Things to say to a guy

I am 41 and I love kids but my traveling/overseas job and the timing of my life events made it hard to have kids in my prime.
Would it be wierd to tell a woman that I actually would like to date a woman with children ?
The standard thing for most guys is to run away from women with children.

I have had multiple year long relationships that always seem to fall flat, even though every guy has been very different from the last. My current relationship is the longest I’ve had so far, but I’ve been having doubts for a long time now.
I find it hard to say “I love you”, harder than before, but I was also raised in an emotionally distant environment. I don’t like kissing that much at all, it actually annoys me and I’d rather not do it. My sex drive used to be a lot better in my first relationship, but it’s fallen flat now. Maybe we will do it one or two times per month. It’s not necessarily because I’ve lost a bit of physical attraction, but I just don’t feel anything.
I’ve noticed I’m a lot more apathetic than most people, yet incredibly empathetic towards children, animals, and (awkwardly enough) fictional characters/movies/shows. But real adults? Especially partners? Nope. If my partner cries (even my exes), I guess I don’t care. If they’re happy, I’ll cheer them on, but inside me is a void. I can feel angry and jealous, though. I’m more of a taker than a giver, and for some reason I just don’t have much of a desire to give.
I’m a hopeless romantic and it seems like most of the time I put myself in a fantasy mindset to cope with something I can’t put my finger on. All of this together has been ruining my relationship slow and steadily. I don’t want to give up, because there are things I genuinely love about what I have. I just don’t know what to do and I’m hoping for advice, thank you.
TLDR: My relationship is going downhill because I’m emotionally/sexually absent and stuck in my head, and this has happened with every partner, but I don’t want to give up on this one.

My boyfriend (32M) is really going through a hard time and it is taking its toll on me (28F). I just want to start by saying I know depression is something to take seriously, and I am not at ALL blaming my boyfriend for feeling the way he is. He recently had a major surgery, works at a job that treats him very poorly, and he hates the city we live in. All those things are a lot individually, but all together it has to be so hard. I want to support him the best I can, but I also struggle with depression and (this is going to sound so insensitive) but his issues are taking a toll on me & our relationship. And whenever I’m struggling with something and want to talk to him about it he always says something like “it could be worse… just look at me.” Which is really invalidating, because it’s not a competition. I can have sad feelings and he can too. And it’s tough because he’s the person I want to talk to when I’m struggling, but I don’t feel like I can anymore. He is so deep in it that I don’t feel like I can share my experiences, good or bad. Good because it feels like rubbing it in, and bad because he just tells me it could be worse.
I just don’t really know how to navigate the situation. I tend to take on my partners feelings as my own (something I’m working on in therapy) but I just don’t know where to go from here. I know things will get better eventually but it’s really tough to see a way if we can’t talk about things openly. I need to broach the subject with him but I know he’ll feel awful knowing I’ve been feeling this way. Any advice on how to broach this subject, or deal with a partner with depression?

Hi, I rarely ever post anything on Reddit but recently this has been the only thing I can think of these days. So long story short, me (17F), recently discovered that my dad was cheating on my mom with another guy for five years by looking at some of his text messages. I never thought he would be gay, but thats a whole other can of worms to unpack. Should I tell my mom about my dad cheating on her? They have never been on good terms for as long as I can remember, and atp I think they are only staying together for the sake of keeping family together. My mom does not work, or own any properties/cars, so I am also worried about what may happen if they get a divorce. Any advice on this situation is greatly appreciated…

