u/Galaxy-far-away01

Been on several dates with a super nice guy. Great energy. We clicked. Laughed. Lots in common. One particularly fun pub crawl. Chemistry. Felt unpretentious. Finally meeting someone after a long time who did feel the need to project a perfectly curated version of themselves.

Let my guard down after a recent bitter break up.

We never really talked politics until last weekend when the marches were happening in London. Was date #5. Prob weird that politics never came up but that’s because we were always doing fun things. Museums, shows etc. And, drinks after - more about general life chats.

When we met, the marches came up as it was all over the news plus we were in central. I made a joke about how ridiculous I found Tommy Robinson and the whole March in general. I was shocked when he said he sympathised with Unite the kingdom and Robinson. I genuinely thought he was having me on … and thought at any moment he’d laugh and break his poker face. He didn’t. He laughed once, awkwardly when i said - “ are you joking” so i genuinely wasn’t sure. We had tickets for a film at prince charles. I felt uncomfortable so confronted him beforehand. I genuinely wanted to know his position.

Everything was so at odds with his personality up to that point. Outgoing and seemingly empathetic.

He started to explain his theories and stats. It dawned on me this guy actually believes this stuff.

I tried to explain my views but he talked over my words. Resulted in a rush of rage - I wanted to leave. Which I did. Honestly, was like my body went into autopilot. He tried to walk after me but I refused to stop. His words felt so personal. I grew up in London and it was as if he was judging my friends. And to be reiterate again., I really really was on autopilot. I just had to go. Hopped on the tube - completely spaced out. I can’t even remember the journey.

He’s sent 3 very long text messages since partially apologising but also reaffirming his position. Some with articles written by ‘experts’

I feel like I owe him an explanation of sorts, even just to reiterate my views more coherently - but part of me just wants to block and move on.

It just sucks on a lot of levels - I was so smitten on Friday. We were exchanging texts, stupid GIFs - even discussing holidays. Sunday was pure gloom. I wondered have I lost the plot l. Was I missing red flags?

His last message was yesterday. He wants an explanation and is angry that I’ve ’ghosted’. I’m not sure if I should give him one but I hate ghosting too. I keep trying to type something and give up. Thought clarity would come with time but I’m still upset. Genuinely could never date a person with his views. Worst part is we don’t live that far from each other. Bethnal Green and Hackney Wick. We like a lot of the same places. Worried I’ll bump into him.

Just have a lot of mixed emotions.

Was in Spain this weekend, overheard a group of Brits waxing lyrical about a UK where re-migration is a reality. That is, the expulsion of people regardless of being born in the UK to their perceived country of heritage. Popularised by the German AfD recently. They did not use the word but what they discussed was exactly that.

They believed Farage would eventually - “deal with them too”.

In a particularly chilling moment, one of them described seeing an immigrant driving an expensive car. I’m not going to repeat what they said as it was horrible - but the jist was ‘they’d eventually just claim these things for themselves. As someone living in Germanyin a building once inhabited by Jews who were sent to the camps - It’s exactly what the Nazis did - they convinced locals that the property of Jews and other enemies of the state belonged to them, and justified it as something that had been stolen from true Germans. Be in houses or valuables.

I know reform’s policy is about illegal immigration - but I do wonder if many reform voters also see re-migration as a natural extension of a UK ICE style policies (I heard reform talking about needing an ICE) that would evolve to encompass more than illegal migration. And considering how powerful this playbook is - always extending who’s demonised - will who ‘who things belong to’ also be questioned?

Perhaps it sounds far fetched, but I see small gold plaques (Stolpersteine) with names of people murdered on them everyday - so it doesn’t feel so extreme. There’s still people alive who lived it. What do you think?

I live in Kreuzberg. They’ve been emptying out my building for years. Despite other tenants notifying authorities about empty apartments, the owners/owner has managed to circumvent the law. Fake tenants etc. I’m 1 of 3 left in the whole hinterhaus that had 4 floors.

I just discovered my hausverwaltung has handed over control of building to another agency. Only via a neighbour who was moving out. I’ve had no comms from them.

I got no notice. But now buyers are visiting the dormant properties around me at a sudden frequency.

An elderly neighbour who’s been there since the 80s let a guy in to take pics. I’m not sure he knew his rights.

My departing neighbour told me he intercepted someone trying to enter my apartment whilst I was overseas.

I’ve set up a camera as a result.

The BMV have proven absolutely useless. My last meeting felt like the advisor was in a rush to leave. She just told me things any quick Google could say. The first time I used them die to a mould issue they cased more issues than help - so after this and the recent apathetic encounter. I’m reticent to lean on their advice.

