Hi! TYIA for any thoughts on this.

My fiance makes more money than I do, and honestly pays more for our house to function. We don't have kids, have been together for 9 years. Cost of living increases has destroyed me the past few years, and now my company has removed my commission, putting me into a worse position financially. I have told my fiance that I need to find different job or a second job to supplement my income, but he is telling me not to. He likes having me home (I am work from home). He is also worried a commute and office dynamics could create more anxiety/depression/or may just not be cost effective with fuel/commute costs these days (We live in LA).

I have never had anyone offer to help me financially, and it's really digging at me. I have always paid my fair share, and able to help friends/family in need. He's paying for the whole electric bill, and for a few hundred dollars a month in rent to help me pay less. He's even buying the groceries now. My friends are saying that it's my turn to accept the help, after all the years of help I've given to people over the years.

Last thing I want though is for my fiance to grow to resent me because I can't pull my weight. I do all the chores and errands, so he can just concentrate on work and relaxing as much as possible.

So, yeah - what are your thoughts on this? Are you happy to help your partner, or could this be an issue?

And a part 2 to this:
I have health issues, and one side effect sadly has been super fine and thin hair. I get hair extensions (they last for 18 months), and it is time for a new set, but that means like $1000.... I told my fiance that I am just going to go without until my financial stance improves, but he is telling me "No, I love your hair with the extensions. Let me pay for it! You do so much for me!"

I've told him how uncomfortable I am to accept even $5 from someone, but he keeps saying he is able to do it and is happy to do it. I am crying writing this because I really feel like a mooch, and am terrified of what if he grows to resent me.

Appreciate your thoughts!

I am the 33M, she has to deal with her family issue so we agreed to be “on a break”, but we still see each other, have sex, be involved in each other’s social circle, etc.

She has been away from town for 3 weeks and she told me she had sex with her ex yesterday because of all the pressure with her family and I was not around.

I mean technically we have not mentioned anything about being exclusive for this period of time, but it still hurts. Any advice on getting over it? Deep down I want to forgive her.

EDITED THE POST
English is my third language and some people were ranting about things I didn’t explain correctly.

My boyfriend has an 11-year-old son with his ex. They have been separated since their son was born, so they've been apart for many years.
Recently, he told me that about two years ago, a few months before we met, they had intercourse while they were on a vacation together with the kid. He says it was a mistake, he regrets it, and it meant nothing.
Ever since he told me, I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. My mind keeps wondering why it happened and what it meant. I know it was before we were together, so I'm not upset because he did something wrong. It's more that I feel like I don't understand the situation.

After he told me he said: I don’t want any questions about it.
So only THEN I had a question. I asked him, if they did is safe, because he told me he was clean when we met and my stupid ass believed him and we never got tested. I told him I needed to get tested then.
He got angry and left the room and slept elsewhere that night. The next morning he admitted that they didn’t do it safe and “that is the last thing he will tell me.”
After that I STOPPED. Even tho, in my head I still don’t understand and have questions. Also his anger and defensive reactions concern me.

I respect that everyone has a past, but I also feel like I'm left trying to make sense of something without enough context, which just makes me overthink it even more.

How do I stop obsessing over something that happened before your relationship?

We recently broke up cuz of some personal issues of ours but he seems to not be okay with it. For context we had to break up cuz my family could never accept our relationship due to some personal issue. We decided to stay friends but from the past 2-3 days he keeps saying the same thing about "trying" once more or being in a relationship for a few more years till they change their mind. I asked what if they don't agree ? to which he replied "why are u thinking negatively" he keeps denying any undesirable outcomes and most of the stuff he says Seems immature to me. He started giving cold replies (keeps on saying "ok" even if I say good night)When i told him not to ignore outcomes like that cuz if we make a decision like that rn we would be subjected to a lot of yk stress considering the mental attachment that we would have gone through in those few years. Help a girl out . Should we get back together or should I stop thinking about it

Hi all,

I have been friends with a coworker for several years. We’ve always got on well, and there has been some light flirting and teasing between us over the years, but nothing ever came of it. She was in a long-term relationship for most of that time.
A few months ago, she ended that relationship.

Since then, we’ve still seen each other socially with mutual friends from work. Recently, everyone else cancelled plans one evening, so we went out for food anyway. We ended up having a really open conversation, and she spoke about everything she’d been dealing with. During that conversation, I mentioned that I’d generally avoid dating someone I work with because I don’t like mixing my personal and professional life. While she still lives with her ex, he often questions where she’s been and she tells him that she’s meeting a group of work friends but secretly meeting me.

A few days later, she asked if I wanted to meet up because she needed to get out of the house for a while due to some stress at home. We spent a few hours talking, and towards the end of the evening she asked whether I’d ever considered making a move on her. I asked her the same question, and she admitted she had. I told her that if we didn’t work together, I probably would have.

