u/TransitionScary6062

I’m 31F and he’s 30M. SO kind, so generous, so supportive. it’s like we understand each other without words sometimes when it comes to expressing emotions or feelings, no matter how deep they are. i think I’ve found a good guy, but the only potential issue I’m seeing is that I’m often having to “dumb myself down” or constantly explain what certain words I say mean.

thats not to mean that I think he’s not intelligent, he definitely is! he’s super knowledgeable when it comes to his job or things that are super useful like fixing cars. I don’t think I’m lightyears ahead of him but I do read a lot and happen to know a lot of “big” words. When I say something and it comes out exactly how I thought it in my head, he’ll sometimes stop and ask me what a certain word means, or a certain concept. he seems open to learning and never seems to be intimidated or annoyed by my verbiage (that right there would be a word that he wouldn’t understand, but I have trouble finding a more “simple” word for what I’m trying to say!), hes VERY receptive to understanding and often praises how smart he thinks I am but sometimes I feel like I’m putting the poor guy through a teaching lesson.

this often pops up when I’m telling him what I’m doing or something random on my mind, because I’m often doing schoolwork while I talk to him on the phone so its just all at the forefront of my mind. but once I just open up about my inner thoughts or emotions or something that’s bothering me, he understands me better than any past partner I’ve ever had and makes sure to make me feel supported.

so I’m asking, do any of you have any experience with a dynamic like this? did it work? I dont mind having to explain things to him, I just feel like it’ll get old for one of us at one point and that really sucks to think about because besides that, he is genuinely the kindest man ive dealt with.

my last ex was extremely intelligent, but almost to a fault—he was super logical but only operated on facts and didnt really understand my emotions or feelings. if he couldn’t make concrete sense of what I felt, hed brush it off. my current guy has always encouraged me to feel what I feel and has never shamed me for it, and it makes me feel safe. it’s just that I wish I could talk to him in a way that comes naturally to me when it comes to everything else.

does intellectual level really matter, or should someone that understands your innermost workings take precedence?

I have a DVRO against my ex that expires this November so I’m starting the paperwork process and I’m really nervous to poke the bear again but it needs to be done.

Myself, my daughter, and my parents are protected under it. My ex missed the mediation hearing and the actual hearing for the DVRO so I was granted it by default for 3 years. Full physical and legal custody was established and given to me in the order as well and is to stay that way until my daughter turns 18. The judge wrote that my ex could file for visitation but he never did, he moved states (FL).

Anyways, I’m a little scared because since the DVRO was issued, my ex has left me alone and even moved away but these last 3 years under the restraining order have given me a sense of peace I haven’t felt in years since he was in my life. I want it renewed and am praying that I’ll get it granted, I‘m asking for it to be issued permanently this time as opposed to the other option which was 5 years.

I have evidence of suicidal behavior through texts to me from his family saying they’re scared of him, court documents describing his drug use, and proof that he was put under a Baker Act in Florida (their equivalent of a 5150 a week before our daughter‘s birth before the DVRO was issued. He’s also hacked into my personal accounts and impersonated me to other people and threatened me and my family. I’m hoping these things will show a pattern in his behavior and prove that keeping him away is ideal for everyones safety.

I’m looking for anyone else’s stories or experiences getting DVROs renewed. If nothing else, please pray for me or send good thoughts. I’m scared out of my mind.

Editing to add: before anyone questions why I need the DVRO if he’s stayed away, I’m also filing for divorce at the same time and will have him served with both simultaneously and want to protect myself from any type of harrassment.

I‘m 31F, just broke up with my 30M boyfriend of 3 years. To try and make a long story short: he was a responsible and great man to me in the very beginning but he lost his dad and suffered an injury that caused him to quit his job and it sunk him into a deep depression. He got a dead end job as a helper at a tattoo shop and has now been there for 2.5 years and despite hating the job and how little it pays, he refuses to quit or look for another job (its under the table so they don’t have to pay him fairly. if there’s no customers, he’ll go home with not even a penny in his pocket and even when there are customers he still complains about how he can’t make his bills). After he lost his dad, he clung onto his boss and calls him a second father, and because of that he says he won’t quit the job or “betray his boss” by finding something better.

