u/Professional_Egg8983

I have lived with my roommate for about a year now. We became good friends but I recently asked her about a series of lies she told me and instead of telling the truth, she doubled down on the lies and told stories that were far-fetched and untrue.

I approached her and asked her about these things and did not label her as a liar but also made it clear I didn’t buy her story. Since this conversation, she’s been extremely passive aggressive towards me.

She also stomps around, smashes dishes together, slams drawers and doors, and vacuums at all hours.

She has also programmed the AC to run between 67-68. She lives downstairs, where it’s about 5 degrees cooler. Before I found out about the lies, I told her it was too cold for me, we agreed on 70, but she continued setting it to 68. I am physically extremely uncomfortable.

We live in a dry climate where it drops to the 50s at night and days are in the 80s. She also has the AC running during peak hours and our utilities have skyrocketed as a result.

I feel like an asshole, but I reprogrammed the thermostat to be 74, which is comfortable for me. We are surrounded by large trees which keep the house cool and if it were up to me, I wouldn’t use it at all. The thermostat is based on the temperature upstairs, so it should stay around 68 downstairs, where her area is.

I was ignoring a lot - the thermostat, the noise, but I’m at my wits end.

The thermostat issue, in addition to her lies, petty and negative behavior, and disregard for the planet / money, I don’t think we are compatible as friends. We are on a lease together and I am trying to make it work as roommates but I don’t feel comfortable in my own house anymore. I lived there first, know the neighbors, have a garden, and own most of the furniture. I am tempted to contact the landlord but I don’t want to go there if I don’t have to.

I have an indoor/outdoor cat and live with another female. I recently purchased two outdoor ring cameras (one for the front and one for the back) after I asked her if it was OK.

I purchased them for personal safety and to keep an eye on my cat and watch for any outdoor predators. The cameras are strictly outdoors and I do not believe in having indoor cameras. She also has access to the app for both cameras.

The back camera has been sitting on a shelf and the first few days it was there, I noticed it had been getting turned around towards the wall. I approached my roommate and asked her if it was OK if I had the camera there and offered to return it since it had been getting turned around, and she said it was fine and that she had accidentally knocked it over. But she seemed annoyed.

I figured since she said it was ok and since I asked her about it, it would stop happening. But she has done this every single day. I turn it back around at night and the next morning, I find that the camera was then turned to the wall all night. There is no point in even having one.

I have always tried to be accommodating and understanding and open and I genuinely don’t understand why she would continue to lie, even after I have given her opportunities to be honest.

I actually have a huge problem with the lying and with her not being straightforward. I would have gladly returned the camera and saved my money if she had said “no.”

I am now outside of the return window so I would like to properly mount it so that she can no longer mess with it. I also don’t want to reward her for lying and being dishonest by taking the camera down. Would that make me an asshole?

EDIT: Before anyone says anything about the cat - yes I know it’s bad to have an outdoor cat. I am in the process of adopting her and need to wait until she has been vaccinated and tested for disease before I let her inside around my roommates cats.

Lipomas run in my family. My uncle’s arms are covered with them and it horrifies me, and my mom has them on her thighs. It’s clearly genetic and I’m scared of getting them. Are there any preventative measures I can take to avoid getting them?

My uncle has a pretty poor diet - he isn’t fat per se but eats mostly simple carbs and sugar, and I wonder if that could be a contributing factor?

My roommate keeps our AC at 69 degrees and it is freezing. I turn it up to 75 or turn it off on less hot days and open the windows because our house is under heavy shade.

I don’t even want to be inside because its too cold. Keeping the air conditioning set to 69 in the summer is bad for the planet, expensive, and I believe sends your body into a state of shock when you step outside into weather that is 25 degrees warmer and it makes the heat so much more intolerable than if you let your body acclimate to it.

Can I talk to her about this? Or just freeze?

