u/FvckinWalkinParadox

After 3 years of friendship and 2 years of togetherness, I still feel as if, after separating from my partner (3 months later), I wake up with a heaviness. How can a mother be so cruel, not just to me but to her son? She had the opportunity to be a wife and a mother but refused to allow her own son to have one of his own, trained him and moulded him into being guilty if he put up a boundary [regardless of how much he hated it]. My family would sometimes ask if I would ever go back to him. I love him, but I hate how late he was to rescue us and stand up for us. Last week she reached out, yes, my ex-MIL, she sent a message directly to my phone since I blocked her on social media. I saw the iMessage and didn't open it. It gave me this sick feeling because I knew why she was messaging; she actually didn't expect us to break up, and my husband warned her that ifour relationship was going to end, he would avoid her at all cost. I didn't read the message, then 10 hours later, she deleted it, I just don't want no problem, she has no business contacting me, I have been in no contact for 3 months. I have a theory that he isn't in contact with her and she is now seeing how things are after all her drama and terrible behaviour.

We went from designing our house and planting flower seeds around our house lot TO a permanent separation because of his mom's interjections and his lack of backbone. I remember our final interactions while I was in a work meeting and I took the call and it's like he knew how this would have ended. She gave him any ultimatum and something he said made me view him in a bad way, eliminating all that we went through, he said, "after all the fight I put up for you, you want us to separate?" Like you can't see what she is doing, this is what she wanted and for some reason you think I am the problem. She did this thing where it felt as though she was the side chick and needed him to choose between his wife and his mother. How stupid he has to be to not see this?

I am trying to move on and move forward, but it feels like my trust in people in general has diminished. However, I am therapy and I hope he is too. All love and no hate, but alot of pity.

For added context, there's a list of all the parts somewhere below in this reddit group.

We separated, and somehow he still didn’t get the picture. So what was the last straw for me?

My MIL made a comment about my childhood, something completely falsified and, to me, insanely unforgivable.

Some context: my partner and I grew up a few blocks from each other but didn’t know each other growing up. When I was 8, my family moved out of our house and my parents sold it. The man who bought the house used to host parties in the bottom quarters. I’m not sure whether my parents and his parents were actually friends, but they knew the house after it was sold.

My ex-MIL and I had the biggest, worst fight over the phone. I told her that if she wasn’t pleased with me, she should find another partner for her son and leave me out of it. Anywho, she completely blew up and started rambling the most insane things. She said that she and her husband used to go to parties at my parents’ old house and that there were so many parties that they heard about instances where the daughters, the couple’s daughters, meaning my sisters and I were supposedly being constantly raped. I decided right then that whatever she said after that would be the last thing she ever said to me, so I ended the call.

She proceeded to send me over 30 voice messages saying some of the most heinous things I have ever heard. I eventually responded by telling her that I pitied her, and then I blocked her.

Oh, and she was in the country when all of this happened. That same day, my partner, now ex, called me and told me that I shouldn’t have said anything to her. Not once did he acknowledge how completely inappropriate and disturbing her behavior had been. I told him I would not take back what I said and that she owed me an apology.

They ended up having a fight, and he warned her that he would stay away from her if she ever said anything to me out of the ordinary.

I never told him exactly what she had said to me, because for some reason that's something nobody would expect a 60 year to even be saying. She told him that we had a conversation and then she started crying. That was when he told her not to disrespect me again.

Fast-forward to the day before she left the country. The three of us ended up having a conversation about everything. During that conversation, she admitted that what she had said about my childhood was a lie. She apologized. She even said that if she were in my shoes and someone said something like that to her, she would have "thrown hands" with them. In that moment, my strength waa tested, I wanted to cry, but I held it back.

I just looked at this woman in absolute awe, shame, and pity. And the craziest part? My man was sitting right there, except he apparently wasn't listening to a word that she and I were saying. I found this out days later when I asked him whether he didn't find the whole thing strange. He told me that he couldn't recall her saying any of that and that I should forget everything that happened between me and her for the sake of our engagement.

That was another major moment for me. Because how exactly am I supposed to forget something that fundamentally changed how I see someone, all this? She also told me that she was happy her son had found such an educated woman and admitted that she was jealous.

She even said that I would never separate from him because he was such a catch. The irony is almost unbelievable.

