r/relationship_advice

I 34F have been with my partner 35M almost 7 years. We have 4 children, 2 are his from a previous relationship.

It's my step-childs birthday next week and I needed to order something for her from amazon. My partner has prime which he's told me I can use for the free shipping, I always pay for what I order, I use it extremely infrequently, maybe twice a year.

I went on to order the child's present only to find a big box of branded condoms saved in the basket and a search for a sex toy he's never expressed any kind of interest in with me which can't be used with a condom. We don't use condoms, never have and I thought sex wise we had good communication about what we like or would like to try together.

I panicked, moved it to "save for later" ordered what I needed then put it back in the basket. He would have been notified that I'd ordered something once I'd finished.

Now here's where it gets weird, about 30 mins after I did that I got a flurry of messages and a missed call from him while he's at work (very rare) asking if we were okay and being overly affectionate. I asked is there a reason he feels like we wouldn't be okay and he simply replied he had a feeling in his stomach and I left it at that for the time being. Since then he's been really clingy and affectionate, considerably more than usual so now my stomach is telling me he's unfaithful or at the very least thinking about it.

I've no idea how to broach this with him and I'm desperately trying to think of a legitimate reason he might have them but can't think of one. Wtf do I do? Can anyone think of a legitimate reason for this? Has anyone "accidentally added" something to their amazon basket before? Or am I being naive here?

I (33F) have been with my partner (32M) for almost 12 years. We love each other and, objectively speaking, we have built a good life together. But lately, I have been struggling with a feeling I can't quite shake, and I would genuinely like to hear from people who may think more like my partner does.

When we got together, neither of us wanted children. We were young, and that genuinely suited both of us at the time.

Our relationship was also much more "new" for him than for me. I had had previous relationships and had even lived with an ex for two years. He had dated before, but I was essentially his first serious, long-term relationship.

After about three years together, he started having serious doubts. Nothing was particularly wrong between us. In fact, he said our relationship was good. But he struggled with the idea that his first truly serious relationship might also be his last. He felt he had missed out on other romantic and sexual experiences.

At one point, he considered leaving me for that reason. He also suggested opening the relationship, which I refused because I knew that was absolutely not for me.

I told him he was free to make his own choices, but I didn't understand why we should destroy something good simply to introduce experiences he imagined he might be missing. At the time, though, those conversations really hurt me. They left me feeling like I wasn't enough, like perhaps he was constantly wondering whether there were other women he would rather experience life with. I was also much more insecure about myself and my appearance back then, so it affected me deeply.

Eventually, things settled down. For several years, our relationship felt peaceful again.

Then, around three or four years ago, something changed for me: I developed a strong desire to have a child.

This scared me because my partner had always been quite clear that he didn't want children, and for a long time, I had felt the same way. When we eventually talked about it openly, he reaffirmed that he didn't want them. Around the same time, he also expressed regrets that we hadn't moved abroad permanently.

We had actually already spent five months living in another country for his studies, and I had found volunteer work so I could go with him. It was a wonderful experience. But unlike him, I don't want to permanently leave my country. My family and closest friends are an extremely important part of my life, and I can't imagine growing old without them nearby.

So suddenly, we were facing two potentially fundamental differences: I had developed a desire to have children, while he still didn't want them; and he still imagined a life abroad, while I didn't.

I was heartbroken, but I told him that perhaps we needed to consider separating. I didn't want either of us to sacrifice something fundamental and eventually resent the other for it.

He seemed genuinely horrified that I was considering ending the relationship. He asked me to give him some time to think. We agreed on a date in the future when we would revisit the conversation.

When that date came, he told me that he had made his decision and wanted to have children with me and build that life together.

I was happy, but also scared. Part of me wondered whether he had truly changed his mind or whether he was simply choosing this because the alternative was losing me. He has told me that the idea of becoming a parent scares him a lot, but his decision has remained the same.

Since then, we bought a house together and moved in a little over a year ago. We are now well settled, and we have agreed to start trying to build our family towards the end of this year.

So objectively, he has chosen me. He chose to stay when he had doubts about missing out on other experiences. He chose a life in our country rather than pursuing the idea of permanently living abroad. He agreed to become a parent, despite having once been convinced that he didn't want children.

And yet, I still struggle with feeling truly chosen.

I think the reason is that throughout our relationship, I have often felt that I have to push for demonstrations of affection or commitment. My partner is a very rational person. He doesn't tend to be swept away by emotion or make spontaneous, romantic gestures. He thinks things through carefully and makes decisions based on what makes the most sense to him.

I know that isn't inherently wrong. In fact, I appreciate many things about his personality. But emotionally, it can leave me feeling strangely uncherished.

For example, I would really like to get married someday. For me, it isn't primarily about having an expensive wedding or following tradition for the sake of it. I care about rituals and symbolic moments. I love the idea of publicly celebrating our commitment to each other with the people we love. I would also like to hear him actively affirm that commitment.

When I brought up marriage, his reaction was essentially that he couldn't justify the expense when we could use the money for so many other things.

And once again, I felt like the romance had been completely removed from the conversation.

This is where I am struggling: I know he has made major life choices that allow us to stay together and build the life I want. But because those choices often seem to come after a lot of rational deliberation, rather than enthusiasm or emotional spontaneity, I still sometimes feel like I am not being actively, joyfully chosen.