What would you do in my situation. I know I’ve rights when it comes to eviction - but are there any concrete steps you’d take as of today. Inc what I should say to the new agency that took over. Their silence feels uncomfortable. Esp as it seems like they are an agency that deals with sales of apartments.

I have been in a four-year relationship with my partner. We met at Uni. We come from very different backgrounds. I grew up in a working-class Sikh household in South London, while he comes from a wealthy Dutch /American family. We recently moved to Berlin for his career, where I have felt increasingly sidelined as he thrives in a social circle that shares his specific lifestyle. Start up culture. This includes a female colleague who is always around and fits into his world with a seamlessness I have never been able to match. I’ve tried. I just don’t really have much in common with his new friends. And he’s not really a fans of the ones I made in German class. I work remotely and have a part time cafe job.

I have spent years making myself small to avoid appearing ‘insecure’ about our class and cultural differences, while he uses his natural charm to deflect from any serious emotional heavy lifting. I mention this as it’s come up a few times. He’s like this Adonis character. I know it’s a cliche but it’s true. Everyone fancies him - girls, guys, straight, gay - etc. And they feel of his qualities. His desirability. And he’s always been a massive flirt in return - In a charming way. I felt confident when we met at uni. I knew he was popular - but still, I never really worried. Never felt intimidated even when some tried to make a not to subtle pass. My mantra prior was - what happens happens. Maybe it’s being in germany and feeling like I’ve lost my agency. But somehow I few less attractive. More invisible. A snarky colleague of his, whilst drunk, seemed to insinuate his inner circle were surprised we’re an an item. Honestly tech bros and gals are … characters. When I confronted my partner about it - he said - oh he’s just a fire starter, ignore him.

The situation came to a head last week when I had to return to the UK alone after a family member suffered a heart attack. My partner claimed he was too busy with a work launch to join me. He defo acted as if he should have joined but I got so many mixed messages I just gave up and said - it’s okay. Stay. Work is important. Yet I later found out he spent an evening where he claimed work was ‘insane’ at boat party with his colleagues, including the female coworker. Lots of pics of wine and singing in his friend’s socials. I admit I’ve become jealous. She’s pretty. Shes talented. She’s Dutch. She shares his passion for business. I tried to invite her to things and she always declines. I wanted to get to know her - take away the growing fear. I worry I’m starting to hate her. Her name keeps popping up. Messages at night. Lots of non work joke like messages. Memes etc. They have lots of in jokes. He’s frequently working late.

In March I just wanted to have a simple birthday. Dinner together. He could not make it for the restaurant booking. I said fine - let’s eat in. I’ll order pizza. We can watch a film and chill. He said he’d be home for 10pm but got home at 1am. I kept it cool … but had to ask. Was she working late too - he said yes. And it’s the first time I broke down. We had a massive fight. I asked him outright if he was cheating (I’d had wine, I was angry) and he took it so personally - as If I was mad for suggesting it! He said, it now made things awkward for him and his colleague - as he’d never considered it prior. I tried to explain myself - as best as a drunk person can but just felt gas lit. Cried and went to bed.

That was 2 month ago and it’s been rocky leading up to my aunt’s illness. I tried to bring it up but he said it was stressful and he’s already stressed with work. I feel like he’s trying to blow it up or just let it die - and free himself of responsibility. Or worse, blame me for the demise.

I’m trying to decide how to move forward. I feel like it’s all slipping through my fingers.

Names and identifying details have been altered. I have written this more as a story as I feel it helps with context. Additionally, it was cathartic to write it like this. Maybe it is just easier to say it all to strangers. I know it’s long - forgive me. I wrote it last night whilst in the depths of internal conflict.

The first time I saw Theo properly was in my second year at Oxford, in the JCR. He was holding court on a sofa that wasn’t his. One of my course mates, Femi, had brought him along to a film night. Theo was a Penn student, over for the year on one of those visiting programmes the Ivies do, where they send their golden ones to Oxford to absorb a bit of dreaming-spires gloss before being shipped back to blue-chip firms in Manhattan. Theo was very golden. Tall, blonde, athletic in that American way that suggests rowing and a personal trainer and parents who paid for both. Cheekbones you could open letters with, as a friend once observed.

He was not my type. I want to be clear about that. It was the well-to-do of him. The well turned out quality. The ease. He had the unweathered nature of someone who had never once had to count or face social obstacles. I am a Sikh girl who grew up above an off-licence in Tooting, the daughter of a bus driver and a teaching assistant who saved for a decade so I could have the violin lessons that helped my Oxford application stand out. Theo had a trust fund and a ski tan in February. We were not the same in so many ways. Certainly not our childhoods.

