I plan to show this to my girlfriend (I’ll call her Nora since she has a ridiculously rare name) when she’s finished her finals on Thursday. I’m using a throwaway because she’s advocated for me to always convey my feelings, with her, a journal, friends or my family and I’ll use reddit this time and she loves this platform. We’ve resolved everything but I still want to write everything down and show her.
For some background, Nora and I met and became the best of friends when we both started middle school; we had the same classes together up until high school and up until Covid, we stopped talking for 2-3 years. In 11th grade, we had many of the same classes once again and within 2 months of the school year, I fell for her. I didn’t confess for another 4-5 months by asking her out to junior prom and we started dating March 31, 2022. Since then, we’ve bettered ourselves, experienced shared dreams, been to 6 countries and 20 states together. We one-up each other when it’s time to celebrate our birthdays and anniversary. We saved each other and I know for certain that she is my soulmate and she’s the only person that I want to marry and have a family with down the line. Currently, we’re freshmen at different colleges in our home state.
For the past few weeks, she’s been stressed for this one final, it’s the highest math she needs for her program and we’ve been taking college classes since June 2022 up until attending college in August 2023. Her plan for the last 2 years has always been to attending community college to knock out her pre-reqs before transferring within a few months. Although since she’s nearing the finish line for this plan, it’s been taking the biggest toll on her.
But last week specifically, she was really unresponsive, which isn’t like her. Whenever she would stay the night over, she would either sleep on the couch in my room and stay up longer than me (which always worried me considering I’m quite an insomniac whenever I don’t get a chance to share the same bed with her or to hear her telling me goodnight). The only time she opened up to me was to let all of her frustrations out. I would go to my family (they love her just as much as they love me) a lot but they’d only endearingly laugh at me, my mom especially. She’d tell me “She’s the reason you’re able to be open up so much to us, give her time” and things along those lines.
I did do as my mom said and gave her time, but I know my girl very well. I know when she wants to talk, when she wants to hug and when she wants to cry. But I also knew she didn’t want to talk just yet. Our conversations were short, and as much as it killed me, I knew she needed time more than anyone.
Yesterday (Mother’s Day), I ended up being the reason we fixed things. We like to spend the first half of holidays at her place then mine after. I went to her place, her eldest brother opened the door and smiled at me, we made conversation and he told me she was upstairs. I dropped my gifts off and went to knock on her door. She said come in and was surprised to see me, I guess she didn’t know what time I was coming over.
Looking at her felt like time stopped, Nora has always been the most beautiful woman, no one can rival her radiant smile, her loud laughs or the pleasure of staring at her; but she was glowing. She smelt like lemon, ginger and coconut, she smelt like herself. She felt like herself. At that point my face was burning, she got up and started inspecting my face, her hands were on my face and she kept asking what was wrong.
I started crying without knowing and she started to panic, crying has become a normality for me, I always find myself crying when she cries. But crying out of nowhere was alarming for her. She spent 10 minutes consoling me before I apologized for making her panic. She said it was fine but asked what was wrong. I told her how when I saw her, it felt like she was herself again. It was the first time she’s touched me in over a week (physical touch being my love language) and I asked her what happened to make her, her regular self again. She told me that “Your support for me has been unwavering for 2 years, I can’t possibly disappoint you with how much you’ve put into being there for me through everything, and I think making gifts for your mom and mine just made me realize I shouldn’t stress so much, I got to take my mind off everything and I wanted to apologize to you for being so short and disrespectful of your feelings”
She started laughing after explaining and started teasing me until we started to banter back and forth and ended up wrestling together. After some minutes, Nora hugged me really tight and kissed me countless times and told me how sorry she’s been. I easily forgave her, she’s always gone out of her way to make sure I’m okay.
I just thought I’d put my feelings down somewhere before heading to bed, we’re sharing the same bed for the first time in a week or so and the idea of getting ready in the morning to help her study makes me smile. She’s been stressed a lot and I’ve promised her that once she’s officially done this semester, I’m treating her to a deserved spa day with a manicure and pedicure, I’ve already paid her hair stylist in advance for her appointment on Saturday.
I just want my girl to be happy and stress free the way she’s always trying her best to be present in lives of the people she cares for and she’s gone several miles: from being the first to show up for my younger sister’s (17) art exhibits, paying for her prom, taking her shopping, to going on morning walks with my older sister (22), going to concerts and helping my parents. I’d be stupid if I didn’t show how far my appreciation for her runs.
I’ve been rambling for the last 20 minutes and I’m happy I made this account, I really do love Nora more than life itself because she’s the one who made me love the longevity of my life. I talk to my dad about her constantly and my friends can’t go without telling me that I always talk about Nora when the chance is given. I can’t do without her and her serenity, her weirdness, her humor her warmth and her beauty.
Good night!
TL;DR: I'm planning to pour my heart out to my girlfriend after her finals. We've been inseparable since middle school, she's my soulmate. Lately, she’s been stressed, but we had a breakthrough on Mother's Day, and I feel relieved. I can't wait to support her and treat her to a spa day. I'm head over heels for her and deeply appreciate everything she does for me and my family.

https://mises.org/mises-daily/society-without-state
In attempting to outline how a “society without a state” — that is, an anarchist society — might function successfully, I would first like to defuse two common but mistaken criticisms of this approach. First, is the argument that in providing for such defense or protection services as courts, police, or even law itself, I am simply smuggling the state back into society in another form, and that therefore the system I am both analyzing and advocating is not “really” anarchism. This sort of criticism can only involve us in an endless and arid dispute over semantics. Let me say from the beginning that I define the state as that institution which possesses one or both (almost always both) of the following properties: (1) it acquires its income by the physical coercion known as “taxation”; and (2) it asserts and usually obtains a coerced monopoly of the provision of defense service (police and courts) over a given territorial area. An institution not possessing either of these properties is not and cannot be, in accordance with my definition, a state. On the other hand, I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of an individual. Anarchists oppose the state because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights.
Nor is our definition of the state arbitrary, for these two characteristics have been possessed by what is generally acknowledged to be states throughout recorded history. The state, by its use of physical coercion, has arrogated to itself a compulsory monopoly of defense services over its territorial jurisdiction. But it is certainly conceptually possible for such services to be supplied by private, non-state institutions, and indeed such services have historically been supplied by other organizations than the state. To be opposed to the state is then not necessarily to be opposed to services that have often been linked with it; to be opposed to the state does not necessarily imply that we must be opposed to police protection, courts, arbitration, the minting of money, postal service, or roads and highways. Some anarchists have indeed been opposed to police and to all physical coercion in defense of person and property, but this is not inherent in and is fundamentally irrelevant to the anarchist position, which is precisely marked by opposition to all physical coercion invasive of, or aggressing against, person and property.
The crucial role of taxation may be seen in the fact that the state is the only institution or organization in society which regularly and systematically acquires its income through the use of physical coercion. All other individuals or organizations acquire their income voluntarily, either (1) through the voluntary sale of goods and services to consumers on the market, or (2) through voluntary gifts or donations by members or other donors. If I cease or refrain from purchasing Wheaties on the market, the Wheaties producers do not come after me with a gun or the threat of imprisonment to force me to purchase; if I fail to join the American Philosophical Association, the association may not force me to join or prevent me from giving up my membership. Only the state can do so; only the state can confiscate my property or put me in jail if I do not pay its tax tribute. Therefore, only the state regularly exists and has its very being by means of coercive depredations on private property.
Neither is it legitimate to challenge this sort of analysis by claiming that in some other sense, the purchase of Wheaties or membership in the APA is in some way “coercive.” Anyone who is still unhappy with this use of the term “coercion” can simply eliminate the word from this discussion and substitute for it “physical violence or the threat thereof,” with the only loss being in literary style rather than in the substance of the argument. What anarchism proposes to do, then, is to abolish the state, that is, to abolish the regularized institution of aggressive coercion.
It need hardly be added that the state habitually builds upon its coercive source of income by adding a host of other aggressions upon society, ranging from economic controls to the prohibition of pornography to the compelling of religious observance to the mass murder of civilians in organized warfare. In short, the state, in the words of Albert Jay Nock, “claims and exercises a monopoly of crime” over its territorial area.
The second criticism I would like to defuse before beginning the main body of the paper is the common charge that anarchists “assume that all people are good” and that without the state no crime would be committed. In short, that anarchism assumes that with the abolition of the state a New Anarchist Man will emerge, cooperative, humane, and benevolent, so that no problem of crime will then plague the society. I confess that I do not understand the basis for this charge. Whatever other schools of anarchism profess — and I do not believe that they are open to the charge — I certainly do not adopt this view. I assume with most observers that mankind is a mixture of good and evil, of cooperative and criminal tendencies. In my view, the anarchist society is one which maximizes the tendencies for the good and the cooperative, while it minimizes both the opportunity and the moral legitimacy of the evil and the criminal. If the anarchist view is correct and the state is indeed the great legalized and socially legitimated channel for all manner of antisocial crime — theft, oppression, mass murder — on a massive scale, then surely the abolition of such an engine of crime can do nothing but favor the good in man and discourage the bad.
A further point: in a profound sense, no social system, whether anarchist or statist, can work at all unless most people are “good” in the sense that they are not all hell-bent upon assaulting and robbing their neighbors. If everyone were so disposed, no amount of protection, whether state or private, could succeed in staving off chaos. Furthermore, the more that people are disposed to be peaceful and not aggress against their neighbors, the more successfully any social system will work, and the fewer resources will need to be devoted to police protection. The anarchist view holds that, given the “nature of man,” given the degree of goodness or badness at any point in time, anarchism will maximize the opportunities for the good and minimize the channels for the bad. The rest depends on the values held by the individual members of society. The only further point that need be made is that by eliminating the living example and the social legitimacy of the massive legalized crime of the state, anarchism will to a large extent promote peaceful values in the minds of the public.
We cannot of course deal here with the numerous arguments in favor of anarchism or against the state, moral, political, and economic. Nor can we take up the various goods and services now provided by the state and show how private individuals and groups will be able to supply them far more efficiently on the free market. Here we can only deal with perhaps the most difficult area, the area where it is almost universally assumed that the state must exist and act, even if it is only a “necessary evil” instead of a positive good: the vital realm of defense or protection of person and property against aggression. Surely, it is universally asserted, the state is at least vitally necessary to provide police protection, the judicial resolution of disputes and enforcement of contracts, and the creation of the law itself that is to be enforced. My contention is that all of these admittedly necessary services of protection can be satisfactorily and efficiently supplied by private persons and institutions on the free market.
One important caveat before we begin the body of this paper: new proposals such as anarchism are almost always gauged against the implicit assumption that the present, or statist system works to perfection. Any lacunae or difficulties with the picture of the anarchist society are considered net liabilities, and enough to dismiss anarchism out of hand. It is, in short, implicitly assumed that the state is doing its self-assumed job of protecting person and property to perfection. We cannot here go into the reasons why the state is bound to suffer inherently from grave flaws and inefficiencies in such a task. All we need do now is to point to the black and unprecedented record of the state through history: no combination of private marauders can possibly begin to match the state’s unremitting record of theft, confiscation, oppression, and mass murder. No collection of Mafia or private bank robbers can begin to compare with all the Hiroshimas, Dresdens, and Lidices and their analogues through the history of mankind.
This point can be made more philosophically: it is illegitimate to compare the merits of anarchism and statism by starting with the present system as the implicit given and then critically examining only the anarchist alternative. What we must do is to begin at the zero point and then critically examine both suggested alternatives. Suppose, for example, that we were all suddenly dropped down on the earth de novo and that we were all then confronted with the question of what societal arrangements to adopt. And suppose then that someone suggested: “We are all bound to suffer from those of us who wish to aggress against their fellow men. Let us then solve this problem of crime by handing all of our weapons to the Jones family, over there, by giving all of our ultimate power to settle disputes to that family. In that way, with their monopoly of coercion and of ultimate decision making, the Jones family will be able to protect each of us from each other.” I submit that this proposal would get very short shrift, except perhaps from the Jones family themselves. And yet this is precisely the common argument for the existence of the state. When we start from the zero point, as in the case of the Jones family, the question of “who will guard the guardians?” becomes not simply an abiding lacuna in the theory of the state but an overwhelming barrier to its existence.
A final caveat: the anarchist is always at a disadvantage in attempting to forecast the shape of the future anarchist society. For it is impossible for observers to predict voluntary social arrangements, including the provision of goods and services, on the free market. Suppose, for example, that this were the year 1874 and that someone predicted that eventually there would be a radio-manufacturing industry. To be able to make such a forecast successfully, does he have to be challenged to state immediately how many radio manufacturers there would be a century hence, how big they would be, where they would be located, what technology and marketing techniques they would use, and so on? Obviously, such a challenge would make no sense, and in a profound sense the same is true of those who demand a precise portrayal of the pattern of protection activities on the market. Anarchism advocates the dissolution of the state into social and market arrangements, and these arrangements are far more flexible and less predictable than political institutions. The most that we can do, then, is to offer broad guidelines and perspectives on the shape of a projected anarchist society.
One important point to make here is that the advance of modern technology makes anarchistic arrangements increasingly feasible. Take, for example, the case of lighthouses, where it is often charged that it is unfeasible for private lighthouse operators to row out to each ship to charge it for use of the light. Apart from the fact that this argument ignores the successful existence of private lighthouses in earlier days, as in England in the eighteenth century, another vital consideration is that modern electronic technology makes charging each ship for the light far more feasible. Thus, the ship would have to have paid for an electronically controlled beam which could then be automatically turned on for those ships which had paid for the service.
Let us turn now to the problem of how disputes — in particular disputes over alleged violations of person and property — would be resolved in an anarchist society. First, it should be noted that all disputes involve two parties: the plaintiff, the alleged victim of the crime or tort and the defendant, the alleged aggressor. In many cases of broken contract, of course, each of the two parties alleging that the other is the culprit is at the same time a plaintiff and a defendant.
An important point to remember is that any society, be it statist or anarchist, has to have some way of resolving disputes that will gain a majority consensus in society. There would be no need for courts or arbitrators if everyone were omniscient and knew instantaneously which persons were guilty of any given crime or violation of contract. Since none of us is omniscient, there has to be some method of deciding who is the criminal or lawbreaker which will gain legitimacy; in short, whose decision will be accepted by the great majority of the public.
In the first place, a dispute may be resolved voluntarily between the two parties themselves, either unaided or with the help of a third mediator. This poses no problem, and will automatically be accepted by society at large. It is so accepted even now, much less in a society imbued with the anarchistic values of peaceful cooperation and agreement. Secondly and similarly, the two parties, unable to reach agreement, may decide to submit voluntarily to the decision of an arbitrator. This agreement may arise either after a dispute has arisen, or be provided for in advance in the original contract. Again, there is no problem in such an arrangement gaining legitimacy. Even in the present statist era, the notorious inefficiency and coercive and cumbersome procedures of the politically run government courts has led increasing numbers of citizens to turn to voluntary and expert arbitration for a speedy and harmonious settling of disputes.
Thus, William C. Wooldridge has written that