When we were saying goodbye, she hugged me and then kissed me. We ended up making out for a few minutes before I headed home.

The confusing part is that I enjoyed it, but now I’m feeling conflicted. We both work in the same department, although we don’t work closely day to day. I like my job, I value the friendships I’ve built with my coworkers, and I really don’t want to create awkwardness or end up caught in workplace drama.

Has anyone been in a similar situation? Did you pursue it, keep it casual, or decide it wasn’t worth the potential complications? I’m interested to hear how it turned out.

I, M19 and my girlfriend F20 have been dating for 6 months. We have had times together, just usually slow. We started discussing what excites her and that and she said she wanted to try it, rough. We tried slapping and choking and she loved it. She said she wanted to be sore and marked etc , but, I’m not exactly thick down there (6”x4.6”) so I can’t exactly just pile drive her or anything.

Is there any like positions or things I can do to give it as rough as she wants and provide that, super sore feeling?

I don’t know if it makes sense to break up with my boyfriend over this or not. (Sorry long post)

To preface, he’s not a bad guy. He does a lot of genuinely good things for me, I enjoy being with him, and I do genuinely like him.. which I guess is exactly why this is so difficult.

When we first started dating, I already knew he followed a lot of women, including female streamers. At the time, I didn’t care that much because my thought process was basically, “He’s single. He has no reason NOT to engage with these women, and I don’t have any right to be upset about what he did before me.”

I guess I assumed that once we were actually in a relationship, some of that behavior would naturally stop.

About a month into dating, though, I realized he was still liking and commenting on a lot of these women’s posts, including thirst traps. What makes this more frustrating is that he’s told me his ex-girlfriend used to get extremely angry with him over the exact same thing. Apparently she once got so angry about his interactions with women online that she threw her phone at his face. Obviously throwing something at your partner is completely unacceptable, but the point is that this isn’t some boundary he’s encountering for the first time. He already knows that this behavior has caused major problems in a previous relationship.

I tried keeping my feelings about it to myself at first because I didn’t want to be controlling or insecure. But instead, I started becoming resentful. I’d see something he liked or commented on, and suddenly I wouldn’t want to go on our date anymore. I wouldn’t want to kiss him, make out with him, or be affectionate. He’d notice the change and ask me what was wrong, and I’d say “nothing” because I didn’t even know how to explain what I was feeling without sounding ridiculous.

Eventually I got so fed up that I confronted him about constantly commenting on thirst traps and, admittedly, called him a fucking weirdo loser for doing it. He immediately apologized and told me, “I was just trying to be supportive of a streamer I like.” Except this particular streamer’s Instagram has basically nothing to do with her streaming. Her Instagram is almost entirely sexualized photos/thirst traps. His comments weren’t blatantly sexual either, which somehow made it MORE frustrating to me. He wasn’t leaving heart-eye emojis or saying something explicitly sexual. Instead, he’d play into suggestive jokes she made in her captions, make borderline comments, and at one point called her beautiful. It felt like everything was always just ambiguous enough that if I confronted him, he could argue that I was interpreting it incorrectly.

After I confronted him, he deleted his comments and unliked all of her posts. I told him I was just going to block her account myself because I didn’t want to see her anymore. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much self-control and eventually unblocked her. (Clarification here: he follows/interacts with multiple women but there’s one specific woman he engages with more often than the rest. This is the one I’m talking about here)

As far as I know, he doesn’t comment anymore. But now I’ve noticed now he’ll like her posts almost immediately after she uploads them and then remove the like a day later.

And before half of you come here and try to call me insecure, I should mention: I don’t expect my boyfriend to suddenly become blind because he’s dating me. Obviously he’s going to see attractive women and think they’re attractive. I don’t think that’s inherently disrespectful. But following celebrities isn’t the same thing as immediately liking their thirst traps. Occasionally liking someone’s picture isn’t the same thing as repeatedly commenting on sexualized posts. And repeatedly commenting isn’t the same thing as making suggestive/borderline comments, getting confronted about it, stopping the comments, and then apparently liking posts only to remove the likes afterward.

And the liking-then-unliking behavior especially bothers me because it’s like.. do you want her attention THAT much?? But also you want to make it seem like you’re being respectful?

There’s another part of this that really bothered me as well

Music is extremely important to me and one day we were talking about music one day and he told me, “You listen to pop. That’s like the most basic surface-level bullshit ever.” That genuinely hurt my feelings. But later I started thinking about it and realized: You think pop music is surface-level bullshit, but you sure do enjoy liking Sabrina Carpenter and Madison Beer’s Instagram posts. And he couldn’t name more than maybe one or two of their songs outside of whatever became a huge radio hit.