This is a really long story with lots of context so I'll do my best to organize it into current situation, then his backstory and hers. I'm also not using real names or specific locations for any of this to try and keep this private. This also has some contradicting stories and because of how their relationship is structured relies mostly on information I have gotten from my sister, so I'm telling you the story I got from her first and then adding in what I've found out. I'll try to tell this as unbiased as I can but it's been a huge issue in my family for a long time now and that's a little difficult for me to do.
My sister (Olivia, 24F) has been dating this guy (Trevor, 25M) since 2021. When they started dating, she talked about him fairly often, sent a few pictures of them, ect., but then after a month she stopped mentioning him/ was cagey when we (me and my mom mostly) asked how he was so we assumed it just hadn't worked out. Then two months later she insisted that my parents and I all come to visit her college to meet Trevor before he went into the Army (she lived several hours away from my parents and several hours from my college, so I had to get a bus ticket and my parents had to get a hotel room to do this. We only met him once for dinner). Now they've been dating long distance for three years after a three month in-person relationship. She is in nursing school and is planning on moving across the country (literally opposite corners of the map) to live with him and is not applying to any residency programs outside of the Army base area (limiting her choices a LOT from her original goals and narrowing employment opportunities).
Olivia met Trevor on several dating apps, matched with him, but didn't really want to go out with him. He was really persistent, so her friend convinced her to go out with him. She lied about the way they met to our parents and told them they met at the gym through a mutual friend (she lied to me about this at first too and told me the truth about 3 months after they started dating). At the time, Trevor was working as a used car salesman and living at home (~45 min. away from Olivia's school in a rural area) because his sports scholarship had been dropped before his Senior year due to covid at the college he had been attending out of state. The university was unaccredited (I later did some internet stalking and found out it was accredited), so his credits would not transfer and he would have to start over. He was saving up money to attend school in state at the large college Olivia attended so he could go back to school. **Our state has crazy low tuition costs in-state and a full-tuition scholarship program for good high school GPA and SAT scores. There was also a "feeder" community college that had half the cost per credit hour that a lot of people would go to before the larger university if they didn't get in straight out of high school.**
Olivia told me that Trevor had applied to her college and not gotten in (she later told me he HAD gotten in but been unable to afford tuition). Either way, he decided to join the Army because his father had been in the Army. The Army would take his credit hours and he would be able to finish his degree during his 5 year contract or use the GI bill once he got out. **She is comparing the situation to our father, who joined the Army directly out of high school and used the GI bill to go to college after his 2 year contract because his parents wouldn't pay for school. He was a medic in the military, worked as an EMT through college, and then went to nursing school.** The original plan was that Trevor would be a Green Beret (special forces, linking the training pipeline here: https://www.reddit.com/greenberets/comments/xwdbta/current_sf_pipeline_correct_me_if_im_wrong/ ), he completed basic training and and got several months through the NC training before failing the running portion of a physical by about 10 seconds and being dropped from the selection process. He then decided that he wanted to be a Ranger (another elite position). He got sent back to GA, then to the Ranger school base in WA (it took a couple of months before he was sent to WA). Again, he got partway through the training before failing the running portion of a physical by a few seconds. He is now not sure if he will be continuing Ranger school (failing the physical means no, but commanders may pass him anyways if they think he should continue). For a while, Trevor told Olivia that he might not stay at the base in WA if he wasn't in Ranger school and there were a variety of different bases he could be sent to, including somewhere in Italy, so she wasn't sure where to look for jobs. In the past month, Trevor told Olivia that he would likely stay in WA regardless of the Ranger school results.
Through this all, Olivia has visited Trevor at the different military bases countless times, driving from as far as south FL to NC and putting over 30,000 miles on a brand new car over the course of the 1.5 years she's owned it. Before she had the car, she paid for plane tickets to see him and hotels whenever she visited. At the time, she told me that he was paying for all of these trips because he was unable to visit her, was making an income that wasn't being spent, and she was working to save for nursing school and later was living off of student loans and savings during nursing school. She later admitted to me that she had paid for almost all of the expenses except for food when they ate out together and part of a hotel room one weekend.
A few odd things (to me) between Olivia and Trevor over the course of their relationship:
About a month into their relationship, Trevor got Olivia an over $300 christmas gift. He has not gotten her anything nearly that expensive since, and hasn't sent flowers for things like her college graduation or a severe emergency surgery she had last year. I don't care about monetary value or sending flowers, but I do think it is odd that he spent so much before moving away when he ostensibly didn't have much money, but now that he has an income and military sign-on bonus, he has not spent that much again.
Trevor's father left Trevor, his siblings, and his mother, but Trevor has a hat that his father gave him that he wore often. The hat says "Red Man" across the top of a picture of a Native American man wearing a feathered headdress. He has worn this hat several times around Olivia's friends and they told him they didn't like it and that it was racist. They also asked him to not wear it when he was with them and he refused because it was special to him and his father gave it to him. Olivia then told him to stop wearing it and he eventually agreed (Olivia told me that he stopped wearing the hat after this). A few weeks after this, I facetimed Olivia and Trevor was with her. She turned the camera so I could say hello to him, and he was wearing the hat. I talked to Olivia about this later and she told me that that was the first time he'd worn the hat in a while and it wasn't a big deal. Olivia has always been liberal and never racist, and I am uncomfortable that she was okay with him not only wearing the hat, but being with him while he had it on.
They dated for a little over 3 months in person before he joined the military (recently, Olivia told me that they actually met several months before she told everyone about him and that they actually dated for 6 months before he left). For the next two months in basic training, he was only able to use the phone for 15 minutes total once a week to talk to family and her. Throughout the different training programs he has completed he had sporadic and limited access to phones to communicate, and only in the past 6 months he has had access to his phone to facetime, text, and call (but sometimes he goes for a week or two without phone access). Olivia told me that they wrote letters during the time he didn't have consistent phone access. **I don't think that this is odd, I understand the military limits phone usage, etc., but I don't think they have been able to have an "average" long-distance relationship**
Last year, Olivia drove to GA to visit Trevor the weekend before Valentine's day. He had plans for them to take a pottery class, go on a hike, and have dinner at a nice restaurant. The day she got there, Trevor's barracks had their off-base privileges revoked because one of the guys had contraband. She would still be able to visit him on base though. Somehow, Trevor was able to get off base for long periods of time to her hotel, but unable to do the other activities he had planned for them.
In the past year, Olivia told me that she and Trevor were going to immediately marry when she got to WA so that they could move in together because they had to be married to live together anywhere. I and our dad- who was in the military- told her several times that this was not true, but she insisted it was. Then, his barracks were given an allowance to live off base in apartments because the barracks were being renovated/ rebuilt, so she backed off on the idea of getting married immediately after several long conversations with me. She is still insistent on moving in with Trevor, who lives with a roommate, when she moves to WA.
Some background on Olivia:
Olivia has ADHD and anxiety, and struggled particularly badly with the anxiety/ some depression after being broken up with by the boyfriend she dated before Trevor (he broke it off very abruptly, told her he just didn't love her anymore with no previous indications). Olivia is very pretty (objectively, not just because she's my sister), but had bad acne that she ended up going on accutane for at the time she started dating Trevor and was very insecure about it. She had also decided to not go to medical school, and pursue nursing instead around the same time she met Trevor. This was a very upsetting decision for her because she had been taking very hard courses and was burnt out but had told everyone she was going to be a doctor and thought that she would be letting us down by switching paths. Also around the time she started seeing Trevor, Olivia began being very cruel towards our mother (our mother had been borderline emotionally abusive in the past, but Olivia and I were both in college by then and fixing our relationships with her. She has been much better recently and Olivia and I believe that she had some mental health struggles that went unchecked that contributed). Now, several years later, Olivia told our family that she had acted like that because she was rpd by a friend of her ex-boyfriend's after her ex broke up with her. This person also gave her an STD.
I always believe people who say they have been S A'd, and we believed Olivia when she first told us, but some things have come to light that make me and my family question that. Right after Olivia and her ex broke up, Olivia told our cousin that she had gone out with one of his friends and had revenge/ breakup sex with him because he had also been dumped recently. Once my cousin told me this, I remembered that Olivia had told me about a guy she had a one night stand with after she was dumped. She showed me a picture of him, talked about how cute he was, etc. (no distress whatsoever). I know sometimes people behave in ways you wouldn't expect when a traumatic event occurs to them, but I really don't understand how or why Olivia would brag about this guy if he really did S A her.
Three months ago, Olivia was arrested for stealing a set of sheets from Walmart (incidentally, right before Trevor came to visit her on leave). She used the self check-out and only bought a small $5 item and the sheets. She held both in one hand and scanned each side because she had a cut on the other hand and was holding her wallet with it. She saw a 5 in front of the total number and thought it looked right because the total should have been about $50, paid, didn't get a receipt, and walked out. An employee at the door asked to see a receipt, which Olivia didn't have, so she pulled up her transaction history on her phone to show she had paid. At this point, the employee called the police and took Olivia into an office, where she was questioned and charged with shoplifting. (Olivia can get very emotional and probably got upset when the police questioned her, which may have led them to believe she was lying). Luckily, Olivia has managed to get the charges expunged, but the process is still ongoing. Because of her ADHD, if anyone genuinely made this mistake, I would believe it from her, but Olivia has been improving a lot on organization and being more attentive recently. It is extremely uncharacteristic of her to steal- she was honest to a fault as kids- she would break down from guilt and admit things to our parents that we would have gotten away with if she hadn't said anything.
Right now, my parents have met Trevor twice in person, and I've met him once in person and several times in passing over facetime. I personally don't think that Trevor seems to keep up with my sister or that they make each other shine, and that opinion is shared with family friends and family that have met Trevor. Olivia doesn't mention Trevor in front of our parents often because his name has become a topic of contention and argument between them. My parents don't think Trevor is right for Olivia. She has almost 2 college degrees and plans to become a nurse practitioner in the future, and he hasn't finished college and doesn't seem to have any drive to do so. Olivia is also well traveled and enjoys going to museums, concerts, etc., while Trevor has lived in rural FL his whole life (this is not Trevor's fault, and I don't think he is a lesser person because of it, but I don't see a lot of common ground between them). Trevor has not seemed very well spoken when I have talked to him and I just don't see a lot of qualities in him that Olivia values.
If you've gotten this far, I just don't know what to do. Olivia and my parents have a huge rift in their relationship right now and any mention of Trevor, with her around or not, explodes into a huge argument, discussion, or just icy silence. I want Olivia to be able to talk to me about him, and we are able to discuss things much better than she is with our parents. My parents have also started asking me about Olivia and Trevor because they know Olivia shares more with me, and it makes me uncomfortable because I don't want to betray Olivia's trust, but I'm also very worried about her. I know I can't control her actions and I'm having a really hard time trying to balance supporting Olivia but not supporting the relationship (I'm not going to lie to her about how I feel, but I don't want her to feel alienated or unloved by our family, because that is NOT the case). I also think that Olivia is romanticizing the fact that our parents don't like him because my father's parents had a rift with him over our mother when we were very young (this is a whole other story, but basically, his parents always favored his sister, his sister got (I think) jealous when he did well for himself and married my mother, who his parents initially likes, and she made up rumors/lies about my mother that turned his parents against her (this was way before our mother's suspected mental health struggles, which occured when Olivia and I were in middle/high school).
Please share any thoughts you have on the situation (am I reading too into things, is this not as bad as I think it is?), and any advice you have on navigating the relationships.