Wooldridge adds the important point that, in addition to the speed of arbitration procedures vis-à-vis the courts, the arbitrators can proceed as experts in disregard of the official government law; in a profound sense, then, they serve to create a voluntary body of private law. “In other words,” states Wooldridge, “the system of extralegal, voluntary courts has progressed hand in hand with a body of private law; the rules of the state are circumvented by the same process that circumvents the forums established for the settlement of disputes over those rules…. In short, a private agreement between two people, a bilateral “law,” has supplanted the official law. The writ of the sovereign has cease to run, and for it is substituted a rule tacitly or explicitly agreed to by the parties. Wooldridge concludes that “if an arbitrator can choose to ignore a penal damage rule or the statute of limitations applicable to the claim before him (and it is generally conceded that he has that power), arbitration can be viewed as a practically revolutionary instrument for self-liberation from the law….”2
It may be objected that arbitration only works successfully because the courts enforce the award of the arbitrator. Wooldridge points out, however, that arbitration was unenforceable in the American courts before 1920, but that this did not prevent voluntary arbitration from being successful and expanding in the United States and in England. He points, furthermore, to the successful operations of merchant courts since the Middle Ages, those courts which successfully developed the entire body of the law merchant. None of those courts possessed the power of enforcement. He might have added the private courts of shippers which developed the body of admiralty law in a similar way.
How then did these private, “anarchistic,” and voluntary courts ensure the acceptance of their decisions? By the method of social ostracism, and by the refusal to deal any further with the offending merchant. This method of voluntary “enforcement,” indeed proved highly successful. Wooldridge writes that “the merchants’ courts were voluntary, and if a man ignored their judgment, he could not be sent to jail…. Nevertheless, it is apparent that … [their] decisions were generally respected even by the losers; otherwise people would never have used them in the first place…. Merchants made their courts work simply by agreeing to abide by the results. The merchant who broke the understanding would not be sent to jail, to be sure, but neither would he long continue to be a merchant, for the compliance exacted by his fellows … proved if anything more effective than physical coercion.”3 Nor did this voluntary method fail to work in modern times. Wooldridge writes that it was precisely in the years before 1920, when arbitration awards could not be enforced in the courts,

It should also be pointed out that modern technology makes even more feasible the collection and dissemination of information about people’s credit ratings and records of keeping or violating their contracts or arbitration agreements. Presumably, an anarchist society would see the expansion of this sort of dissemination of data and thereby facilitate the ostracism or boycotting of contract and arbitration violators.
How would arbitrators be selected in an anarchist society? In the same way as they are chosen now, and as they were chosen in the days of strictly voluntary arbitration: the arbitrators with the best reputation for efficiency and probity would be chosen by the various parties on the market. As in other processes of the market, the arbitrators with the best record in settling disputes will come to gain an increasing amount of business, and those with poor records will no longer enjoy clients and will have to shift to another line of endeavor. Here it must be emphasized that parties in dispute will seek out those arbitrators with the best reputation for both expertise and impartiality and that inefficient or biased arbitrators will rapidly have to find another occupation.
Thus, the Tannehills emphasize:

If desired, furthermore, the contracting parties could provide in advance for a series of arbitrators:

Arbitration, then, poses little difficulty for a portrayal of the free society. But what of torts or crimes of aggression where there has been no contract? Or suppose that the breaker of a contract defies the arbitration award? Is ostracism enough? In short, how can courts develop in the free-market anarchist society which will have the power to enforce judgments against criminals or contract breakers?
In the wide sense, defense service consists of guards or police who use force in defending person and property against attack, and judges or courts whose role is to use socially accepted procedures to determine who the criminals or tortfeasors are, as well as to enforce judicial awards, such as damages or the keeping of contracts. On the free market, many scenarios are possible on the relationship between the private courts and the police; they may be “vertically integrated,” for example, or their services may be supplied by separate firms. Furthermore, it seems likely that police service will be supplied by insurance companies who will provide crime insurance to their clients. In that case, insurance companies will pay off the victims of crime or the breaking of contracts or arbitration awards and then pursue the aggressors in court to recoup their losses. There is a natural market connection between insurance companies and defense service, since they need pay out less benefits in proportion as they are able to keep down the rate of crime.
Courts might either charge fees for their services, with the losers of cases obliged to pay court costs, or else they may subsist on monthly or yearly premiums by their clients, who may be either individuals or the police or insurance agencies. Suppose, for example, that Smith is an aggrieved party, either because he has been assaulted or robbed, or because an arbitration award in his favor has not been honored. Smith believes that Jones is the party guilty of the crime. Smith then goes to a court, Court A, of which he is a client, and brings charges against Jones as a defendant. In my view, the hallmark of an anarchist society is one where no man may legally compel someone who is not a convicted criminal to do anything, since that would be aggression against an innocent man’s person or property. Therefore, Court A can only invite rather than subpoena Jones to attend his trial. Of course, if Jones refused to appear or send a representative, his side of the case will not be heard. The trial of Jones proceeds. Suppose that Court A finds Jones innocent. In my view, part of the generally accepted law code of the anarchist society (on which see further below) is that this must end the matter unless Smith can prove charges of gross incompetence or bias on the part of the court.
Suppose, next, that Court A finds Jones guilty. Jones might accept the verdict, because he too is a client of the same court, because he knows he is guilty, or for some other reason. In that case, Court A proceeds to exercise judgment against Jones. Neither of these instances poses very difficult problems for our picture of the anarchist society. But suppose, instead, that Jones contests the decision; he then goes to his court, Court B, and the case is retried there. Suppose that Court B, too, finds Jones guilty. Again, it seems to me that the accepted law code of the anarchist society will assert that this ends the matter; both parties have had their say in courts which each has selected, and the decision for guilt is unanimous.
Suppose, however, the most difficult case: that Court B finds Jones innocent. The two courts, each subscribed to by one of the two parties, have split their verdicts. In that case, the two courts will submit the case to an appeals court, or arbitrator, which the two courts agree upon. There seems to be no real difficulty about the concept of an appeals court. As in the case of arbitration contracts, it seems very likely that the various private courts in the society will have prior agreements to submit their disputes to a particular appeals court. How will the appeals judges be chosen? Again, as in the case of arbitrators or of the first judges on the free market, they will be chosen for their expertise and their reputation for efficiency, honesty, and integrity. Obviously, appeals judges who are inefficient or biased will scarcely be chosen by courts who will have a dispute. The point here is that there is no need for a legally established or institutionalized single, monopoly appeals court system, as states now provide. There is no reason why there cannot arise a multitude of efficient and honest appeals judges who will be selected by the disputant courts, just as there are numerous private arbitrators on the market today. The appeals court renders its decision, and the courts proceed to enforce it if, in our example, Jones is considered guilty — unless, of course, Jones can prove bias in some other court proceedings.
No society can have unlimited judicial appeals, for in that case there would be no point to having judges or courts at all. Therefore, every society, whether statist or anarchist, will have to have some socially accepted cutoff point for trials and appeals. My suggestion is the rule that the agreement of any two courts, be decisive. “Two” is not an arbitrary figure, for it reflects the fact that there are two parties, the plaintiff and the defendant, to any alleged crime or contract dispute.
If the courts are to be empowered to enforce decision against guilty parties, does this not bring back the state in another form and thereby negate anarchism? No, for at the beginning of this paper I explicitly defined anarchism in such a way as not to rule out the use of defensive force — force in defense of person and property — by privately supported agencies. In the same way, it is not bringing back the state to allow persons to use force to defend themselves against aggression, or to hire guards or police agencies to defend them.
It should be noted, however, that in the anarchist society there will be no “district attorney” to press charges on behalf of “society.” Only the victims will press charges as the plaintiffs. If, then, these victims should happen to be absolute pacifists who are opposed even to defensive force, then they will simply not press charges in the courts or otherwise retaliate against those who have aggressed against them. In a free society that would be their right. If the victim should suffer from murder, then his heir would have the right to press the charges.
What of the Hatfield-and-McCoy problem? Suppose that a Hatfield kills a McCoy, and that McCoy’s heir does not belong to a private insurance, police agency, or court, and decides to retaliate himself? Since under anarchism there can be no coercion of the noncriminal, McCoy would have the perfect right to do so. No one may be compelled to bring his case to a court. Indeed, since the right to hire police or courts flows from the right of self-defense against aggression, it would be inconsistent and in contradiction to the very basis of the free society to institute such compulsion.
Suppose, then, that the surviving McCoy finds what he believes to be the guilty Hatfield and kills him in turn? What then? This is fine, except that McCoy may have to worry about charges being brought against him by a surviving Hatfield. Here it must be emphasized that in the law of the anarchist society based on defense against aggression, the courts would not be able to proceed against McCoy if in fact he killed the right Hatfield. His problem would arise if the courts should find that he made a grievous mistake and killed the wrong man; in that case, he in turn would be found guilty of murder. Surely, in most instances, individuals will wish to obviate such problems by taking their case to a court and thereby gain social acceptability for their defensive retaliation — not for the act of retaliation but for the correctness of deciding who the criminal in any given case might be. The purpose of the judicial process, indeed, is to find a way of general agreement on who might be the criminal or contract breaker in any given case. The judicial process is not a good in itself; thus, in the case of an assassination, such as Jack Ruby’s murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, on public television, there is no need for a complex judicial process, since the name of the murderer is evident to all.
Will not the possibility exist of a private court that may turn venal and dishonest, or of a private police force that turns criminal and extorts money by coercion? Of course such an event may occur, given the propensities of human nature. Anarchism is not a moral cure-all. But the important point is that market forces exist to place severe checks on such possibilities, especially in contrast to a society where a state exists. For, in the first place, judges, like arbitrators, will prosper on the market in proportion to their reputation for efficiency and impartiality. Secondly, on the free market important checks and balances exist against venal courts or criminal police forces. Namely, that there are competing courts and police agencies to whom victims may turn for redress. If the “Prudential Police Agency” should turn outlaw and extract revenue from victims by coercion, the latter would have the option of turning to the “Mutual” or “Equitable” Police Agency for defense and for pressing charges against Prudential. These are the genuine “checks and balances” of the free market, genuine in contrast to the phony check and balances of a state system, where all the alleged “balancing” agencies are in the hands of one monopoly government. Indeed, given the monopoly “protection service” of a state, what is there to prevent a state from using its monopoly channels of coercion to extort money from the public? What are the checks and limits of the state? None, except for the extremely difficult course of revolution against a power with all of the guns in its hands. In fact, the state provides an easy, legitimated channel for crime and aggression, since it has its very being in the crime of tax theft, and the coerced monopoly of “protection.” It is the state, indeed, that functions as a mighty “protection racket” on a giant and massive scale. It is the state that says: “Pay us for your ‘protection’ or else.” In the light of the massive and inherent activities of the state, the danger of a “protection racket” emerging from one or more private police agencies is relatively small indeed.
Moreover, it must be emphasized that a crucial element in the power of the state is its legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of the public, the fact that after centuries of propaganda, the depredations of the state are looked upon rather as benevolent services. Taxation is generally not seen as theft, nor war as mass murder, nor conscription as slavery. Should a private police agency turn outlaw, should “Prudential” become a protection racket, it would then lack the social legitimacy which the state has managed to accrue to itself over the centuries. “Prudential” would be seen by all as bandits, rather than as legitimate or divinely appointed “sovereigns” bent on promoting the “common good” or the “general welfare.” And lacking such legitimacy, “Prudential” would have to face the wrath of the public and the defense and retaliation of the other private defense agencies, the police and courts, on the free market. Given these inherent checks and limits, a successful transformation from a free society to bandit rule becomes most unlikely. Indeed, historically, it has been very difficult for a state to arise to supplant a stateless society; usually, it has come about through external conquest rather than by evolution from within a society.
Within the anarchist camp, there has been much dispute on whether the private courts would have to be bound by a basic, common law code. Ingenious attempts have been made to work out a system where the laws or standards of decision-making by the courts would differ completely from one to another.7 But in my view all would have to abide by the basic law code, in particular, prohibition of aggression against person and property, in order to fulfill our definition of anarchism as a system which provides no legal sanction for such aggression. Suppose, for example, that one group of people in society holds that all redheads are demons who deserve to be shot on sight. Suppose that Jones, one of this group, shoots Smith, a redhead. Suppose that Smith or his heir presses charges in a court, but that Jones’s court, in philosophic agreement with Jones, finds him innocent therefore. It seems to me that in order to be considered legitimate, any court would have to follow the basic libertarian law code of the inviolate right of person and property. For otherwise, courts might legally subscribe to a code which sanctions such aggression in various cases, and which to that extent would violate the definition of anarchism and introduce, if not the state, then a strong element of statishness or legalized aggression into the society.
But again I see no insuperable difficulties here. For in that case, anarchists, in agitating for their creed, will simply include in their agitation the idea of a general libertarian law code as part and parcel of the anarchist creed of abolition of legalized aggression against person or property in the society.
In contrast to the general law code, other aspects of court decisions could legitimately vary in accordance with the market or the wishes of the clients; for example, the language the cases will be conducted in, the number of judges to be involved, and so on.
There are other problems of the basic law code which there is no time to go into here: for example, the definition of just property titles or the question of legitimate punishment of convicted offenders — though the latter problem of course exists in statist legal systems as well.8 The basic point, however, is that the state is not needed to arrive at legal principles or their elaboration: indeed, much of the common law, the law merchant, admiralty law, and private law in general, grew up apart from the state, by judges not making the law but finding it on the basis of agreed-upon principles derived either from custom or reason.9 The idea that the state is needed to make law is as much a myth as that the state is needed to supply postal or police services.
Enough has been said here, I believe, to indicate that an anarchist system for settling disputes would be both viable and self-subsistent: that once adopted, it could work and continue indefinitely. How to arrive at that system is of course a very different problem, but certainly at the very least it will not likely come about unless people are convinced of its workability, are convinced, in short, that the state is not a necessary evil.

