u/VulcanHumour

I'm currently pregnant with my second child, I'm feeling a little bit of hostility from my coworkers over this. Just wondering if this is a normal experience for women engineers or what other experiences people have had. Like how was your boss and teammates when you were working while pregnant, did they give you a hard time for taking time off for doctors appointments or nausea, how was your mat leave and how did they treat you coming back from maternity leave?

During Q2 (April - June) I was gone for 7 weeks; 2 weeks were planned PTO time (family weddings) then 5 weeks were sick leave due to sudden pregnancy complications. I just had my quarter review and my boss compared my ticket completion to the others on the team. I've completed half the ticket points as our top engineer. She roasted me for this, I did point out to her that I was gone for half the quarter, she doesn't care. I know they'd love to manage me out because ever since I got pregnant my output has been less (the nausea has been killing me) but of course they're scared about formally disciplining a pregnant woman so instead they just verbally berate me. Going to look for a different job once mat leave is over

I went no contact with my brother in February for a myriad of reasons that's too much to get into here, but I was reflecting on this really weird story and wanted to share it with this community. My parents were narcissists (my dad actually had a clinical diagnosis) and I don't talk to anyone from my nuclear family anymore.

So back in November of last year, my brother and I were talking about Christmas gifts. He told me that one of his ex FWBs had returned a necklace to him. My brother is into bdsm (I really wish I didn't know this information but he is extremely tmi about his sex life with everyone in our family, even my 70 year old aunt) and gave this girl a necklace that said "owned" on it. He told me that as a Christmas gift, he wanted to turn that necklace into an ornament and give it to me because even though he and that girl didn't see each other anymore, she still meant a lot to him and that necklace was a symbol of his devotion to take care of her. And he wanted to show me that same devotion.

When he explained it, it didn't sound that weird, but I did tell him "I get your intentions but I can't have an ornament that says 'owned' on my Christmas tree because how do I explain that to my kids when they get old enough to read? And then how do I explain that their UNCLE gave that ornament?" So he didn't follow through with his gift thank God.

But I'm sitting here thinking about it today and realizing yeah that was a really messed up idea. Best case scenario, he was just being extremely cheap. Worst case scenario...idk

My (31f) brother (30m) and I have been estranged since February because I found out he had been holding certain opinions about me.

Basically during my early 20s I was sexually harassed by a former teacher, and not only did my brother remain friends with that teacher, he said "it's not like he raped you," and undermined how devastating this was for me.

Also during my early 20s, I was hospitalized due to abusive behavior from my stepdad and when I asked my brother to tell everyone what he witnessed he refused to and mocked me.

We reconnected 5 years ago and I thought he had changed. During a conversation in February my brother candidly told me that he regretted none of his actions, he thought me trying to get help from him while I was hospitalized was "obviously an attempt at manipulation and control" and that he "obviously assumed" I was lying about the teacher situation; even though my accusation against the teacher led to a dozen other girls coming forward and that teacher was then fired, and I also had screenshots and loads of evidence.

I cut my brother out of my life because I realized he hasn't changed and was continuing the cycle of scapegoating me. I should also mention that I'm pregnant and I had found out in February and told my brother, so I was about 1 month pregnant and he knew this. He seems to have a habit of kicking me when I'm down.

I am happily married with a toddler, my brother completely ignored me on mother's day but reached out to my husband on father's day to wish him a happy day and tell him what a great dad he is. My husband and brother don't really have a relationship, even when my brother was in my life my husband often expressed to me how disappointed he was at my brother's lack of effort to get to know my husband and his family. Conversations were very one sided with my husband being the one always asking questions, and my husband is a very down to earth person, easy to get along with.

I know my husband is always on my side and he has reassured me many times that even if something were to happen to me like I passed away, or he and I got divorced, he wouldn't let my brother or abusive family anywhere near him or our kids because he doesn't even like my brother anyways.

Still I'm feeling incredibly hurt that this happened because my abusive family has tried in the past to connect with my new family by circumventing me. I moved out of the country just to get away from them, I live an ocean and many time zones away but they won't just let me have my peace. I finally created my own community and family, full of people who love and respect me, and my brother and those other abusive people from my past keep trying to infiltrate that circle. They feel entitled to my son because they're blood related, but they don't care about how they've treated me or the impact that their toxic presence has on me. Why can't they just let me have my own group of people?