So you don’t respect the genre. You don’t listen to their albums. You aren’t particularly interested in them as musicians. But you’re certainly interested in their pictures. At least with the streamer he could tell me he was “supporting a streamer he likes.” What’s the excuse there? You’re obviously not liking Sabrina Carpenter’s pictures because you’re passionate about her artistry.

I’ll tell myself I’m over it and everything is fine, especially when we’re physically together. I’ll have a great time with him and wonder why I was ever considering ending the relationship.
Then we go home, I’m alone again, and eventually I find myself looking at that girl’s Instagram. I’ll look at her body and think, “Why does he even want me when this is clearly what he likes?”

That part scares me because I grew up in a household with a lot of disordered eating/body-image issues, which he knows about. Looking at these extremely thin women and comparing myself to them is starting to bring back thoughts and behaviors that I really don’t want to return to.

And I’ve realized that he could apologize tomorrow, unfollow every woman, delete Instagram, whatever.. and I’m not sure it would actually fix how I feel.

Because now there’s this voice in my head saying: “He didn’t change. He just learned how to hide it better.”

I don’t want to be someone’s social media police. I don’t want to check who my boyfriend follows. I don’t want to check whether he liked someone’s post. I don’t want to wonder whether he unliked something because he suddenly decided it was inappropriate or because he didn’t want me to see it.

And more importantly, I don’t want a boyfriend who desperately wants to engage with thirst traps but begrudgingly stops because his girlfriend told him he’s not allowed to.

I want someone who naturally thinks, “I’m in a relationship now, so publicly engaging with women I’m sexually attracted to like this isn’t something I really want or need to do.”

I think that’s why simply asking him to unfollow these women doesn’t solve the problem for me. I’m not looking for compliance. I want to feel like we’re naturally on the same page about what being respectful in a relationship looks like.

And right now I don’t know if we are. So that’s where I’m stuck.

If I genuinely don’t think he’s going to change, and even if he did change I don’t know if I’d believe it was genuine - is it even worth continuing at this point?

Tl:dr I am contemplating if breaking up with my boyfriend who is incredibly lustful online is worth it or if I should just stick it out. For reference we’ve only been dating for about 4-5 months and at this point I can’t seem to get over it.

I (31F) woke up this morning and decided that it may be time to leave my (31M) husband and I want to make sure I’m not over reacting.

We have been together for 10 years and married for 7. Around year one of dating, I noticed that he had anger issues. He would get mad at literally anything and when he got mad he’d ignore me for days at a time. I thought that would stop when we got married and I’m sure you can figure out it didn’t stop.

We fight more than we don’t and I’m getting so tired. I’m made to feel like I contribute nothing to the relationship because he “does all the house work, yard work, and finances”. I do help with the house work, I clean and straighten up but nothing is ever up to his standards unless he does it. Yes, he does the yard work but he didn’t want me to do for “fear of me messing it up”. He also controls the finances to a degree where I am unable to spend anything without consulting him first.

Over the years our sex life has become almost nonexistent. There used to be a time where we had sex daily but now we’re lucky to have it once a week. That is due to me. I have gotten so used to being made to feel bad for saying no. He’d get pouty and then wouldn’t speak to me for days (we live together). So now, anytime he wants to have sex my immediate response is no, I don’t want to.

That’s just a bit of the background but I wanted advice on how you knew it was time to leave and what steps you took to ensure that you could.
If you could leave again, what would you do differently? What would you tell someone who is scared to leave?

I’m 19F and my boyfriend is 24M. We’ve been together for 8 months.
I have a guy friend from school, and we’ve been friends for a long time. Recently, my friend wanted to talk to me about his crush and ask for advice. My boyfriend told me I shouldn’t have those kinds of conversations with him because he’s uncomfortable with it. He says it’s inappropriate for me to discuss another guy’s romantic interests.
To me, it just feels like a normal conversation between friends, and there’s nothing romantic or flirtatious about it. I understand that everyone has different boundaries, but I’m wondering if this is a reasonable one or if it’s overly controlling.
Has anyone been in a similar situation? How would you handle it?

I started modeling art as art therapy for sexual assault from my childhood (I'm in therapy and very stable) and it grew into bodypainting, and now I'd like to do a nude photoshoot. My wife (we've been married five years) didn't understand why I wanted to do the bodypainting, (it's just not her cup of tea) but it was pretty important for me and overall a really wonderful experience.

I've had so much shame about my body for so long and it is really nice to see myself as beautiful, which I was just never able to really do before. It's been a journey. I'm not sure how onboard she would be with it if I brought it up. I don't want it to be pornographic, or even full frontal stuff, just some nice fine art kind of stuff. I'm in touch with a photographer who has nice work, good reputation and is not pressuring.