[Murray Rothbard delivered this talk 32 years ago today at the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy (ASPLP), Washington, DC: December 28, 1974. It was first published in The Libertarian Forum, volume 7.1, January 1975, available in PDF and ePub.]

https://mises.org/mises-daily/society-without-state
In attempting to outline how a “society without a state” — that is, an anarchist society — might function successfully, I would first like to defuse two common but mistaken criticisms of this approach. First, is the argument that in providing for such defense or protection services as courts, police, or even law itself, I am simply smuggling the state back into society in another form, and that therefore the system I am both analyzing and advocating is not “really” anarchism. This sort of criticism can only involve us in an endless and arid dispute over semantics. Let me say from the beginning that I define the state as that institution which possesses one or both (almost always both) of the following properties: (1) it acquires its income by the physical coercion known as “taxation”; and (2) it asserts and usually obtains a coerced monopoly of the provision of defense service (police and courts) over a given territorial area. An institution not possessing either of these properties is not and cannot be, in accordance with my definition, a state. On the other hand, I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of an individual. Anarchists oppose the state because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights.
Nor is our definition of the state arbitrary, for these two characteristics have been possessed by what is generally acknowledged to be states throughout recorded history. The state, by its use of physical coercion, has arrogated to itself a compulsory monopoly of defense services over its territorial jurisdiction. But it is certainly conceptually possible for such services to be supplied by private, non-state institutions, and indeed such services have historically been supplied by other organizations than the state. To be opposed to the state is then not necessarily to be opposed to services that have often been linked with it; to be opposed to the state does not necessarily imply that we must be opposed to police protection, courts, arbitration, the minting of money, postal service, or roads and highways. Some anarchists have indeed been opposed to police and to all physical coercion in defense of person and property, but this is not inherent in and is fundamentally irrelevant to the anarchist position, which is precisely marked by opposition to all physical coercion invasive of, or aggressing against, person and property.
The crucial role of taxation may be seen in the fact that the state is the only institution or organization in society which regularly and systematically acquires its income through the use of physical coercion. All other individuals or organizations acquire their income voluntarily, either (1) through the voluntary sale of goods and services to consumers on the market, or (2) through voluntary gifts or donations by members or other donors. If I cease or refrain from purchasing Wheaties on the market, the Wheaties producers do not come after me with a gun or the threat of imprisonment to force me to purchase; if I fail to join the American Philosophical Association, the association may not force me to join or prevent me from giving up my membership. Only the state can do so; only the state can confiscate my property or put me in jail if I do not pay its tax tribute. Therefore, only the state regularly exists and has its very being by means of coercive depredations on private property.
Neither is it legitimate to challenge this sort of analysis by claiming that in some other sense, the purchase of Wheaties or membership in the APA is in some way “coercive.” Anyone who is still unhappy with this use of the term “coercion” can simply eliminate the word from this discussion and substitute for it “physical violence or the threat thereof,” with the only loss being in literary style rather than in the substance of the argument. What anarchism proposes to do, then, is to abolish the state, that is, to abolish the regularized institution of aggressive coercion.
It need hardly be added that the state habitually builds upon its coercive source of income by adding a host of other aggressions upon society, ranging from economic controls to the prohibition of pornography to the compelling of religious observance to the mass murder of civilians in organized warfare. In short, the state, in the words of Albert Jay Nock, “claims and exercises a monopoly of crime” over its territorial area.
The second criticism I would like to defuse before beginning the main body of the paper is the common charge that anarchists “assume that all people are good” and that without the state no crime would be committed. In short, that anarchism assumes that with the abolition of the state a New Anarchist Man will emerge, cooperative, humane, and benevolent, so that no problem of crime will then plague the society. I confess that I do not understand the basis for this charge. Whatever other schools of anarchism profess — and I do not believe that they are open to the charge — I certainly do not adopt this view. I assume with most observers that mankind is a mixture of good and evil, of cooperative and criminal tendencies. In my view, the anarchist society is one which maximizes the tendencies for the good and the cooperative, while it minimizes both the opportunity and the moral legitimacy of the evil and the criminal. If the anarchist view is correct and the state is indeed the great legalized and socially legitimated channel for all manner of antisocial crime — theft, oppression, mass murder — on a massive scale, then surely the abolition of such an engine of crime can do nothing but favor the good in man and discourage the bad.
A further point: in a profound sense, no social system, whether anarchist or statist, can work at all unless most people are “good” in the sense that they are not all hell-bent upon assaulting and robbing their neighbors. If everyone were so disposed, no amount of protection, whether state or private, could succeed in staving off chaos. Furthermore, the more that people are disposed to be peaceful and not aggress against their neighbors, the more successfully any social system will work, and the fewer resources will need to be devoted to police protection. The anarchist view holds that, given the “nature of man,” given the degree of goodness or badness at any point in time, anarchism will maximize the opportunities for the good and minimize the channels for the bad. The rest depends on the values held by the individual members of society. The only further point that need be made is that by eliminating the living example and the social legitimacy of the massive legalized crime of the state, anarchism will to a large extent promote peaceful values in the minds of the public.
We cannot of course deal here with the numerous arguments in favor of anarchism or against the state, moral, political, and economic. Nor can we take up the various goods and services now provided by the state and show how private individuals and groups will be able to supply them far more efficiently on the free market. Here we can only deal with perhaps the most difficult area, the area where it is almost universally assumed that the state must exist and act, even if it is only a “necessary evil” instead of a positive good: the vital realm of defense or protection of person and property against aggression. Surely, it is universally asserted, the state is at least vitally necessary to provide police protection, the judicial resolution of disputes and enforcement of contracts, and the creation of the law itself that is to be enforced. My contention is that all of these admittedly necessary services of protection can be satisfactorily and efficiently supplied by private persons and institutions on the free market.
One important caveat before we begin the body of this paper: new proposals such as anarchism are almost always gauged against the implicit assumption that the present, or statist system works to perfection. Any lacunae or difficulties with the picture of the anarchist society are considered net liabilities, and enough to dismiss anarchism out of hand. It is, in short, implicitly assumed that the state is doing its self-assumed job of protecting person and property to perfection. We cannot here go into the reasons why the state is bound to suffer inherently from grave flaws and inefficiencies in such a task. All we need do now is to point to the black and unprecedented record of the state through history: no combination of private marauders can possibly begin to match the state’s unremitting record of theft, confiscation, oppression, and mass murder. No collection of Mafia or private bank robbers can begin to compare with all the Hiroshimas, Dresdens, and Lidices and their analogues through the history of mankind.
This point can be made more philosophically: it is illegitimate to compare the merits of anarchism and statism by starting with the present system as the implicit given and then critically examining only the anarchist alternative. What we must do is to begin at the zero point and then critically examine both suggested alternatives. Suppose, for example, that we were all suddenly dropped down on the earth de novo and that we were all then confronted with the question of what societal arrangements to adopt. And suppose then that someone suggested: “We are all bound to suffer from those of us who wish to aggress against their fellow men. Let us then solve this problem of crime by handing all of our weapons to the Jones family, over there, by giving all of our ultimate power to settle disputes to that family. In that way, with their monopoly of coercion and of ultimate decision making, the Jones family will be able to protect each of us from each other.” I submit that this proposal would get very short shrift, except perhaps from the Jones family themselves. And yet this is precisely the common argument for the existence of the state. When we start from the zero point, as in the case of the Jones family, the question of “who will guard the guardians?” becomes not simply an abiding lacuna in the theory of the state but an overwhelming barrier to its existence.
A final caveat: the anarchist is always at a disadvantage in attempting to forecast the shape of the future anarchist society. For it is impossible for observers to predict voluntary social arrangements, including the provision of goods and services, on the free market. Suppose, for example, that this were the year 1874 and that someone predicted that eventually there would be a radio-manufacturing industry. To be able to make such a forecast successfully, does he have to be challenged to state immediately how many radio manufacturers there would be a century hence, how big they would be, where they would be located, what technology and marketing techniques they would use, and so on? Obviously, such a challenge would make no sense, and in a profound sense the same is true of those who demand a precise portrayal of the pattern of protection activities on the market. Anarchism advocates the dissolution of the state into social and market arrangements, and these arrangements are far more flexible and less predictable than political institutions. The most that we can do, then, is to offer broad guidelines and perspectives on the shape of a projected anarchist society.
One important point to make here is that the advance of modern technology makes anarchistic arrangements increasingly feasible. Take, for example, the case of lighthouses, where it is often charged that it is unfeasible for private lighthouse operators to row out to each ship to charge it for use of the light. Apart from the fact that this argument ignores the successful existence of private lighthouses in earlier days, as in England in the eighteenth century, another vital consideration is that modern electronic technology makes charging each ship for the light far more feasible. Thus, the ship would have to have paid for an electronically controlled beam which could then be automatically turned on for those ships which had paid for the service.
Let us turn now to the problem of how disputes — in particular disputes over alleged violations of person and property — would be resolved in an anarchist society. First, it should be noted that all disputes involve two parties: the plaintiff, the alleged victim of the crime or tort and the defendant, the alleged aggressor. In many cases of broken contract, of course, each of the two parties alleging that the other is the culprit is at the same time a plaintiff and a defendant.
An important point to remember is that any society, be it statist or anarchist, has to have some way of resolving disputes that will gain a majority consensus in society. There would be no need for courts or arbitrators if everyone were omniscient and knew instantaneously which persons were guilty of any given crime or violation of contract. Since none of us is omniscient, there has to be some method of deciding who is the criminal or lawbreaker which will gain legitimacy; in short, whose decision will be accepted by the great majority of the public.
In the first place, a dispute may be resolved voluntarily between the two parties themselves, either unaided or with the help of a third mediator. This poses no problem, and will automatically be accepted by society at large. It is so accepted even now, much less in a society imbued with the anarchistic values of peaceful cooperation and agreement. Secondly and similarly, the two parties, unable to reach agreement, may decide to submit voluntarily to the decision of an arbitrator. This agreement may arise either after a dispute has arisen, or be provided for in advance in the original contract. Again, there is no problem in such an arrangement gaining legitimacy. Even in the present statist era, the notorious inefficiency and coercive and cumbersome procedures of the politically run government courts has led increasing numbers of citizens to turn to voluntary and expert arbitration for a speedy and harmonious settling of disputes.
Thus, William C. Wooldridge has written that