Am I being unfair? Can someone genuinely love you deeply and be fully committed to you while simply not experiencing or expressing that commitment with the kind of enthusiasm or romance you expect?

And I would especially love to hear from people who think more like my partner. If you are someone who is very rational about major life decisions, what does love and commitment feel like from your perspective? Have any of you initially been skeptical about marriage but eventually chosen to get married anyway? If so, what changed your mind or made the decision meaningful to you?

I am not looking for people to tell me to leave him, and I don't think he is a bad partner. I genuinely want to understand whether there is something about his way of loving that I am failing to see and whether there is a way for us to bridge the gap between his way of making commitments and my need to actually feel loved, wanted and chosen.

Reposting from a throwaway account because my original post was removed.

I (27F) met a guy on Hinge last year while I was seeing my boyfriend (32M). My boyfriend and I had been in a casual relationship for almost 2 years at that point. I wanted a serious relationship with him and told him that multiple times, but he kept deflecting and didn’t want a commitment. We eventually became officially committed in March of this year.

Because we weren’t committed, I was talking to the Hinge guy on and off. We flirted here and there and I met him for a few dates, but I never got intimate with him because honestly, I still wanted to be with my boyfriend. The Hinge guy genuinely meant nothing to me and I never saw him as someone I wanted a relationship with.

At the same time, my boyfriend was also on Hinge until February. He says the difference is that he was honest with me about his past, while I wasn’t honest with him because I never told him about my conversations with the Hinge guy.

And honestly, I didn’t tell him because I never cared about this Hinge guy enough to consider it significant. To me, it was just nothing.

In January this year, I messaged the Hinge guy saying I didn’t want to hook up, but that if he wanted, we could go for a drive and smoke. He asked when, and I said “now?” He said he was busy. After that, I never replied to him and nothing happened. Later, my boyfriend found those messages and focused on the fact that I was the one who asked him to meet. He said that if the guy hadn’t been busy, I would have gone. I told him honestly, “yeah, maybe,” because I don’t want to lie about it. But I didn’t go, and I never pursued him afterward.

My boyfriend says he feels betrayed and hurt by this and that ever since he found those messages, he has “checked out.” He says he can’t trust me anymore. He also says that when I don’t text or call him, his mind immediately goes to “where is she?” and that he feels like this will eventually become toxic.
And he wants to breakup for this very reason.

I understand why seeing those messages hurt him, and I’ve told him I regret asking that guy to meet. Looking back, I wish I hadn’t asked, especially because I knew I wanted my boyfriend.

But this is the part I genuinely struggle to understand: how can he feel betrayed by me when we weren’t in a committed relationship?

I had repeatedly asked him for a serious relationship and he repeatedly told me he didn’t want one. He was still on Hinge until February. He had met and hooked up with someone from Hinge in the past, and even met her for coffee in May. Again, I’m not saying his actions make mine automatically okay. I’m saying I don’t understand why there seems to be such a different standard.

He says “the context doesn’t matter. The thing is, you asked him. That’s the problem.” And I understand that part, I did ask him, and I can admit that it was a mistake. But how am I supposed to understand the level of guilt he’s putting on me when there was no commitment between us at that time?

He says I should have told him about this guy, while I genuinely didn’t think there was anything meaningful to tell him about. I never hooked up with this guy, never pursued anything serious with him, and after he said he was busy that day, I never followed up.

I can accept that I made a mistake. I can accept that my boyfriend was hurt by seeing those messages. But I don’t understand how that mistake makes me fundamentally untrustworthy or why it should erase all the context of what our relationship actually was at that time.

And I also don’t know how to reconcile his reaction with the fact that he was on Hinge too and had his own history with someone he met there.

I love him and I don’t want this to become toxic. I’m willing to put in the effort to rebuild trust, and I’m not trying to invalidate his feelings. But I also don’t want to carry guilt for something that, at the time, happened when we had explicitly not agreed to be exclusive.

Is it reasonable for him to feel betrayed even though we weren’t committed, and is it fair for him to say he can never trust me again because of this? Or are we looking at the same situation with completely different standards?

Update- Another important context is that this happened in January, during a huge fight between my boyfriend and me. The fight was again about me wanting commitment and him not wanting one, and he blocked me for about a week. During that fight, he verbally abused me and called me a whore and what not.
It was the first time I experienced panic attacks, and I was genuinely shaken and mentally exhausted from constantly feeling like I had to prove my worth to him. So when I messaged the Hinge guy, this was the emotional context I was in, we were not committed, we were actively fighting about commitment, and he had blocked me.

My girlfriend and I have been dating for about 6 months. Overall I really care about her and enjoy our relationship, but lately I've been struggling with how little time we actually have together and, more specifically, how she seems to be filling the little free time she does have with things that exclude me.

When we started dating, she made it clear that Friday nights were her family nights. Her family lives in different parts of the country, and every Friday they get online and game together. I completely understood that this was important to her and agreed that Fridays would be her time with them. I did tell her that if she ever felt comfortable including me, I'd love to join occasionally and get to know them better, but I've never tried to push my way into it because I understand that it's something special she has with her family.

Recently, though, she started a new job that has completely changed our schedules. She works Monday through Thursday and has to wake up around 3am, which means she goes to bed around the time I get off work at 6pm. Because of that, we basically can't spend meaningful time together Monday through Thursday anymore. So realistically, our overlapping free time is mostly the weekend.

