u/cozygamerwitch

Okay everyone, I've been posting here about my LDR for the past few weeks. I was approved for my visa to the UK last month, and my fiance moved a plane ticket for me. It was a brutal 9 hour flight from Kenya to Heathrow airport in London. However, I still managed to enjoy it. I thought I would be a lot more tired than I actually was. I only slept 30 minutes on the plane, but I was alright. I went through immigration/passport control. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be, I thought they would pull me aside into a dark room and interrogate me for hours, but actually they didn't.

They only asked me a couple questions. I showed them my passport, they asked me why I came to the UK, I said to get married to my fiance. They asked me when I was getting married, I gave them the date of my civil wedding, they asked how long I've known my partner, I said we have been together 3.5 years, and they asked what we did for work. After answering he stamped my passport and told me to go through!!! I was very happy.

After that, I picked my luggage and my fiance and his dad drove to the airport to pick me up. I gave my fiance a huge hug and we got into the car and went home.

I slept a bit (considering I hadn't slept for more than 30 minutes in like 24 hours) and when I got up, we went for a beautiful walk around where we are living right now. It's a beautiful neighbourhood with tons of greenery! I am very happy to live here. Then, we had a family dinner with him, his dad, his aunt, and his grandad to celebrate. It was delicious!!! Now I feel so happy and at home!!!

Now, it is the next day, we woke up together, and later we are going to go out and buy some more clothes and things for the house!

I love my life with him so much! My only complaint is that he steals the blanket too much haha.

After I have settled, I will come back here and write an article on how to deal with long distance, some tips from someone who has made it!

We've been together for 3.5 years and closing the distance next week. I want to know if 3 years is long, short, or just around the average. I know there's a lot of relationships that CTD at around 3 or 4 years because of college/university.

I used to be a fundamentalist Christian when I was younger, and when I met my husband. Some time after I got married, I started deconstructing. That went on for about 1 or 2 years, and I have decided to pursue pagan witchcraft. It's something that makes me happy. My husband, who is still Christian, accepts me, and I'm so happy about that. I never wanted to exit the marriage, just not be a Christian anymore.

So, my husband is the only child of a single dad. His dad originally wanted more, but his ex-wife left him and was a deadbeat mum, so my husband only had his dad growing up.

He had a wonderful childhood, him and his dad were always super close, and he went on lots of wonderful trips and vacations and had tons of time with his dad. He was also very close with his grandmother and grandfather, and aunt. They also had two cats growing up.

Now that he's an adult, his family has the time and money to travel and also contributed to our wedding.

I'm confident about the decision to have only one child because I know they will be just as happy as he was growing up.

Hello! Very new to paganism and witchcraft here. I recently decided to be Dianic because I wanted my practice to be more feminine focused. I would say I am a daughter of the Great Mother, but She is symbolised by multiple Female Goddeses such as Diana, Persephone, Selene. Can I worship others?

Hey everyone! I wanted to write about something I've been thinking about recently. Now, first of all, let me say I support ALL family sizes as long as the parents are equipped to care for the children, so this isn't judgement, but rather just an observation. One of my biggest fears about motherhood is losing the "spark" or basically the joy de vivre. But to be honest, when I look at all the OAD mums I know, I don't see that at all. They all have happy relationships, and they all have hobbies and energy. They have the spark. In fact, many of them I won't even know they are parents unless I asked them. I should mention some of these children are older like 8 or 9+

But with parents of multiples it's different, they seem so exhausted all the time, they never have time for hobbies and whenever I see them, it is very brief. It's quite daunting to be honest.

What do you all think?

I know it's like the easiest one but I'm still happy!

Hey everyone! I (24F) converted to Christianity when I was 19 years old. I was non-denominational for a while, and then when I was 20, I started inquiring into Catholicism, and that was pretty much my introduction into fundamentalist Christianity. No hate to any Catholics here, but it is quite strict. No women in leadership, no condoms, no birth control, no saying no to intimacy within marriage, etc. Then, after a while, I met my wonderful, amazing husband. I was 21 at the time, and a lot of fundamentalist Christians push the idea that women should get married and have multiple kids very young, so we got married on our first anniversary in 2024. I felt very happy to be married, but slowly all my fundamentalist beliefs started to affect my marriage and my mental health.