But Theo had a way about him. He listened with his whole face. He remembered things, small things, the name of a poem I had mentioned in passing, the way I took my tea (a complex alchemy), the fact that my mum’s birthday was the week after his. He made you feel briefly like the most interesting person in the room, and the trick of it was that he genuinely meant it in the moment, even if the moment did not always last. He was funny. He could sense exactly when I was about to roll my eyes and would roll his first. When you grow up the way I did, watchful, careful, always reading the room before you speak, somebody who throws their weight around the world that easily is, against your better judgement, magnetic. I was making coffee badly in the corner, trying to stir Nescafé granules with a fork, the granules stubbornly refusing to dissolve. He looked up, caught me, and laughed.

“You need help, or is this a process?”

“It’s a process.”

He came over and watched me struggle for another full minute before handing me a spoon. I was reading PPE. Theo was at Queen’s, doing something at the intersection of computer science and management that he could never explain in under fifteen minutes. He was deeply, almost embarrassingly entrepreneurial. He had two side projects and an opinion on every founder’s podcast. I told him on our second date that he sounded like a LinkedIn post. He told me that was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to him.

He started inviting me to Queen’s. He had a lovely room with an inspiring view and a desk that screamed future Silicon Valley: mechanical keyboard, vertical monitor, a Pomodoro timer, post-its colour-coded by project arranged in a grid he refreshed every Sunday evening. A neat little stack of business books. A framed quote from Paul Graham. He was twenty-one years old. We would eat in hall, where the high table loomed above us like a courtroom, and afterwards he would walk me back along the High. He would insist on putting his coat over my shoulders the moment he felt a draught, even when I was not cold. He liked the gesture of it. He liked us.

He was determined to pull me out of my library-bound orbit. He would rent a car on a whim and we would drive out on weekends to explore. He would pack these elaborate picnics, M&S posh bits mixed with things he had found in speciality delis, and we would sit in damp fields talking about everything and nothing. He dragged me to a karaoke bar in Cowley once, a place I would usually avoid at all costs. I watched him belt out a deeply sincere, perfectly pitched version of a Lana del Rey song, completely unafraid to be silly or look ridiculous. It was disarming. By the spring I was spending more nights at Queen’s than at Brasenose, and his friends had stopped asking when I was leaving and started saving me a seat.

His mother was visiting London that spring. She was over for some board thing and had taken a suite in Marylebone, and Theo brought me along to dinner. She had pearls and a smile that did not move her eyes. She called me “Priya, dear” twice, and the third time, when I gently said it is actually Preet, she laughed and said, “Of course, I am so sorry, I am just terrible with some names.”

I tried, over dinner, to find common ground. Theo had told me the family was part Dutch, generations back, and that his mother was proud of it. I mentioned I had spent the previous summer in Amsterdam, interning for an NGO and living in a houseshare. She brightened, briefly. She talked about how civilised the Netherlands was, how clean, how one feels safe walking at night, before pivoting smoothly into a long observation about how London has just become so dangerous, hasn’t it, all those terrible stabbings, “I do worry about Theo when he visits.”

Theo squeezed my hand under the table. Later he said, “She’s just old-school, she’ll come around.”

She did not, really. But she was polite, in the way that costs nothing.

My family, when they met him, were the opposite. They genuinely loved him. My mum made him chai the way she made it for guests she wanted to impress, with extra cardamom and the good cups. My dad, who is not a man given to performance, drove Theo all the way to Southall on a Saturday to take him to the place he swears does the best seekh kebabs in London, where the queues spill onto the Broadway. He’s announce “this is Preet’s friend from Oxford, he’s American.”

My Bua happened to be visiting from Birmingham that weekend and made a fuss of him, brought him laddu, pinched his cheek, and told me in Punjabi that he was bahut sohna (very handsome), but also bahut patla (very thin), did Americans not feed their boys? Theo, to his credit, ate everything put in front of him. He asked questions. He learned to say Sat Sri Akaal with passable pronunciation. Everyone agreed he was lovely. Such a gentleman. My cousins added him on Instagram. My dad still asks after him every time we speak.

By the end of that summer, his year at Oxford was over. He flew back to Philadelphia for his senior year and we did long-distance for nine months, FaceTime at odd hours, him visiting me twice, me flying out to him once. I told myself if we survived that, we would survive anything. We did survive it. I am less sure now what that proved.

