u/xPrincess_Yue

I would love to hear some other women’s words of advice here, especially if you’re also in a similar life stage (but of course, any advice from any life stage is welcome).

My situation that I am seeking advice for is that my (35F) and my husband’s (34M) social circle is growing in the way that people are either starting families, or growing families, and it’s making me feel really…..weird. I have no desire to have children, and I don’t enjoy being around babies or young children because of all the sensory overload and unpredictability that can come with it.

Having friends comes with social events like birthdays, baby showers, wedding showers/weddings, and just general get-togethers. Of course I would never think of asking my friends to leave their kids/babies at home, but every time since the first baby in our social circle was born, my anxiety goes through the roof whenever there’s an occasion planned where either children will be there, or it’s centered around the child itself. My husband is aware of my autism and is wonderful with it, but all of his friends and their wives are NT, and I wouldn’t feel very comfortable if my diagnosis was disclosed. So, I feel like I’m a bit stuck here.

How do other women adapt to changes involving friends that are starting or growing their families when you yourself have zero desire to, and have zero interest in being around babies or young children?

TIA🩷

This may be common knowledge, but it wasn’t to me! People who are autistic often have a delayed or insufficient melatonin cycle, which results in having trouble both falling asleep and staying asleep.

I (34F) used to take melatonin like the directions usually state: take 30 minutes before bed. This resulted in me feeling like it didn’t work at all for me….until I took it two hours early on accident.

Taking it wayyyyyy before my anticipated bedtime was an absolute game changer for me. It makes sense with the delayed/insufficient melatonin cycle; letting it slowly get to workable levels has finally helped me fall asleep and stay asleep.

Just thought I would put this out there just in case anyone was feeling frustrated with their sleep routine!

Tomorrow I am having a 1:1 with my boss and verbally giving my ‘two weeks’ before I send a formal email. I have a feeling it will not go well.

The reason I’m giving my two weeks is I found out I was accepted to a top ten graduate program with a full ride scholarship and a research assistant placement. For my personal and professional development, this is an opportunity that I cannot pass on.

My boss is not known to be a pleasant person all the time, and I know that they’re planning on scheduling me for a lot of engagements coming up (which is actually why the 1:1 was originally taking place tomorrow).

Our team is very small, and we just went through two rounds of layoffs, so I want to be as helpful as I can in navigating this, but I have a feeling that breaking the news to my boss tomorrow will not be a pleasant event.

For anyone that has navigated a hostile ‘two-week’ notice with their boss/team, what tips do you have?

TIA🩷

Like the title says, I haven’t seen a post really going over this, so as a survivor of domestic v*olence, I wanted to make a post for anyone who is looking for information/advice.

In June of 2022, I divorced my ex-husband due to financial, emotional, psychological, and physical ab*se. I won’t go into the small details, but as part of his retaliation, he:

- Shredded my Birth Certificate and Social Security card
- Sent anything with my name on it to collections even if it was his responsibility
- Attempted to commit tax fraud
- Sold my personal information on the dark web
- Stalked and harassed my new BF at the time to the point where we were forced to leave our apartment before the lease ended. This apartment ended up sending the entirety of the remaining rent to collections.

I wanted list these specific points, as I will be going over each of them as part of my recovery process and to give context of where I was coming from at the beginning of my credit journey after escaping domestic violence.

After all of these events occurred, I had a total of 12 collections on my credit report, 25 missed payments, the appearance of $30,000 in CC debt, $14,000 of unpaid rent sent to collections, and my credit score tanked to a low of 408. I was still mentally and emotionally recovering from what had happened during my marriage, so adding all of this on top of it felt incredibly overwhelming. So, as part of taking my power back, I began the painstaking process of repairing my credit. Here’s the steps that I did in order:

1. Applied and received a new Birth Certificate and Social Security Card. I figured that I couldn’t fix anything on my file if I couldn’t prove that I was me. I called the Social Security office to ask them specifically what forms I needed to submit, and then did the same with the city of Chicago (where I was born). This in total took about six weeks. Note: as part of this entire process, I specifically called creditors, debt collectors, and the credit bureaus. Was this fun or easy? Definitely not. But, did it help me navigate this whole mess more easily than looking around on a bunch of websites? Absolutely.

2. Locked my credit and put out a fraud alert to each bureau. I wanted to make sure that I had every protection available on my credit profile, especially since I knew my information was on the dark web.

3. Filled out an identity theft report on identitytheft.gov to also get extra monitoring and make sure that any new sources of my personal information were identified and rectified. I also filled out multiple police reports during this time as well just to make sure I had adequate documentation, because other things did come up (this ties in with the harassment).