So my mom is from Oklahoma, my dad is from Texas, and I was born and raised in Illinois. From the time I was a baby, I would fly down about 2/3 times a year to visit my Oklahoma family. I'm 31 now and still in regular contact with my OK cousins and grandma.

I have noticed that my OK family has a lifestyle that's noticeably different from my TX family and us in IL. They seem to be a lot more normalized to things that I would consider kinda chaotic. I noticed that my OK family's neighbors are the same. I always assumed that it was just my mom's particular family culture, I mean OK is a big place and we're all American at the end of the day, but recently I met someone from OK and their family is the same so it made me curious.

I have been working for my current company since early 2023. They're an American multinational with an office here in Ireland.

In late 2023/early 2024, one of my managers (based in America) was really pushing the envelope with overtime. I'm a data engineer, he would call us multiple times a week at 9pm, early weekend mornings, etc for non-emergencies (things that were broken in the dev environment, we were explicitly told by higher up it was only an emergency if it was broken in prod which rarely happened). We also had an on call schedule, he didn't care he'd call everyone on the team at these crazy times. He even tried pressuring me to work a half day on the day of my father's funeral.

I'm more outspoken than the average techie so I was the one who spoke up on behalf of my teammates, in retrospect I regret this because it clearly put a target on my back. This manager did try a lot of blatant retaliatory shit against me, HR got involved and told him to back off and forced him to do some training.

Then later in 2024, I got pregnant, so he laid off me and everything was chill until I went on maternity leave. All my 1:1 reviews were good for the entire duration of my employment up until this time.

I go back to work November 2025, my role has 100% changed in that time. Same team, but completely new tasks, I essentially had to be trained in a new job. The problematic manager was now really nice and I had no problems with him at all anymore, the training seemed to have worked.

From November 2025 - March 2026 my reviews were good. Then in late March 2026, a couple things happen. First, I tell my boss (different than the manager) that I'm pregnant again. Second, I get into a conflict with an engineer on my team who is more senior than me.

Essentially I needed his sign off on code I submitted, he kept insisting it was wrong despite me showing him proof beyond a doubt that it was correct, and while he kept blocking my work he was also rude, unprofessional, and hostile. After bringing someone else in to look at it he finally relented that my code had been correct this whole time, approved it, but by this point the work was now late.

I reported his behavior to my boss, who didn't take my complaint seriously and still blamed me for it being late. I found out later through another coworker that boss and senior coworker are good friends, I get along well with boss but since she and senior coworker are in the US in the same location they regularly hang out.

In early April I was off for 1 week for PTO, then from late April to May I had to take 3 weeks of sick leave due to unforeseen pregnancy related illness.

I had another review recently, and it was the first bad review I've gotten. Boss was telling me I'm not contributing as much as other people, that I'm slow, it was a real 180 from other reviews I've received. I did reiterate to her that I have been struggling with pregnancy nausea, she didn't seem to care.

Company also had layoffs recently so stress is high and morale is low. But I'm worried they're starting to build a documentation trail now that I'm pregnant again and I have a history of ruffling feathers when people more senior than me are being unfair

Has this happened to anyone else? Not even on reddit but elsewhere too? Where your family is so full of abusive, narcissistic people that others assume you must be exaggerating or making it up.

Below is the copy/paste post I made on AITAH, they removed it saying it was fake. When I messaged the mods to tell them it was real and I had proof, they were incredibly aggressive and kept saying I "obviously" made it up or used AI.

I shouldn't let it bother me so much, but having my very real and traumatic experience used against me as a character attack was just rubbing salt in the wound

"

AITAH for not forgiving my aunt for something she did two decades ago?

I (31f) got a call from my aunt (60f) last night out of the blue. We're not very close, we talk like twice a year and have always lived far from each other.

We were talking about random stuff and the conversation happened to lead to an incident that happened almost two decades ago when I was 13.

When I was 13, my aunt promised me she'd take me out for ice cream later in the evening. But throughout the day she was struggling with not drinking. My aunt is an alcoholic, she even has a breathalizer attached to her car (court ordered from so many duis). She kept saying "do you believe I can go today without a drink? You believe me right?" Which, even at 13, I knew was weird for her to be emotionally relying on me that way.