I have my “dry” herbs together (lavender, thyme, oregano, and rosemary) but my oregano and thyme kept frying (I planted 2-3 rounds of each). They’re in a place where they get full-day intense sun in Colorado. my creeping thyme was also in a similar spot and fried.

I went to get my final round of oregano and thyme before giving up and explained my issue to the folks at the nursery who told mw that thyme and oregano actually benefit from a few hours of afternoon shade..but lavender and rosemary are fine in intense sun… who knew?!

I work in communications at a university with a shared governance model. In my college, there seems to be no real hierarchy of how things work or who reports to who on what.

We have a video team who produces video content for the college. But they are their own entity and they do not report to my supervisor, the director of communications, which makes everything confusing and harder and inefficient because our team never knows what they are working on and vice-versa.

I have weekly meetings with their team now which helps but honestly - things still come up that I was not aware of. Also - much of their work has to do with things unrelated to the college. They are supervised by the Dean’s assistant. I am not sure what our dean’s vision is for their team and they have not wanted to communicate a vision, either.

So various departments and organizations within the college will request their work on video projects, without our insight or input in strategy. Then, they give the project to us and we oftentimes have to figure out what to do with it. Many times, after reviewing the project, it will need edits and revisions to adhere to the College’s strategic mission and goals.

Which should be fine but the director of the program gets very defensive of his work, no matter how nicely and complementary I try to be. He makes beautiful content but does not check with us, the communications team, on what the messaging is, and the system isn’t set up to do that.

He is rude to my boss and she has given up working with him. I have probably the best relationship with him but when I give him feedback, he argues with me and gets defensive and I am so tired of dealing with this.

There are several other men in the college who are rude and defensive to my boss, refuse to communicate, and are allowed to get away with it. Another example is someone who has thrown requests for full ad campaigns at us with minimal notice. Their refusal to communicate eventually becomes my job because our job is all communications coming from the college.

I really like the place I work and the benefits it provides me but I am so sick of having to tiptoe and overthink every interaction and still have to deal with men getting defensive instead of simply cooperating for the good of the college. It makes me frustrated and makes it hard to effectively do my job or be organized when I have to derail all of my plans to put out fires.

What can I do here?

I’ve planted everything in my beds and used leaf litter and woodchips to mulch everything. However, about a week ago, I noticed my plants were being mowed down by roly polys - I’ve heard they’re a big issue right now.

I put out beer traps, sprinkled diatomaceous earth on the soil and removed most of the mulch and my plants seem to be recovering. they left my tomatoes alone but my beans, chamomile, marigolds, and strawflowers were pretty severely damaged.

I know having no mulch is also bad. is there a time when it will be safe to replace the mulch ?

My roommate and I have been living together for about a year. We’ve become really good friends but I’ve noticed she seems to have a problem being honest about things for no reason.

For example - she started smoking a few months ago (and has since quit). She would smoke in the backyard. It’s technically against our lease but since it was far from the house, I didn’t care as long as she cleaned up.

On multiple occasions, I found cigarette butts scattered around the yard. I provided her with an ashtray filled with sand and told her I did not care if she smoked, but to please put the butts in the ashtray. But I kept finding them in the yard so I told her that it is against our lease and I really needed her to use the ashtray, and she gave a thumbs up to the message.

I recently bought some security cameras for our house since we live alone after discussing it with her. I also like to use them to watch for wildlife. I’m having some issues mounting the cameras so I have one set up behind some plants on a stand outside. The camera keeps getting turned around so tonight I asked her about it and she said she knocked into the stand and it fell over, but that doesn’t explain the other times it’s been knocked over. And I can see it being grabbed in the video…

I asked her tonight if she would like me to return them if they made her feel uncomfortable, and she said it doesn't matter to her and she’s fine with them. I emphasized that they were expensive so please let me know so I can return them within the window, which I am happy to do. The solution is to obviously properly mount them but I don’t understand why she isn’t being honest.

But I don’t understand why she lies about small things like this, where there is no reason to lie. I give her “ways out,” like ashtrays and offering to return the cameras. I was in the house first and I have worked hard on the garden and really don’t want to move, plus our lease just renewed.

