u/dogearedexistence

I (34F) need advice. I've been with my husband for 3 years now and we visit his parents pretty often, a few times a year (we don't live in the same country, it's about a 3 hour flight).

My father in law (69M) smells absolutely horrible. At first, I thought it was his breath. My mother in law said he had a rotten tooth and that's why his breath smelled and eventually the rotten tooth was removed at the dentist. This has not helped his breath from smelling rotten. He drinks 3 double espressos a day and one glass of water at lunch. I think we are all clever enough to see how this impacts his oral hygiene. I have never seen him take a shower. Not after swimming in the sea. Not on any regular day. He often wears the same clothes for a week at a time before washing them. I'm not against this per say but I think it's contributing to his smell?

We've been staying here for a month this summer as I'm pregnant and my husband can work from home. My pregnancy sense of smell is obviously heightened, but I've tolerated this for 3 years and I can't take it anymore. How do I approach this subject? Do I talk to my mother in law? Do I talk to my father in law directly? Do I ask my husband to talk to him? It's at the point where I cannot sit near him and I have to cover my nose with my shirt if we are in the car together, and sometimes we have to drive 3 hours to go to certain destinations. I'm at my wits end and I can't handle it anymore. It's clear he has bad hygiene and bad oral hygiene but everybody else just seems to tolerate it and leave him alone. I don't get it.

Edit: added our ages and gender for context

What's everybody reading right now? I'm halfway through my pregnancy and looking for some books to read. Looking for book recommendations on:

\- newborn stage

\- parenting

\- birth/labor (what's happening in the body, how to prepare, etc.)

\- lactation/breastfeeding tips, info, foods to eat, etc.

\- any fun fiction books that you couldn't put down (I don't like romance novels or anything related to murder)

\- any gripping non-fiction (please no murder/true crime, it's too close to home for my family)

TL/DR: I am a normally level-headed person who has developed unexplainable pregnancy rage recently. I don't know how to deal with it and I don't know how to self soothe because my usual techniques aren't working in the moment. Looking for advice.

I am 18w. I'm normally a pretty level-headed person but lately, the smallest thing can trigger a big reaction from me. For example, we watched the world cup final with some friends and strangers on Sunday. We all brought stuff to grill and my husband and I brought flank steak. I usually do the grilling but since it was a charcoal grill, I let my husband do it. We like our steak medium rare, and this was really rare when he brought it out. He also cut it the wrong way in very unappetizing slices, different than how I would do it.

No big deal, right? If this were any other day, I wouldn't say a word. I wouldn't even care, I'd just cut it how I want on my own plate and throw my piece back on the grill. When he brought the plate in from outside, in front of everyone, I said very loudly and firmly, "what are you doing? You cut it all wrong! It's totally undercooked. You're supposed to do it this way..." Blah blah blah. One of the women there had the most shocked and horrified look on her face from how I spoke to him. I was immediately mortified. I humiliated him and was so rude to him in front of people we were meeting for the first time. I apologized to him profusely and to everybody else at the party too for how I spoke to him.

In general though, I'm noticing these minute outbursts a lot more often. It is like a wave of anger that fills up my entire body and then just explodes over the stupidest thing. It happens with crying too, where I will cry because my cookies I baked don't taste right or because I saw a cute old couple on the street walking their dog. My emotions overtake me and I feel like such a raging bitch and it's starting to eat at me. I can catch myself and apologize quickly but I'm trying to avoid getting to the high points in the first place.

Anybody have advice on how to deal with this? I feel so overly emotional and not in control. My normal therapy techniques are not working and my poor husband who is the sweetest man on earth is taking the brunt of this.

Just want to take a moment to talk about how gorgeous the women are (and honestly a lot of their families as well!)

I don't have enough words for how drop dead gorgeous Mica and Jasmine are to me. I can't say a negative thing about either of their appearance. Just stunning, with and without makeup. Classy and elegant.

ANGIE. I love Angie. She's got a bangin body, beautiful smile. Gorgeous with and without makeup. Looks amazing in every color and her skin is so lovely.

Priya's big beautiful eyes and adorable ears that stick out. When she wears her back she looks a little elf-like and I just find it so gorgeous on her.

Julia's round blue eyes and strikingly sharp collarbones. It's all I stare at when she's on the screen. She highlights them beautifully with her clothes and when she wears her hair up. I'm obsessed with her collarbones.

Yasmin's thick and voluminous hair, even if she plays with it too much. I know others agree but she's got that adorable Sabrina Carpenter thing about her. She's a ray of sunshine.

What features do you appreciate about the women of this season? I feel inspired to put effort into my appearance watching this show. I genuinely look forward to seeing what they wear every night and the new looks they have. So much creativity!

SPOILER AHEAD FOR ANYONE NOT CAUGHT UP

There's a lot of Ellie fans in the sub, myself included. She's great entertainment and fun to watch. I love how authentic she comes across. So let me preface this by saying I love her and I'm rooting for her 100%.

However - her expectations of the men she's with throughout her LI experience have been unrealistic. Ellie does not want to explore multiple guys at the same time. Seems like it's not in her nature/personality. Other people can. Priya, Yasmin, and Lorenzo all have no issue exploring multiple people, flirting, cuddling, getting to know multiple people, etc. Seems like something they're comfortable doing.