Wooldridge adds the important point that, in addition to the speed of arbitration procedures vis-à-vis the courts, the arbitrators can proceed as experts in disregard of the official government law; in a profound sense, then, they serve to create a voluntary body of private law. “In other words,” states Wooldridge, “the system of extralegal, voluntary courts has progressed hand in hand with a body of private law; the rules of the state are circumvented by the same process that circumvents the forums established for the settlement of disputes over those rules…. In short, a private agreement between two people, a bilateral “law,” has supplanted the official law. The writ of the sovereign has cease to run, and for it is substituted a rule tacitly or explicitly agreed to by the parties. Wooldridge concludes that “if an arbitrator can choose to ignore a penal damage rule or the statute of limitations applicable to the claim before him (and it is generally conceded that he has that power), arbitration can be viewed as a practically revolutionary instrument for self-liberation from the law….”2
It may be objected that arbitration only works successfully because the courts enforce the award of the arbitrator. Wooldridge points out, however, that arbitration was unenforceable in the American courts before 1920, but that this did not prevent voluntary arbitration from being successful and expanding in the United States and in England. He points, furthermore, to the successful operations of merchant courts since the Middle Ages, those courts which successfully developed the entire body of the law merchant. None of those courts possessed the power of enforcement. He might have added the private courts of shippers which developed the body of admiralty law in a similar way.
How then did these private, “anarchistic,” and voluntary courts ensure the acceptance of their decisions? By the method of social ostracism, and by the refusal to deal any further with the offending merchant. This method of voluntary “enforcement,” indeed proved highly successful. Wooldridge writes that “the merchants’ courts were voluntary, and if a man ignored their judgment, he could not be sent to jail…. Nevertheless, it is apparent that … [their] decisions were generally respected even by the losers; otherwise people would never have used them in the first place…. Merchants made their courts work simply by agreeing to abide by the results. The merchant who broke the understanding would not be sent to jail, to be sure, but neither would he long continue to be a merchant, for the compliance exacted by his fellows … proved if anything more effective than physical coercion.”3 Nor did this voluntary method fail to work in modern times. Wooldridge writes that it was precisely in the years before 1920, when arbitration awards could not be enforced in the courts,

It should also be pointed out that modern technology makes even more feasible the collection and dissemination of information about people’s credit ratings and records of keeping or violating their contracts or arbitration agreements. Presumably, an anarchist society would see the expansion of this sort of dissemination of data and thereby facilitate the ostracism or boycotting of contract and arbitration violators.
How would arbitrators be selected in an anarchist society? In the same way as they are chosen now, and as they were chosen in the days of strictly voluntary arbitration: the arbitrators with the best reputation for efficiency and probity would be chosen by the various parties on the market. As in other processes of the market, the arbitrators with the best record in settling disputes will come to gain an increasing amount of business, and those with poor records will no longer enjoy clients and will have to shift to another line of endeavor. Here it must be emphasized that parties in dispute will seek out those arbitrators with the best reputation for both expertise and impartiality and that inefficient or biased arbitrators will rapidly have to find another occupation.
Thus, the Tannehills emphasize:

If desired, furthermore, the contracting parties could provide in advance for a series of arbitrators:

