ve already brought this up directly. I told him I felt disconnected and more like a convenience than a partner. He agreed we both had things to work on, and for a short time there was improvement, but it slowly went back to the same pattern.

Part of what makes this difficult is that I know he genuinely is busy and stressed. He works a lot, worries about money constantly, had medical issues recently, just got a third job, and overall seems exhausted most of the time. On our second date, he even told me his last relationship ended partly because he was working 50-hour weeks and never really had time for his ex. That stood out to me because I feel like I’m watching the same pattern repeat itself.

At a certain point, I feel like if someone’s life is so overloaded that they barely have time or emotional energy for a relationship, they probably shouldn’t actively be pursuing one. I understand being busy, but I don’t think wanting consistency, communication, and quality time is asking for too much.

There have also been multiple moments where I felt like I wasn’t being prioritized at all. For example, we had plans to see Iron Lung together three separate times because he said he really wanted to see it, but every time it ended up falling through. I eventually saw it with my mom on my birthday because it was literally my last chance before it left theaters. If I had kept waiting for him, I would’ve missed seeing it entirely.

At one point, he also told me he needs “90% of his time” to himself after talking about how one of his friends and his girlfriend were always fighting because they spent nearly every day together. I understand needing space and independence, but hearing that honestly made me question whether he even has the emotional availability for a relationship right now.

Another thing that makes me nervous is that his moods can shift pretty quickly. Sometimes he makes intense jokes about self-harm or says dramatic things when upset, even if he later says he was joking. For example, when I tried talking to him seriously about communication and said something like, “I’m not asking you to spill your guts,” he immediately responded with a graphic joke about using a Bowie knife on himself. He later brushed it off as humor, but moments like that make serious conversations feel emotionally exhausting and hard to navigate.

He also has a lot of revealing (topless) photos of me saved, which adds another layer of anxiety when thinking about ending things. I don’t necessarily think he’d do anything malicious, but I can’t fully shake the fear.

Another thing that’s been bothering me is that there are times where I’ll be left on delivered for hours (or even overnight), but I can still see him actively posting or using Instagram. For example, yesterday he told me he was exhausted and barely taking care of himself. I responded supportively around 3:20 PM, and now it’s the next morning. Just found out he read it yesterday, but he’s been active on Instagram and I still haven’t heard from him. I know social media activity doesn’t automatically mean someone owes me immediate replies, but after dealing with this pattern repeatedly, it starts feeling hard not to take personally.

At this point, I don’t feel emotionally secure in the relationship. I spend a lot of time analyzing gaps in communication, wondering whether I’m asking for too much, debating whether I should pull back, and questioning whether he actually cares or misses me. I feel more anxious than stable most of the time.

I don’t even know if I still care about him, which is why this is so difficult. But I genuinely can’t tell if this relationship could realistically improve with better communication and time, or if I’m trying to force something with someone whose level of effort and emotional consistency just doesn’t match what I need.