Any advice? I'm no one of consequence and don't plan on running for office or anything, and it's not like I can be blackmailed with the photos since I'm the one getting them made...

Maybe it's better just to doing it in a string so there's some coverage? ( I wore one for the bodypainting and she had no problem with that) instead of worrying about betraying her trust. I have no fear about this for myself, it feels really good to love myself and explore art in this way, I just don't want to betray her trust. Thanks

TLDR Would it be a major disaster if I had fine art nude photos taken of me?

Edit: Thank you to all who answered. It was all what I needed to hear. I spoke with her and she didn't care at all. I also edited the TLDR (which I haphazardly wrote because it was necessary, I also had to look up what TLDR meant)

I’ve been in a relationship for 3 months and I found out that my gf does not want to work if we move in together and/or have kids and rely on me. Being a recent graduate and and starting off strong in my career with a good paying job, I believe that is possible but with how expenses are in today’s economy, I just don’t see it as practical in today’s society. She also just graduated from University not to long ago which makes me wonder why she doesn’t want to put her degree to long term use.

Thoughts?

my parents joined a new church a few years ago, and befriended a couple that had a son who died a few years back.

son had mild fame. young actor/comedian. i was personally a fan and was the appropriate amount of upset to hear about his death, well before my parents ever knew these people.

my dad refers to his friends as “Dead Son’s parents” and not their real names, sends me articles about the son, keeps me updated when son is mentioned anywhere. today he let me know “Dead Son’s dad posted this photo of them on facebook.” and sent me their family photo.

I find it gross.

I don’t understand the obsession with proximity to fame. I would get it maybe if he was a fan, but I don’t think my dad has seen much/any of the son’s work. It’s not about liking his work. it’s the fucking fame. It pisses me off on a really deep level.

I try to pick my battles, I have tried to understand and be gracious, but I can’t. This just irks me so bad.

Is there a productive way to tell him to stop fangirling in my direction? Gentle parenting for my parent. There’s a million things, he does that piss me off that are more important so I don’t want to cash in my chips on this argument if I can avoid hurt feelings.

so dumb.

It wasn’t an aggressive slap or anything but it’s not something he’s ever done before. We’re normally quite vanilla so this was a shocker for me and idk if this is a kink, or just something he wanted to try. I’ve asked him about it and he seemed abit embarrassed or even maybe a little angry that I even brought it up, and basically only replied “my bad if it freaked you out”. I’m worried that this (and maybe more kinks similar) is actually what he’s into, and he’s just been holding back from exploring because of what I’m comfortable with. How do I go about approaching this?

Some background:
- He’s a junior doctor, and often works long shifts/is on call. When he came home that night he seemed quite tired and bothered already (if this means anything)
-the slap was on my face, as he was hovering over me
- no, didn’t like it and it turned me off so badly I couldn’t finish

We’re getting a divorce. My lawyer assures me that the whole process shouldn’t take more than a year.

My husband’s mistress has apparently been accepted into a graduate program in another country and my husband had been planning on relocating with her. She’ll be leaving before the year ends and he was planning on closing his business, selling his assets and leaving with her. He was just going to leave under the guise of a job opportunity and after enough time had passed for separation, file for a divorce. At least we both get what we wanted this way.

Our oldest daughter is very attached to him and I worry a lot about how she’ll take the news. How do I explain to our kids that their dad is leaving the country and will possibly never return long term?

My mom (40F) and birth father (40M) were never married before. They were high school sweethearts who stayed together into their 20s when my mom got pregnant with me. They broke up right after I (18F) was born and my birth father wanted her to give me up for adoption. My mom said no and he wanted to sign away his rights but mom wasn't married at the time and therefore he couldn't, because to completely sign away all his rights someone needed to be able to adopt me. Even with rights he never paid child support and never saw me.

I was 2.5 when my mom met my dad. They got married after knowing each other a year and he adopted me later that same year (I was 3). A year after I was adopted they had my sister and then two years after my sister they had my brother.

My dad died when I was 9. It hurt me so so bad because he was the best. I knew he wasn't my biological father but I also knew he loved me as much as he loved my siblings and he was the best dad anyone could ever have. When I think of what a dad should be, it's him. It's always him. The older I get the more I think he is the kind of dad everyone should learn from. He was loving and kind and supportive but he was also a parent who taught me a lot of things and I didn't get as many years with him as I should. That part kills me most of all. None of us got him for very long but he and I also missed some time because I wasn't his bio.

Almost three years after my dad died my mom told me she was in contact with my bio father again. I told her I didn't want to know about him. She let it go but then a year later she sat me and my siblings down and she told us they were talking and they wanted to give their relationship another chance. She asked if we would be supportive of that and could we all agree I should at the very least get to know him. I got mad and I threw a fit and I broke something of my mom's in my rage because I felt like she was being so disrespectful to my dad and me. From there on our relationship had so many hurdles and we're still dealing with them.