Even though I love my husband, it's sad to say that I was terrified of him. Because the viewpoint was that in fundamentalist Christian marriages, the husband is only second to God in authority. So basically if my husband asked me to do anything even something uncomfortable I'd have to do it. So I was always a bit on edge when he would talk to me because I was scared of that. And I was never honest with him about it because the view point is that if you're feeling bad about submission it's because you are not trusting God. So I thought it was a problem I needed to fix internally.

At around 8 months into our marriage, we started talking about having kids. We had talked about having kids before marriage, but because I was pretty young I didn't know anything about pregnancy or birth. But then, when we started talking about it, I looked more into it and found that it was not easy at all. And so I got very nervous about it, and told my husband I only wanted to have one child and not 2-3. He still thought we should have 2+ and so, I approached some of my fundamentalist Christian women friends and asked how this should be handled. They told me I had no say and I would just have to have as many as he wanted, even if it was dangerous to my health. I immediately started feeling like I was in a cult.

After a while, I spoke with my husband about how I was feeling, and he told me that my happiness is his first priority and he wouldn't want me to have more children than I want, so if we have one and don't want more than he's alright with that, and our marriage has just gotten so much better. For one, I don't have to worry about him asking me to do something and then wondering if I'm going to end up in hell. I don't have to pontificate on how much I'm allowed to discuss with him before it crosses into disobedience. I don't have to wonder how far his authority goes. And this has helped me to have a much better marriage and I'm so happy with him, we have a wonderful marriage and very happy together.

I'm planning on having one child with my husband in the future because I love him very much and I want a family with them, to experience our child growing up together, to see my beloved husband and child playing together, seeing them grow up and witness all the beauty life has to offer.

I can handle pregnancy and birth, but I unfortunately can't handle frustration very well. Today I was taking care of 5mo, and usually things are very fun and happy. We did tummy time, playing together, and he even napped a bit, but then he woke up and wouldn't stop fussing. I changed positions with him a few times, and he kept on crying and I do admit I got a little bit frustrated so I left him in a safe spot and took a few minutes in the other room to calm myself.

Because I am caring for one child, I think this isn't an issue because it's very easy for me to just take a few minutes to calm down, but if I had to take care of both a baby and a toddler I might get so overwhelmed that it would be bad for me. I would never, ever, ever in a million years do anything that would jeopardize a child's safety, so I would just have to swallow the frustration. Let's say I had a baby and a toddler, if I left the baby to calm myself the toddler might hurt him or her.

And even before I had a second child, I would also have to go through pregnancy and because of the hormones I can get even more frustrated.

So this is what I was thinking about today, people say you need to have two or more kids because your child needs a friend. But riddle me this, if a child want's a friend, don't they usually pick someone their own age or perhaps one year older or younger?

According to doctors, a woman should wait around 1.5 years - 2 years between pregnancies, and then counting pregnancy itself even if you get pregnant almost immediately thats 3 years between siblings. Okay 3 years. Imagine an 8th grader being friends with a 5th grader. It's not impossible but most 8th graders would want to be friends with someone in the 7th, 8th, or 9th grade, not a 5th grader, for example.
The only way this could work is if you did Irish twins or 2under2 which is notoriously horrible.

Hello! I'm 24F and I've been married since March 2024. I just wanted to share something sweet that my husband does for me. My husband works long hours and can't always read the bible for me during the week. But recently, we read the first few chapters of Genesis together, and it was extremely endearing. I love how tenderly my husband explains things to me. He is so intelligent and gentle. When we got to Genesis 2, he chuckled at me and told me that God created me to be his helper and it just made my heart burst with joy.

I know that verse has been taken out of context by sexist people but my husband and I have a good understanding of it and I think it's so beautiful. I love obeying my husband too because he takes such good care of me. He's so sweet and loving and I absolutely love him so much and I we continue to read the bible together and pray together.