Anyways, I broke up with him because he has no drive to do something better with his life. he’s very smart, but holds himself back because he thinks the tattoo industry is the only place that will take him because he’s completely covered from head to toe. I had to pay for my own BIRTHDAY DINNER between us last week because he’s faked being sick for the last 11 weeks at his job and hasn’t had an income in that time, and he says that he doesn’t want to face his boss himself and quit because he respects the guy so much so he’s holding out hope that if he doesn’t show up for long enough that they’ll just fire him themselves. he constantly talks about wanting a family and getting married but can’t even afford a $5 coffee for me without making comments like “😬 I’m spending WAY MORE than I’m making…”

I’m so burnt out. I had a physically and financially abusive ex before this one, and I thought I’d finally found a decent man but I realized my bar was in hell. I thought a good man was anyone who wouldn’t put their hands on me. I hear so many stories about dudes with weird fetishes, that act normal long enough for you to marry them or have their kid and then let loose, or that just become straight up bums (like this one). I have a 4 year old daughter from the abusive relationship I left, and I also don’t even feel like ever getting to know someone new just because its so hard to know if you can actually trust a man in your life especially when you have a child in the mix.

I really think I’d be fulfilled just having 3 cats, maybe a dog, and living in peace with my daughter than ever having a man in my space again. Is this just an in the moment feeling for me, or have any of you stuck to the whole single thing and been happier for it?

thank you so much to you ladies, I’m looking forward to any advice or wisdom you all can share with me. 🤍

I’m asking this because my now EX boyfriend (I just broke up with him over this) refuses to make an effort to do something about the roach infestation in his house. They’re all over his bathroom and even out during the day, I’m not sure if they’re in any other rooms but I’m sure they are. He says his mother won’t want to pay for an exterminator, and he doesn’t want to pay for one either, and said that even if he DID pay for one that no one in the house would want to put in the effort to move things around for the exterminator or clean up. Whenever I brought up store remedies he just said that it was so bad that it wasn’t even worth wasting money on that, so I’m just wondering:

What happens if you just let it get out of control? it’s already bad and it obviously won’t go away on its own. I have a huge phobia of bugs and he was trying to get me to just “get used to it.” I got over my fear enough to kill the ones that got close to me but that’s such a terrible way to live.

I posted here a few days ago about my relationship, but I’ll give the background again: we’ve been together for 3 years, he initially was a great, thoughtful guy with a good job. a few months into the relationship, he had a back injury that caused him to not be able to go back to work. his tattoo shop needed a helper so he applied and got it. it’s under the table pay, and he’s not paid hourly. he only gets paid 10% of every tattoo that comes in in a day, which means that if no customers come in (which is often the case given the economy), he‘ll work 10+ hour days for no pay. not only that, he doesn’t get along with any of his coworkers. the only thing keeping him at this job for the past 2.5 years, is his blind loyalty to his boss. his father died right before he got hired, so he latched onto his boss and says he sees him as a “second father.”

here’s the issue: he hates his job so much, he’s been calling off since May of this year. Over 2 months. He’s been lying to his boss that he has chronic health issues and can’t go in, and his boss just buys it and lets him keep the job. the problem is that my boyfriend had practically no savings to live off of before he decided to take this time off, and now he’s literally living off of practically nothing and constantly complains about being broke but refuses to go back to work because he hates being there so much, but also says he refuses to quit because he doesn’t want to do his boss “dirty“ by leaving him “high and dry” and quitting to go to a better job. he was in the middle of a tattoo apprenticeship and feels that if he quits that he’d be taking the stuff his boss taught him and doing him a disservice. but my whole thing is… isn’t NOT GOING TO WORK FOR 2+ MONTHS leaving your boss high and dry?

This all came to a head over my birthday last week when he was making faces and comments about having to pay for aquarium tickets because that’s all I wanted to do that day, didn’t even offer to buy me a snack when I told him I hadn’t eaten and I was getting a migraine (I’m a full time student and caretaker for my dad so I don’t have an income right now either and live with my family), and was just a dark cloud over me the entire day. it didn’t even feel like my birthday because even then, he was complaining about how broke he is and how he needs to start making money but doesn’t want to go back OR quit and let his boss down. it’s actually maddening.