I didn’t date until I was 18 years old. I never really got asked out and I really wasn’t that outgoing so I probably wouldn’t have said yes anyway. “My first date” if you can call it that because I definitely don’t claim it as one. we went to college together and one of my friends at the time convinced me to go out with him. He was funny but that was about it. He really wasn’t that cute, with acne all over his face long shaggy hair, facial hair that really wasn’t coming in and very bushy eyes brows. Hopefully you get the picture.
I really didn’t want to. But i think I went because I told him that I would and really value my word and I don’t like following through with what I said. I texted my Mom about it to let her know where I was going just to be on the safe side. We went to Chick-fil-A down the street we drove separately thank the lord I really don’t think after the conversation we had or should I say he had that I would have road back with him.
So I got there and he told me that he had forgotten his wallet at home so I being the nice person I am paid for his meal.
I honestly don’t remember eating and I barely remember most of the conversation. I just remember him going on and on about himself and about his family. I think the BIGGEST thing that shocked me to my core and left me speechless and still has me kind of like lost for words all these years later was the fact that his sister if she liked you she would bite you. And she would bite him and her fiancé all the time. He tried to play it off like it was a normal thing because I guess it was in his family but I was just token by surprise and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Needless to say I never went out with him again and ether he was just using me for a free meal or he knew that I wasn’t going to see him again.( I honestly think it was the first option) he didn’t text me after that. Thank the lord, I’ve never wanted to get away from someone so fast. But now I’m happily married to my best friend who also went to the same college and who pursued me even though I turned him down several times. But that’s a story for another time.
So do you guys think he was just getting a free meal and he made all that stuff up and he was being a bad date on purpose? Or do you think any of that was real?