Okay so, this is going to be kinda long but I really want to get this off my chest. I've been with my husband since 21, and married since 22, for the past 2.5 years. Since I met him, I've always wanted to be in a traditional relationship. What this looks like for us is that I stay home fulltime to serve him, cook his meals, make him lunch for work, keep the home clean etc, and he is the breadwinner and the leader of the marriage. I've been in this dynamic for years and it makes us very happy.

However, I've also dealt with people who have been extremely horrible to me when I talk about this. I've noticed a lot of women, and even some men, project their trauma onto me. About 1.5 years ago, I joined a support group for people with religious trauma. I noticed all of the women in that group had divorced their husbands when they left their respective former religions. That's not a bad thing, they talked about how their husbands were abusive and I sympathized with them. However, I was open about the fact that had not been in my experience and even though I was deconstructing I still wanted to stay with my husband.

Sometimes, I would casually mention 'traditional' things like making dinner for my husband, or wanting to have a child with him. I guess the most 'controversial' thing I said was that even though I'm not a religious fundamentalist anymore, I still love to submit to my husband but I made it very clear that I don't expect other people to do this, this is just something I enjoy. A lot of the women didn't like this, and told me I was triggering them. I genuinely feel like if hearing a woman say she likes to cook for her husband triggers you then you need SERIOUS therapy and not just an online group chat?

I slowly learnt that these women absolutely refused to look past their own trauma and would just constantly project it onto me, being rude and condescending to me. It was all very unfortunate. And I will say this, I am DEEPLY sorry to anyone who has experienced such abuse. But it's also not fair to antagonize the people who are happy in their traditional marriages. You need to understand it is not traditional marriage that is bad but rather the abuser that is bad.

I want to know if I'm the only one who does this. When my partner flies to me I love to watch the little plane he's on fly on flightradar24. Its like "partner.exe is downloading ETA: 6 hours 23 minutes"

Hello everyone! I'm 24F, and I wanted to make a post about this. I kinda feel left out and alienated from other women because I don't like pregnancy, birth and I don't want to have a lot of kids. I don't really like the idea of being pregnant, birth absolutely terrifies me, and I only want to have one child with my husband. I love him very much and I want a family with him but I genuinely don't have it in me to have more than one child. I am caring for my 4 month old nephew and even though he is a very easy baby and I have lots of help I'm still quite tired. I have enough time for my hobbies and stuff but it's so overwhelming. I know I wouldn't want to go through this more than once.

But a lot of Christian women I see, they seem so obsessed with pregnancy birth and babies. So many of them have huge families and always excited to have another baby. And I just don't understand it. Of course I know everyone is different but I just can't see any of it as anything other than extremely difficult. Of course I'm not discounting the joy people get from being parents but just the large number of parents I've spoken to told me they cannot sleep due to their kids and that seems horrifying to me. My 4 month old nephew thankfully sleeps a lot and through the night so I'm not scared of him but I would not risk having two children.

Sometimes when the topic comes up, and I divulge my feeling about children, other Christian women scold and insult me, and tell me the bible says children are a joy and blessing. Of course I understand that but I also understand how difficult it is. So I feel like I stick out as a sore thumb when I'm here talking about how I want only one child when I'm 30+ and I want several years of bliss with my husband before we have a baby, and the other Christian women are saying that they want 5 or 7 or 8+ kids and they want them all back to back and so excited about the process.

Any other Christian women feel the same?

My darling and I met back in 2023, and he always had to fly to my country because I have a very weak passport, and he is from a first world country. We have met in real life four times and each trip was around 2 weeks. We are meeting again next week as well. On the 18th, we applied for a partner visa so I can move his country permanently and if it gets approved, we will get married. I love him more than anything and so excited for the day I will finally be able to say we live together permanently.

So this is something I've been thinking about recently. When you have a baby, there is obviously the fact that for some months you have to wake up several times during the night for them. For some babies, this stops at 4 months, for some, it stops at 6 months, for some, it stops at 8 months etc. But it can result in parents waking up 2, 3 or 4+ times during the night. Humans need several hours of UNBROKEN sleep to be healthy. Now obviously if someone has 1 or 2 children their entire life time, this is not gonna be an issue, but if someone has like, 4 or more kids I could see their help being affected from lack of sleep. Obviously not trying to shame anyone for their family size but this is something people overlook.