So today, he asked to hang out and I straight up told him that I’m tired of constantly hearing him complain about his life and not do anything about his current conditions. I forgot to mention that he lives with his elderly mom and they have a huge roach infestation so lately im on edge about getting roaches on my things and bringing them home or him bringing roaches to my home. I keep asking him to please do something about it because it’s a health hazard, and his response is always “My mom won’t pay for an exterminator and won’t want to clean the house.” My thought is always just… he’s a grown man who lives there, shes elderly. He should take the initiative and work until he can afford an exterminator himself, or ask his mom to split the cost. He won’t even listen to any suggestions, he just predicts “Oh, I won’t even bother asking, she’ll just say no.” He literally has all of these things wrong in his life that he has the ability to do something about, but he just surrenders to it. I brought all these things up to him, and he just said that I’m a leech that‘a only happy when he’s working and has money to spend and that he refuses to go back to work or leave his boss lol. I just told him that if asking him to get his life together is too big of an ask and if hes going to put his boss over prioritizing me and building a better future for us, that his job can keep him. he then started backpedaling and saying that he was considering his options but I felt he already told me the truth: his boss comes first and he has absolutely no intention of doing anything about his job situation. He started saying he was hurt that I was leaving him at his lowest and that if I would have hung in there, things would have gotten better.

did I jump the gun on breaking up? would you stay with someone like this? I miss the person he was to death but the person I’ve seen these past few months is a complete stranger.

We’ve been together for 3 years, and in the beginning, (like most relationships) I thought I’d finally found someone that I really connected with that checked all of my boxes. He had a good job, would always plan thoughtful dates, and made me laugh all the time.

1 year into being together, he had an injury that caused him to quit his job and live off of running up his credit card debt for months while he found a new job. He eventually found a new job, and he’s hated it ever since. He’s a ”helper” at a tattoo shop, which means that he’s everyone‘s assistant and only gets 10% of every tattoo that comes in and no hourly pay, which means that he can work 10 hour days and not get paid anything if there’s no customers. He got into an argument with his coworkers on Labor Day and has called off every day since then. He’s going on I think week 11 calling off, and somehow he still has a job to go back to. He’s gone so far as to make up reasons to go to the ER and get doctor’s notes to not go in, and even purchased a gym membership cities away because he goes everyday and doesn’t want to risk someone from work seeing him at our local gym and ratting him out for being okay to go to the gym but not work. His boss just tells him to come back when he feels better.

The thing is, he had very little savings to live off of when he started avoiding work, and it’s even worse now. He constantly complains about how he’s running out of money, and when I tell him he should go back to work, he says he doesn’t want to because he hates that place. So when I suggest he should find a different job, he says no to that too because he thinks he’s put in too much time into his current place and thinks he’s too old to start over (he’s literally only 30).

For further context, I’m a full time student and caretaker for my dad right now so I don’t have income either. My boyfriend buys himself dinner everyday, and he doesn’t hold back when he spends on himself. but I ordered a meal and a drink with him and even asked beforehand if I could, he said yes, then when he heard the total he goes “Oh shit” and embarrassed the hell out of me in front of the cashier. I told her to take off the drink since the food was already made, and she felt so bad for me she ended up giving me the drink for free. For my birthday, I wanted to go to the aquarium so we went, but he wouldn’t pay for ANYTHING. I kept telling him I was starving and my head was hurting and not even on my birthday would he buy me a snack or take me through McDonald’s to get a cheap meal to keep me going. On top of that, he lives at home with his mom and they have a cockroach infestation in their house that’s so disgusting that I won’t go over there anymore. I asked how he can live like that and he says “I just learned to deal with it, my mom won’t pay to do anything about it.” Instead of doing something about these situations, like going back to work and making enough money to afford food and a clean environment, he just surrenders to it and decides he’s powerless while turning into a dark cloud to be around because he’s so miserable about it all.

Its just also funny to me that whenever I suggest that he cut back on things to save more money, like cancelling a few of his 10 subscription services or stopping vaping so he can stop spending $100 a month on them, he says he won‘t do it because those things bring him joy. He’s just beyond giving advice to.

What would you do in my situation? He was always a lovely guy before all of this but I find him so repulsive now. If he at least showed some initiative or a plan to fix all of this, I think my feelings would come back. I still think he has potential to put his mind to it and do something with his life, he’s not an idiot, he CAN make good money. And the worst part is that everytime I try to talk to him about this and tell him this isn’t sustainable, he says he knows and that the fact that he’s in this financial rut is his own fault, BUT WON’T DO ANYTHING.