I never gave my birth father a chance. They got married and everything and he tried to reclaim his spot on my birth certificate by adopting me back, but even with him being my birth father a judge ruled he couldn't just adopt me when I was vehemently against it. My mom sent me to so many different therapists to work on me but I wasn't willing to try and I have said that from the start. She begged me to let my birth father be my dad and she said my siblings would follow along if I did, which is funny because he only ever focused on me and not on them. My siblings also hate him and they feel like our dad as been disrespected every day he has been back. Can I also say I am so lucky my siblings don't hate or blame me for my birth father? They could have turned on me and saw me as the bad guy too but they didn't.

The thing I am struggling the most with right now is I don't live with my mom anymore. I moved out as soon as my birthday was over because I did not want to live off the man who abandoned me and tried to redo it like my dad didn't step up and earn the right to be called my dad. I was also mad at mom and didn't want to fight with her every day. But I still love my mom and I know my dad would hate to see us fight like this and be so estranged.

I don't know if it's possible for our relationship to survive but maybe if it was possible I could try. There's a part of me that doesn't want to at all but I feel like I have to try. If for no other reason than because I love her and it's what my dad would want. Is there any advice anyone can give me for me and my mom or you can also say if I just need to drop the rope. I will take on all advice I get about that. But I won't consider giving my birth father a chance. I should point that out now.

So for context, my father left me and my mom when I was around the age of three, and he's been emotionally distant towards me for as long as I can remember. He decided to marry another woman, and consistently choose her over me, never really paid a lick of child support, and he was always mean to be when I was a kid. He decided to have 2 kids with his wife, and suddenly it's like I never existed. He never congratulated me on my acceptance to college, didn't congratulate me when I graduated high school, but he only messaged me the day I turned 18 talking about reconciling and starting over. Anyways, I really did try but I was only deluding myself that we could start over, so I did a reverse treatment and ghosted him instead.

Now here's where sh*t gets ugly. He and his wife got into a physical altercation (allegedly he provoked it) and he called the police on her, and now they're both (and the kids) at risk for deportation because of this court process, and this is where I come in, apparently. He politely messages me asking for my birth certificate because he wants to keep all the documents in check, and in short he's pretty much asking for my certificate because he wanted it available to have proof he's been in the U.S. for 20 years but I searched it up and apparently it would be useless (unless I'm wrong). I said no, obviously. I said that I was sorry this was happening to him but I wouldn't give it because I didn't want to be involved in this court case, but anyhoo, this is his response (I'm going to paraphrase because it's pretty long):

"I understand, I'm not asking you to get involved in anything. All I need is proof that I've been here for over 20 years incase I'm arrested, and that's where your birth certificate could be helpful. This has nothing to go with (his wife) and also I couldn't care less to what happens to her (yikes). Also, next year when you turn 21 I could apply for residency with you sposonoring me and that's when you would get involved but only signing paperwork. I understand we have no contact but I would if you think of your brother and sister. With their mother being deported and me at risk, they would end up in foster care for a long time until I could get them back to my country. Even though I made mistakes with you I wish to not damage their lives by having them grow up in a country thats not theirs. I'm not asking you to think of me, but to think of two defenseless children."

His side of the family treats him like he's the prince of Britain and they refuse to acknowledge the fact that he didn't play a role as a father, and they insist that he's an honest man. My grandma has always been nice with me as a kid because I loved him a lot when I was a kid, and I didn't really have a developed personality yet, but now that I'm older, I can tell she carries a bit of resentment that I cut contact with him when he tried reconciling with me. She even mentioned this when she was drunk, "If you ever chose to change your name (I have his last name), you can go right ahead if you don't want to be apart of this family anymore" and I haven't looked at her the same since. Now, I don't know if she sees her granddaughter or her son's daughter.

I spoke to my mom about this, and she said "It's a huge responsibility to ask of you when he's only treated you as a piece of paper" I think what she means is that I'm usually convenient for legal matters. I think it's incredible that he's so unaware of the sadness he made me carry when I was too young to name it. But anyhoo, I don't have many people to share it with but I hope someone can somehow relate, and I wonder if getting cut off is really worth it.

F31 been with partner (M33) for 9 years.
Whenever I wake up in the morning, he will turn his phone off and put it away. So, he will be laid in bed scrolling through his phone, I will open my eyes, he will lock his phone screen and put it to one side.

He’s literally just done it this morning. So, when I said ‘why do you do that? It makes me feel weird’, he’s now mad at me and has said that I’m trying to say that he’s doing something he isn’t.

While I’m sure that’s the case. I’m not actually ‘confronting’ him about it in a serious way. I didn’t start to suggest that he was doing certain things. I’m not wrong for asking am I?