Well 10pm comes around, the time we said we'd get ice cream, and she's drunk as a skunk. I was upset she lied to me, she didn't care at all. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. My grandma who was 66 at the time, came home from work at 2am. She worked at a casino. She asked my aunt, who was drinking by herself in the car, to come inside so she could set the house alarm. She lived in a dangerous neighborhood. My aunt simply refused to, and my grandma said "well I'm not going to lock up until she's in the house because I'm worried she might get attacked sitting out there, and I'm not going to sleep with this worry on me." This pissed me off, it was now 3am and my grandma just wanted to sleep. I go outside to convince my aunt to come in, she refuses.

So I dump all her beer in the grass, she starts verbally attacking me, saying I'm "toxic and poisonous just like your mother!" She then goes inside the house, only to demand to her daughter (my cousin, 16 at the time) that she drives her home (an hour drive away). My cousin said "mom it's 3am and I just took a sleeping pill, I'm worried I'll fall asleep behind the wheel." My aunt said "if you don't drive me home I'll hitchhike." My cousin turned to me and said "I have to drive her home, I'm worried she'll get murdered or raped, this is a dangerous neighborhood." Luckily they got home okay but I was pissed off.

The next day, less than 12 hours later, my aunt shows up to the house like everything is hunky dory. I'm giving her the silent treatment because I am still pissed at the bullshit she pulled. She then tells me "Jesus says we need to forgive and by not forgiving me, you are being sinful." Yeah she's a born again Christian.

Okay so that all happened when I was 13, and I'm now 31. I just assumed after all these years, when she properly got cleaned up, that she realized she messed up and I forgave her. So when she called last night and brought that story up, at first she apologized but then she said "I know you got upset because my drinking reminded you of your dad." I said "no, I would have been angry and upset even if my dad wasn't an alcoholic. You put my cousin's life in danger." She kept insisting that although she was in the wrong, my trauma from my parents was the only reason I was upset, and that if I had a normal childhood I wouldn't have been bothered by her actions. I got so pissed off. I told her I don't care that it was two decades ago, I don't forgive her anymore because I can't forgive someone who can't take accountability. After trying for 30 minutes to explain to her how her actions were extremely inappropriate to do in front of a child ("you were technically a teenager not a child") I told her I don't want anything to do with her and hung up the phone.

My cousin (different cousin) is saying I should let it go, it's been 2 decades, but I only forgave her because I assumed she had changed. As an adult with my own children, the situation horrifies me more now than it did as a 13 year old.

So, aitah for picking back up this grudge?

"

I (31f) got a call from my aunt (60f) last night out of the blue. We're not very close, we talk like twice a year and have always lived far from each other.

We were talking about random stuff and the conversation happened to lead to an incident that happened almost two decades ago when I was 13.

When I was 13, my aunt promised me she'd take me out for ice cream later in the evening. But throughout the day she was struggling with not drinking. My aunt is an alcoholic, she even has a breathalizer attached to her car (court ordered from so many duis). She kept saying "do you believe I can go today without a drink? You believe me right?" Which, even at 13, I knew was weird for her to be emotionally relying on me that way.

Well 10pm comes around, the time we said we'd get ice cream, and she's drunk as a skunk. I was upset she lied to me, she didn't care at all. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. My grandma who was 66 at the time, came home from work at 2am. She worked at a casino. She asked my aunt, who was drinking by herself in the car, to come inside so she could set the house alarm. She lived in a dangerous neighborhood. My aunt simply refused to, and my grandma said "well I'm not going to lock up until she's in the house because I'm worried she might get attacked sitting out there, and I'm not going to sleep with this worry on me." This pissed me off, it was now 3am and my grandma just wanted to sleep. I go outside to convince my aunt to come in, she refuses.

So I dump all her beer in the grass, she starts verbally attacking me, saying I'm "toxic and poisonous just like your mother!" She then goes inside the house, only to demand to her daughter (my cousin, 16 at the time) that she drives her home (an hour drive away). My cousin said "mom it's 3am and I just took a sleeping pill, I'm worried I'll fall asleep behind the wheel." My aunt said "if you don't drive me home I'll hitchhike." My cousin turned to me and said "I have to drive her home, I'm worried she'll get murdered or raped, this is a dangerous neighborhood." Luckily they got home okay but I was pissed off.

The next day, less than 12 hours later, my aunt shows up to the house like everything is hunky dory. I'm giving her the silent treatment because I am still pissed at the bullshit she pulled. She then tells me "Jesus says we need to forgive and by not forgiving me, you are being sinful." Yeah she's a born again Christian.