4. Started disputing all of the inaccuracies on my credit report. Note: Only file disputes for TRUE inaccuracies. There will be other methods that I will discuss further down to remove accurate but negative items. This was definitely the most time-consuming process. But, if you are diligent, your chances of success are much higher. I filed a dispute for each inaccurate item with each bureau (because it’s not guaranteed that a deletion from one bureau will occur on the other two without a dispute).

5(a). Ownership disputes: for me, this was the largest category. I had medical bills, credit card debt, utilities, and other items that had my name on them, but they were not my responsibility. For the medical bills I presented visitation summaries, insurance approvals/denials, my own personal medical records that I authorized to be sent out, bank and credit card statements showing I had not ever paid anything towards these medical bills, communications from medical professionals on any follow up appointments, and past prescription information that lined up with each medical bill I disputed. Before obtaining each of these items, I made sure that we had both signed any related HIPAA disclosures that authorized our medical information to be sent out for legal or medical purposes.

5(b). For the credit card debt, I sent in all of my personal credit card statements from the cards that were my responsibility, the approval emails for these cards, and proof that I never gave consent to be an authorized user on any of my ex-husband’s credit cards. I also sent in communication from the credit card companies that showed that each of the disputed cards was solely tied to his name, addresses, and Social Security number.

5(c). Utilities was the same; I provided proof that the utilities were only linked to the disputed credit cards that I was not responsible for, that I was not present on any communications from the utility companies, and support of the utilities that I was responsible for, their payment history, and the cards in my name used to pay for the utilities.

6. Identity Theft disputes. I gathered all of the information above from Points 1-5, as well as any updated communication from the credit bureaus or credit monitoring services showing that I was actively working to prevent any further fraudulent accounts from being opened in my name. I also added a certified & notarized copy of my divorce Affadavit that specifically outlined the reasons for divorce and the types of abu*se that occurred.

7(a). The longest dispute process by far was for the apartment debt that went to collections (bottom of first list) and proving my BF and I were not responsible (ownership) for the remaining $14,000 of rent. A good question to ask right now is “how did you prove that you weren’t responsible for the remainder of the rent at the apartment that you signed a lease for?” And the reason is: The Illinois Safe Homes Act. In most of the United States, there are specific laws that allow victims of domestic or se*ual violence to seek safe housing without facing the potentially devastating economic consequences of breaking a lease early. Additionally, many of these laws provide what is called an Affirmative Defense in the case that an apartment comes after a victim and their families for uncollected rent.

7(b). The collection agency that the apartment complex sent our remaining rent to is called Columbia Debt Recovery. They’re the largest collection agency that deals specifically with leases, rentals, apartments, etc. I had disputed this item before and had always failed, so here’s what found me success. I submitted FOIA requests for every police report that was filed while we were living at that apartment complex, along with the evidence for each. I also submitted the letter that we wrote the apartment complex to let them know we were vacating, and their subsequent denial of our request. Then, I printed out the specific Act from the Illinois General Assembly.

7(c). After I gathered all of these items together, I wrote a very detailed letter to the credit bureaus outlining why we left the apartment, that our letter that we gave followed all of the legal requirements, that the apartment was not allowed to deny our request, and that we had an affirmative defense to ensure that we did not suffer any undue economic damage from seeking safe housing.

8. For any items that I could not dispute. I used both the Pay For Delete and Goodwill Saturation techniques discussed in this very subreddit. I would highly highly suggest that you look up posts that go over each of these methods, because they are lengthy, but give you all of the information that you need to get other negative items like collections or late payments off of your credit report. This was a very methodical process, but nonetheless, I watched items get deleted off of my report one by one. Note: Keep all of your decision documents and pay for delete agreements in case any items show back up on your report, and report any of these incidents to the FCRA.

Point 7 was the absolute most difficult item to get off of my credit report, especially because it was such an unusual situation. After each denial (there were four in total), I did research online to figure out the best course of action to take next, and I could never find any concrete information for survivors to successfully fight items on their credit reports. So, I figured out the above methodology myself through much trial and error.

Today, May 9th 2026, I received my final dispute decision for this item: It has been deleted off of all three reports.

Over the past four years using the techniques above, I have managed to remove a total of 39 individual negative items off of my credit report, and now I have one pay for delete left. I have also increased my available credit from $300 to $15,400, and as of today, my score is 671. A 263 point increase in four years.

My last piece of advice to you, if you have read this far, is please be patient with yourself and with the process of getting your credit and your life back together after leaving an abu*ive situation. There is a high likelihood that you will hear “no” many times during this process, but if you adapt and persist, there is also a high likelihood that you will be successful. It does get better ❤️.