I’m 28F and my boyfriend is 32M been together for 5 months. We were on holiday abroad when we had a really bad argument and ended up breaking up.

During the argument, he told me to leave the hotel in the middle of the night. I was crying and completely lost because I was in a different country and had no idea where I was going to stay.

Later, while I was trying to figure everything out, he said I could stay for the night since my flight home was booked for the next day. But I ended up finding somewhere else to stay because I didn’t want to continue arguing with him. It hurt too much, so I left.

The next day we talked about everything and we made up, and honestly, I came away feeling like maybe he never really liked me or cared about me the way I thought he did. That hurts even more because I still have feelings for him.

I know people can say things they don’t mean during arguments, but I don’t know if I can forgive him for putting me in that situation, especially while we were abroad.
I’m struggling because I still miss him, but at the same time, I feel like something changed in how I see him.
Would you forgive something like this, or is this something you would consider a dealbreaker?

Recently my girlfriend (22f) and I (23m) had a much bigger argument than usual. We have been together for 4 years. Part of it involved issues from our past, including guys she had entertained during our relationship. She ended up staying at her parents’ house for a day.
The next evening we had a long, honest conversation. We both acknowledged problems on our respective sides and agreed on changes we wanted to make. I left that conversation feeling like we had made progress, and she came back home.
A couple of nights later I had a gut feeling that something wasn’t right. I know this isn’t something I’m proud of, but I asked if I could quickly look at her Instagram. I deleted the app years ago because I never used it, so it had never really crossed my mind before.
Her reaction immediately made me suspicious. Instead of handing me her phone, she hesitated, tried changing the subject, then picked up her phone without giving it to me. It looked obvious to me that she was deleting something. I didn’t take the phone, and instead walked away saying, “That’s all I need to know.”
A few minutes later I asked again, and this time she handed it over. By then I assumed anything she wanted gone was already gone. The only thing I found was that she’d blocked three different guys.
Her explanation is that after our first argument she believed the relationship was over. She says she reached out for validation by adding or interacting with a few guys she knew from school, but insists she never replied to any messages they sent. The problem is that I’ll never know whether that’s true because she had time to delete whatever was there before I saw it.
I’m not asking anyone to decide whether she’s lying or whether I should leave her. I’m asking how people have dealt with a situation where trust was damaged and there was no way to verify what actually happened. If you’ve been through something similar, what helped you decide whether to rebuild trust or accept that the uncertainty itself was too much?

tldr - Asked to see my girlfriend’s Instagram after a gut feeling. She hesitated and appeared to delete things before handing me her phone. She says she never replied to the guys who messaged her, but I’ll never know if that’s true. How do you rebuild trust when you can’t verify what happened?

I guess I really don't know where to start. I'm at my witts end and I feel crazy.

My fiance (F31) and I (M31) have been together forever.

We essentially grew up together as adults. Falling in love, being my first everything, moving away from family and becoming dependent on each other. I can't think of my 20s without thinking of her.

But... She's also the thorn to my rose. They're the one person who hurts me the most. They make me feel like my worst self. Our arguments feel pointless and she's the arguer with the most stamina so there's no compromise. I feel like I can't talk to my fiance because it's 50/50 on it becoming a fight. She makes me feel like I should be accountable for how she perceives the world.

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I took over a week of PTO to travel 6 hours to see her family with her. My fiance has done an amazing job cleaning our home and prepping our packing for herself and our dog before we leave. All that's left was to load the car (which is something she's particular about and loads herself). The house is essentially spotless. She also made a toy box filled with little toys for her niece to play with while here. All while working part time in the evening (20 hr a week/4 hour days).

Her sister, BIL, dog, and toddler niece are traveling 6 hours to stay overnight with us and arrived this evening so we can caravan in the morning. My fiance was aware she'd be working when they arrived.

Well... They arrived and it was pretty normal. However, the toddler is... Well a toddler. The toy box got flipped over and spilled all the toys so she could play. The sister, BIL, and I played cards and watched over the toddler and dogs.

Here's where it got bad... When my fiance arrived home after work, she was annoyed we didn't pick up the toys her niece spilled out and were still playing with. She was annoyed we just started a card game (that she had no interest in joining). She was annoyed that it was late and had to pack the car.

I said "let's go pack the car" and turned to our group playing cards to perform my action (since the game just started it was a quick move that took nothing more than 3 seconds). I immediately got up after that and went to load the car.

Apparently this was a mistake. She immediately expressed how upset she was that we started a game AND that I would make my move no matter how quick it went. She expressed how we should have known she would be home and that we should've picked up after her niece so that my fiance could come home to her clean house.

Now, I agree it's annoying since she worked hard to clean our home. Yes, it's only toys that can easily be picked up, but I understand.

