u/flowyy_princessxo56

I started my second job four weeks ago today as a project coordinator at a small consultancy and the first full paycheque cleared into my account this morning. 3,800$ after tax. I genuinely sat at my desk and stared at the screen for about ten minutes.

I grew up on a council estate with my nan because my parents werent in the picture, and i left school at sixteen with nothing to show for it. Ive spent most of my twenties bouncing around admin jobs that paid just enough to keep me one missed shift away from disaster.

My main job is a customer ops role at a saas firm that pays 64k base. The second one brings in another 48k flat and ive spent the last month going slightly insane while i learned it on top of the old one. Both managers think im weirdly keen and i keep getting praised on calls for being "responsive."

Today the second paycheque hits and i pay off the entire 2k credit card balance ive been dragging behind me since covid, and i still have something left over. Im going to make my nan dinner this weekend and not check the bill before i pay it for the first time in my adult life.

If anyone is lurking and wondering if you can pull this off coming from nothing, you genuinely can.

i am 33, my wife is 32, weve been married almost six years and we made the decision not to have children. its final, weve had the procedures, our families have known about two years.

my mother in law has never accepted it. her three other kids have given her seven grandchildren and we are the only ones out. shes brought it up at every family event for two years, sometimes directly and sometimes in passive comments designed to make my wife feel like a failed daughter. its become impossible to politely deflect.

last weekend was my wifes nieces graduation dinner, eighteen people in the house. before dessert my mother in law starts going on about how empty the table will feel when her grandchildren grow up and whether some of us will regret our choices later. she doesnt look at us when she says it, she doesnt need to.

my wife reached for my hand under the table and i could feel her starting to shake. shes cried about her mother on the drive home from family events for years and i was done.

i mentioned casually that ive been thinking about how some choices about parenthood look different from the outside than they did at the time. my mother in law went still. her aunt, sitting across from me, gave me a tiny nod i caught and she didnt.

then i asked my mother in law if shed ever told her grandchildren about the time she and my father in law decided not to have a fourth. id heard the decision had been a big deal and i thought it was a brave choice. i didnt say anything about the reason or how it was made.

her aunt had told me three years ago that my mother in law had made the same choice for the same reason, and spent a decade being shamed for it by her own mother. nobody at the table knew except her aunt and me.

she went silent. the conversation moved on within twenty seconds because everyone could feel something had happened they didnt understand.

after dinner she pulled me aside and asked how i knew. i told her i wasnt going to say. i told her if she brought our choice up again in front of family or in private, i would tell my wife what i knew and let her decide. shes been quiet since.

my wife knows i did something but hasnt asked what. my mother in law hasnt brought up children once since.

i feel a bit bad i used something this private as leverage. i dont feel bad it worked. AITA?

so i made it through three rounds of interviews for a role i was actually pretty excited about, great pay, good growth, the kind of role you dont see open very often in my field. the first three rounds were all remote and the feedback after each one was really positive, so when they told me the final round was an in person half day at the office where id meet the team and have a final chat with the hiring manager, i was already kind of mentally counting it as mine.

i drove an hour to get there, wore my best shirt, even brought printed copies of my work like an absolute boomer in case anyone wanted to flip through. i was ready.

the morning actually went really well, i met three of the team, had nice conversations, got into some real detail about the work itself and it looked interesting. then at the end of the day they walked me into the hiring managers office for the final conversation.

he was wearing a polo, sleeves rolled up, and the first thing i clocked when i sat down across from him was a tattoo on his forearm. 1488. if you dont know what that is its not an obscure reference and its not open to interpretation, its a well known white supremacist combination and theres no other reading of it. its right there on his arm because he wants people to see it.

i sat through about 15 more minutes of the conversation but i was basically not present for any of it, answering questions on autopilot. when he asked if i had any questions for him i just said no and made up an excuse about needing to leave early, then drove the hour back home in basically total silence.

told a friend about it that night and she was furious with me, not because of the tattoo but because id bailed after putting three rounds of work in. she said i couldve just turned down the offer if it came, that i wasted everyones time including my own, that the right move would have been to play it out and see what happened.

i told her i wasnt gonna sit through more interviews and pretend i hadnt seen what i saw, and i wasnt gonna wait around for an offer just so i could do a polite no later. so i did the polite no in the moment.

did i sabotage three rounds of work over one tattoo, should i have stayed neutral and just declined any offer if it came, did i jump too fast? am i wrong?

my former partner and i ended things a while back and we still have some shared responsibilities that require occasional contact. most of it is fine honestly. surface level, practical, we get through it without much trouble

then a few weeks ago something came up that needed to be handled. i tried to reach them but i received no response. tried again but still nothing so i ended up handling it myself, did the best i could with it, learned what i needed to learn, figured it out as i went

when they finally called me back they were furious. and not about what had happened. about how i handled it. said i had overstepped. said i shouldve waited or found someone else to deal with it. called me some things that were genuinely unfair and a little cruel

i kept it together for most of the call. i explained why id done what i did. i pointed out that id tried to reach them and they hadnt responded

then they said something specifically designed to wound me. and i know it was designed because they know me well enough to know exactly where to aim it

i told them to go fuck themselves

there were people nearby who heard that part

i feel awful about them witnessing it. i dont feel awful about saying it. but the combination is what's making me question whether i was wrong about the whole thing

my ex hung up. i had to deal with the aftermath of the people who had overheard being upset and confused and i spent the rest of the day fixing what i could

AITA for snapping after being called cruel things for doing the right thing alone because they wouldnt pick up the phone?

i have a procedure coming up in about three weeks. its not life threatening but its not minor either, like the kind where recovery is real and the first couple days after are gonna be rough. ive had surgery before so i know how i get and i just dont want an audience. i want to be uncomfortable in private and recover at my own pace and not have to perform being okay for people whose presence stresses me out even when they mean well

so i told my partner i didnt want visitors at the hospital, just him. his family can come to the house once im home and settled, like a few days after when i actually feel like seeing people

he was fine with it at first and then it slowly turned into this negotiation thing

his mom really wants to be there, like at least in the waiting room. and he keeps framing it as her just wanting to support us and asking if i can let her come since she wouldnt even be in my room

and i said no. the waiting room is still there, its still something i have to think about, i dont want to come out of surgery with someone elses experience of that day in my head

theres context i shared with him too. i had a procedure a few years ago that went harder than expected and i ended up emotionally managing the people who came to support me while i was the one literally in the hospital gown. i dont want to do that again

he says his mom isnt like that and i told him i know, i still dont want anyone there

then he says im being rigid and i told him its my body and my recovery and i get to decide whos in the building while its happening

were not in a full fight or anything but theres a thing between us now and i can tell he thinks im asking for too much

AIW?

I have been going back and forth on this for two weeks and I need people outside my life to weigh in because everyone around me has picked a side already and none of them are mine.

my boyfriend and I had been together for almost two years. things were good, or I thought they were.

a few weekends ago he went to a party without me. I was not bothered by that, we do not have to be attached at the hip. he came home that night and told me something had happened. he said a game had gotten going and on a dare he had kissed one of his friends. he said it was just a dare, it meant nothing, it was not like he chose to do it, and that technically a dare does not count as a real decision.

I told him it counted to me.

he said I was being irrational and that I needed to understand the context. that it was a social situation and he could not just back out without making things weird. that anyone in that situation would have done the same thing.

I ended it that night.

AITA for leaving over something his whole friend group says did not count?