Stuck and need to let it out
Before i start i know i am very stupid for the choices i made. I (26f) got married to my husband (30m) when i was 21 we met from mutual friends and i fell in love with him and it was a feeling ill never forget. He was an amazing guy until he wasn’t he was always very charming and people instantly liked him when meeting him. There is more details but i am going to try to sum it up. I worked a little after marriage than covid hit and i got pregnant with my first born. He took care of me financially always and assured me i dont need to work anyways. I was with him when he was struggling i never complained as a newly wed who barley got to spend time with her husband because i understood i never asked him to take me out or anything i stood by him and now hes very successful (ill get back to why i mentioned that later) my pregnancy was very stressful in my 7th month he hit me and i had bruises on my neck and face i dont even remember what the fight was about after giving birth i struggled alot i was 22 years old i kept finding porn and videos being sent between friends which i have seen before but it started to make me feel bad about myself which i have always been confident before him i told him it bothered me and it never stopped so now im 23 and insecure and i alter my body and do a procedure thinking that will fix things (as i said i know im stupid) he strangled me 2 months after giving birth to the point that i passed out and woke up he almost killed me i never told anyone. He kept saying hes changing and well work things out so i forgave him. My family dosent believe in divorce and as much support i have from them i don’t want to disappoint them. We did good for a little bit we moved to a bigger place and than we moved again to another bigger place that i am in currently. In between all of that there was stuff that i kept seeing that hurt me and bothered me but anytime i say anything he says its me who keeps digging which is true because i grew up having a father who cheated on my mom and i saw it first hand im not going to lie it traumatized me but i did not project it on him until after he started doing the things he did. Hes a very jealous person himself he always tried to control everything he hates that im good looking he tells me all the time he should have married someone “ugly” i do NOT dress provocative at all i barley show any skin but somehow EVERYTHING always leads back to how i dress and all our problems are my fault because of how i dress he says that when we go out men always check me out and it angers him even tho i am not showing any damn skin. Anyways mothers day 2022 he hit me again but he says he didnt but the bruises on my arms say otherwise i have pictures of it and it was bad he tried to throw me down the stairs i begged him not to. Sadly i still wanted to be loved i forgave him moved on he is would buy me gifts and cards and because im so stupid i believed he was sorry anyways now its 2023 and i find out im pregnant i didnt know how i felt my first born was lonley so i thought at least they will have a sibling.. surprise its twins and i knew im going to go through it i had the worse pregnancy i almost died i developed pre eclampsia and my doctor missed it i gave birth early my whole pregnancy i was alone i was so lonley just me and my first born i cried everyday husband was working so i couldn’t complain without it turning to a fight even though its his company and he could afford to have been there a little for me it is not 7 months after i gave birth physically i feel good mentally i dont he is never there for me as a husband i been telling him i feel like he’s just a roomate at this point we have no dates barley any intimacy which had been going on for years i know hes insecure and i never used it against him but he always would to me he hates now that i bounced back quickly and like to dress up again because the end of my pregnancy i was very swollen i was wearing all his clothes. I kept crying telling him i have needs just like anyone else i want to feel loved i dont want to live like this but anytime i say anything he says i complain to much now last week he beat me over nothing it was 60 seconds into a petty argument and he attacked me i packed myself and my 3 kids he watched me packing calling me names i left to a hotel for a night nd than my moms house he got backlash from both our families i ended up having to come home for the kids im miserable hes not sorry mothers day he barley acknowledged me But we spent the day and today any time we try to talk about anything he blames me.
I know im stupid i dont know how i can start over again i have 3 kids i am in the works of going back to school so when the babys start school ill have my career because i am financially dependent on him which is my fault i worked since i was 14 but he convinced me not to anymore My oldest loves their father so much it hurts me to put my baby through this drama There is soooooo much more detail and stuff to add Hes not the worse person i guess i bring out the bad in him when all i ever wanted was to be in a healthy marriage and give my kids what i didn’t have growing up
I dont know what to do i know i have to finish school so i can get a stable job but that means i have to stay and suck it up
I never wanted to be divorced but this marriage is over i always thought cheating was the only reason for divorce i am not in love with him but its so hard to let it go i never was like this i was so out going the life of the party i dont even recognize myself i feel so sad and depressed and alone i have the most amazing friends but i cant get myself to open up

I (22F) was in a very abusive and toxic relationship for about 3 years. I was abused in every way possible. Every chance he had to make me feel bad about something that happened to me he took it for example I was raped as a child and teenager and when he got mad he would tell me that the guy must have been big because I was bleeding after the event rather than being their to comfort me. Because to him it wasn’t that fact that I was violently raped it’s just they had to be bigger than him. He triggered my trauma by touching me and inserting things into me while I slept not to mention when I would tell him no during sex and he’d still enter me. One time I remember most was when he tried to put it in the back door and I repeatedly said no but he did it anyway I was so hurt and scared that I just laid there until he realized that I wasn’t moving and rather than apologizing and making sure I’m okay he got upset and rolled over because I ruined the mood. Going back to the beginning we started dating in 2019 when I had turned 18 and he was 21. In 2020 he got me pregnant and one day he got unreasonably upset at me for worrying about where he was running off to in the middle of the night and told me “He’d make me lose our baby” and surely enough he kept true to his word and I did lose the baby I remember crying and begging him to comfort me but he was too busy playing the game and talking to his friend at some point he got annoyed with me crying so he left out the room. His actions beat my confidence down and every ounce of personality I had was taken from my very being and I was shell of who I once was by summer of 2021. I think once he saw that he figured that final blow would be to tell me that he fell in love with someone else and I cried but like a fool I still wanted him to comfort me but all he could do was look at me like I was beneath him. Once he chose her only two months in he realized the grass wasn’t greener on the other side and left her to come talk to me looking back on it now I know it was because I was easier to manipulate at the time. We got back together and by 2022 I thought maybe he changed his ways as I was noticing things he did at the beginning of our relationship and things I liked. But soon I would realize how wrong I was he became abusive again but by this point I felt like I had no one but him I had no one to talk to not even family. We had sex although I really didn’t enjoy it I just knew that was the only way I’d be able to keep him in my life and without him I had no one to ones surprise I got pregnant again I was sick and miserable the whole time by this point I started coming to my senses and gaining my sense of self back I knew I couldn’t be in this relationship or be tied to him by having this baby after talking to him and my parents we decided an abortion would be the best but afterwards I was too weak and in pain to travel back home so I stayed at his place until I had the energy to get back on my feet during this stay he got aggressive with me one night in September of 2022 I grabbed something to protect myself in case he came at me and in a rage he snatched it from me flipped me on the bed and punched me his hardest in my face I was bleeding according to his sisters and mom but I couldn’t feel my nose or mouth I just remember walking through the hallways and screaming that he hit me and then I was dragged back to his room where I felt myself fading in and out of consciousness no one called an ambulance no one checked on me I just remember waking up and seeing that while I was going through all the things he was putting me through he was on Reddit telling other girls how sexy they were or how pretty they looked. I like to say I’ve healed from it and I found someone better but from the things I’ve been through sometimes I find myself thinking peace and healing is not enough I need him to suffer like how he made me suffer.
Note: I did not include a lot of the times he hit me or spit on me because this post would be very long I just wrote the parts that were the most traumatic to me. Thank you for reading I just wanted to get this out.

