u/Several_Sympathy_977

Alright y'all, I need you to gather around and help me process a profound loss.

My girlfriend and I have been together for 3 years. She is the love of my life, my soulmate, and I am 100% planning on marrying this woman. I don’t fuck with cheating, monogamy is my jam, and she is stuck with me.

There’s just one tiny, tragic catch: My cat is officially retired from active service.

Don't get me wrong, I love eating her out. I could do it all day. But she absolutely hates giving head. After much discussion, our ultimate compromise has come down to this: she will only do it if we use dental dams.

Now, bless the inventors of safe sex, but I absolutely hate the feeling of dental dams. It feels like trying to experience a water park through a tarp. The disconnect is real, and it just kills the vibe for me. So, by the laws of mutual consent and compromise, the math adds up to: No more getting my pussy ate. Period.

I’m struggling with the grief, guys. I’m looking back at my single days like they were the Golden Age of Oral. I used to get eaten out on the regular! My twenties were a buffet! And now? The buffet is closed, the lights are off, and the building has been demolished.

Please give me some cheerful, hilarious, or absurd advice on how to cope with this for the next 50 years. Do I hold a literal funeral for my clit? Do I need to buy a specific vibe and name it after my glory days? How do I accept that the only thing getting tongue-kissed in this house from now on is our foreheads?

Light up the comments, I need some laughs.

Hey everyone,

I’ve lived in Oak Park for about 3 years now, and I’m trying to get a feel for the running community out here. I’m deeply used to the Chicago city run crew scene—crews like Peace Runners 773, Tortugas, Venados, 3run2, On the 9, 7 on Sunday’s, Run Too Hard, and Demon Hours. If you’ve run with any of them, you know the vibe: free to show up, deeply community-focused, high energy, and zero pretension. It’s about building community first, running second.

I recently tried out the Oak Park Runners Club to see what the local scene was like, and to be honest, the vibe felt totally off-putting compared to what I’m used to. Having to pay a $30 membership fee from the getco just to test out a single run felt incredibly restrictive. When I showed up, I got put on blast by the leadership during announcements about whether I had paid the fee yet, rather than getting a simple "welcome." So, I never went back and lost out on $30 🙃

There was no community cheering at the end for the back of packers, and the whole experience felt a bit cliquey and ego-driven. I can read people very well, and I could tell that the certain folks who did talk to me only felt obligated to do so. Pretty shitty, right?!

I did notice the run group skews a lot older (mostly 40+), which is completely fine, but it was just a stark difference from the younger city crews where I usually find peers to relate to. To be clear, I'm not trying to start a war on inclusivity or make a massive deal out of the lack of age or racial diversity with OPRC—it's just a noticeable cultural shift from the city environment.

It made me wonder: Is there an appetite in Oak Park for a new, free, community-first run crew? Or is the culture here fiercely loyal to the established legacy club?

If a new, free run crew focused on accessibility with similar energy and authenticity like the city crews, would people actually show up? Or would it be seen as "drawing a line in the sand" with the existing OPRC club because they have a paid membership base?

Would love to hear from any local runners, especially if you've felt a similar gap in the suburban scene! Also open to hear if any runners have a positive experiences from the OPRC.

Hey everyone! I’m a 30-year-old woman raised non-denominational Christian here in Illinois. As I’ve stepped deeper into adulthood, I’ve found myself entering a profound season of deconstruction.

To be entirely transparent, part of this journey stems from the fact that I am a gay woman. Navigating my own identity and my full acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community has naturally forced a reckoning with the environment I grew up in. But I want to be very clear about the distinction I am making: I am not walking away from Christ. I am deconstructing my relationship with American-Christian culture.

The older I get, the more I realize how much of the modern American church landscape feels fundamentally disconnected from the actual teachings, humility, and character of Jesus.

Here is what I am actively unpacking and stepping away from:

• The Rise of Christian Nationalism: I am deeply exhausted by Christians enforcing their faith as political laws and mandates for an entire nation. Not every American is Christian, and the separation of church and state needs to be vastly wider. When faith is weaponized into political control, it starts to mirror the same extremist religious overreach we criticize globally. Just as there are peaceful, sincere Muslims who hate seeing their faith overrun by extremists, I feel that same grief watching Christianity be distorted into a tool for political dominance.
• The Fractured, Man-Made Divisions: I am tired of the endless maze of man-made denominations. It feels incredibly counterintuitive that so many institutions claim the same book but create entirely different, rigid rules to exclude people.
• Rejecting Performative Righteousness: I am stepping away from the pressure to perform a specific type of institutional righteousness. I have no desire to participate in a faith that looks like a loud subculture designed to protect its own political comfort.

What I am moving toward is a quiet, ever-growing, personal relationship with Christ on my own.

My goal now is simply to be as Christ-like as I can in my daily life. I want to make disciples in a subtle, genuine way—not through arguments or political lobbying, but through action. For me, that means focusing on actual, tangible impact: giving to charities, volunteering, and sponsoring families and children in need, all without being performative about it.

I want a world where people of all religions—and no religion—are free to live and worship without bigotry.

This isn't an abandonment of my faith; it's a protection of it. I am stripping away the cultural noise, the institutional flaws, and the political entanglements to find out what authentic, grounded love looks like in the real world today.

For those of you who have deconstructed the nationalistic, political side of American Christianity while keeping your personal faith intact—how did you find your community on the other side? How do you protect your peace while continuing to give and serve outside of the traditional church structure?