I really like her as a roommate but I just cannot understand why instead of simply putting the butt into an ashtray, she chooses to put them on the ground. Or why instead of being honest about the cameras, she says they are fine and makes up excuses.

I have a firepit lined with rocks and a steel barrier around the rocks. I have bindweed growing in the firepit. Can I just start a fire over the weeds to kill them?

We have been dating for 2-3 months and things moved pretty fast. About 6 weeks ago, he met my friends for dinner. My friends later told me that they felt he was looking at their chests uncomfortably. 

I thought maybe it was a misunderstanding because I couldn’t believe he would do something like that and I wanted to give it time and have him meet everyone again. But as time has gone on, my roommate has grown to hate him and I can’t shake what my friends told me. My roommate dislikes him because he is a regular at her job and acts full of himself and recently told me other women have felt the same way about him checking them out. 

I took a few days to process all of this and was distant from him via text. He asked what was going on and I called him and told him my friends felt he had been checking them out, and then asked him what could have happened for them to feel this way. I told him my friends are really important to me and it’s important they feel comfortable and get along with him. 

What ensued has been so much drama. We have had multiple long, drawn-out conversations about this over the last week and it has been exhausting and stressful. He is upset with me that I waited so long to tell him because it could have been squashed immediately before it snowballed. I told him I didn’t because I was trying to give it time and let my friends have a second impression (which they agreed to) and then when I realized it wasn’t going away, I needed to process how to ask him about this. 

I expected understanding and an apology but he became extremely defensive, said he was looking at our outfits bc we were dressed up and he has trouble with eye contact. He then said my friends ruined this for us and it was rude and pretentious for them to assume something like that. I told him an apology for the misunderstanding, even if it wasn’t intentional, would go a long way. 

He told me that my friends owe HIM an apology for making an assumption and that he now feels uncomfortable being around them. He insinuated that I am insecure and then told me he wants a partner who admires his “hot friends.” He told me that this is stupid and he is going through “real shit” because his friend OD’d last week. Which is sad and I talked to him about grief. 

For context, my friends were there for me when my dad randomly died last year so they are closer to family to me and have been  there for me through real shit too. 

At first, I fell for his words and apologized and said I wanted to work this out. I thought grief was clouding his judgement. 

As I’ve gathered this information, I can’t see this working. Even if it was a misunderstanding, he has blown this thing into a huge stressful ordeal that could have been resolved with a simple “i’m so sorry for the misunderstanding, how can I fix this?” but the more he says, the worst it gets. I don’t think I could ever bring up a bigger conflict without fearing his reaction now. And he has shown me he doesn’t care about my friends. I really cannot believe he thinks my friends owe him an apology. 

We are meant to go on a walk later but I really don’t want to after coming to this realization. I want to be honest but I also fear what hurtful things he will say and I feel guilty doing this while he is grieving. He is also newly sober and I worry about putting that at risk. 

I feel bad for going back and forth and being hot and cold. But his reaction has really concerned me. How do I end things with him in a way that’s honest yet kind? 

Tl;dr: guy I recently started dating made my friends uncomfortable, and his reaction has been defensive and he has taken 0 accountability. I realized I need to end things - how do I do that in a way that is kind but honest? 

I live in a century home and the walls are plaster and lathe. I would like to hang some picture frames - the heaviest is probably 15-20 lbs. Do I absolutely need metal wall anchors? It feels like overkill but obviously even the best stud finder doesn’t work.

I am renting the house and I am allowed to hang things but trying to do as little damage as possible. Thank you!

I’ve been seeing a man for the last 2 months who I am falling in love with. He is a business owner and chef - we met because he is a regular at my roommates job.

He has been great to me so far - he is understanding, patient, excited to see me and make plans, we have similar interests and values, we laugh together, and are both looking for the same things. I really enjoy spending time with him - he makes me feel safe.