Im a 15 year old producer ive been producing for a couple years now. Recently ive made a list of things I need to improve in my production one of the things that came up was top melodies,counter melodies, and lead melodies. Really melodies in general. I feel whenever I add any of these things to my beats I genuinely feel it ruins them. Is there a good way to make better melodies on my tracks? If so what are some techniques you guys use?

We have been together for 3 years. We were friends for a year first after meeting through mutuals. Her parents are separated and dads side are civil to me, but moms side is downright rude. Prior to us dating, my girlfriend did not have a speaking relationship with her mother. Shortly after us starting to date, their brother asked that they all try speaking again. The mother did not apologize for anything and nothing was discussed. Year 1, i wasnt invited to any family parties at either parents house.I met them at a graduation party for an extended family member. A beach trip was mentioned with the mother at a beach my girlfriend and i had planned to visit for a weekend trip around the same time, so i suggested we reschedule the date of ours and all go together. I was told i wasnt allowed on the family beach trip and that i had ruined things when it ended up being cancelled altogether. This discussion has been cited as "the reason" the mother does not like me.
Year 2, i was invited to family parties at dads house for all holidays. Moms house invited me to my girlfriends birthday dinner, alone. I painted my moms girlfriend a painting for mothers day a few months later. I attended an art gallery she had work in. I attend a family gathering at the mothers with extended family. I continue to try to form a relationship to little avail.
Year 3, i am not invited to any further gatherings moms. When i ask if i can come, responses are either flat out "no"s or "its a free country so anyone can come, i suppose" if a meeting was in a public place. Dad continues to invite.
I started with just being me with both parents. Then, overt niceness with mom. Then, simple civility with mom Now, i don't try to speak at all with mom. With mom, I am not invited to come over at all. I am not allowed to come inside if i drop something off at the house. I am not welcomed. I am not spoken to kindly.
And all this id likely be okay with except every time my girlfriend comes back from her moms, which is maybe 3 times a year, we get into an argument. I cant help but feel like mom is causing this.
The argument is always about my girlfriend feeling like i am holding her back from living her life but when i point out all the new adventures we have been on recently, and ask her in what ways she is feeling held back and how i can work on them, theres no solid response. When i ask in what way she feels held back from her friends when we have weekly game nights and regularly go on day trips with our friends? I ask if theres anything i can do to help with these feelings and she says she doesnt know.
I truly feel like her mother is sabotaging our relationship and i dont know what i can do to improve the situation. A large reason they stopped speaking was because of her mothers controlling and manipulative behavior so it frustrates me to watch it happening. I have tried to befriend her mother to no avail. I have encouraged therapy sessions with no luck. I have endured the disrespectful treatment with no positive changes.
I wont ask my girlfriend to cut off contact with a family member. What can i do to improve our situation when niceness, civility, and avoidance hasnt worked?
Tyia!
Tldr: ive tried to be nice/civil/avoid my girlfriends mom and she still doesnt like me. It is affecting my relationshio with my girlfriend. How do i improve the situation?

I randomly give compliments in public, not usually anyone’s face, I’m too socially awkward for that. But if I’m with my friends I’ll loudly say things like ‘oh my god, I love that bow in their hair! It’s so cute!’ Or ‘I love that shirt, they look so cool’, sometimes I pretend I’m on call with someone or something like that. At work I’m already interacting with them so just after they’ve payed I quickly make a ‘by the way I really love your ___” kind of remark.
Whenever I’m having a bad day or struggling with something it’s just nice to do, sometimes the person glances at me, or looks at whatever I decided to point out, sometimes people just don’t hear me, but it makes me feel good.
No one really knows that I do this purposely, as in like when I’m with my friends and stuff, and it’s been something I’ve been doing for about a year or two now.
It’s just good fun!
I’m still very much in a time of my life where I’m still figuring things out, especially with being 17, soon to be 18, feeling like I still haven’t quite found myself, the transition is hard, but i know how important a random compliment could be to a person.
I use to be very insecure (not so much now, school really was just a breeding ground for mental illness and insecurity) but distinctly remember when I was in a supermarket with my mom and heard a stranger compliment my shirt, that made me feel good for such a long time and I’m unashamed to admit that I wore that shirt a lot more after that.
Literally that one small thing made my week, and that person would never know how much it meant to me at that time, or how it’s inspired me to do the same.