Then, during her first month at this new job, she was trained by a guy who runs a D&D game every Saturday night from around 6pm-midnight. She decided to join his group.

This one hit me harder than I expected. D&D has actually been one of my hobbies for years. I used to have a regular group, but over time everyone got busy with family, work, etc., and the group fell apart. My girlfriend didn't even really know what D&D was until I introduced her to it and told her about my old group. So when she told me she was joining this Saturday game, I was actually excited and asked if there might be room for me too. She told me no, not necessarily because the group was full, but because she wants to keep her social life and our relationship separate. She said that combining the two would be too "codependent."

And that's where I'm struggling.

I don't think couples need to do everything together. I actually think having separate friends, hobbies, and time apart is healthy. I'm not asking to be attached to her hip or invited to everything she does.

But Monday through Thursday we essentially can't see each other because of our work schedules. Friday night is specifically reserved for her family, which I've always respected. Now Saturday night is becoming another standing commitment that I'm specifically not supposed to be part of.

At that point, it feels less like "we need healthy independent social lives" and more like our relationship is being squeezed into whatever time is left over. The D&D part especially hurts because it's something I genuinely love and would enjoy doing with her. If it were simply her going out with friends or having a hobby that wasn't really my thing, I don't think I'd feel nearly as bothered. Instead, she's discovered something that's already a major interest of mine, joined another person's group, and then told me that including me would make our relationship too codependent.

I don't want to become the boyfriend who demands invitations to everything his girlfriend does. I also don't want to slowly end up in a relationship where I'm effectively allotted one day a week while every other part of her life is intentionally kept separate from me.

I think what I'm trying to figure out is where the line is between respecting your partner's independence and reasonably expecting your lives to actually overlap.

Am I looking at this too much through the lens of feeling excluded? Is it reasonable for her to want this much separation between her relationship and social life? Or is it fair for me to tell her that with our schedules being what they are, I'm starting to feel like our relationship isn't being given enough space in her life?

TL;DR: My girlfriend's new work schedule means we basically can't spend time together Monday-Thursday. Friday nights have always been reserved for gaming with her long-distance family, which I've respected. She has now joined a D&D group every Saturday night but doesn't want me to join because she says she wants to keep her social life separate from our relationship and thinks combining them would be codependent. D&D is already a major hobby of mine, which makes the exclusion sting more. I'm starting to feel like nearly all of her free time is being allocated to parts of her life that specifically don't include me, leaving our relationship with whatever time is left.

My boyfriend and I have been together for almost 5 years. For about the last year, I’ve been talking about wanting to move. He has always been apprehensive about it, but I tried to keep the conversation open and figure out what our future might look like.

Last month, he signed another contract for another year at his current job. I found out after the fact. I was really hurt because he knew I had been wanting to move, and it felt like he made a major decision about his life and our future without even talking to me about it.

We also had a conversation around our 4-year anniversary about commitment. I told him that I didn’t see myself staying in a relationship for 5 years with no engagement. I wasn’t giving him an ultimatum or demanding that he propose immediately, I was just being honest about what I wanted for my life.

Months went by and nothing happened. I eventually suggested we go ring shopping. He agreed. I told him I wanted him to plan it. Months went by again before i eventually gave up asking.

We had a convo last night. He apologized profusely for signing the contract without talking to me first. But then he told me very decisively that he is nowhere near ready to propose anytime in the near future. he also stated i pushed him into doing a lot of things earlier in the relationship (asking me to be his gf, saying i love you etc) before he was ready.

Now I’m questioning the whole ring shopping thing. Why did he agree to that and let me think we were moving in that direction if he knew he wasn’t even close to wanting to propose? The conversation also focused a lot on himself and all the things he feels he needs to work on before he can be ready. There wasn’t much about us, our future together, whether he sees marriage with me, or what the hell he actually thinks our future looks like.

I think I’ve already made my decision, but I guess I’m looking for outside perspectives. Am I being unreasonable for feeling like this relationship has run its course? Has anyone been in a long-term relationship where you realized you were waiting for a future that the other person wasn’t actually moving toward?

ETA: thank you all for your resounding move on. we do live together so this does make the separation a bit harder, but i’ve been mentally preparing for this for the past year sadly.

My ex broke up with me last month and whilst the first week was really shit without her, I got over it and focused on movies, TV shows, gaming and seeing friends.

I had a friend come round mine tonight, which I thought was weird as we only see each other in group settings. He dropped a bombshell on me, saying they have been seeing each other. Felt like I knew this was coming but I'm still very very angry.

It's only been a month and I just feel so disrespected. Thing is, she was seeing him 1-1 right before we broke up and in her marriage 2 years ago, she was cheating on her husband multiple times. Now I feel like, was she cheating on me too near the end of our relationship?! Thing is, I knew this when we first started dating and I should have called it off there, saving me time and money. I was just so so invested in her, that I ignored the big red flag in front of me.

It's really fucked me up and I'm going to try to stay positive. I'm seeing friends tonight and Saturday, which I know will help. Needless to say, I said to the friend I no longer want to be friends with him.

PS, forgot to say, he was recently in love with a married woman and still lives with his ex wife. Like, both of them deserve each other!