Arbitration, then, poses little difficulty for a portrayal of the free society. But what of torts or crimes of aggression where there has been no contract? Or suppose that the breaker of a contract defies the arbitration award? Is ostracism enough? In short, how can courts develop in the free-market anarchist society which will have the power to enforce judgments against criminals or contract breakers?
In the wide sense, defense service consists of guards or police who use force in defending person and property against attack, and judges or courts whose role is to use socially accepted procedures to determine who the criminals or tortfeasors are, as well as to enforce judicial awards, such as damages or the keeping of contracts. On the free market, many scenarios are possible on the relationship between the private courts and the police; they may be “vertically integrated,” for example, or their services may be supplied by separate firms. Furthermore, it seems likely that police service will be supplied by insurance companies who will provide crime insurance to their clients. In that case, insurance companies will pay off the victims of crime or the breaking of contracts or arbitration awards and then pursue the aggressors in court to recoup their losses. There is a natural market connection between insurance companies and defense service, since they need pay out less benefits in proportion as they are able to keep down the rate of crime.
Courts might either charge fees for their services, with the losers of cases obliged to pay court costs, or else they may subsist on monthly or yearly premiums by their clients, who may be either individuals or the police or insurance agencies. Suppose, for example, that Smith is an aggrieved party, either because he has been assaulted or robbed, or because an arbitration award in his favor has not been honored. Smith believes that Jones is the party guilty of the crime. Smith then goes to a court, Court A, of which he is a client, and brings charges against Jones as a defendant. In my view, the hallmark of an anarchist society is one where no man may legally compel someone who is not a convicted criminal to do anything, since that would be aggression against an innocent man’s person or property. Therefore, Court A can only invite rather than subpoena Jones to attend his trial. Of course, if Jones refused to appear or send a representative, his side of the case will not be heard. The trial of Jones proceeds. Suppose that Court A finds Jones innocent. In my view, part of the generally accepted law code of the anarchist society (on which see further below) is that this must end the matter unless Smith can prove charges of gross incompetence or bias on the part of the court.
Suppose, next, that Court A finds Jones guilty. Jones might accept the verdict, because he too is a client of the same court, because he knows he is guilty, or for some other reason. In that case, Court A proceeds to exercise judgment against Jones. Neither of these instances poses very difficult problems for our picture of the anarchist society. But suppose, instead, that Jones contests the decision; he then goes to his court, Court B, and the case is retried there. Suppose that Court B, too, finds Jones guilty. Again, it seems to me that the accepted law code of the anarchist society will assert that this ends the matter; both parties have had their say in courts which each has selected, and the decision for guilt is unanimous.
Suppose, however, the most difficult case: that Court B finds Jones innocent. The two courts, each subscribed to by one of the two parties, have split their verdicts. In that case, the two courts will submit the case to an appeals court, or arbitrator, which the two courts agree upon. There seems to be no real difficulty about the concept of an appeals court. As in the case of arbitration contracts, it seems very likely that the various private courts in the society will have prior agreements to submit their disputes to a particular appeals court. How will the appeals judges be chosen? Again, as in the case of arbitrators or of the first judges on the free market, they will be chosen for their expertise and their reputation for efficiency, honesty, and integrity. Obviously, appeals judges who are inefficient or biased will scarcely be chosen by courts who will have a dispute. The point here is that there is no need for a legally established or institutionalized single, monopoly appeals court system, as states now provide. There is no reason why there cannot arise a multitude of efficient and honest appeals judges who will be selected by the disputant courts, just as there are numerous private arbitrators on the market today. The appeals court renders its decision, and the courts proceed to enforce it if, in our example, Jones is considered guilty — unless, of course, Jones can prove bias in some other court proceedings.
No society can have unlimited judicial appeals, for in that case there would be no point to having judges or courts at all. Therefore, every society, whether statist or anarchist, will have to have some socially accepted cutoff point for trials and appeals. My suggestion is the rule that the agreement of any two courts, be decisive. “Two” is not an arbitrary figure, for it reflects the fact that there are two parties, the plaintiff and the defendant, to any alleged crime or contract dispute.
If the courts are to be empowered to enforce decision against guilty parties, does this not bring back the state in another form and thereby negate anarchism? No, for at the beginning of this paper I explicitly defined anarchism in such a way as not to rule out the use of defensive force — force in defense of person and property — by privately supported agencies. In the same way, it is not bringing back the state to allow persons to use force to defend themselves against aggression, or to hire guards or police agencies to defend them.
It should be noted, however, that in the anarchist society there will be no “district attorney” to press charges on behalf of “society.” Only the victims will press charges as the plaintiffs. If, then, these victims should happen to be absolute pacifists who are opposed even to defensive force, then they will simply not press charges in the courts or otherwise retaliate against those who have aggressed against them. In a free society that would be their right. If the victim should suffer from murder, then his heir would have the right to press the charges.
What of the Hatfield-and-McCoy problem? Suppose that a Hatfield kills a McCoy, and that McCoy’s heir does not belong to a private insurance, police agency, or court, and decides to retaliate himself? Since under anarchism there can be no coercion of the noncriminal, McCoy would have the perfect right to do so. No one may be compelled to bring his case to a court. Indeed, since the right to hire police or courts flows from the right of self-defense against aggression, it would be inconsistent and in contradiction to the very basis of the free society to institute such compulsion.
Suppose, then, that the surviving McCoy finds what he believes to be the guilty Hatfield and kills him in turn? What then? This is fine, except that McCoy may have to worry about charges being brought against him by a surviving Hatfield. Here it must be emphasized that in the law of the anarchist society based on defense against aggression, the courts would not be able to proceed against McCoy if in fact he killed the right Hatfield. His problem would arise if the courts should find that he made a grievous mistake and killed the wrong man; in that case, he in turn would be found guilty of murder. Surely, in most instances, individuals will wish to obviate such problems by taking their case to a court and thereby gain social acceptability for their defensive retaliation — not for the act of retaliation but for the correctness of deciding who the criminal in any given case might be. The purpose of the judicial process, indeed, is to find a way of general agreement on who might be the criminal or contract breaker in any given case. The judicial process is not a good in itself; thus, in the case of an assassination, such as Jack Ruby’s murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, on public television, there is no need for a complex judicial process, since the name of the murderer is evident to all.
Will not the possibility exist of a private court that may turn venal and dishonest, or of a private police force that turns criminal and extorts money by coercion? Of course such an event may occur, given the propensities of human nature. Anarchism is not a moral cure-all. But the important point is that market forces exist to place severe checks on such possibilities, especially in contrast to a society where a state exists. For, in the first place, judges, like arbitrators, will prosper on the market in proportion to their reputation for efficiency and impartiality. Secondly, on the free market important checks and balances exist against venal courts or criminal police forces. Namely, that there are competing courts and police agencies to whom victims may turn for redress. If the “Prudential Police Agency” should turn outlaw and extract revenue from victims by coercion, the latter would have the option of turning to the “Mutual” or “Equitable” Police Agency for defense and for pressing charges against Prudential. These are the genuine “checks and balances” of the free market, genuine in contrast to the phony check and balances of a state system, where all the alleged “balancing” agencies are in the hands of one monopoly government. Indeed, given the monopoly “protection service” of a state, what is there to prevent a state from using its monopoly channels of coercion to extort money from the public? What are the checks and limits of the state? None, except for the extremely difficult course of revolution against a power with all of the guns in its hands. In fact, the state provides an easy, legitimated channel for crime and aggression, since it has its very being in the crime of tax theft, and the coerced monopoly of “protection.” It is the state, indeed, that functions as a mighty “protection racket” on a giant and massive scale. It is the state that says: “Pay us for your ‘protection’ or else.” In the light of the massive and inherent activities of the state, the danger of a “protection racket” emerging from one or more private police agencies is relatively small indeed.
Moreover, it must be emphasized that a crucial element in the power of the state is its legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of the public, the fact that after centuries of propaganda, the depredations of the state are looked upon rather as benevolent services. Taxation is generally not seen as theft, nor war as mass murder, nor conscription as slavery. Should a private police agency turn outlaw, should “Prudential” become a protection racket, it would then lack the social legitimacy which the state has managed to accrue to itself over the centuries. “Prudential” would be seen by all as bandits, rather than as legitimate or divinely appointed “sovereigns” bent on promoting the “common good” or the “general welfare.” And lacking such legitimacy, “Prudential” would have to face the wrath of the public and the defense and retaliation of the other private defense agencies, the police and courts, on the free market. Given these inherent checks and limits, a successful transformation from a free society to bandit rule becomes most unlikely. Indeed, historically, it has been very difficult for a state to arise to supplant a stateless society; usually, it has come about through external conquest rather than by evolution from within a society.
Within the anarchist camp, there has been much dispute on whether the private courts would have to be bound by a basic, common law code. Ingenious attempts have been made to work out a system where the laws or standards of decision-making by the courts would differ completely from one to another.7 But in my view all would have to abide by the basic law code, in particular, prohibition of aggression against person and property, in order to fulfill our definition of anarchism as a system which provides no legal sanction for such aggression. Suppose, for example, that one group of people in society holds that all redheads are demons who deserve to be shot on sight. Suppose that Jones, one of this group, shoots Smith, a redhead. Suppose that Smith or his heir presses charges in a court, but that Jones’s court, in philosophic agreement with Jones, finds him innocent therefore. It seems to me that in order to be considered legitimate, any court would have to follow the basic libertarian law code of the inviolate right of person and property. For otherwise, courts might legally subscribe to a code which sanctions such aggression in various cases, and which to that extent would violate the definition of anarchism and introduce, if not the state, then a strong element of statishness or legalized aggression into the society.
But again I see no insuperable difficulties here. For in that case, anarchists, in agitating for their creed, will simply include in their agitation the idea of a general libertarian law code as part and parcel of the anarchist creed of abolition of legalized aggression against person or property in the society.
In contrast to the general law code, other aspects of court decisions could legitimately vary in accordance with the market or the wishes of the clients; for example, the language the cases will be conducted in, the number of judges to be involved, and so on.
There are other problems of the basic law code which there is no time to go into here: for example, the definition of just property titles or the question of legitimate punishment of convicted offenders — though the latter problem of course exists in statist legal systems as well.8 The basic point, however, is that the state is not needed to arrive at legal principles or their elaboration: indeed, much of the common law, the law merchant, admiralty law, and private law in general, grew up apart from the state, by judges not making the law but finding it on the basis of agreed-upon principles derived either from custom or reason.9 The idea that the state is needed to make law is as much a myth as that the state is needed to supply postal or police services.
Enough has been said here, I believe, to indicate that an anarchist system for settling disputes would be both viable and self-subsistent: that once adopted, it could work and continue indefinitely. How to arrive at that system is of course a very different problem, but certainly at the very least it will not likely come about unless people are convinced of its workability, are convinced, in short, that the state is not a necessary evil.

[Murray Rothbard delivered this talk 32 years ago today at the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy (ASPLP), Washington, DC: December 28, 1974. It was first published in The Libertarian Forum, volume 7.1, January 1975, available in PDF and ePub.]

I am NOT OOP, OOP is u/MediumGrouchy5547
Originally posted to TrueOffMyChest
I found my sister who disappeared from everyone more than 15 years ago after she ran away from home
Trigger Warnings: abandonment, depression, self-harm, eating disorder, possible mental health issues
Editor’s Note: TCA stands for trastornos de la conducta alimentaria which translates into “eating disorder”
Rastafarian: a religious movement
Original Post: April 26, 2024
I'm really happy and confused and I really don't know if I can talk about this with friends and family but I need to share my experience with someone because I missed my sister. I don't need or want any advice since no one really knows the situation to be able to give a good advice without assuming things they don't know and it's weird to read people talking about my sister like if they know what she lived, I just want to share this and I know a lot of people have had experiences like this too so maybe someone can relate.
When I was 10 years old my older sister who was 22 at that time disappeared after leaving a note to our parents saying that she's okay and just wants to start over her life.
My sister was always a lonely but outgoing person, she always told me that she enjoyed solitude from time to time and noisy things took away from her quality of life because tbh it was loud LOUD where we lived and it was annoying even for me (we lived in a dangerous neighborhood so it wasn't too safe and she hated not being able to go for a walk at night or do things at night alone), she was depressed and I remember seeing her suffering from severe anxiety attacks, she used to hit herself to stop them and she had a strong TCA that triggered those things. She suffered from other mental issues as well and talked freely about that, she talked about those things in front of me and these are things that leave a mark on you.
She was the favorite of the whole family although mi parents never out pressure on her, they always let us do our life (my brother who was 19 at that time knows that, my sister was the golden child), my grandfather always made it clear that she is his favorite granddaughter, even now. She was the calm but funny kind of person, she was the closest to my parents and uncles so when she disappeared from one day to the next no one understood what was going on.
Even my sister had never traveled alone except to go to work and she always notified my mother that she was okay for safety reasons. She left a long note clarifying that she doesn't want to be searched but she loves us. It was a big blow for the family, I remember my mother wanting to report to the police but they said that my sister was not a minor and the note said that she left by her own so they can't do anything.
In a way, my other brother knew that this would happen at some point, since our sister mentioned a lot that she wanted to leave everything and go live in the countryside or become a nun and live in a calm place without any worries but nobody took her seriously about that. She was always the kind of person who did things without telling anyone, she liked her solitude sometimes even if she was always friendly.
The first months and weeks were strange, it wasn't that she had passed away but that she disappeared because she wanted to, I remember my mother missing her because they always shared the afternoons together.
I also missed her a lot, Even years later my family missed her and at Christmas or her birthday someone would always say "maybe she'll show up now" or we would wonder how she's doing or if she was alive.
Back to the present. I'm on vacation in the south of my country (This part of my country is very expensive for a tourist and I am the only one in my family who was able to come now that I am an adult), it's a place full of villages and while I was exploring I came to a place where they sold typical handicrafts of the place.
While shopping I can swear that the first thing I saw was my sister looking at some crafts on a shelf, she looked more adult but obviously I recognized her instantly, we are really similar after all.
I didn't really knew how to react after so many years and I didn't know how she would react, but I went over and said her name. What I didn't expected was that she would smile instantly when she saw me and called me by my nickname. I thought she had escaped because she didn't wanted anything to do with the family even if in the note she said she loves us, but she was greeting me as if nothing had happened.
She told me that she didn't expected to see me there and asked me if I was on vacation, she said that the village used to be not so touristy but now more people started to go and many villagers opened stores for the tourists. I was upset, I was angry with her for leaving us and pretending that nothing happened but I couldn't react so I just asked her if she lives in that town and she said yes, It's a place filled with old people.
We talked for a few seconds, she asked me what I'm studying and if everyone at home is okay, she told me I'm taller and thinner. Then she gave me a kiss on the cheek and told me that if I have a few days off I can go visit her but she doesn't have a cell phone so she told me that she's almost everyday there. My sister also told me to send hugs to our parents.
I'm confused and full of questions about her, she doesn't even wants to hide, she didn't looked or talked to me like someone who wanted to run away from something and hide. She was just happy to see me and happy to know that we were all good.
But I also feel resentment for her when I think about all that our parents and grandparents suffered when she disappeared, making my mother feel that she was a bad mother because she couldn't protect her.
But I'm ambivalent as I'm also happy to know that she's okay and that she doesn't hate me or the family but I'm also confused, Her behavior wasn't that of someone who is hiding or who doesn't want to know anything about her past, she was just happy to hear about us.
Edit: I'm sorry but there are people who clearly don't read the post, there are literally people saying that I didn't even knew my sister and commenting as if they knew her and taking things for granted about her life, there are even people saying that they don't understand why I'm 'angry' (it's just a feeling, a normal feeling, it's not that I hate her and I will treat her badly, god. Nor will I talk to my family without talking to her first, at what point in the post did I say that I'm going to expose her? I'm never going to treat her badly either because I have no reason to do so, It's crazy how half the comments draw silly conclusions) with my sister when i literally say it up there, even if my English is bad because it's not my first language, just read the post before you want to get a few likes for some unnecessary advice.
Additional Information from OOP on his sister’s note

OOP: My sister in the note said that she loves our parents, my brother was 19 when our sister left and he himself knows how much our parents loved and supported her when she was having a hard time with herself but the outside always affected her badly.
I was ten years old but I wasn't a baby and I remember what the family dynamic was like, I remember the feeling of my family, my parents are not narcissists and my sister loved them and they love who's my sister, she just had her own problems.
How could a parent miss the idea of their children? There's not a day when my parents don't miss everything about my sister, they miss sharing the day with her, my father even missed when she was cranky. My parents always let us go our own way and I can assure you that they never pressured us to be what they wanted us to be, I don't even know what they want us to be.

Relevant Comments
Mil1512: Is your sister neurodivergent?
With the hitting herself when struggling with anxiety and enjoying solitude.
I'm neurodivergent and my family live in another country. I honestly forget to talk to them most of the time and only really do because my mum messages me first. If she didn't we just wouldn't talk. Not due to any hate or anything, I'm just happy doing my own thing.