Okay so that all happened when I was 13, and I'm now 31. I just assumed after all these years, when she properly got cleaned up, that she realized she messed up and I forgave her. So when she called last night and brought that story up, at first she apologized but then she said "I know you got upset because my drinking reminded you of your dad." I said "no, I would have been angry and upset even if my dad wasn't an alcoholic. You put my cousin's life in danger." She kept insisting that although she was in the wrong, my trauma from my parents was the only reason I was upset, and that if I had a normal childhood I wouldn't have been bothered by her actions. I got so pissed off. I told her I don't care that it was two decades ago, I don't forgive her anymore because I can't forgive someone who can't take accountability. After trying for 30 minutes to explain to her how her actions were extremely inappropriate to do in front of a child ("you were technically a teenager not a child") I told her I don't want anything to do with her and hung up the phone.

My cousin (different cousin) is saying I should let it go, it's been 2 decades, but I only forgave her because I assumed she had changed. As an adult with my own children, the situation horrifies me more now than it did as a 13 year old.

So, aitah for picking back up this grudge?

I'm 32f, this happened back when I was 14 but I'm just thinking about it now as it came up in emdr therapy and I'm still pissed off.

So when I was 14, I became a vegetarian. I was the only one in my family to do so, I did it for environmental reasons. My mom and stepdad would get so shitty anytime someone tried doing something good; I was raising money for a school club to help build schools in Angola and I'd get an angry rant about how "we need to focus on our schools here in America!!" I got into Christianity because I was looking for a higher purpose and a moral path, I'd get bitched at anytime someone Christian in the news did something shitty. So the vegetarian thing was one more thing for them to get mad at me about.

Well on Christmas morning, my older sister and younger brother opened their Christmas stockings. My sister had loads of makeup and jewelry, my brother had loads of toy cars and trinkets. Me? I had a banana, an orange, and an apple. That was it. I stood there in shock and asked why I got only fruit. My mom said "oh you're a vegetarian I thought you liked fruit," while my stepdad angrily told me to stop being ungrateful.

I am the cliche forgotten middle child. Like surely as they were putting the stockings together, as they realized they forgot to get me stuff, they could have given me some stuff from both my siblings stockings because they each had items I would have liked too. At the time I just thought it was a combination of stupidity and apathy on their part, but as an adult I realize this was their cruel way of punishing me for being a vegetarian

I live in Ireland so I was on maternity leave for a year, my team is spread across Ireland, India, and the US with almost all of management being in the US. I was back from maternity leave for 2 months when I got pregnant again; I'm in my 30s and my children will have a 2 year age gap between them, which is a pretty common age gap.

When I was 13 weeks pregnant I told my manager I was pregnant because it was starting to impact my performance; I had to take a week off of work because the nausea was so bad, and the hospital ended up prescribing me nausea medication which takes away some but not all of the nausea, and leaves me drowsy. I wanted to wait until I was 20 weeks pregnant to tell my manager but I thought she should know why I was sick for so long and why I might be slow at work. Some days I have to periodically lay down in the fetal position until the nausea goes away.

Before I told her I was pregnant, my 1:1s were great. But ever since I told her what I was going through, she's been more critical. She said that I am completing what's being assigned to me on-time and with good quality, but I'm not going "above and beyond" or "stepping outside my comfort zone." To be honest, I don't have the energy to stretch myself beyond what's being assigned. I don't want to come off as that person who uses her pregnancy as an excuse, especially since I only came back from maternity leave in November, so I just say "thanks for the feedback I'll work on it." And if I submit a ticket late due to the scope being larger than expected or a blocker from someone else, she has a lot less patience than before I announced my pregnancy. And I don't submit tickets late often.

My manager herself is a mother so I was hoping she'd be a bit more understanding. So I suppose I'm trying to figure out what she's thinking, from other managers pov

Edit to add: this literally just happened right now. We normally have refinement calls every second Thursday to go over the next sprint, I noticed I didn't get an invite. I asked my manager "can you send the link I didn't get one," and she said "don't worry about it, it's mostly for people who own the epics," but I see other people who don't own epics are in this call. I feel like I'm being excluded

Edit 2: some of these comments have been constructive and I appreciate those folks for being honest. Others are just downright nasty because they hate that working women also get pregnant. This is why the birth rate is decreasing everywhere.