Over the past few months, he's been having strange views since the iran war began. He's all in favor for trump to continue this war, that trump should drop a nuclear bomb on the strait, and that trump should sanction any country that doesnt support trump's plan. He's been acting crazy thinking trump will win this war against Iran and that if they dont surrender, that they should burn in hell.

His views are causing major stress after i just gave birth and its up to the point where he stomps off to his room and not help out just because we disagree on political views. How do I get him to see reality?

So my 26M fiancé 22F banged her head against the bathroom door five times during an argument and I don’t know what to do. A few days ago we were having a pretty normal day, had gone to church, got home and did some work on the house, everything was fine. A little background, my fiancé likes things done a certain way and doesn’t handle it very well if things don’t go her way. For lack of a better word she grew up very spoiled and still has some of those tendencies. That being said she did experience some trauma involving her family during her childhood.
The argument escalated to the point where I wanted to leave the house to have some space. I was pretty mad as she had been (rather rudely) questioning my work ethic all day as I was trying to explain to her that we couldn’t afford certain aspects of the wedding she wants (we are paying for the wedding ourselves). She screamed at me saying that I don’t care about her at all and she was just going to throw the engagement ring away. Then I said that maybe if she wasn’t such a horrible person I’d care more. This is when she grabbed the bathroom door and banged her head against it five times, hard enough that the door broke and it gave her a black eye. Then I just stood there in shock as she ran out of the house crying. About a half hour later she came back inside and we have been trying to piece things back together since. I’m just having a hard time with all of this and don’t know what to do. I love her but I am worried for the relationship. Thoughts?

First, I want to say that my husband (35M) and I have been swingers for about 8 months and we’re still strictly soft-swap. We’ve been hanging out with this one couple (32M and 38F) a lot and they’re basically our closest friends. We get along ridiculously well and they know us and our lives extremely deeply (important later).

Last weekend we all went to our favorite club. Things were heating up, I was on my back, and I suddenly felt something being applied to me. I looked down and saw our friend (F) holding a little bottle. I asked her what it was and she just said, “Don’t worry about it. You’re going to feel REALLY good” I didn’t give it much thought in the moment and it didn’t help that the next hour was some of the best sex of my life (no exaggeration). But the next day I asked her about it and she casually says “Oh. It’s cannabis pleasure glaze! I bought it online. Pretty great right?”

WHAT?!

I work at the Philadelphia airport TSA checkpoint. We get drug tested multiple times a year. And she knew that. I’ve been spiraling with anxiety ever since. I can’t decide if it was malicious or just wildly incompetent, but either way I don’t feel safe around her anymore. My husband thinks it’s “not a big enough deal.”

I like the friendship we thought we had, but I don’t know if I can keep hanging out with them after this.

Should we just cut them off completely or is there a way to set hard boundaries and move forward? I feel like you can’t set boundaries after something like this but I don’t have a lot of experience with this type of situation…

TLDR: Closest lifestyle couple applied THC to me without telling me (they knew I get drug-tested for work). Great sex then pure panic. Husband thinks it’s no big deal. Do we keep seeing them or walk away?

EDIT: Thank you all for the support! It turns out that it had <0.3% THC something called pleasure glaze. I got some for myself lol but I agree that it was a wild overstep of boundaries and have agreed with my husband that we will not see them again.

Trigger warning for those who have dealt with dv. I don’t know what to do guys. We got in a petty little argument when he got up after cuddling about him moving me instead of asking me to move when I was laying too far on his side of the bed. He then got on the bed and in my words shoved me to the edge of the bed. He said he just moved me, but he was angry while doing it and I immediately jumped out the bed thinking he was going to shove me off.

I caught myself on the bookshelf after I stumbled and he grabbed my arms and got really in my face. I yelled at him to let go and when he refused I grabbed his shirt and shoved him hard. He stumbled back and stepped closer but I put my hands up to stop him and yelled at him to get back. I’ve dealt with dv before as he knows and my mind went blank. All I could do was scream at him to get the fuck away from me.

He began apologizing and asking why I was screaming. I threw my ring at him and told him to get the fuck out. He tried talking and telling me he was just trying to catch me but eventually left. I have no idea what to do next. I don’t know if I really think he would actually hurt me or if it’s just my past trauma coming up. How do I handle this?

I 27F never had kids yet, i want to have kids, it’s something me and my friends talk about. They already married and have kids. I have told my bf (30M) that I definitely want to have kids, and he said we would be great parents. He said that we can go on trips and do family activities. Although he has said somethings that make me feel comfortable, he did mention that when if they misbehave I should be the one who should deal with them, that it should be my job to know what to do. He laughs and says no you deal with them. Mind you as a female, I have searched what comes with pregnancy, I’ve seen that your physical body isn’t the same after, stress, hormone change, I’m not a mother yet, i have seen how difficult it is to deal with your children during stores, and public places. The other day I went to get groceries and I’ve been hearing loud tantrums, it worries me a little that my bf has the audacity to put all that stress to me. I feel like he now that he mentions he wants to have children, that he only wants to have kids to have the easiest job, and makes me feel like I have to work hard for him and for our future children. I’m rethinking if I should be having kids, I feel, in my perspective, that it should be a growing, healthy, by both parents, (I’ve been dating my bf for a year and a half ) I would like to know how motherhood is like for those who have already experienced this, And if it’s worth to have kids with him? I truly love this man

Obs: if my english is not perfect i apologise in advance.