After my finals, I struggled. PPE is a beautiful degree and a useless one if you do not know what you want, and I did not. I applied to think tanks, the Civil Service Fast Stream, and policy roles at NGOs. I got close on a few; I did not get any. I was working part-time at a bookshop in Bloomsbury and freelancing pieces for places that pay in “exposure” while Theo was back in the States, grinding away on his own project. He called me late one evening, his voice humming with that specific American frequency of high-stakes excitement. A friend from Pennsylvania had offered him a partnership in a startup. In Berlin.

The startup had one of those names, a normal English word smashed into another, vaguely brain-related, with a dynamic logo and a tagline about unlocking human potential. The kind of name workshopped in a WeWork over oat lattes. He was so excited I did not have the heart to tell him what I thought. I said yes before he even had to ask me to follow. I could write from anywhere, and I was not writing much anyway. We found a flat in Neukölln with thin windows and a kitchen that smelled faintly of the Turkish bakery downstairs.

The first six months were harder than I let on. Theo had a whole life waiting for him: an office, colleagues, a Slack workspace full of inside jokes. I had a desk by the window and the cat from the flat downstairs who sometimes climbed up to sit with me. I tried freelancing, pitched everywhere, and got a couple of bites. A café job tided me over in the meantime. The pay in Berlin was lower than London, the rejections kept coming, and I started, slowly, to feel like I was disappearing.

So I signed up for a VHS course. ‘Volkshochschule’, the adult education school in Berlin. I went hard at the language. A2, B1, B2 in under a year. I have my Punjabi grandmother to thank for that; she taught me that you do not give up on a language, you sit with it until it submits.

The class was where I met Layla and Olya. Layla is Syrian, an architect from Damascus who has been retraining since arriving in 2016. Olya is from Kyiv, doing translation work and trying not to talk about her brother. We started getting coffee after class, then drinks, then dinners. They were the first real friends I made in that city. They saved me, honestly. Theo never quite warmed to them. He would ask how class was, but when I suggested he come along to Friday drinks, he would find a reason. He had work. He had a deadline. He was tired. I think, looking back, he did not know how to be in a room where he was not the most fluent person, the most at-ease, the obvious centre. With my VHS friends, he was just a tall American who looked, as Olya once put it, like he should driving expensive cars.

He met them once, properly, about eight months in. We went to a wine bar. He brought Anett.

Anett is Dutch. She works at Theo’s startup. She is pretty, confident, and has the kind of doe-eyed look, imagine a young Charlize Theron, that makes local elders smile. She brought treats the first time she came to ours and she spoke to me about my writing for NGOs like she had actually read it. But when I pressed her on a specific piece, it became clear she had only skimmed the surface or perhaps just shoved the text through an LLM to get a brief synopsis. It was a performance of interest, polished and shallow.

That night at the wine bar, Theo and Anett did most of the talking. About their work. Clients only they had met. Olya watched her the whole evening. Not rudely. Just watching. On the way home, Olya linked her arm through mine and said, in her quiet way, “Preet. I do not like how she looks at him. And I do not like how he does not notice.” I laughed it off. I told her she was being Slavic about it. She said, “Yes. I am.”

I tried inviting Anett to a few things - be it the two of us or with my friends. It was my way of breaking the ice, trying to feel less threatened by her presence in our lives. I wanted to get to know her properly, to find a bridge between us. She was cordial, perfectly pleasant, but she was always too busy to join. There was always a sprint, a meeting, or a prior engagement. She remained at a distance that felt entirely intentional.

As the Berlin autumn deepened into a biting October, Theo’s mother visited. I made saag paneer because Theo asked me to, “she’ll love it, she’s adventurous,” and she pushed it around her plate. Anett came over for dessert. His mother lit up the moment she walked in. They spoke for forty minutes about the village in North Holland that Theo’s great-grandparents came from, which Anett, of course, knew. His mother kept touching Anett’s arm. “What a lovely girl. Theo, isn’t she a darling?”

I cleared the plates. Theo did not notice. When she left, his mother hugged Anett longer than she had ever hugged me.

I did not say anything. I did not want to be the insecure one, the one who feared everything was about race or class. I am not dismissing those realities; they are the bedrock of so much for so many, but for me, the goal has always been to just power through life, to refuse to be made to feel less, even if that’s the other person’s intention. Even when the silence cost me emotional strife later on.

Last Tuesday my mum rang. My Bua had had a heart attack. She was stable but they did not know yet how bad. I needed to be in Birmingham.