OOP: She's not. My sister had a lot of self-destructive behaviors and hurting herself was one of them when she felt 'fat', she also had eating disorders and panic attacks because of that. I don't remember too much but she did other things to not eat besides hitting herself, she was very open about her TCA and yes, she has a diagnosis from a professional.
My sister was always in touch with my mother and everyone in text, she always used to keep in touch when she was going out until the day she left, now she doesn't even have a phone. In her note she just said that she wanted to leave everything

mikuzgrl: It almost seems like the sister has been in contact with someone for a while and thinks news is being passed back and forth.

OOP: I never thought about that but I don't think so, seeing how my parents miss her I think the first thing the family would do would be to at least tell my father that she is okay :/

 
Can people just stop with the aggressive messages? Weirdos: May 1, 2024
I understand that many reflect their personal traumas in this site, but I literally received passive-aggressive messages calling me idiot or even telling me that I would hate my sister if she were neurodivergent or claiming that my parents abused her.
What's wrong with y'all? Go to a psychologist and stop reflecting your unresolved traumas in the story of a person you don't even know. Go out and touch grass and talk to a real person instead of literally sending private messages like that.
I didn't asked for any advice and just wanted to share my story because that's the point of that subreddit, but many took it the wrong way and decided to turn something positive into a way to fight.
I don't even understand why out of nowhere I started getting those kinds of messages or if someone share that post on a weird place.
 
Editor’s Note: TLP is trastorno límite de la personalidad which translates into Borderline Personality Disorder
Update: May 7, 2024
On sunday I finally found my sister again, she was selling things in the park with other stands, all of them are rastafari, not hippies or a sect. I walked over and she greeted me just as happily, we talked a couple of things and my sister told me that she doesn't have a cell phone so it was impossible for her to tell me that she wouldn't be there on Saturday.
I spent the afternoon with her at her stand and after that we went to her house, she lives alone (and sometimes with her friends). We talked for a while and at one point she broke down and hugged me, saying she was trying to stay calm all this time and didn't knew how to react because she didn't wanted to make me cry too bc she remembered that I was really sensitive but she couldn't hold it anymore. We cried and talked a lot.
My sister was tired of people, she said that our house was her safe place but hated the idea of having to work everyday and I didn't wanted to study anything, she was our parents' golden child, so they let her do whatever she wanted, but she knew that at some point she had to make something of her life. She was tired of how stupid and empty everyone was, of the politicians, of the TV showing empty things, of the noise everywhere outside when she wanted peace, even sleeping in our home was stressful for everyone because of the noises outside during the weekends when she wanted to be alone to smoke and listen music (tbh, In my memories as a child I didn't remember the obvious smell of joints that my sister had all the time)
That added to the pressure that society put on her to be physically perfect make her want to leave everything behind.
She didn't wanted to die but realized that my parents were miserable when they saw her being miserable, this is something I didn't know, but my sister said that our father had two jobs to be able to pay for her psychologist and medication, also my father used to spoil her a lot with the only food she eat without guilty. Running away was like dying symbolically.
My sister says that although our parents always supported her, she felt like a failture for not being able to improve and always relapsing, she felt bad to see our father working so hard and also wanted to live according to her spiritual mentality, free from all that is toxic in society.
All of those things make her ran away from everything, she felt like a burden and also didn't wanted to live a life working and miserable like everyone.
Sis told me that she never contacted us because she doesn't wants to have a cell phone and a trip to our province is too expensive to her because it's basically going from one end of the country to the other.
She hates capitalist society with all her soul and doesn't even have a TV. My sister said that she is much better now away from the city. My sister told me that she wants to talk to our parents but doesn't knows what to say and we don't want to give them parents a shock since our dad was sick a few days ago and is recovering from dengue.
I'm writing this with her beside me and doesn't understand what's the point of this site (The last social network she used was fotolog in 2007) but said that she doesn't mind if I post this. She wanted to write something but said she doesn't like writing in English haha
My sister was reading the comments and wants me to clarify that she never suffered any kind of a abuse, she has a lot of friends and never had any problem with anyone but likes to be alone from time to time to meditate.
And she's not neurodivergent (She said her behavior was normal because of her TLP), suffers from ED, borderline personality disorder and see a psychologist twice a month.
During her adolescence, the blogs Ana and mia were trendy, her friends had that 'aesthetic' and she was popular in fotolog (according to my sister, at that time it was taken as an aesthetic and even a book about that was really popular between teens, maybe someone from my country knows Abzurdah?). She hated going out when she felt fat, she couldn't have imperfections like cuts on her arms so she hurt herself with a rubber band when she overate, something she read in those blogs. Now she's in a good weight but it took her really long to not relapse again. It's been a long recovery for her and once you're anorexic you never stop being anorexic, she's always afraid of relapsing.
So that's it for now, we don't know how we're going to talk with our parents without making them freak out. And also my sister after seeing the comments on the post saw other reddit posts and said that her life is definitely better without a cell phone, she says that things like fotolog was the beginning of all evil haha
Relevant Comments
OOP on his sister being involved with Rastafari

OOP: Idk how it is in other countries to be honest, my sister doesn't live in community and there are no camps, she's one of the few who has a house because most of them prefer to travel around the country.
I really think it's impossible for them to be 100% Rastafarian here tbh because we are from South America and the Rastafarian community here is obviously totally different from the REAL Rastafarians, they just follow most of the philosophy
Edit: for example, my sister doesn't consider herself Rastafarian but she share some points of the philosophy they have, I don't know how the rest of them thinks

 

DO NOT COMMENT IN LINKED POSTS OR MESSAGE OOPs – BoRU Rule #7

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT OOP

I am NOT OOP, OOP is u/AdhesivenessMurky204
Originally posted to AITAH
AITAH for separating from my husband because he refused to get a vasectomy?
Thanks to u/queenlegolas and u/Direct-Caterpillar77 for suggesting this BoRU
Editor’s Note: added paragraph breaks for readability
Trigger Warnings: PTSD, mentions of abortion, domestic abuse, verbal abuse, sexual assault, rape
Original Post: April 28, 2024
My husband (28M, who I will call Jack) and I (27F) have been together for 4 years, we have 2 young children and I am pregnant again. I have been pregnant for what feels like most of our relationship. I got pregnant 4 months into our relationship. We got married a month before our daughter’s 1st birthday and ended up with a honeymoon baby. After our son was born, I talked to my OB and she put me on birth control and I have been taking it militantly.
My daughter is now 3 and my son is 2. A little over a month ago I discovered I am pregnant again, despite taking my birth control religiously. Abortion is banned in my state, and the pregnancy was discovered too far along to attempt to obtain one out of state. While Jack and I were nervous, we also love being parents and decided that 3 young kids would be a challenge, but 3 was a good number for us. Then we went in for the first ultrasound and got some unexpected news - it’s twins.
Things have been tough financially, and while we were stressed but excited for a third child, we were not expecting a third and fourth child. Beyond the finances, I am the primary caretaker and I know that twins is going to be a lot, three children under 5 is already a lot, but 4 children under 5 is going to be really really difficult for me. Physically, I am tired of being pregnant. I’ve been pregnant or breastfeeding the majority of our relationship. It’s exhausting, it feels awful, and I don’t recognize my body anymore.
Four children is enough. I don’t want more. I told Jack that I was done with pregnancy, I’ve been pregnant enough, I’ve been experimenting with different types of birth control for over a decade and I still can’t stop getting pregnant, abortion isn’t a valid option where we live, we need something more permanent. He agreed, and suggested an IUD, I told him no - if it did fail then it could cause an ectopic pregnancy which could kill me, especially where we live. I’ve had both control fail me multiple times already and I’m not taking the chance, so I suggested a vasectomy. He was not open to the idea, and was even upset that I suggested it and told me I should get my tubes tied. I told him a tubal ligation is a much bigger surgery and I could be recovering for weeks during which time I wouldn’t be able to work or take care of our 4 young children, but he could ice his balls for a day or two and be done with it. He told me that not getting pregnant was ultimately my responsibility, and topped it off by saying “that’s what your body your choice means, YOUR body, so YOU choose.” That’s when it went from a discussion to a full blown fight.
See, when I was 19 I had another birth control failure with my boyfriend at the time (who I will call Tom). I wanted an abortion, Tom did not because he was opposed. I told him I was getting the abortion since it was my body and my choice, and Tom said some horrible things to me, including threatening me. I broke up with him and got the abortion. In response, Tom ended up following me one night and attacking me. I don’t want to go into detail but it was horrible, and he ended up going to prison for a number of charges related to the attack. Not only do I have a number of scars and some long lasting physical effects, but I have PTSD as well.
Jack knows about my history and diagnosis, and has known from the beginning. I have a pretty prominent facial scar so I was upfront about it early on in our dating. Jack always presented himself as very pro-choice, so I was shocked that he would say that. I got really emotional and started crying and shouting, and it turned into a full-blown fight.
Eventually I said that birth control is a two-way street and so far I’ve been the only one managing it and he said “and now we have 2 kids and 2 more coming, great job.” I told him he sounded like Tom and he got super pissed, basically said how dare you compare me to him, and maybe he might want kids one day with someone who doesn’t compare him to her felon ex-boyfriend. I was stunned and horrified. I said “well then let’s not waste any fucking time,”then packed up myself and the kids and drove to my parents place.
It’s been about a week since the fight. I’ve spoken with Jack a few times and he has since apologized and said he was out of line and was speaking from a place of anxiety after finding out about the twins, but also that I said things that were out of line and it was wrong of me to insist he undergo a medical procedure. He said that can move on from the things I said and that he wants to see his children and be a family again. I told him no, that I didn’t want to “move on” from the things he said to me. I can’t just get over that and I think we need space apart. Jack was upset by this and while we talked I brought up getting a separation agreement to manage custody and finances while we figure things out. He did not like this suggestion, said we didn’t need to pull the courts into this.
I haven’t told a lot of people about what’s happening but my family and a couple close friends. My sister and best friend both think I should throw the whole man away, but my brother (who is the only other one married with kids) thinks that I’m being extreme for what sums up to a fight between two scared people who both said nasty things. My mom is trying to be supportive but is occasionally reminding me that I “don’t want to be a single mother of 4” and telling me not to let my PTSD drive my decisions, while my dad is being completely unhelpful (he thinks jokes are helpful - like calling me Doorknob because I “can’t stop getting knocked up”, telling me to let the oven cool down, real knee-slappers). I don’t know what to do. My kids are happy to be at grandma and grandpas house but they miss their daddy, I’m 4 months pregnant and already uncomfortable as hell, I wish I could go back to being a happy little family but I’m so hung up on the things he said in that fight. Am I destroying my family over one bad night? Am I being unreasonable for asking my husband to get a vasectomy?
Edit: I've noticed a lot of people recommending condoms. I have gotten pregnant with condoms twice. Our second child and my first pregnancy were both conceived using condoms properly (correct fit, put on correctly, single use, not expired, no breaks, etc). I do not trust condoms enough to not fail a third time. I know the failure rate is supposedly small, but it's not personally small enough for me. Edit to the edit: I'm sorry, I didn't expect so many comments so fast and I can't keep up with them. By the first pregnancy I mean the pregnancy with Tom. With Jack I was on the patch when I got pregnant with our daughter, condoms with our son, and the pill with the twins. So far I haven't ever suspected that Jack has tampered with our birth control and always presumed that I'm a fertile Myrtle.
I recognize the comments and just want people to know I'm seeing the suggestion. I'm not dismissing it, but the thought of it is deeply upsetting and has provoked a lot of anxiety. I just wanted to make it clear that if the suggestion is only based on the condoms, that the condom pregnancies were with two different partners. While I know I always used condoms properly with Tom, I do believe that Tom could have been fully capable of sabotaging the condoms.
AITAH has no consensus bot, OOP received mixed reactions of NTAs and YTAs
Relevant Comments
deepsleepsheepmeep: NTA. Your husband is though. Your body has already been through A LOT. A tubal ligation is a serious surgery and you are right about being out of commission for a while when recovering. If he is more concerned with an imaginary future wife than he is for you, I don’t think there is much hope for this marriage.
We have 4 close friends who all got vasectomies. None of them bitched about it like your wimp of a husband. We actually had fun vasectomy themed parties for them.
On the off chance he does end up getting a vasectomy, make sure to do the follow up appointments. One of the vasectomy fab 4 did not follow through and ended up with a post-vasectomy baby.

