u/TheSwedishEagle

I got my Rose Bowl tickets.

It seems more tickets have sold than I thought would be. I mean, it's a huge venue.

I am sort of excited to see Ice Cube. He's been getting good reviews on his tour.

Who else gonna be there with me?

My auto insurance (Toggle) was $2800 per year for a 2018 truck. I bought a new car (Subaru) and kept the truck (full coverage) and they raised it to $5600 per year which... huh? Most of the increase wasn't the added comprehensive/collision but liability. Someone told me they reprice when you change the policy?

Shortly after I had an at-fault accident. First one in 24 years! I was trying to avoid a pedestrian and backed into an old truck in a parking lot when leaving my parking space and cracked his taillight. No other damage. His old truck was a beater with scratches everywhere which he acknowledged. He wasn't even there but I waited to give him my insurance like an idiot.

Now my insurance wants to raise my rates to $7600 per year!

Dude. Cracking some Tacoma's tail light should not be costing me $2000 per year on top of the 2x my policy went up.

Is there a way to dispute that or is it time for new insurance after 31 years with them (starting back with 20th Century)?

I have two pairs of Costa Rincons that I like. Unfortunately, I now need a prescription. Can my current frames be used for prescription lenses? Does it really even save much money to do so?

My girlfriend told me that no less than 5 men have propositioned her for sex over the last 6 months. She turned them all down. I am not surprised men would be interested but is this something some guys do? I have never in my life propositioned a woman for sex. I have asked them out on a date, sure, but not invited them over to have sex. For guys that do this, what exactly do you say? Does it ever actually work? I am sort of horrified by my gender. My girlfriend says women deal with this constantly.

I have been reflecting a lot lately about what went wrong. I noticed there were some red flags early in the relationship that I ignored or overlooked because I recognized that no one is perfect. I gave the benefit of the doubt or I let things go to keep the peace. However, in retrospect they were a lot bigger issues than I thought they were at the time. Issues relating to how we perceive marriage and sex and even love. We used the same words but they didn't mean the same things.

Sometimes I wonder how come I never noticed important things about my partner's past and personality and then I realize that I did notice but didn't weight them properly. This led to me developing an image of them and the relationship that was not based on fact but on my own projection of what I wanted them to be.

It's very sobering to look back and see that they haven't changed. They were this person all along and I refused to accept that. I consider myself a good judge of character. It makes me feel like a failure because the real her was hiding in plain sight this entire time. I wasted my life with a person that never really existed.

I was right on the boundary of the burn area near Altadena Drive and New York Drive but I did not lose my house. There was some ash and smoke damage but nothing bad enough to make me want to file an insurance claim, although I did file a claim with FEMA which was denied.

However, I was without gas or power for weeks and the National Guard prevented me from coming and going to my property. I did not work, but my employer compensated me for my time anyway.

So I didn't suffer any loss of property but I did lose use of my home (I stayed at my vacation home) and of course the entire event was very traumatic. I was already in therapy for something else but my therapist and I spent many sessions after the fire helping me cope.

It's been pretty rough. When I left my home I was pretty sure it would be the last time I saw it and I drove through flames to leave. I had already processed the loss in my mind and said goodbye to everything I owned. Not to mention how my health may have been impacted.

I checked the Edison Wildfire Recovery Program and that seems to pay for property damage and other economic damage but my damage has been mental. Anytime I see or smell smoke I am triggered.

I am not the litigious type but the more I think about how Edison did this to me, to all of us and our community that has been changed forever which I am reminded of every time I drive home, the more pissed off I get.

Anyone else in a similar situation
file a suit, join a class, or just wondering what the options are?

My wife will never initiate difficult conversations with me even when she is upset. She will yell and cry if we are arguing but outside of the heat of the moment she will never circle back. She holds a lot in.

She will tell me all about how she feels about her friends, her family, her job... whatever is bothering her EXCEPT our relationship. That is a no go unless she wants to complain about me.