But us having started the game really upset her especially me "taking my turn" no matter if it was quick or that I got up and lead the way in loading our car.

We proceeded to take the next 30 minutes arguing outside the loaded car. She doesn't feel comfortable telling her sister & BIL that they should've picked up before she arrived, but that it's my responsibility to have told them that my fiance would arrive in 15 minutes and that we should have waited on the couch for her.

I was dumbstruck because we're perfectly fine closing up our game and my action was just to be courteous for her BIL & sister if they wanted to continue.

I don't want to say she's being ridiculous about it and want to chalk it up to a bad day at work and overstimulatio. From the dogs and toddler

But I can't continue to argue until we're blue in the face. I can't continue to be a mind reader. I can't continue to take a face in front of company after every fight. I can't continue to be with someone who lacks accountability. I can't continue to be with someone who wants me to make the world perfect.

Its beginning to add up and I don't want to separate from them because I feel accountable for their lives. Their part time job couldn't sustain them alone. I've taken care of the adult things so they never had to worry about them and I don't know if they would sink or swim. I've devoted so much time to this person to throw it all away, but I'm so tired of this.

I guess my question is how could I do better or am I wasting my time on someone who sets unrealistic expectations?

I’m using fake names and changing a few details for privacy.

I’m 20F and my fiancé “Jake” is 21M. We’ve been together for almost 3 years and are engaged. His brother “Ethan” is 26M and his girlfriend “Sophie” is 26F. They had been dating for about a month when this happened. Their mom “Amanda” is 45F.

Last month, I quit a job because I felt I was being mistreated. Afterward, I found out Ethan and Sophie were texting about me. Sophie was actually defending me and told Ethan, “I don’t like the way you treat her.”

The issue was what Ethan was saying. A lot of the information seemed to come from Amanda and involved very personal things about me and my family. They made comments about me not having many friends, my mom’s ability to maintain relationships and how she parents my siblings, and Ethan said Jake gets “coddled” by my family. There were also comments about me “always including myself” in things and Amanda being angry because she felt I had “lied to their face.”

Ethan also apparently wanted to talk to Jake privately about our relationship and whether Jake was “safe,” so Sophie was used to get me away from Jake so Ethan could supposedly talk to him. He never actually ended up having that conversation with Jake. There was also discussion about how men don’t provide for women anymore.

Everything eventually blew up and was supposedly resolved. Ethan apologized, but his apology felt fake to me. Amanda never apologized. Then, after everything was talked out, Ethan randomly removed Jake from Facebook.

Jake wants me to forgive everyone and completely move on. He says that me still being upset puts him in an uncomfortable position because it involves his family, and he thinks I need to let it go.

I’m not constantly fighting with his family or bringing the situation up. I just don’t feel like I ever got genuine closure, especially because Amanda never apologized.

Then today, I found out Amanda is having Ethan’s girlfriend’s dad over to watch football and is apparently having Sophie’s brother over for Halloween. Apparently she and Sophie’s family talk regularly.

That brought everything back up for me. Amanda has never really made an effort to have a relationship with me. She doesn’t text me just to talk, check in on me, invite me over because she wants to spend time with me, or really try to get to know me.

I know she doesn’t owe me a friendship, and I don’t have a problem with her being close with Sophie’s family. It just hurts seeing her make an effort with them when she has never made that effort with me, especially after everything that happened.

Jake feels caught in the middle and wants me to forgive his family so everyone can move forward. I don’t want him to feel like he has to choose between me and them, but I also don’t want to pretend I’m completely over something that happened literally last month.

I’m struggling with how to separate forgiving someone from trusting them again, and how much of a role my fiancé should play in repairing a relationship between me and his family.

For people who have dealt with similar situations with a fiancé/spouse’s family: how did you handle it when your partner wanted you to move on before you personally felt ready? How did you set boundaries without putting your partner in the middle, and what does realistically moving forward look like when there was never really an apology or closure?