OOP: Thank you, I feel like this is a lot of what has been so upsetting has been that he's thinking about some imaginary future wife when I'm right here, his actual wife, the mother of his children. It's like he's already imagining a future without me.

 
Update: AITAH for separating from my husband because he refused to get a vasectomy?: May 3, 2024
I didn’t expect so many comments and literally couldn’t go through them all. It seemed like the majority of people said I was NTA but I did get a lot of YTAs telling me I was trying to force him to get a medical procedure and telling me to get one instead. Besides already addressing my reasonings why I made my request in the original post (which I want you to read with real "per my last email" energy), I in no way am *forcing* him to have a medical procedure, but I am saying that I do not want to be with a partner who is not willing to be snipped. This is an issue of compatibility. The number of children you want, the methods of birth control you’re willing to use, those are issues of compatibility and a reason relationships end all the time. If he doesn’t want to be sterilized that’s fine, but then that means that we’re not compatible anymore, since it means he wants more children and I don’t. Beyond that there were some YTA comments and some DMs that were just nasty, calling me a murderer and saying my body is a cemetery. Sadly enough, I expected those types of comments, because I know there are a lot of Toms out in the world.
First I wanted to address a couple things that kept coming up, because last post turned into thousands of comments that all said about 5 different things, so to avoid my inbox becoming another echo chamber:

You’re 100% going to have a C-section anyway so just get a tubal while giving birth.

No, I’m not 100% going to have a C-section anyway. Twins are not an automatic C-section. With my birth history there is no reason to presume that a C-section is in my future. My OB agrees, and has discussed the possibility as doctors have to do but also said that based on my past two birth experiences, I'm a "perfect candidate" for vaginal delivery.
I also am not going to mince words: tubal ligations are *less* effective than vasectomies with a *much higher* likelihood of an ectopic pregnancy. Ectopic pregnancy can *kill me*. In fact I got a PM from a woman who is a fellow fertile Myrtle who had an ectopic after a tubal. I am rejecting birth control options that, if they fail, would lead to my likely death. I don’t want to be pregnant again but I also don’t want to die and leave my children motherless, and in no way should anyone assume that traveling to another state to obtain an emergency abortion will continue to be an option in the future - we live in scary times, and Gilead is a real possibility. The comments seemed to have the vibe that people think that ligations are magically more effective than vasectomies and vasectomies are more of a whisper of sterility than an actual sterilization method so for those in the back VASECTOMIES ARE MORE EFFECTIVE THAN TUBAL LIGATIONS, FULL STOP. So I really need y’all to shut up about it.

Go to another state and obtain an abortion anyway.

I appreciate the personal offers to help I received in DMs deeply, but no. I’m in my 2nd trimester, which I know is still legal in some places, however I am at a point in my pregnancy where I personally as an individual do not feel comfortable obtaining an abortion, considering I would be *even farther* along by the time I could travel (which is not only finances, but logistics as well). I am 16 weeks pregnant now, these babies aren’t just clusters of cells to me anymore, and I’m not going to expand on that since it’s not up for debate.

Why not adoption?

With love and respect to everyone who has gone through adoption in all its aspects, adoption is absolutely not for me. This is a thought process I already went through 8 years ago, and now that I’m a mother and not a scared teenager I know it’s even less for me. I personally could not go through with it and come out the other side intact. Going through a full pregnancy, having my babies, and then being separated from them would break me.

Leave him and give him full custody of the twins

No. Because going through a full pregnancy, having my babies, and then being separated from them would break me. Jesus, some of y’all.

Just have a sexless marriage.

No. I love banging my husband, obviously lol. I don't want to be in a sexless marriage and anyone who has been to an abstinence-only high school knows that abstinence is not the way lol. There were a lot of comments assuming I would be perfectly fine withholding sex from my husband and having na dead bedroom, and I wouldn't. I have a sex drive. I'm going to want to bang my husband. Wanting to have sex with your spouse is *normal*.

What you would do about birth control if you divorced and dated in the future?

I’m not thinking of dating anyone else right now, because I’m thinking more about saving my actual marriage instead of an imaginary relationship. And if theoretically I did, I would probably seek out a partner who was snipped or was ready to be to be honestly, or a woman. I’m bisexual so there’s a very good chance that my future partner wouldn’t have the right parts to knock me up anyway lol.

Jack is sabotaging your birth control

I clarified my methods in the original post (as per my last email), but I did want to address this because it came up a LOT. I don’t have reason to believe that Jack sabotaged my birth control. A number of other fertile Myrtles showed up and brought up they or their family members repeated pregnancies in the face of birth control, including tubals. Accusing my husband of reproductive coercion for no reason other than I keep getting pregnant is a big leap and a weighty accusation. I am not the only fertile Myrtle out there, there's a reason there's a whole term for it.

Your husband is a narcissist, abuser, psychopath, and he does no childcare

My husband and I historically have a really healthy and loving relationship outside of this fight. In fact, this fight is the first time we’ve really had a fight, we’ve only ever had little arguments that we’ve been able to talk through. He’s an active father, the reason that I do the majority of childcare is due to circumstance between maternity leaves, our job schedules and the fact that I breastfed my babies. Someone also presumed I’m the breadwinner, which isn’t quite true. Jack makes more than me, but we do not have deeply significant differences in our incomes. When he is home he does his fair share of cleaning and cooking (arguably more than me at times), and parenting. That being said, the things he said in the heat of the moment were deeply concerning, and we’re addressing that together.
So to get down to the nitty gritty of the real update: since the last time I posted, Jack and I have sat down together and had a real come to Jesus talk. I’m not going to go through the whole breakdown, but it basically boiled down to this: it’s the vasectomy, but it’s more than the vasectomy. It was wrong of me to compare him to Tom but it was wronger of him to weaponize my trauma against me in a very malicious way. The way he intentionally used the same language my abuser used in an effort to hurt me was not acceptable and damaged the trust between us. He agreed it was not acceptable and said that in the aftermath he was horrified and ashamed his own words, and that he (as an explanation and not an excuse) kind of snapped under the stress. Oh and what he said about his “next wife” was not an indication of him not being committed to me but was because he felt hurt and wanted to hurt me back. He has apologized numerous times and seems to feel genuinely bad about it.
As for the separation, I am still going forward with it. I need space and time and I need to take that before the babies come. I am still staying with my parents who, for the record, are not sick of me or the kids. We’re a tight knit family, I only moved out when I moved in with Jack, and my sister moved out about a year ago so they have been empty nesting, and my mom doesn’t like that we live “too far” (an hour) away. What I have realized with space and time is how deeply triggering it was, in a way that I cannot explain to those without PTSD from DV, those who know will know. It’s deeply unsettled me and I’m having a hard time “getting over it” so to speak. There is now a lot of fear of my husband that was never there before and it’s going to take a lot to repair that trust and sense of safety. I cannot make a decision while I’m in this space, and I am addressing this with my personal therapist. Overall, I told him that if he wanted to stay married to me I needed two things from him: marriage counseling and a vasectomy, and even then I still cannot guarantee him anything. He understands, but I do not know what will happen with the vasectomy right now, we focused more on talking about the fight, but he is very aware that it's now a dealbreaker. And we have a marriage counseling appointment set up for next week. I'm hoping that counseling will bring some clarity to the situation, and in the mean time for the next couple months I'm focusing on giving my kids lots of cuddles and preparing myself for two new babies to come into my world, with or without Jack.
Additional information from OOP on her relationships

OOP: I've been through a trial to convict my ex-boyfriend of trying to kill me because of an abortion in a deep red, deeply religious area. I've definitely heard worse things, and I typically have pretty thick skin. That being said, I am pregnant and pretty emotional, so it's not the best experience. That being said, I do appreciate the level-headed comments when I see them through the sea of comments kind of saying the same stuff over and over. I'm not reading a lot of them if what I can see in the comment notification starts off nasty, so a lot of it is just inbox white noise. My favorites are the ones that start off with "I'm not going to read that BUT..." and I just think lol same. Like you don't want to read my post but expect me to read your comment that was made without even reading the situation? lol nope. And there are a lot of people conflating "providing someone with a hard choice" with "forcing someone into a medical procedure" and it just makes wading through for the actually helpful comments more tiring. Thank you though, I very much appreciate the kindness. Sorry, I've gotten so much of the same nonsense I guess I needed a little vent lol.

OOP on wanting her husband to make a decision and be on the same page

OOP: I want to be honest with him about where I am emotionally because I want him to make an informed decision. While the vasectomy is a deal breaker, it's really my secondary concern. My primary concern is the way he acted during the fight and his intention exploitation of my trauma because he was mad and scared. I think that telling him "get the snip to stay with me" and then deciding to leave anyway because there are deeper issues and/or I don't feel safe anymore would be cruel. He deserves to have the full picture before he makes a choice, doesn't he?
If he doesn't want the vasectomy, that's his choice. It's not what I want, but it is what it is. If he wants to call it quits at 4 kids, then it is what it is and if he secretly wants to be the next Nick Cannon then it is what it is he should be free to do that. That is part of why I don't know where he is on the vasectomy right now and we didn't really discuss it much when we talked, I'm focusing on discussing the bigger issue for me which is trust and safety within the relationship. The only way for him to make an informed decision about whether or not he get a vasectomy is for him to have all the information about the situation. If that makes him want a vasectomy less, then it is what it is. It's not about making him want to have a vasectomy. It's about being on the same page.

 