That means it's up to me to initiate conversations and I am almost as avoidant as she is but not quite. Every few months I screw up my courage and approach her.
I find it easier to write her a letter but she will never write back. She also hates texting and that quickly devolves.

The problem is that every few months isn't often enough. We need to talk a lot more about "us" and the marriage to clear up miscommunications and prevent resentment.

I started therapy and the therapist suggested I say:

"Wife, I need to talk to you about the incident the other day. When would be a good time to do that? Does next Friday work?"

And then hold her to it.

This sounds good in theory but it doesn't work for us. She won't hold to it. She will start an argument or get defensive when I ask. And it's super hard for me to even ask her that to begin with.

Any other ideas?

tl;dr

I have an incredibly difficult time finding an opportunity to discuss issues in the marriage with my avoidant spouse. How do you do it?

I have been thinking that for me a big cause of my RJ is that my wife and I have very different attitudes toward sex and it comes down to risk tolerance.

I would never want to have sex with a person I didn't see a future with and that I didn't trust. Sex fundamentally implies that you want that other person to be your mate and (potentially) raise children together so that is how I view sex partners. I mean, heterosexual sex is for procreation as well as recreation. I am unable to mentally separate the two.

Before sleeping with someone new I always ask myself if I could raise a child with them if birth control failed. I also examine what I know about their sexual past to gauge the risk of sleeping with them. Risk of disease.
Risk they are just using me for sex or something else like money. Risk that they might be a psycho.

Also, I have to actually like them as a person. It seems obvious but people sleep with people all the time without knowing them well and it turns out they don't really like them.

I didn't sleep with a woman because she was a vegan. I didn't see a future with a woman like that even though I admired her reasons for choosing that lifestyle. I like meat too much. She was very pretty but I couldn't lead her on. I tried to be vegan but I couldn't. Going out to eat with her was a massive headache.

I had a one night stand once after a lapse in judgement and freaked out about it for months. I worried I might have caught a disease. I worried the birth control failed or that she could have taken my sperm out of the condom and impregnated herself if she wanted to. I worried she was going to stalk me and boil my bunny. I worried she was going to want a relationship. I worried she had a boyfriend that was going to find out and hurt me. I worried she was going to blackmail me with a video she secretly took. I even worried that she had stolen my credit card numbers because I had left my wallet in her living room out of my sight and she went in there often. Of course, I didn't think any of that was likely. But they were all things I considered. Definitely not worth some mediocre sex with a woman who I didn't like that much and I didn't even want to see again.

On the other hand, my wife holds different opinions about sex which I think are very odd for a woman to hold as the gender that bears a larger burden for mistakes and who can physically be overpowered. For her sex was about a moment. About letting go and having fun. Taking some risks. Being desired by an attractive guy. An ego boost. Scratching an itch. No serious relationship required.

She didn't consider pregnancy to be something to worry about at all (never took birth control) and inconsistent use of condoms and the pull out method were apparently good enough to satisfy her concerns about that and disease as well.

I hate to say it, but I feel like my wife was a fool when it came to sex. She mated with men who would have been awful fathers and husbands. She went with very promiscuous men, one of whom gave her a STI. Luckily, a treatable one. She was sexually assaulted. She was talked
into sex acts she didn't enjoy. She had unprotected sex and took the morning after pill just to be sure. I can't imagine going to that clinic because some guy she barely knew came inside her not even knowing she was not on the pill because he didn't ask her and pulling out was fine by her so he wasn't covered.

So when I think about her past I think about how reckless she was. How she let herself be used for sex by men that she was hoping to have a relationship with instead of having a relationship first.

She sold herself to me as a prude and a good Catholic girl who didn't even date in high school. She didn't lose her virginity until 2nd year of college and made her boyfriend wait 6 months. And then something changed. That's the part she didn't share with me.