However since we started dating, my roommate and my friends didn’t like him because he hasn’t made an effort to talk to them, and one of my friends told me she felt like he was looking at her breasts. At the time, I chalked it up to a misunderstanding. But it’s also made things awkward with my roommate.

This weekend, I came across a Reddit thread about worst restaurants to work at in town, and I was shocked to see someone commented his and it had a decent amount of upvotes. I DM’d the OP who said he was antisemitic, a narcissist, and overall a horrible person. Another person wrote a comment that he and his ex wife would either always be screaming or making out with each other at his restaurant. Apparently he used to also put his hands up her skirt in front of everyone.

My roommate also confided in me, and made me promise not to tell him, that he has a reputation at her job for staring at women’s boobs, being a creep and a weirdo, full of himself, and a lot of other things. And last week, as we were walking down the street, I swore I saw him checking out another woman but I thought “surely not…”

Im shocked and disappointed. We just became boyfriend and girlfriend and I genuinely like him a lot and was excited for the future, the summer, and spending time with him. But it seems like the universe is waving a giant red flag and I don’t know where to go from here.

Including the Reddit comments, there are now a total of 11 people who I’ve talked to who only have negative things to say about him.

If it were just one or two people, I would put less weight on this but at this point, so many people have said similar things, I can’t look away. But I can’t say the most damning parts that my roommate told me because I promised I wouldn’t.

I am old enough to know that even if he treats me like a queen now, that will change if this is how he treats others. Its important to me that my friends are at least ok with him, but they’re not. And now I learned he has a negative reputation from others.

I guess I need to end things, which really bums me out because I really really like him and feel connected to him. I don’t really want to end things but I know how this type of thing goes.

How do I navigate this? How do I end things without throwing my roommate under the bus? Is there any way I can salvage this?

Tl;dr: turns out the guy i’ve been dating has a reputation of being a creep. I really like him but I know I can’t change him and I cant look past this. How do I navigate this?

Hi all - I have a family member who currently does not have health insurance because he is a caregiver for my grandmother and does not have time to work more than a part time casual job. They live in Dekalb. His premium used to be manageable but apparently went up to 600 or more this term and he couldn’t afford it.

My grandfather received a pension from the state and my grandmother now receives it. I think she also has medicare but i’m not sure of the specifics. I do not live in Georgia, I live in a blue state that has programs to help people in this type of situation.

Are there any resources or programs that could help him? Or programs I could connect him with to have someone walk him through his options?

Thanks!

Hello - I have been seeing someone for about a month. When we first started seeing each other, I was certain I wanted to stay in our city and was happy with my life.

I went on a trip to South America, had an amazing time, came home, decided I wanted to try moving there because I realized I wasn’t really happy here. I tried to end things with him and he talked through my feelings with me and understood me in a way I’ve never felt seen. And we ended up sleeping together and have had a very intense month.

I had a profoundly traumatic year last year, with a lot of loss and heartbreak. Everything I thought was certain imploded and I’ve had a tough time equalizing. I don’t feel like I can plan for the future, because I have just been taking life one day at a time trying to survive.

In the last year, I haven’t been able to truly connect or feel anything with anyone I dated and usually dumped them. He’s different. I can see us having a future together and we share a lot of similar values - travel, family, community, and sobriety. He feels safe and secure and solid and I am falling in love with him.

He has made it clear that he is staying here. He is a restaurant owner and his family is here.

We are at a point in our relationship where we need to decide where it’s going. I feel caught between two places - on one hand, I am curious about moving somewhere warmer and closer to the ocean. On the other hand, my body’s clock is ticking and I want to get married and have kids. I worry i’ll keep encountering the same unhappy problems wherever I go, as I always have (i’ve lived in many many places). I really don’t want to walk away from what we have.

How do I figure this out?

Tl;dr: Met a man who makes me feel safe, secure, with shared values, who I can see a future with. We need to figure out where it’s going and I realized I have no idea what I want in life. How do I figure this out?