I told Theo. He “empathised,” he agonised, he made a whole scene about it. He said he would come, of course, but then in the next breath he was talking about the launch on Thursday, the investor demo, how Marcus was already stretched. The hints piled up until they made a wall.

I said, “Honestly, stay. I’ll be fine.”

He looked relieved before he remembered to look sad.

He drove me to the airport and kissed me at departures and told me to call him when I landed.

Four days I was in and out of the hospital in Birmingham. Bua woke up on the second day. She squeezed my hand and asked if I had eaten. My dad cried in the car park, which I had never seen him do before. My mum held it together because that is what she does. The whole Brum side of the family rotated through: aunties, uncles, cousins I had not seen since the last wedding.

“Where’s Theo, beta? He couldn’t come?” “He had work. A big launch.”

“Oh, of course. Such a busy boy. Tell him we missed him.”

It was the “we missed him” that did it. Because they meant it. They had welcomed him into a family that does not welcome easily, and he had not got on a plane. My dad did not say anything about it, which was somehow worse. He just kept making me chai and pretending he was not watching me.

I said it about thirty times in four days: He had work. And every time I said it, I noticed how I was performing the version of my life I wanted them to see. I did not say: I have not had a proper conversation with my partner in three weeks. I did not say: “My closest friends in Berlin are women he has met once.”

On the fourth night, sitting on my parents’ sofa in Tooting at 1 am, I opened Instagram. A mutual from Theo’s startup had posted a story. A boat on the lake. Sunset. Wine glasses. Theo and Anett, her head on his shoulder, laughing.

Tagged: crew Time-stamped that evening.

I have not told him I saw it. He texted me goodnight at 11 pm Berlin time and said he was exhausted from the launch.

I find myself hating Anett, and then hating myself for the petty, sharp edge of it. She is not doing anything wrong; she is simply of his world. She is an extrovert. A natural saleswoman. I have tried to be that, but where it feels like a performance for me, for her, it is just the default setting. At a festival last month, one he had of course invited her to, I remember the barman looking from Theo to Anett and assuming they were the couple. There was that flicker of shock when I handed over the money, that "oh" moment that I have learned to recognise.

People have often been a little surprised I am his girlfriend, not unkindly, but in a way that suggests I am an unexpected variable in his perfect equation. Though one lady, during a trip to Seoul, could not mask her horror. We never spoke about it oddly. I tried to raise it on that occasion and Theo empathised but, like Theo, he lost focus as soon as a work message pinged on his phone.

Theo is a force. People gravitate towards him, men, women, gay, straight, it does not matter. I think of how Joan Baez described a young Steve Jobs whilst they dated. He knows how to charm with a precision that is instructive; he makes you feel chosen until you realise he is choosing everyone. Anett recognises the rhythm of that better than I ever will. There is no “girls’ chat” with her, no moment where the mask slips to acknowledge the awkwardness. She remains perfectly, politely impenetrable. To call her out on it would make me the insecure one, the one who doesn't get the “chill” culture they both inhabit.

I am sitting in the room I grew up in, above the off-licence. I can hear the muffled sound of the street outside, the same buses my dad used to drive, the same low hum of South London that formed me. In Berlin, I am a ghost in a flat that smells of Turkish bread and startup ambition. Here, I am a daughter, a niece, a woman whose absence was felt.

I think I already know. I have been making myself small in a relationship that was supposed to be the one where I did not have to. I have been so busy proving I am not what his mother expects that I forgot to notice I am also not the woman I want to be inside this. Theo did not choose the lake party over me; he just chose the version of his life that did not require any effort. He chose the "unweathered" path.

Maybe nothing has happened with Anett. Maybe it has. I am not sure it changes the central thing: I flew home to a hospital alone, and he went on a boat. I try to avoid Anett’s socials, but Theo is ever-present in them, a smiling background character in someone else's highlight reel. The only photo he has of us is from a holiday years ago. Sun-kissed, tipsy, and in love. I look at it now and I do not recognise the girl. She looks like she is waiting for something that is never going to arrive.

Checked my ImmoScout today and I’ve applied for 512 apartments since last spring! Been invited to about 11 viewings with no luck. Three of those felt like scams. Another we were certain an elderly person had recently passed in. What looked like drops of blood on the floor of another with the oder of rotten food. And we were still rejected 😁😁😁 No issues with credit or income. I’ve tried every conceivable type of cover letter and then some. Guess sadness set in around the 300 mark (I wasn’t counting) but now it’s just joyful acceptance of what happens … happens. Stages of berlin apartment grief. Huuurah 🎉🥳🎉 - I feel there has to be a drinking game to make this process more palatable.