I thought we perceived sex the same way. She seemed smart with a good head on her shoulders. The reality is that we are so different. She gave herself to men she knew didn't want relationships. She just wanted to see (and experience) some guy's penis piercing. She heard a guy slept with a lot of women and figured he knew what he was doing. Her friend told her some guy was well endowed. She wanted to try BDSM so hooked up with an old pervert who sold her on the experience only to find out it wasn't for her. Talked into a threesome by two guys she never saw again. It seemed like fun at the time. She says it was, in fact, fun. I wonder which one would have been the father. Would the other one feel lucky it wasn't him?

What about those men made her want to (potentially) bear their children? Poor judgement. Risky behavior. Not the woman I thought I knew. She says alcohol and marijuana are partially to blame.

We have fundamental differences in our attitudes about sex. We should have found like-minded partners but people misrepresent - especially those who are afraid of being judged. Afraid of being alone. Now we are married and I feel like my wife has been viewed as dumb, reckless, and easy by too many men still out there carrying that version of her in their minds.

Is there a solution? In my case I think divorce. I knew I wasn't marrying a virgin but I never realized how little value she placed on sex in a relationship. It's not special to her at all. I am totally repulsed by her. I wish I had asked MORE questions about her past, not less.

Hi everyone.

I am a 33M married to a 36F. We have been together for 14 years. She is my first and only everything: kiss, relationship, sex. I wasn't hers. She had some experiences being 22 when I met her while I was just barely 19.

At first she was all over me. In fact, I wanted to take it slow and she was ready to go right away. However, after a few months of dating I finally realized I was developing feelings for her which I declared and she reciprocated and then we finally had sex.

I was totally inexperienced and couldn't make her orgasm but she said that her other boyfriends only made her orgasm "sometimes"
so not to worry about it. She said it was nice and she enjoyed it. Eventually, I was able to make her orgasm but not consistently.

We got married after a year of dating. She was the one who wanted to get married at first but we got along so well it was like a fairytale romance and I happily agreed.

However, within two years the sex all but stopped. I asked her why she didn't like sex and she said she liked sex but not with me. She said she wanted to sleep with someone else to "remember what I am missing" and that it might spark her desire for sex again.

I was pretty hurt and angry. I told her absolutely not. I figured she was just fishing for a way to revive her libido and suggested something dumb.

However, since then the sex isn't any more frequent. Our best year we had sex twice and we went three years without any at all.

I talked to her about it a few times. One time she said that our courtship was too short. One time she said she needed to sow her wild oats. Another time she said that sex with me felt like a chore to her. Yet another time she said that she wished she could sleep with other men without being shamed for it.

Each time I told her no. She insisted she was faithful and that she would "work on it." One time she suggested a sex therapist which she later changed her mind about.

The last time we had the discussion she said that she has trauma from being cheated on with her only other long-term serious boyfriend (rest being FWBs or hookups) and past sexual abuse as a child/teen and as a result she realized she is asexual and isn't interested in sex at all anymore. She said I can go find a woman to sleep with if I want. I don't.

Writing it all like this makes it obvious how crazy it is but living it over a decade it didn't really hit very hard all at once. 99% of the time we had a great life together outside of the lack of sex. She says I am the love of her life and her soulmate and her best friend and her "everything."

I guess I sort of assumed that she was broken in some way and the love we had for each other would somehow magically fix things. I also started drinking heavily as a coping mechanism.

I quit drinking (2 years sober) and recently started therapy, too, because she won't go to couples counseling with me because she said a counselor will only suggest a divorce which she doesn't want.

In therapy I started thinking about all of the times she told me she wanted to sleep around and how that made me feel very inadequate. If anything I was the one more open to trying new things in bed than she was and I asked her many times how to please her and she always said that she didn't know what I could do differently and that it was a "her" thing being caught up in her head and unable to let go. She says she doesn't even masturbate and now has no sexual urges.

When you add in the infrequent sex and how she insulted my skills it made me angry and resentful, too. I feel very betrayed and disrespected. If she told me today she wanted to sleep around I'd ask for an immediate divorce.

The thing is that it's been years since she mentioned anything like that (opening the marriage) and I feel bad knowing now about the sexual abuse as well. On the other hand, it was still really shitty of her to say those things and our sex life is all but over.