Married for three years. I'm extra nice to my wife, have always been very passionate about her, did (mostly still do) many things for her, like her breakfast everyday (since i wake up earlier), leave everything ready for her to go to work (i work from home). I fill her with kisses and hugs many times of the day, as soon as she leaves the bed, when she's going out to work, when she arrives. I always thought that was necessary to keep things alive, and i was wrong.

Although i'm like this with her, i'm not like this with other people, ever. Me and my whole family have always been very cold, not out of hatred or anything else, but we don't show emotions to people, to anyone. If we're sad, we keep it to ourselves, if we're happy we don't overreact to it (even if inside we're incredibly happy), it's just how we are, nothing artificial.

With my wife i am different, exclusively with her. I tell more things, i get excited for her, i get sad for her, etc. With time she started disrespecting me, specially my intelligence. I've read a lot my whole life, enough to know that because there are too many things to know for me to be confident about anything, hence i prefer to always be skeptical about the facts i give, and even the opinions (since i'll never know all the variables). I think this characteristic makes it seem like i'm a bit stupid to her, and i've mentioned many times that i try to be the nicest but i won't take bs from anyone, ever. In the beginning she apologised when that happened (it wasn't that often), and we moved on.

Then time kept passing and it increased, add to that the fact that i can't remember last time i shared something where she actually said anything other than "hum...". Then she started disagreeing with everything i said, even if it was obviously correct, and the few things that she did agree she talked about it like it's the most obvious thing in the world, like i'm stupid to be even mentioning it. About two months ago i told her again that i won't be taking bs, we're married and we're supposed to fill each others void (or whatever we have in existence), not to compete on who's right or wrong. And this time she disagree that she does that, so i explained her the examples and she would pick one small example that i gave and changed the focus of the conversation to something else that i did wrong, like the fact that she asked me to do something this way and i ended up forgetting, for example.

One month ago, after a whole month of continued disrespect, i mentioned again. I've been trying really hard to keep this going, but i don't think it's possible anymore. My whole life i saw marriage as the greatest definition of partnership and companionship, that is the one person that will be on your side (who is not your mother), but it seems now that i live with the enemy. Of course we don't have sex anymore, i guess with this context it goes without saying. So i stopped hugging and kissing her, i don't feel it anymore. I still do other things but mostly to avoid drama, cause i'm out of patience for that anymore. Could there be any way out if not divorce?

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Hey everyone, I honestly just need some outside perspective because I feel completely stuck in a loop.

My partner and I have been together for over 5 years. We have young kids, and at this point, that is the only reason we are still living together. We do not fight or scream, but the relationship is dead. Zero communication left, zero shared vision for the future, and we are just drifting in completely different directions.

She wants to try fixing things for the Xth time. I am just exhausted, I am so tired of hitting the reset button on a cycle that always ends up right back here.

The kicker is the physical side of things. We still sleep in the same bed every single night. She wears lingerie that drives me crazy, and every instinct tells me to go for it. Sometimes she explicitly says she wants me, but I turn her down, claiming I am 'too tired.' The truth is, I am terrified that if I sleep with her, she will take it as a sign that I changed my mind and want to stay. I do not want to send mixed signals.

At the same time... I am a guy, the temptation is right there, and part of me just wants physical connection without any strings attached. But I know it would mess with her head and make a clean break even harder.

So, honestly, what would you guys do in my shoes? Just give in to the physical release and deal with the fallout, or keep turning it down and stick to your own devices?

Got broken up with today , technically this is the second day, and yesterday after the breakup call I was surprisingly fine. I listened to phonk and other music, kept myself distracted, and genuinely felt okay. I even slept normally.

So the break up call happend yesterday at 7 30 pm , and yesterday morning i cried in front of my mother ,which i coudnt control and my mom too cried seeing me ( since i know today will be the last call )

Right now I’m at the office and I swear there is this pain inside me that feels like it’s getting worse. I keep diving into my thoughts and asking myself why she didn’t fight for me.

We were together for around 8 years. The breakup happened mainly because she couldn’t stand against her dad and the situation with our families. For the last two weeks, she had become really rude and seemed like she had completely given up. She kept telling me there was no hope, that I should give up, and that forcing her into something she didn’t want would only make things worse in the future.

But now my mind is going everywhere.

Is she happy now? Is she going to be happy with someone else? Why wasn’t I enough? Why couldn’t we just continue? Was she really giving up on me? I don't actually believe she was playing with me because I know her and we were together for so long.

Even stupid little things are triggering me. The bag I’m carrying at work right now is the same bag I used whenever I went to see her. The purse I’m using was given to me by her.also after . also my room itself will be a prob , coz i always lie down in by bed and vedio call her always , like everyday , we had fights , we had cried , smiled lauged , did everythg until the last 2 3 weeks where she was a lil rude .and started pushed me back . and thinking she will be with some one else makes me crazy 😢

also at the end she told like her mother dosnt like me , i asked why , she was like she dosnt know . now that increases my insecurities tooo . now i regrest i didnt say anythg about it

I blocked her everywhere after the breakup, but now I keep getting the urge to contact her again and ask why, even though another part of my brain is telling me she’ll probably just be rude or tell me to move on again.