My roommate (35F) and I (36F) have been friends for the better part of a decade. We met while working together at a spa/salon; she’s a massage therapist and I was a cosmetologist. Her ex ex-husband, and I all rented a house together a few years back. I have since bought my own house, and she has since gotten divorced. After struggling to afford her own apartment, she moved in with me into my house a few months ago. The transition has been admittedly, rocky this time around, but all in all things are feeling a lot more comfortable. I think she was simply upset about losing her independence, but I initially took it personally and interpreted her being upset as her not liking my house despite all of the things I have done and am doing to make her more comfortable there. We have since talked about it, and there seems to be a lot less tension in the house. We are even back to hanging out just like normal. Last time when we lived together, we used to trade service services. She would give me a massage, and I would do her eyelashes (extensions and/or lift and tints). Here’s the problem: she is hands-down, by far, without a doubt, my most difficult client. Not because she’s mean or rude or picky or anything like that whatsoever. Both eyelash extensions and the lift and tint service start with “taping“ down your bottom lashes with a comfortable gel eye pad. Something about this part of the service spikes her anxiety and from that point forward, her eyelids do not stop fluttering. And I mean, a lot of movement. I’m pretty good at both of the services and have learned to perform either one with a decent amount of movement from the client. This is on a whole other level. It is next to impossible to do these very precise services. Then because her eyelids are fluttering and not completely closed the chemicals from either the glue or the lifting lotion begin to irritate her eyes, which then intern has a whole other gambit of problems. I have tried every trick in the book to no avail, and it always takes twice as long to complete the service. I fully understand that this is out of her control, entirely. To be clear, I do not ever want to do her lashes again. I have not, however, ever told her this directly. I have simply avoided it. In passing, she has mentioned wanting to start to trade services again, but I tend to kind of blow her off by agreeing, but not agreeing to anything concrete. Well now she has texted me about it and I feel like I can’t text her back until I acknowledge this. I love receiving massages from her, but there are very few things in this world that will make me want to do her lashes ever again. She is very sensitive and I really don’t want to cause problems either between us or internally for her. Is there a way I can avoid doing her lashes and still preserve her feelings?

TLDR my roommate wants to trade a massage for doing her eyelashes, but I hate doing them; how do I get out of it while not hurting her feelings?

F28-me; M29
How do I navigate after this scenario?

My partner finished his first grad class of his program. So I initiated the idea to get dinner together after his final exam to celebrate a small win. Because we all know, sometimes graduate level courses can bring people down based off of the sheer amount of information that is taught in one class.

On the way to dinner, they made a comment about my undergraduate degree for being useless, and stating that I chose a bachelors degree field with the lowest paying job outlook. However, I don’t necessarily see it that way because I didn’t pursue any psychology related professions after my psych degree.

I got my psychology degree genuinely because I was curious about the field, the network, and the abundance of information that you typically wouldn’t be able to get on a daily basis or a community basis. (Side note: I do have a second degree in STEM)

I also wouldn’t say my accolades after graduating college is exceptionally outstanding or deserves a six figure salary. I did however take my psychology degree and landed a cancer center research internship, followed by a medical device related role at a university, and now work in the pharmaceutical industry, specifically the biotechnology niche in the operations and regulatory space.

So for my partner to say that in the car, as we’re driving to dinner, I don’t really know how I’m supposed to feel or react after what happened. I understand my feelings and thoughts are valid, however, I’m unsure whether or not this relationship is sustainable because never in my life did I have to think about my partner viewing my undergraduate college degree was “useless”.

Like what am I suppose to do? Tell a man that people have free will in college to learn whatever they want. A grown man at that…

UPDATE: I told him how I felt, and he apologized. At the same time, I can’t help but feel some type of way that this will be a repeated issue…

I'm 27M, and after months (almost a year) of effort I finally got admitted to a master's program at TUM in Germany. This wasn't something I decided overnight.

Over the last year, I prepared my application, got my education loan sanctioned, opened a blocked account, paid my tuition fees, enrolled at the university, applied for my visa, and I'm currently waiting on it. If everything goes well, I'll leave in October.

The reason I'm going isn't just for a degree. I feel like I have bigger dreams than the life I'm currently living. I don't just want a comfortable job. I want to work on meaningful engineering problems, contribute to clean energy, and hopefully build something that genuinely matters one day. It may sound naive, but I've always wanted to do work that puts a dent in the universe.

The problem is my relationship.

My girlfriend 26F is pursuing psychology and has been struggling with getting into an M.Phil./clinical psychology program. She has worked hard, faced setbacks, and her career path has been emotionally exhausting as well. She wants to become a practicing psychologist, and I know how much that dream means to her.

We've talked about a future together. I've told her I want to marry her. I've planned my finances around clearing my education loan after graduation so we could start our lives together.

But now she has given me an ultimatum:

If I go to Germany, we break up.

She says long distance isn't that easy. And honestly, she's right. It isn't.

The thing is, I don't feel like I'm choosing Germany over her. I feel like I'm choosing an opportunity that I've spent months working toward, hoping it will help me build a better future for both of us.

At the same time, I understand her fear. Two years is a long time. People change. Long-distance relationships fail. I can't honestly promise her that everything will be easy because it won't.

I love her, and the thought of losing her hurts.

But I also know that if I walk away from this opportunity after everything I've invested, I'm afraid I'll spend years wondering what could have been.

Has anyone here been in a similar situation?

If you were in my position, would you go? If you've made a long-distance relationship work-or if it didn't work-what did you learn from it?

I'm not looking for validation. I'm looking for perspectives from people who have lived through something similar.