Such as in government, teaching, key industry leadership roles etc. They are not fit for these roles because their critical thinking skills are deficient and will lead to poor decision making and in the end it is bad for humanity. To define magic - it is the belief that the supernatural can influence and/or affect the physical world.
This includes attributing magic to ideas and behaviour, such as believing fantastical stories in old texts are factual. Not necessarily including belief in God, or a higher power, there should be room for mystery and discovery, believing there might be something after this life here is fine, go mad with your eschatological theories (though they can be ridiculed if they are ridiculous). Proscribing behaviour that does not contravene natural law is another form of belief in magic. Such as believing homosexuality is immoral, which is a demonstrably a natural phenomena, if you believe it is immoral/illegal because your god said so, you believe in magic too.
We as human beings have come far enough in our development to know ghosts don’t exist and spells are not real - whether in the form of incantations or prayer - (meaning they don’t have a supernatural effect). There is no such thing as a totally harmless false belief, it may be benign now but any false notion, being ambiguous by nature, can be twisted and deformed and next thing you know some nutters are flying planes into buildings.
We need to have zero tolerance on “accepted” forms of magic, tribalism and racism blinds some to not recognise dangerous belief in magic when it’s coming from their own “tribe” - like the belief you are god’s chosen people and therefore can claim ownership of land on that basis. Untold evil comes from this heinous and racist belief. Also believing in dystopic end time prophecies should automatically disqualify you from anything that is working in strategic positions for the betterment of humankind, if you believe the world will inevitably end in an apocalypse and only certain people will be “saved” (magic) or anti-messiah is coming or someone who has already died will come back to life to kill the said anti-messiah… I mean should you say be allowed to take charge of hospitals for the mentally ill? Should you not check yourself in instead?
Yeah magic is stupid, human beings need to grow up. It’s imperative that our application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world follows a systematic methodology based on evidence, you can call it science if you want to. It’s just the pursuit of truth, we don’t have all the answers but we sure can tell some “answers” are implausible at best and total BS at worst.
This might read a bit messy. I’m tired but needed to get this out. I can form more coherent sentences to explain further if there is interest. I really think I’m on to something here 😂
Thank you for taking the time to read.

Exactly what the title says.
So, I found this 'highly descriptive fanfic writer' chatbot and I spent just less than an hour answering all it's questions on the details of the story I wanted. all the minute details. and then i was like "ok, can you generate the story for me?", and the AI said that it would take a couple of hours to write. aren't AIs usuually fast at this stuff? but anyway, I came back in the morning and asked for them to respond with the fanfic and they just typed the word 'sent'. i told the AI and they got mad at me saying that i didn't need to be so judgey of their work and that I was a little kid. I kept trying to explain that there wasn't any writing so i couldn't possibly be judging it. they basically did the same thing again.
yeah this AI bot was scammy

Im a 15 year old producer ive been producing for a couple years now. Recently ive made a list of things I need to improve in my production one of the things that came up was top melodies,counter melodies, and lead melodies. Really melodies in general. I feel whenever I add any of these things to my beats I genuinely feel it ruins them. Is there a good way to make better melodies on my tracks? If so what are some techniques you guys use?