I know everyone says “don't contact your ex,” but right now I'm struggling with that urge and that slight pain now .

what did you do when you desperately wanted to contact your ex again?

My wife and I have been married for a couple years and it's genuinely been especially awful. I often find myself drenched in sweat from arguing, screaming, and just overall stress in general from dealing with her on a consistent basis. It feels as if we could be having a perfect night, but a single mistake can destroy everything for the entire day, but she almost always wakes up the next day as if nothing happened and there's a high chance of ending up in a similar argument a couple days later.

She always insists that they're never arguments, it's just me having a mental breakdown and screaming at her each time, but she repeatedly says provocative or offensive things throughout the entire argument while denying she ever said that or deliberately ignoring it when saying "all I said to you was XYZ." I admit I'm not the best with cleaning up after myself, but it often gets to the point where I've been violently woken up randomly at 4am or had my entire days ruined (even during work days and days I've had interviews) because of a single fork or plate that was left on the kitchen counter, or a very tiny piece of a paper towel that was left on the floor (like the size of a sticker), forgetting to close the laundry closet door by 1 inch, because I "cleaned" all the dishes but left the cooking pot on the stove, or because she found an extra piece of debris in our cat litter that she blamed me for not disposing of properly.

She consistently calls me blind, disgusting, stupid, incompetent, loser, etc. over these mistakes and when I question her over it she maintains that they can't be insults because they're literally just characteristic descriptions of who I am, which obviously infuriates me more but she will never admit even to this day that she has ever insulted or name-called me, even to our marriage counselor who we eventually dropped, because under her logic it can't be an insult or name-call if it's true. We do have good moments but lately these things have been happening literally every single day, and I'm tired of pretending like it's normal. When I start screaming because of these insults and ultimately her denying that she's insulting me, she calls me a man-child, that I just scream my way out of everything to get my way, that I'm just immature and all men know how to do is scream.

It got to the point where a few days ago after being waking up due to being screamed insults at during 2-3am while I was half-asleep, she kept on calling me incompetent, disgusting, horrible, etc. and when I looked at what I had *actually* done I had forgot to wash a used pot in the stove. At this point I was having a breakdown already because I'm genuinely tired of being violently awoken during the middle of the night for something that is objectively not to the same scale as what she's treating it as, and then she kept on saying things like "I can't believe someone this incompetent is even still alive, why are you still alive?" and she kept on repeating a variation of "how can someone this stupid even be here?" over and over again until I finally snapped. I have been dealing with depression issues for the past year and was thinking of ending my life during the days before because of how hopeless I've been feeling. Regardless, I swing open the balcony door and lean on the ledge, staring down and seriously questioning whether it's worth it to leap off. I decide not to and walk back in 2 minutes later, and she yells that opening the door is going to cause bugs to fly in. She randomly complains 2 hours later that she is suffering from mosquito bites because of what I did...

I think about leaving her nearly every single day and I constantly regret having married her, but when I bring this up she always gets incredibly defensive and starts insulting me further about how privileged I am, how it must be so nice to have so much power, how it must be so nice to be a man, etc.

For context, she is a Vietnamese immigrant and on a temporary green card, whereas I'm an American citizen by birthright. We weren't married long enough when we applied for her green card, so they gave her a 2-year one that I am ... genuinely struggling to determine if I want to renew, not because I want to destroy her life as she claims, but because I genuinely don't know if I can handle dealing with this pain literally every single day for that much longer.

She also makes significantly less money than me and went to a significantly less competitive university and major, which I literally never brought up before I snapped, but despite this she calls me a "loser" and "incompetent" on a daily basis. On top of that, she can't drive, so I often drive her everywhere to ease her convenience but she always seems to treat it as nothing whenever I bring it up as something I help with because she always says something like "I could've gotten a ride from someone else so I don't owe you anything for doing this for me" whenever I bring this up in response to being called "useless" nearly every day.

She tells me that my reactions are all because I'm not on anti-depressants and that if I was simply taking them more often or more consistently, I wouldn't even react like this at all. The thing is, before her, I didn't even need to even be on them at all.

I genuinely snapped today after spending the entire week dealing with this every single day. When I snapped over being repeatedly put down for years, I reminded her about her place in the household, how she couldn't even earn my degree if she tried, how she couldn't even earn close to my income, how she couldn't even get into a company as competitive as mine, how she can't even drive, how she can't even manage to save any of her salary despite the fact that I heavily subsidize her expenses. I screamed everything I was thinking, pent up with frustrations from years ago that I have been consistently voicing, and I threatened to divorce her (as I frequently do nowadays) which she responded with "must be nice to be able to destroy my life so easily" or "it must be so nice to be an American with a family here who can't just be deported away because her spouse got mad one day" etc. etc. with a bunch of guilt tripping, basically saying how all I had to worry about was my mental health whereas she was now stuck worrying with 100x more things about how I was going to ruin her life, etc. etc.

Genuinely, I feel like I am losing my mind with her.