Ellie just wants a guy to choose her and stick with her the way Fitzy did with Lola. It is POSSIBLE but it's not very realistic on this show. The show's entire setup, with OGs, bombshells, casa, the boys sneaking out to meet girls, etc. is designed for the contestants to explore multiple connections and create drama in the villa.

Now, I know that we don't see every conversation being had, but I'm very curious if Ellie tells every guy she connects with, "I am looking for a man who will only be interested in getting to know me, no matter who comes in." From what I've seen, it seems she's AWARE that the men she's with are still OPEN, which means if someone else comes in that they like, they want to explore. She repeats over and over she wants to be kept in the loop, VALID. It's so valid! But she almost expects that the men will tell her what they're going to do before they do it, or that they'll do something and then immediately run to her and tell her what happened, which again, I don't think is realistic. I couldn't tell someone I was interested in that I just went to the hideaway with another person and played truth or dare and was kissing them all over except the lips immediately after doing it. I'd need time to process, gather my thoughts, think about the delivery of the information, etc.

Finally, Ellie and Finley were intimate but hadn't closed off. This is a bit of a sexist opinion of mine, but very few men (in my experience) treat intimacy the same way women do. Speaking for myself, I've often found that I value intimacy with men higher than they value it with me. There are of course men who don't behave this way, but the majority of my experience has involved me being hurt because I thought sex meant something and the guy ended up being more casual about it, saying oh sex was just sex for me, sorry if you got hurt when I slept with several other women behind your back in the same week and didn't tell you I was dating multiple people at once. Ellie and Finley weren't closed off. She knew he was open. They're on a dating show. REALISTICALLY, there was always the potential he'd go for someone else because they weren't closed off yet.

I'll end this with this: going the entire day without speaking and explaining what happened at the hideaway is shit. Finley sucks and I am not a fan of his whatsoever and I do not condone his behavior. He doesn't deserve Ellie at all. I'm specifically only talking about Ellie's expectations vs reality in this post and that I think our girl's expectations are not realistic.

Going to Syvota area for a week with my husband and his parents. Our hotel is in Syvota.

Looking for recommendations for restaurants or things to do. Open to taking a ferry to Paxos, Antipaxos, Kerkira, and Igoumenitsa.

FYI: I will be 20 weeks pregnant. We have a car. We won't be with my in-laws the whole time so open to recommendations for romantic couple things to do too.

TLDR: This is my first time watching the show. I don't like reality TV because I think it's mean and I feel bad for the contestants in this show because the producers can edit footage to make them look as good/evil as they want to and I feel like people don't acknowledge that enough in this sub when they complain about people like Simba/Jas/Kav/Mica/etc.

I started LIUK with a friend this summer and I'm the kind of person where once I've started a series like this, I want to finish it because I feel I invested time into it so now I want to know the outcome. Once I finish this season, I will not watch another one, so take my opinion how you want.

I'm seeing a lot of discussion about movie night, arguments about Jasmine and how awful/amazing she is, about Mica being a snake, justice for Priya, Kavan, Simba, etc. I agree with everyone else in the LIUK subs saying that the producers show what they want to show. Take the Twitter challenge. Thousands of tweets but they chose "they're having an affair in plain sight" because it suited the narrative they wanted to push. In the same way Jordan said that the clip about not being attracted to Priya was from the first day and they didn't show the rest of the clip where Jas told him not to pursue Priya if he wasn't into her. They control every element of what we as the viewers consume and build our assumptions off of. They can portray anyone how they want with very careful editing.

Jasmine is absolutely beautiful. She's a confident woman who isn't afraid to speak her mind. If she wasn't on the show, the show would be outrageously boring. I genuinely think people who hate her haven't taken a step back to ask themselves, "what am I being presented here?" It's reality TV, we get to form an opinion off the clips we are shown. There is SO MUCH footage we don't see, conversations we don't hear. We have no right to make assumptions about these people the way we do as we only see roughly an hour of edited footage. They are filmed 24/7, even from when they go to bed to when they wake up. Producers want us for engagement, for viewership and nothing more.

All this to say, the contestants sign up willingly. I could NEVER do what they do. Simba outside the villa will face so much hate for his behavior. Aidan and Jasmine and Mica will too. Lorenzo will have a sea of women at his disposal. It takes a lot of strength to put yourself up for someone else's entertainment like this. Someone else said it best - the producers don't view the contestants as people but as content. We don't view them as people either but as an image of who we want them to be or who we want them to represent - reflections of ourselves, our friends, our family, our exes, society, whatever. Ultimately, I think I'm too soft and too empathetic for this kind of content. I just feel bad for everyone because they'll be off this show one day and might read all the shit we post about them. I couldn't take it.

Anyway. Please give me your opinions on reality TV. What am I missing here? Why do you like it? What's great about it? Why would anyone want to go on here and have their reputation changed forever? Obviously fame but beyond that?

Lola is an absolute bore bag to me and needs to go home. Her and Fitzy will be fine outside of the villa and their closed off relationship is just taking up space that would be better used by someone else. Also given her testimonials in the beginning about caring about money, it's quite clear she's just doing this to win. Would love for the two of them to go home to add some more excitement to this season. There's something not right there...