Fast-forward another month. I ended the relationship. They both did not see it coming. I left for good.

I told myself that I would never know peace, not with him and certainly not with her, and eventually I realized that I had to leave. I am now no contact with both of them. I deleted their numbers, and I am done. A month later, he reached out and said that he still doesn't understand why I left (YES, that meant that what she was doing, he was enabling it and that I should go through it and should be grateful I was there).

My family wondered what happened because, from the outside, we were what everyone would call "the perfect couple", we had the education, the status etc, but at what cost? Nobody knew what I had to endure behind closed doors.

And honestly, I don't think they ever will. I stayed. I tried. I communicated. I gave chances. I watched things improve and then fall back into the same patterns. I kept hoping that eventually there would be peace. Even from the last convo with me and her and she promised things would be different, could I trust her and hope that she wouldn't blow up again?

At some point, I had to accept that I couldn't keep sacrificing my peace just to prove that I could make the relationship work. So this is where the MIL Chronicles ends.

Weeks later, I looked back at these situations and I was grateful I came out. She didn't "win." I just finally chose myself.

2 years ago i had this dream and that other thing happened a few seconds after. Still would replay often in my head:

Sun 29th Dec at 12 midnight, I had a dream that my boyfriend (now ex) was upstairs and I was downstairs. I saw from afar that there was someone upstairs walking in the shadows and I called out to my boyfriend to let him know that someone or something was upstairs there with him. He reassured me that there was no one upstairs. After sone time, he walked downstairs with a box and was rambling through it then concluded that indeed someone was upstairs with him.

Then something strange happened. Immediately after that happened in my dream, I heard a knock on my actual door in reality, I jumped out of my sleep because it was so abrupt. When I looked through the window it was my boyfriend. That was weird because he lived miles away and he did not tell me that he was visiting me at noon in the night. I was so anxious and somewhat scared I kept on asking him if he was in trouble or was being followed, that I pulled him inside and had him sit and relax. Then I told him about that dream and that whoever was with him in his car could not be trusted.

Now tell me that ain't some...

Also, on thursday i lost my bank debit card, it was a hectic day and i was confused. Anywho the next day, yesterday, he called me after us not bding in contact for a long time after the split and asked me if by chance i have his debit card, he cant seem to find it. I told him of what happened on thursday, it was weird. We have so many other coincidental stories, we even, when we were together, created a group chat with all of them. That's how wild it is.

Coincidental???

I am a research advisor/ PhD research assistant in the Caribbean region. I have worked with PhD students on research, SPSS, and data analysis for 7 years, particularly in education and business. In 2024, I took on a CEO of a well-established organisation well known in the country. He was eager and excited to start it. I worked closely with him, hoping that he was also 100% invested in his PhD research. However, in the first stage of his research, the part where he actually had to show his commitment, his academic resilience started to decline, or maybe that is how it was always. There would be times when it would seem as though he didn't even understand his own research. I was very much disappointed.

I questioned his lack of understanding and resiliency regarding this. What is going to happen when he has to do his oral defence presentation? There were other instances where he, who has a heightened level of resilience in research and how stressful it can be, would get so irritated when he didn't understand or would just leave the work up to me, it would be a simple task such as: (1) understanding his own research topic; (2) understanding methodologies and even knowing simplified concepts; (3)making simple corrections when he receives them from his thesis supervisor. I need him to understand that this is his own research and that he is responsible for his own academic work.

Any advice or insights?

I've (29F) been dating an expat (45M) who works offshore on a schedule. He spends about 28 days at a time in my country and then leaves for work.

A while ago, he mentioned that if I had a car, I could have picked him up from the airport and it would make getting around much easier when he's here. I recently told him that when he returns, I'd like him to come with me to dealerships to help me choose a car, and he said he's onboard because it would benefit both of us. But he doesnt know that he's the one that I want to purchase it for me/ even make a downpayment on it.

My reasoning is that when he's here, we'd have transportation for airport pickups, dates, errands and trips, and when he's away, I'd still be able to use the car for my own daily life.

Is it reasonable to frame a car as something that benefits both people rather than simply asking for a gift? I'd appreciate honest opinions. Or in other words, I need a new car out of him, for myself in my name... Well we have good chemistry so far, went on multiple dates etc.

Addition: he is actually from the Netherlands