I (23m) have been arguing with my partner (24m) for a few weeks now about lack of intimacy (he has been saying I have been giving a lack of intimacy to him) It started a bit ago due to stress with jobs/moving/surgery/wrecking a car. Seriously just one thing after another. The situation is almost too long to explain. We had an argument a few days ago where I mentioned he is incredibly co-dependent and needs to get out and make friends. They do not have any friends/family outside of me and I believe that’s why they are unhealthily attached.
Today my partner tearfully informed me that they had downloaded Grindr with apparently the sole intent to make a friend, went to a guys house without telling me, and played video games with him. Apparently it escalated and the guy overstepped a boundary and tried to kiss him and he panicked and left. Apparently he immediately started crying and froze up and ran out the door.
I’m just a bit at a loss for what to do. I feel like I’ve been cheated on. He’s saying that he was assaulted and didn’t want it to go anywhere and was just trying to make a friend but I’m having a hard time believing due to recent arguments. After some research I understand that yes people do use Grindr to make friends with other gay people and can put FRIENDS ONLY in their bio to specify I’m just a bit heartbroken over this entire event. After 7 years we have never had this be an issue so I am just not sure what to believe. I have no way of knowing what actually happened and if I’m being told the truth.
The entire day afterwards he has been crying and insisting that’s what happened. Begging for forgiveness. Telling me he was assaulted and that it was never supposed to happen. I told him I need space because I feel like I’ve been cheated on and I’m having a hard time processing. He’s been in therapy and has recently gone off some harder psychiatric medication and has been having lapses in judgement. He has had some harder life events happen to him recently. He’s told me he just froze up the second the guy overstepped the friend boundary and tried to kiss him.
I would feel really bad if I’m supposed to be comforting my partner right now instead of being incredibly mad. Mad that he downloaded this app to go meet a man and not let me know. Putting himself in a situation he never would have had to be in. Please I’d really like advice on what to do. I have never worried about this in our 7 years together and I’m at a bit of a loss. We just celebrated our seventh anniversary a few weeks ago.

Has anyone else realized they were put into a role in their friend group?

I’ve had basically the same group of friends since elementary school. There are four girls and one guy, and over time, everyone kind of ended up having a “role” in the group.

J(26F) was the smart one. She got good grades, gave off the impression that she didn’t really care about us that much, but everyone kind of idolized her because she was intelligent.

K(26F) was the youngest. She was kind of distracted and a little “not many thoughts going on up there” sometimes.

V(26F) was also part of the group, but she was always a little more distant.

The guy, D(26M), had a crush on J for a long time, but obviously nothing happened. Eventually, he started dating K, and they were together for years.

And then there was me(26F).

I was the distracted one who didn’t really care that much about school. I wasn’t particularly interested in getting amazing grades, but I could keep them around average without much effort. I also disagreed with J a LOT. We would constantly have different opinions about things, but I never really took it seriously. I just thought it was normal for friends to disagree.

We’re adults now, and we’ve all gone our separate ways, moved to different cities, etc. D and K eventually broke up, V became even more absent, but the idolization of J never really went away.

What I’ve only recently started realizing is that, for a very long time, I actually believed the role they had given me in this group: the less intelligent one whose opinions weren’t really that important.

And the weird thing is… I’m starting to realize that it wasn’t actually true.

A lot of the time, I would bring up an idea or opinion, and nobody would really pay attention to it. Then J would say basically the exact same thing later, and suddenly everyone would agree with her.

At first I genuinely thought I was imagining it. I even wondered if I was paranoid or somehow making things up in my head.

But it kept happening.

There have been multiple situations where I told J my opinion about something, she tried to convince me that I was wrong, and then weeks later she would bring up the exact same opinion to the rest of the group as if it had been her idea all along.

And everyone would listen to her.

Another thing that made me think about this was reading Murakami’s Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. Without getting too much into the book itself, some of the ideas about how people can become defined by the role they have within a friend group really stuck with me.

It made me look at my own friendships differently and question whether some of the things I thought were simply “my personality” were actually things I had internalized because of the position I had in that group.

The thing that really confirmed this for me, though, was meeting a completely different group of friends in college. I made friends with people who genuinely appreciated my ideas and actually listened when I talked. They would ask me to elaborate, take my opinions seriously, and sometimes even tell me that they thought I had a good perspective on something.

That was honestly when I started thinking, wait… maybe I’m not actually the person I thought I was in my old friend group.

It made me look back at years of interactions with my old friends and notice this pattern that I had somehow never questioned before.

And what makes it even funnier is D.

Whenever we need to vote on something as a group, he can have a completely different opinion at first, but the moment J expresses her opinion, he suddenly changes his mind and agrees with her. Sometimes he literally changes his position completely just to be on her side.

And I genuinely don't think he even realizes he's doing it.

I don’t think J is necessarily doing all of this intentionally either. I don’t think she sits there thinking, “I’m going to make everyone ignore OP’s opinion.” I think the group has just been reinforcing this dynamic for so many years that everyone is used to it.

But I’m honestly tired of feeling like I have to wait for J to repeat something I already said before my opinion becomes valid to everyone else.

It’s strange realizing that a role you accepted as part of your personality might have actually been something your friend group taught you to believe about yourself.

Has anyone else had a similar experience where making new friends made you realize that your old friend group had kind of assigned you a role that wasn’t actually who you were?

I’ve been with my boyfriend for six months. To preface this, I want to say that I in no way expect a big celebration for my birthday. I really only want to spend time with my loved ones for my birthday. What hurts me in this situation is that my boyfriend talked for weeks about us doing stuff for my birthday and kept mentioning all the gifts he was going to get me.