I am confident she was been faithful to me because she said she has been and I trust her. We are basically glued to the hip every day such that she can barely even eat lunch without me knowing what she ate. So it's not concern about actual infidelity but more that she had stated repeatedly that I don't satisfy her sexually and another man might. That really hurts.

I almost asked for a divorce last week but I talked to my therapist yesterday and she talked me out of it. She said that before demanding a divorce I should at least discuss if my wife wants to seriously work on salvaging this marriage at all before springing divorce on her which I know she doesn't want.

However, the more I sit here with my thoughts the more I feel like she's already had more than a few chances to explain herself and apologize to me. I am not sure I can forgive her at this point. The combination of refusing sex with me plus wanting it from others when I haven't had the desire to experience sex with anyone else cut me so deeply. And then deciding that if I wouldn't let her sleep with others that she was now going to be asexual is throwing salt in the wound.

I feel like sitting her down this weekend and telling her that's it. It's over. Is a divorce long overdue? I do still love her very much but I hold a lot of contempt as well.

TL;DR

My wife won't sleep with me after repeatedly expressing desire to sleep with other men. I love her and she doesn't want a divorce but when I replay all those moments in my head it makes me want to divorce her immediately. Is it time for divorce or do I try to give her one last chance?

My wife of 30 years and I are talking about separation but it's clear things are not good. I am the one that wants out but it's hard to destroy the life we shared. We were college sweethearts that grew up together. No kids at least.

She won't do counseling but I am in therapy. However, aside from my therapist no one knows how bad it has gotten. We keep up appearances to friends and family.

My performance at work is really suffering and it is noticeable. I am a high achiever and now I am missing deadlines and taking more time off work than usual because I am depressed and have no energy sometimes.

My wife and I fight all the time which is why I need to leave. In the meantime, other than therapy, what else can I do? I feel like I am living a lie as things spiral down.

Like the subject says, there is a woman I have known for over a year and for half of that time she was in a serious relationship. We were just casual friends in the same friend group.

She broke up with him after he cheated and then proceeded to sleep with several other guys in our circle of friends. The whole time she was confiding in me what she was up to and who she thought was hot and who was after her. She even got explicit about some sexual things she did with them.

The entire time I had a crush on her but was trying to play it cool because she was clearly interested in other guys. I finally made up a story about me with some other girl to see if she got jealous, which she did. That was my prompt to move in and see if she was interested which she was.

I asked her if she was interested in me why she slept with those other guys and she said: "I never saw you in a sexual way until recently."

I think she was just trying to be honest with me but I took offense to that. I feel like I was her fifth choice or something and only when those other guys (who she admitted earlier to me when we were "just friends" that she was "always attracted to") didn't pan out she hooked up with me.

Is it natural that sometimes attraction takes time to develop? I definitely felt like I have found people more attractive after getting to know them but I never went from total disinterest to sexually interested. I feel a little offended.

I have been talking to a girl online via chat and via text for about 9 months. She goes to a university about 100 miles from mine. I know people at her school and have visited there a few times.

We actually met three times but it was very brief each time - less than 5 minutes. First time I didn't really know her. It was an introduction from her friend. Second time she was working an event and couldn't talk long. Third time I was going somewhere with my friends and ran into her but couldn't stay or we would miss our show.

So we have met, but I would say we only seriously started chatting (text only) for the last 3 months. I know she is single. Lately, she has been talking about coming to visit me because she is bored at her school (college town) and my school is in a big city. She asked if she could spend the night at my place if she visited which is fine with me.

How do I interpret this? Is she just looking for something to do as friends or is there some romantic interest? How would I know? I have come to really like her from our long chats (an hour or two sometimes back and forth) but I know there are other guys pursuing her as well including her ex-boyfriend.

I don't want to make any presumptions. I have never shared that I am developing feelings for her because that seems silly for a girl I never held an actual conversation with. Am I reading too much into this?