This is a really long story with lots of context so I'll do my best to organize it into current situation, then his backstory and hers. I'm also not using real names or specific locations for any of this to try and keep this private. This also has some contradicting stories and because of how their relationship is structured relies mostly on information I have gotten from my sister, so I'm telling you the story I got from her first and then adding in what I've found out. I'll try to tell this as unbiased as I can but it's been a huge issue in my family for a long time now and that's a little difficult for me to do.
My sister (Olivia, 24F) has been dating this guy (Trevor, 25M) since 2021. When they started dating, she talked about him fairly often, sent a few pictures of them, ect., but then after a month she stopped mentioning him/ was cagey when we (me and my mom mostly) asked how he was so we assumed it just hadn't worked out. Then two months later she insisted that my parents and I all come to visit her college to meet Trevor before he went into the Army (she lived several hours away from my parents and several hours from my college, so I had to get a bus ticket and my parents had to get a hotel room to do this. We only met him once for dinner). Now they've been dating long distance for three years after a three month in-person relationship. She is in nursing school and is planning on moving across the country (literally opposite corners of the map) to live with him and is not applying to any residency programs outside of the Army base area (limiting her choices a LOT from her original goals and narrowing employment opportunities).
Olivia met Trevor on several dating apps, matched with him, but didn't really want to go out with him. He was really persistent, so her friend convinced her to go out with him. She lied about the way they met to our parents and told them they met at the gym through a mutual friend (she lied to me about this at first too and told me the truth about 3 months after they started dating). At the time, Trevor was working as a used car salesman and living at home (~45 min. away from Olivia's school in a rural area) because his sports scholarship had been dropped before his Senior year due to covid at the college he had been attending out of state. The university was unaccredited (I later did some internet stalking and found out it was accredited), so his credits would not transfer and he would have to start over. He was saving up money to attend school in state at the large college Olivia attended so he could go back to school. **Our state has crazy low tuition costs in-state and a full-tuition scholarship program for good high school GPA and SAT scores. There was also a "feeder" community college that had half the cost per credit hour that a lot of people would go to before the larger university if they didn't get in straight out of high school.**
Olivia told me that Trevor had applied to her college and not gotten in (she later told me he HAD gotten in but been unable to afford tuition). Either way, he decided to join the Army because his father had been in the Army. The Army would take his credit hours and he would be able to finish his degree during his 5 year contract or use the GI bill once he got out. **She is comparing the situation to our father, who joined the Army directly out of high school and used the GI bill to go to college after his 2 year contract because his parents wouldn't pay for school. He was a medic in the military, worked as an EMT through college, and then went to nursing school.** The original plan was that Trevor would be a Green Beret (special forces, linking the training pipeline here: https://www.reddit.com/greenberets/comments/xwdbta/current_sf_pipeline_correct_me_if_im_wrong/ ), he completed basic training and and got several months through the NC training before failing the running portion of a physical by about 10 seconds and being dropped from the selection process. He then decided that he wanted to be a Ranger (another elite position). He got sent back to GA, then to the Ranger school base in WA (it took a couple of months before he was sent to WA). Again, he got partway through the training before failing the running portion of a physical by a few seconds. He is now not sure if he will be continuing Ranger school (failing the physical means no, but commanders may pass him anyways if they think he should continue). For a while, Trevor told Olivia that he might not stay at the base in WA if he wasn't in Ranger school and there were a variety of different bases he could be sent to, including somewhere in Italy, so she wasn't sure where to look for jobs. In the past month, Trevor told Olivia that he would likely stay in WA regardless of the Ranger school results.
Through this all, Olivia has visited Trevor at the different military bases countless times, driving from as far as south FL to NC and putting over 30,000 miles on a brand new car over the course of the 1.5 years she's owned it. Before she had the car, she paid for plane tickets to see him and hotels whenever she visited. At the time, she told me that he was paying for all of these trips because he was unable to visit her, was making an income that wasn't being spent, and she was working to save for nursing school and later was living off of student loans and savings during nursing school. She later admitted to me that she had paid for almost all of the expenses except for food when they ate out together and part of a hotel room one weekend.
A few odd things (to me) between Olivia and Trevor over the course of their relationship:
About a month into their relationship, Trevor got Olivia an over $300 christmas gift. He has not gotten her anything nearly that expensive since, and hasn't sent flowers for things like her college graduation or a severe emergency surgery she had last year. I don't care about monetary value or sending flowers, but I do think it is odd that he spent so much before moving away when he ostensibly didn't have much money, but now that he has an income and military sign-on bonus, he has not spent that much again.
Trevor's father left Trevor, his siblings, and his mother, but Trevor has a hat that his father gave him that he wore often. The hat says "Red Man" across the top of a picture of a Native American man wearing a feathered headdress. He has worn this hat several times around Olivia's friends and they told him they didn't like it and that it was racist. They also asked him to not wear it when he was with them and he refused because it was special to him and his father gave it to him. Olivia then told him to stop wearing it and he eventually agreed (Olivia told me that he stopped wearing the hat after this). A few weeks after this, I facetimed Olivia and Trevor was with her. She turned the camera so I could say hello to him, and he was wearing the hat. I talked to Olivia about this later and she told me that that was the first time he'd worn the hat in a while and it wasn't a big deal. Olivia has always been liberal and never racist, and I am uncomfortable that she was okay with him not only wearing the hat, but being with him while he had it on.
They dated for a little over 3 months in person before he joined the military (recently, Olivia told me that they actually met several months before she told everyone about him and that they actually dated for 6 months before he left). For the next two months in basic training, he was only able to use the phone for 15 minutes total once a week to talk to family and her. Throughout the different training programs he has completed he had sporadic and limited access to phones to communicate, and only in the past 6 months he has had access to his phone to facetime, text, and call (but sometimes he goes for a week or two without phone access). Olivia told me that they wrote letters during the time he didn't have consistent phone access. **I don't think that this is odd, I understand the military limits phone usage, etc., but I don't think they have been able to have an "average" long-distance relationship**
Last year, Olivia drove to GA to visit Trevor the weekend before Valentine's day. He had plans for them to take a pottery class, go on a hike, and have dinner at a nice restaurant. The day she got there, Trevor's barracks had their off-base privileges revoked because one of the guys had contraband. She would still be able to visit him on base though. Somehow, Trevor was able to get off base for long periods of time to her hotel, but unable to do the other activities he had planned for them.
In the past year, Olivia told me that she and Trevor were going to immediately marry when she got to WA so that they could move in together because they had to be married to live together anywhere. I and our dad- who was in the military- told her several times that this was not true, but she insisted it was. Then, his barracks were given an allowance to live off base in apartments because the barracks were being renovated/ rebuilt, so she backed off on the idea of getting married immediately after several long conversations with me. She is still insistent on moving in with Trevor, who lives with a roommate, when she moves to WA.
Some background on Olivia:
Olivia has ADHD and anxiety, and struggled particularly badly with the anxiety/ some depression after being broken up with by the boyfriend she dated before Trevor (he broke it off very abruptly, told her he just didn't love her anymore with no previous indications). Olivia is very pretty (objectively, not just because she's my sister), but had bad acne that she ended up going on accutane for at the time she started dating Trevor and was very insecure about it. She had also decided to not go to medical school, and pursue nursing instead around the same time she met Trevor. This was a very upsetting decision for her because she had been taking very hard courses and was burnt out but had told everyone she was going to be a doctor and thought that she would be letting us down by switching paths. Also around the time she started seeing Trevor, Olivia began being very cruel towards our mother (our mother had been borderline emotionally abusive in the past, but Olivia and I were both in college by then and fixing our relationships with her. She has been much better recently and Olivia and I believe that she had some mental health struggles that went unchecked that contributed). Now, several years later, Olivia told our family that she had acted like that because she was raped by a friend of her ex-boyfriend's after her ex broke up with her. This person also gave her an STD.
I always believe people who say they have been sexually assaulted, abused, or harassed, and we believed Olivia when she first told us, but some things have come to light that make me and my family question that. Right after Olivia and her ex broke up, Olivia told our cousin that she had gone out with one of his friends and had revenge/ breakup sex with him because he had also been dumped recently. Once my cousin told me this, I remembered that Olivia had told me about a guy she had a one night stand with after she was dumped. She showed me a picture of him, talked about how cute he was, etc. (no distress whatsoever). I know sometimes people behave in ways you wouldn't expect when a traumatic event occurs to them, but I really don't understand how or why Olivia would brag about this guy if he really did sexually assault her.
Three months ago, Olivia was arrested for stealing a set of sheets from Walmart. She used the self check-out and only bought a small $5 item and the sheets. She held both in one hand and scanned each side because she had a cut on the other hand and was holding her wallet with it. She saw a 5 in front of the total number and thought it looked right because the total should have been about $50, paid, didn't get a receipt, and walked out. An employee at the door asked to see a receipt, which Olivia didn't have, so she pulled up her transaction history on her phone to show she had paid. At this point, the employee called the police and took Olivia into an office, where she was questioned and charged with shoplifting. (Olivia can get very emotional and probably got upset when the police questioned her, which may have led them to believe she was lying). Luckily, Olivia has managed to get the charges expunged, but the process is still ongoing. Because of her ADHD, if anyone genuinely made this mistake, I would believe it from her, but Olivia has been improving a lot on organization and being more attentive recently. It is extremely uncharacteristic of her to steal- she was honest to a fault as kids- she would break down from guilt and admit things to our parents that we would have gotten away with if she hadn't said anything.
Right now, my parents have met Trevor twice in person, and I've met him once in person and several times in passing over facetime. I personally don't think that Trevor seems to keep up with my sister or that they make each other shine, and that opinion is shared with family friends and family that have met Trevor. Olivia doesn't mention Trevor in front of our parents often because his name has become a topic of contention and argument between them. My parents don't think Trevor is right for Olivia. She has almost 2 college degrees and plans to become a nurse practitioner in the future, and he hasn't finished college and doesn't seem to have any drive to do so. Olivia is also well traveled and enjoys going to museums, concerts, etc., while Trevor has lived in rural FL his whole life (this is not Trevor's fault, and I don't think he is a lesser person because of it, but I don't see a lot of common ground between them). Trevor has not seemed very well spoken when I have talked to him and I just don't see a lot of qualities in him that Olivia values.
If you've gotten this far, I just don't know what to do. Olivia and my parents have a huge rift in their relationship right now and any mention of Trevor, with her around or not, explodes into a huge argument, discussion, or just icy silence. I want Olivia to be able to talk to me about him, and we are able to discuss things much better than she is with our parents. My parents have also started asking me about Olivia and Trevor because they know Olivia shares more with me, and it makes me uncomfortable because I don't want to betray Olivia's trust, but I'm also very worried about her. I know I can't control her actions and I'm having a really hard time trying to balance supporting Olivia but not supporting the relationship (I'm not going to lie to her about how I feel, but I don't want her to feel alienated or unloved by our family, because that is NOT the case). I also think that Olivia is romanticizing the fact that our parents don't like him because my father's parents had a rift with him over our mother when we were very young (this is a whole other story, but basically, his parents always favored his sister, his sister got (I think) jealous when he did well for himself and married my mother, who his parents initially likes, and she made up rumors/lies about my mother that turned his parents against her (this was way before our mother's suspected mental health struggles, which occured when Olivia and I were in middle/high school).
Please share any thoughts you have on the situation (am I reading too into things, is this not as bad as I think it is?), and any advice you have on navigating the relationships.