I was just reminiscing with a college friend about the good ol' days and it made me remember this really funny story from college where I was dating this "nice guy" who ended up being a jerk and well the ending has a funny twist. I'd like to share this funny dating story and read about other similar ones. I know there's a niceguy subreddit but that seems to be entirely screenshots people share

I really want to move into a more people-focused role, even though my background is extremely technical. I have an undergrad in computer science and a masters in astrophysics, 1 year experience as a sales engineer and 7 years experience as a data engineer. I went into tech because I was great at math and after seeing my mom struggle through the 2008 recession, wanted something stable and everyone at the time said comp sci was incredibly stable (lol).

But I hate coding, I miss talking to people. I'm a very bubbly and outgoing person, I also have extensive public speaking skills from 8 years of actively doing stand up comedy (I've done festivals and won a few awards). The only time I feel any sort of satisfaction in my job is if I'm training new people or if I'm in meetings with the business users talking about the bigger picture or if I'm giving presentations. But 90% of my job is just data and coding and I'm so depressed with it.

I enjoyed my job as a sales engineer but got let go during COVID, and I took a job as a data engineer bc they were the only job offer I got after 3 months of applying, 250+ applications, and 5 interviews. I worked as a data engineer before the sales engineering role, and then had to go back to data engineering to pay my bills. But I'm a mom now so I can't travel like I did back then.

Any advice for someone like me? Would my stand up comedy experience be relevant when applying for a BA role or would that make me look not very serious?

I'm pregnant with baby #2, due October. This pregnancy is proving to be more difficult than the first. I've already used up about 3 weeks in total of sick leave, two weeks worth of days used sporadically and one full week I had to take off consecutively. I'm not worried about my job security or getting in trouble because I always have a sick note, but I'm just curious if anyone else had to use up a ton of sick days during their pregnancy and if there were any long periods of time (like a week or more) you had to take off for sickness during the first or second trimester?

We live in a housing estate where all the houses are the exact same and I know for a fact that my neighbors, who live in the house adjacent to mine, pay the same mortgage as we do. I can't give too many details because I'm worried about giving myself away, but they are renting out a room with an ensuite bathroom at a cost that's 80% of the total mortgage, when the room itself is 1 in 4 in the house. And we DON'T live in Dublin, we live far outside Dublin like a 3 hour drive and nowhere near any other major Irish city.

My husband and I had to save up for nearly a decade to get our house and we both struggled with the rental market, seeing someone rent out 25% of the space and charging 80% of the mortgage just feels criminal to me. Whoever is renting will still have to share the kitchen and laundry with the family

Edit to add: a lot of people are saying they don't see what's wrong with this, and that's the problem in this country. We all agree that the housing market is insane, that rental prices are bonkers and too many landlords out there being crooked and greedy. Just because something is legally allowed doesn't make it ethical. Yes I understand people don't rent out rooms out of the goodness of their hearts, that there is financial motivation, but there should be a limit to how much landlords can charge you. It's disgraceful that so many people will experience the shithole that is renting in Ireland, then as soon as they get on the property ladder immediately pull that same exact crap on other people

I (32f) am currently abroad for my husband's cousin's wedding. I'm 16 weeks pregnant, and even though pregnancy nausea is supposed to get better after the first trimester, mine is doing the opposite. I started taking pregnancy nausea medication a few weeks ago and the symptoms got better, but I'm thinking the flying and traveling messed my system up because last night I woke up 4-5 times to vomit, and this morning it's more of the same. The wedding is this afternoon, I'm worried I'll start vomiting during the ceremony which kind of kills the romance vibe, so I'm telling my husband I should stick back. He's saying that because it's a small ceremony, my absence will be noticed and his cousin will probably get upset especially because I seemed fine and dandy yesterday. Honestly I think I was pushing myself too hard yesterday and that's what brought the nausea back with a vengeance.

So WIBTA for skipping the wedding even though I flew from a different country to attend?

Update: I felt a bit better by the time of the wedding ceremony so I went to the ceremony but left shortly after. Got some pics with the bride and groom now I'm rolled up in bed watching the latest season of The Boys and hoping tonight's nausea isn't like last night's. And just to clarify, my husband was not being pushy, mean, or aggressive when he made the suggestion that I try to go. It was more like a gentle comment he casually stated, as the day went on he said "whatever you want to do I'll support, people know how hard pregnancy is." I probably should have clarified that it was more of a casual aside and not some sort of controlling behavior, but I didn't think people would make such drastic assumptions about him and our marriage

TRIGGER WARNING: SA

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So I found out recently that my brother r***d his ex girlfriend, I'm having a lot of bad, intense emotions and looking for a sub where I can find support for this sort of thing