My birthday fell on a weekend, and he had off for a few days, so I asked if he wanted to celebrate with me on one of his days off. I mentioned that we could go to a movie, a park, etc. Even though he makes significantly more than me, I offered to pay for everything that required money. He agreed to a restaurant, and when I asked the day before, he canceled and said he had already “made plans.” We live together, and these plans consisted of him playing video games all day. He did absolutely nothing else. I even asked him if we could play a game together, go on a walk, or something small. He said no and spent the entire day on the game.

It hurt even more when I didn’t get any gifts or anything. He begged me for a $300 collector’s item for his birthday, so I got it. I make close to minimum wage and saved for months to afford it, while he makes over 1K a week. He spent $200 that week on video game purchases, so I know that he had money to do something. In the weeks leading up to my birthday, he mentioned how he was going to get me flowers and jewelry and other things for my birthday. He said this multiple times, including the day before my birthday. Then, I didn’t get so much as a card on my birthday. I asked him about this, and his response was that he didn’t know that I wanted anything for my birthday.

I honestly feel so hurt. He has been spending less time with me lately and gets annoyed when I do little things now and constantly snaps at me. I am asking for advice on this situation. I have brought this up to him before, but he always shuts down. Is there a different way I should bring this up to him? At this point, is this even worth bringing up again, or is it too late?

Me and my girlfriend have been together almost a year now. Things are going great, we live together, and I really see a future with this woman.

Before we got together, her last real relationship lasted 5 years during and after high school. From what I understand the guy was kind of a loser (didn’t really have a job, lived with her and her parents at home, needed her credit to get a car). They were also pretty toxic to each other (put hands on each, fought a lot, etc). There is still a lot of history there though - 5 years is a long time at our age, I guess there was an engagement somewhere in there, a breakup and back together and a breakup again.

Jump forward and we are now dating, but this ex keeps reaching out every once in a while. He joined the armed forces sometime before we got together and sent her a letter from boot camp “hope you’re doing well, maybe I’ll come say hi to you and your folks when I’m on leave” - she didn’t respond. A few months later she gets a text from an unknown number “hope you’re alright, just missed you” - she responded politely and said she had a man. He sent some follow up text and she blocked him.

Just now I was playing on the PS5 we share and I noticed an unopened message, “hey please call me” and gives a phone number. Like 2 days later there’s another message “ignore that I was drunk good luck to you and your man”.

Any advice for how I should proceed? Part of me wants to talk to her about it, part of me wants to text the guy myself and tell him to kick rocks. I trust her completely and don’t think she would ever reach out to him in an unfaithful way, I just don’t like this dude thinking about my girl after all this time 😂

I love my boyfriend, we’ve been together 9 years, and we’ve done long distance before (undergrad, internships), so it’s really nothing new for us.

The real issue is, we’re together or apart, roughly every 6 months we have a fight because I come to him with my feelings (about him or not) and he gets mad at me. It’s not everytime, but every 6 months there is a time it will make him completely push me away. Sometimes it’s framed as me “not approaching him right” or “expecting him to be a perfect listener.”Often he eventually admits he was being mean about it, usually after I’ve already apologized.

This time feels different. I moved from Columbus to NYC 2.5 months ago for my first job out of grad school. He was excited, and has been calling it a stepping stone for both of us since it gives him a push to leave his current unfulfilling tech job. Tuesday night we were on a call and I was having a horrible day at work. This is something that, I admit for the last month I’ve probably complained and leaned into him for support about a little too much. I told him I was ready to start job hunting again. He seemed checked out the whole call and eventually asked to get off to do leetcode.

Hours later I called back to tell him I’d booked a therapy appointment and asked to talk more. At this point, what had gone from a bad day at work had turned into me being in a really bad spot. He said “give me 10-20 minutes.” 45 minutes later I called again because i thought he forgot, but he was on his computer, barely responding. I finally said if he wanted to get off the phone he should just say so instead of making me feel worse. I told him this felt like the same pattern from past long distance stretches where he makes me feel bad for coming to him when I’m really going through it.

That’s when he blew up. He said my feelings have become an inconvenience given his own stress about finding a job to move here, said I don’t appreciate him enough after he supported me through grad school, sarcastically said “it’s about time” I went back to therapy since he’s “been telling me for months.” (I can acknowledge I should have started again while job hunting earlier in the year.) When I said I’d call my mom instead about it because I’ve clearly overwhelmed him, he said “yeah, go ahead, I clearly don’t give you the 100% perfect response every time.” He also said “literally all of this is so you can have a career.”

I ended up just apologizing repeatedly. I know I’ve leaned on him a lot this past month, and that’s fair to own. But the move benefits him too (better earning potential, and he’s very career/finance-focused), and I do regularly acknowledge his financial contribution and I make it clear i’ll to make it up to him once this all works out, even when he insists he views us basically married at this point and it’s “our finances.”

Well, we haven’t talked in almost 3 days now. I called on day 2 as an olive branch and he declined it . I texted an apology about the pressure he’s under and leaning on him too much. He left me on read.

I’m not perfect in this either, but at what point is this just unacceptable? Am I being unreasonable, or has this actually crossed a line?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ How do you navigate this when we’re both stressed from a big change?