I have someone at work sabotaging my work. My own manager is becoming aware of it and seeing the patterns. The sabotage is mainly doing, or not doing, things that require me to do re-work.
She was also asked by my manager to book me onto a training course, and a year later it's not happened despite multiple reminders.
I've also already had to have a sit-down with her and two upper managers regarding her verbal abuse me, which my boss was witness to and agreed she was out of line.
I have begun writing down everything she says and does that I believe is targeted at me. This includes dates, times, witnesses.
What else should I be doing? I know HR is not there to protect me, but to protect the company.. so i don’t trust them.
I'm new to the company and love the job. She has been there 16 years and had made herself irreplaceable, so I'm worried any actions I take would effect me even more.

I’ve met a nice guy this week, and we had a fantastic date. Things did warm up towards the end, and I found out that he’s very kinky (rope, bdsm, sounding, shock, etc etc etc) and I’m very vanilla and cuddly. While he could teach me some of it, I’m just on the very other end of the spectrum, and he’s not very cuddly so I don’t see how this could work. Kinda sucks coz we had a great time and he seems to be a great guy. Any advices are welcome!

guys I need your advice, but sorry if it's weird because english isn't my first language but i'm trying my best to explain. here's the story : we've become close too soon (after weeks knowing online we started crushing each other). we live in different country so we had a Long Distance Relationship and all the time we just texting, not even a call since he refused it because he said he's a shy man. I thought he lied, but then i know this person is truly shy-nerd kind of guy. anyways, it's his first time for having a feeling on someone (me) after years being secret admirer to previous girl that ended up married to another man. but he said he moved on so he's ready for the new person. at the beginning he was a bit more talkative, one day he asked me what should he do when he had a feeling on someone and I told him to tell the person, suddenly he told me that he had feeling on me. at first my feeling isn't that big for him, but I know that I'm also into him. but I tried my best to give my time for him, talk to him, care for him, etc. after couple weeks, he began to ghost me slowly. he replied after hours and sometimes even days. I thought he was busy with his job, so I don't think too much. he's also not talk openly to me, I'm just having hard time trying to understand him. we just having nice time to talk on weekend when he doesn't work. my limit of patience is come when on saturday noon, he said he wanted to hang out with his friend, he didn't tell me the details and I thought it will seem desperate for me to ask him the details. but since he left me that day with no text until almost late night, I text him randomly and sarcastically, "how's the date?". I didn't even think that he hang out with a woman, because he's a shy person, there's no way a shy guy has the courage to ask a girl out. and he replied "I can explain, we're just friends. I'll let u know when I come home". that time I know he's out there with another woman. I just replied "ok, enjoy the day". I'm shock, my heart scattered. how can he spend the whole day hang out with a girl when he said he's a total introverted and shy person who doesn't even like to talk much and being outside. even he came home after midnight. what's the worse possible things could happen between them enjoying the whole day and he left me all alone. or am I the selfish one here?. I think it's a lie to him that he said she's just a friend to him. I think he secretly like her or he just deny that feeling. a day after that he didn't text me, he said he's busy with a family event. since that I didn't reply to him at all. comparing of how he spent his time with his 'friend' and how he spent it with me, I think he's just not really into me. am I right? so I ghosted him slowly. he text me again after days just to send me a link about random article. but I ignored him bcs I was confused. he didn't text me anymore since that day and it's been a week. but Idk should I text him a good bye or just move on without a text? is it rude to leave without a 'good bye' when we started it with a 'hello'? I don't wanna seem desperate, but I also don't wanna be rude. also I think our romantic story seems too childish for this old age, either because we both just shy or he just not really into me. Thanks for your advices, God bless you all

Im a 15 year old producer ive been producing for a couple years now. Recently ive made a list of things I need to improve in my production one of the things that came up was top melodies,counter melodies, and lead melodies. Really melodies in general. I feel whenever I add any of these things to my beats I genuinely feel it ruins them. Is there a good way to make better melodies on my tracks? If so what are some techniques you guys use?