TL;DR: once responsible boyfriend has turned into a bum with no drive or motivation, constantly says that he knows he can’t keep living like this but also won’t go back to the job he’s been calling off from for 2 months now, and my feelings are dying because I hate how he’s handling life right now.

Hey! So I’m 31F and have been on the mini pill, norethindrone .35 mg, for 3 years. Never had a scare or a severely late period on it. I am sexually active.

My periods come on a pretty consistent 28-day cycle, sometimes I’ll have a period come early, like a 2 week cycle, but that’s pretty rare.

First day of my last cycle was June 19th. I got some light pink discharge/spotting with some heavier red spotting on July 7th, it lasted 3-4 days and only appeared when I wiped. I should have gotten my period on July 17th, but it never came. I took a test 3 days ago, a week after my missed period, and it was negative. but my boobs are really sore and this is not a typical PMS symptom for me.

I should also add that I have been EXTREMELY stressed, more than normal this entire month due to family health issues and school coming up amongst a ton of other things that are piling up at once. I’ve heard stress can make your body do weird things. Has anyone else had this late of a period with sore breasts and not turned out to be pregnant? That would be absolutely devastating to me at this point in my life and I’m really hoping I’m not.

thank you all in advance!

I’m reconnecting with my faith and trying to take it as seriously as I can. It’s been a while since I’ve educated myself on Catholic teachings (I took Cathechism classes when I was in middle school, 20 years ago now). I wasn’t educated on birth control or divorce or any adult matters.

I come to God now was a 30 year old woman, escaped an abusive marriage with my 4 year old daughter, have been separated for years and am saving up for a divorce lawyer while I have a DVRO against my ex. The point is, we are DONE. Not married in the church but legally. During this period I‘ve been separated, I’ve met someone else who is incredibly good to my daughter and I. I didn’t think about how dating while still legally married but separated from my ex would be a mortal sin. I also didn’t think about how getting on birth control until the divorce is final and I remarry and am ready to have another child is also a mortal sin. I asked in another group for experiences being Catholic and on birth control because the statistics say a lot of us are, but I was met with a lot of condemnation on how I’m actively sinning and straining my relationship with God, and being told to just give up my pill for the Marquette system.

My whole thing is, I want to reconnect and get closer to God, but I also feel that a good and safe partner is not something I’m willing to throw away to get right in the Catholic Church. I feel that it’s punishing me because my ex abused me and I got away and am rebuilding my life until I’m able to file for divorce. I’m on birth control because I am not healed enough from my past, both physically, mentally, and financially, to support another child. I refuse to bring another life into this world till I have the means to give them all of the attention and care they need. I’d rather prevent than abort. When I asked the other group how NFP is acceptable but birth control is not when they’re different means to the same end, my post got removed for “anti Catholic rhetoric.”

I was really excited about coming back, but now I just feel like a dog with its tail between its legs about all of this. Is anyone else in my boat? Could God forgive me for all of this?

I’m a reconnecting Catholic… baptized as an infant, did first communion and confirmation young. I’m now 30 years old and wanting to get back to my faith. At first, it felt beautiful and I was super happy to get close to God again. But then I decided to look into the rules regarding birth control and now I feel like I’m straining my relationship with God because I’m on the pill. I am in no way, shape, or form ready for another child (I already have one) and my belief is that it’s better to prevent conception at all than to have to get an abortion or put a child up for adoption. My pregnancy was extremely hard on my body and I’m still dealing with residual issues from it years later.

I understand I cannot receive communion while I’m on birth control, and I understand most people would probably suggest that I talk to a priest about this or go to confession and find a way to stop taking birth control in favor of NFP, but I want to keep my health matters between God, myself, and my doctor, and I cannot stop the pill as I do not want to bring another life in the world that I cannot support at the moment. I know another answer would be to get off the pill and remain abstinent on the days where I’m not fertile, but come on. I have an irregular period and most of us remember from biology class that to track your cycle is a near guarantee of a surprise pregnancy.

So my question to you lovely ladies is: is there anyone else here that considers themselves Catholic despite birth control use? Hearing that I’m committing a mortal sin just hits hard when I’m trying to educate myself and reconnect to my faith while not trying to flip my world upside down with a surprise baby.