DO NOT COMMENT IN LINKED POSTS OR MESSAGE OOPs – BoRU Rule #7

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT OOP

Selling my personal collection. Over 800 Games. Sorry my bad english. Paypal ff. Free Shipping over $100. Sorry i know this list will hurt eyes. I don't have a computer to edit it well. More photos at request. Offers are welcome. Most of these Prices are based on Pricharting (sorry im lazy to put my prices for these 800 games) i would like to sell this has a lot but im from Puerto Rico so thats likely impossible.
https://imgur.com/a/ntp4d6Q
Nintendo Switch
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim CIB+ 32.92 1971 Project Helios New 15.41 Boy and His Blob New 50.49 Little Golf Journey New 29.62 Robot Named Fight [Premium Edition] New 50.5 Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion New 25.68 AeternoBlade II New 35.5 Afterparty New 38 Aggelos New 38.22 AI: The Somnium Files CIB+ 60.5 AI: The Somnium Files CIB+ 60.5 AI: The Somnium Files - nirvanA Initiative CIB+ 40 Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX New 18.98 Alwa's Collection New 25.62 American Hero New 40.49 Ancestors Legacy New 24.07 Annapurna Interactive [Deluxe Limited Edition Collection] New 372.64 ANNO: Mutationem [Limited Run] New 69.5 Ape Out [Special Reserve] New 49.13 Ara Fell & Rise of the Third Power New 57.24 Arcade Spirits New 20 Archvale New 51.25 ARMS CIB+ 30.5 Ary and the Secret of Seasons New 12.52 Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore New 74.23 Assassin's Creed: The Rebel Collection CIB+ 17.48 Astalon: Tears of the Earth New 50.63 Astral Chain New 48.99 Astronite New 19.48 Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends & the Secret Fairy New 86.98 Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness and the Secret Hideout CIB+ 49.5 Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness and the Secret Hideout New 60.1 Attack on Titan 2: Final Battle New 74.23 Axiom Verge 1 & 2 Double Pack New 74.5 Azure Striker Gunvolt 3 New 48.5 Azure Striker Gunvolt: Striker Pack CIB+ 25.79 Balan Wonderworld New 11.77 Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Editions New 140.05 Battle Chef Brigade Deluxe CIB+ 32.61 Battle Princess Madelyn: Royal Edition New 52.88 Bayonetta New 40.76 Bayonetta 2 CIB+ 35.5 Bayonetta 3 New 34.67 Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon New 32.5 Black Bird New 55.5 Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition New 48.72 Blasphemous CIB+ 108.49 Blaster Master Zero New 44.14 Blaster Master Zero II New 40.49 Blaster Master Zero III New 34.5 Blazing Beaks New 30.02 Blazing Chrome CIB+ 65.92 Bloodrayne 1 & 2: Revamped Dual Pack w/ Slipcover New 100.47 BloodRayne Betrayal: Fresh Bites New 40.49 Bloodstained: Curse Of The Moon 2 New 28.49 Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night New 21.23 Blossom Tales II: The Minotaur Prince New 46.48 Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King CIB+ 150.47 Blue Fire CIB+ 28.49 Blue Reflection: Second Light New 59.83 Bomb Chicken CIB+ 38.14 Bravely Default II New 29.4 BROFORCE [SWITCH RESERVE] New 53.82 Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling New 55.93 Bugsnax CIB+ 30.77 Burnout Paradise Remastered CIB+ 14.98 BUTCHER New 36.9 Cannon Dancer: Osman New 54 Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker CIB+ 30.49 Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions New 26.09 Card Shark Collector's Edition New 47.5 Carrion: Special Reserve Edition New 50.6 Castlevania Anniversary Collection New 50.49 Cat Girl Without Salad: Amuse-Bouche New 40.97 Cat Quest + Cat Quest II: Pawsome Pack New 49.5 Cathedral New 66.91 Cave Story+ CIB+ 34.49 Celeste New 62.39 Chicken Police - Paint it RED! CIB+ 13.25 Children of Morta CIB+ 22.09 Children of Zodiarcs New 44.77 Citizens Unite! Earth X Space New 29.49 Coffee Talk New 42.15 COGEN: Sword of Rewind & Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX 2 Double Pack New 80.48 Collar X Malice New 30.49 Collection of Mana New 25.5 Contra Anniversary Collection New 41.45 Contra Anniversary Collection New 41.45 Cooking Mama: Cookstar New 36.11 Corpse Killer: 25th Anniversary Edition New 42.7 Cosmo Dreamer & Like Dreamer: Double-D Collection New 25.00 Cris Tales New 13.99 Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion CIB+ 29 CrossCode New 52.99 Crossing Souls - Special Reserve New 40.00 Cruis'n Blast New 20.48 Crystal Crisis New 31.52 Cthulhu Saves Christmas New 45.17 Cult of the Lamb [Special Reserve] New 72.48 Dandara: Trials of Fear Edition CIB+ 41.29 Dark Devotion New 45.49 Darksiders Genesis CIB+ 18 Darkwood CIB+ 108.46 DARQ: Complete Edition New 38.97 Dawn of the Monsters New 50.36 Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania Edition New 32.01 Dead or School New 52.03 Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise CIB+ 16.77 Deadly Premonition Origins New 38.03 Death end re;Quest New 41.97 Death Road to Canada New 40 Death's Door [Special Reserve] New 33.03 Death's Gambit: Afterlife New 38.72 Demon Throttle [Reserve Edition] New 25.25 Demon Throttle [Reserve Edition] New 25.25 Demon Turf New 40.82 Demon's Tilt New 44.5 Deponia Collection New 83.14 Dex New 48.38 Diablo III: Eternal Collection New 25.77 Digimon Survive New 20.95 Dimension Drive [Limited Edition] New 65.48 Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories CIB+ 25.5 DISC ROOM [SWITCH RESERVE] New 38.69 Disgaea 5 Complete New 39.5 Disney Classic Games: Aladdin and the Lion King New 18.29 Disney Tsum Tsum Festival New 26.55 DISTRAINT Collection New 33.76 Divinity: Original Sin II - Definitive Edition New 180.49 Dodgeball Academia New 19.5 DoDonPachi Resurrection New 55.38 Doki Doki Literature Club Plus! New 30.49 Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze CIB+ 32.97 DOOM CIB+ 28.9 Doom 64 New 45.45 DOOM Eternal New 89 DOOM: The Classics Collection New 50.5 Double Dragon & Kunio-Kun Retro Brawler Bundle New 52.83 Double Dragon IV New 33.97 Double Dragon: Neon New 50.49 Downwell [Special Reserve Edition] New 75 Double Switch: 25th Anniversary Edition New 55.89 Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot + A New Power Awakens Set New 30.8 Dragon Quest Treasures New 29.53 Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition New 46.97 Dragon Star Varnir New 45.49 Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen CIB+ 24.74 Dragon's Lair Trilogy New 144.25 DRAINUS New 63.39 Dreamscaper New 44.72 Dusk New 44.49 Eastward CIB+ 20.3 Eldest Souls New 45.5 Elliot Quest New 28.48 Enclave HD New 52.67 Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights New 63.97 Endling - Extinction is Forever New 25.76 Epic Chef New 15.57 Espgaluda II New 60.27 Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force New 48.41 FAR: Lone Sails New 49.69 Fast RMX New 71.73 Fatal Twelve New 44.49 Fault Milestone One New 28.49 Fight'N Rage New 45.49 FINAL FANTASY VII & VIII REMASTERED TWIN PACK CIB+ 37.63 Final Fantasy X / X-2 HD Remaster New 51.33 Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age New 31.61 Fire Emblem Engage New 35.07 Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes New 20.17 Fire Emblem: Three Houses New 45.45 Flinthook New 45.49 Flipping Death CIB+ 28.39 Foretales New 19.29 Forgotton Anne CIB+ 35.49 Fran Bow New 111.48 Freedom Finger CIB+ 77.4 Freedom Planet New 57.39 Furi CIB+ 48.64 Gal Metal: World Tour Edition CIB+ 17.69 Garden Story New 46.5 Gato Roboto [Special Reserve Edition] New 55.49 Ghost 1.0 + Unepic Collection: Standard Edition New 80.5 Ghost of a Tale New 66.61 Going Under New 37.47 Golf Story New 82.75 Gotta Protectors: Cart of Darkness New 45.35 Grandia HD Collection New 82.51 GrimGrimoire OnceMore [Deluxe Edition] New 42.33 GRIS [Limited Special Reserve] CIB+ 85.25 Guacamelee! One-Two Punch Collection CIB+ 87.57 Gunbrick: Reloaded New 24.68 Gunlord X New 107.79 Guns, Gore & Cannoli 1 & 2 New 105.28 Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX New 84.5 Gyakuten Saiban 123: Naruhodo Selection New 41.49 Hades New 39.19 Haven New 45.49 Heaven's Vault New 32.15 Hero Must Die. Again New 56.5 Heroland Knowble Edition New 18.63 Hollow Knight CIB+ 31.5 Horgihugh and Friends New 28.18 Hot Wheels Unleashed New 22.03 Hotline Miami Collection [Special Reserve] New 54.36 Hyper Light Drifter [Special Edition] New 72.29 Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition CIB+ 49.69 Ib New 55.46 Ikenfell New 42.56 Immortals Fenyx Rising New 15.22 In Sound Mind: Deluxe Edition New 21.81 Indivisible New 19.41 Infernax New 50.5 Inscryption [Special Reserve] New 283.5 Ion Fury New 35.35 ITTA CIB+ 45.74 ITTA [Steelbook Edition] New 65.84 Ittle Dew 2+ New 43.45 Jamestown+ New 50.98 Joe Dever's Lone Wolf New 65.54 Katamari Damacy REROLL New 23.45 Katanakami New 42.3 Kaze and the Wild Masks New 32.44 KeyWe New 25.49 Killer Queen Black New 16.13 King's Bounty II New 17.85 Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory New 20.59 Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning CIB+ 19.98 Kirby and the Forgotten Land CIB+ 37.97 Knights and Bikes New 45.49 Kotodama: The 7 Mysteries of Fujisawa New 19.45 KUNAI New 40.5 L.A. Noire CIB+ 29.99 Lair of the Clockwork God New 39.13 Layers of Fear: Legacy New 147.86 LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga New 20.48 Little Nightmares II CIB+ 20.75 Live A Live CIB+ 26.42 Lonely Mountains: Downhill SRG#46 New 86.79 Loop Hero CIB+ 35.47 Loop Hero [Collectors Edition] New 80.75 Love Esquire [Limited Edition] New 90.5 LoveKami Trilogy New 45.87 Luigi's Mansion 3 CIB+ 33.25 Lumines Remastered New 32.5 LUNARK New 49.52 Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope CIB+ 15.42 Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle CIB+ 12.5 Mario Kart 8 Deluxe New 38.35 Mario Party: Superstars CIB+ 39.5 Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order New 41.5 Mary Skelter 2 New 45.49 Mary Skelter: Finale New 49.39 Mato Anomalies New 19.73 Mega Man 11 New 20.48 Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection CIB+ 24.5 Megadimension Neptunia VII New 45.5 Metroid Dread CIB+ 35.34 Metroid Prime Remastered New 34.34 Mighty Gunvolt Burst New 44.45 Mighty Switch Force! Collection CIB+ 45.49 Ministry of Broadcast New 26.72 Minoria New 50.47 Miracle Snack Shop [Limited Edition] New 35.00 Moero Chronicle Hyper New 90.35 Moero Crystal H New 50.77 Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight New 71.68 MONARK Deluxe Edition New 37 Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom New 78.59 Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate New 42.69 Monster Hunter Rise CIB+ 15.49 Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin New 31.49 Monster Sanctuary New 58.46 Monstrum New 38.5 Mother Russia Bleeds [Special Reserve] New 59.25 Mother Russia Bleeds [Special Reserve] New 59.25 Ms. Splosion Man CIB+ 31.98 Mulaka New 60.00 Murder By Numbers Collectors Edition New 80.36 Mushihimesama New 60.7 My Friend Pedro [Special Reserve Edition] New 79.7 Narita Boy New 45.55 NEO: The World Ends With You CIB+ 20.5 NeoGeo Pocket Color Selection Vol. 1 New 43.06 Neon Abyss New 42.38 Neversong & Pinstripe CIB+ 37.5 New Pokémon Snap CIB+ 31.81 New Super Lucky's Tale New 33.59 New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe New 39.5 Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom - Prince's Edition New 18.14 Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch New 26.5 NieR: Automata - The End of YoRHa Edition New 39.5 Night in the Woods New 59.92 Night Trap: 25th Anniversary Edition New 56.06 Ninja Gaiden: Master Collection New 50.42 No Man's Sky CIB+ 26.25 No More Heroes CIB+ 40.5 No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle CIB+ 35.92 No More Heroes III CIB+ 15.5 Ocean's Heart New 53.33 Octahedron New 45.43 Octopath Traveler New 52.43 Octopath Traveler II New 39.99 Oddworld - Collection New 36.25 à Œkami HD New 32.99 One Step From Eden New 34.15 Oniken + Odallus Collection New 36.51 Opus Collection CIB+ 22.49 Ori: The Collection New 28.97 Othercide New 32.45 Outlast: Bundle of Terror / Outlast 2 CIB+ 277.52 Overlord: Escape from Nazarick New 35.97 Owlboy CIB+ 16.48 Oxenfree New 99.53 Panzer Dragoon New 40.5 Panzer Paladin New 48.13 Paper Mario: The Origami King CIB+ 36.5 Pathway New 27.6 Phoenotopia: Awakening [Premium Edition] New 114.25 Pikmin 3 Deluxe CIB+ 39.75 Pikmin 4 New 42.79 Piofiore: Fated Memories New 27.95 PixelJunk Eden 2 New 25.49 Pocky & Rocky Reshrined New 25.49 Pokémon Brilliant Diamond CIB+ 32.75 Pokémon Legends: Arceus New 41.19 Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX CIB+ 40.5 Pokémon Sword CIB+ 30.26 Pokémon Violet New 44.5 Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu! CIB+ 35.47 Postal Redux New 25.5 PowerSlave: Exhumed New 65.06 Prinny Presents NIS Classics Volume 2 [Deluxe Edition] New 43.99 Prodeus New 40.67 Project Warlock New 67.14 Puyo Puyo Tetris New 17.5 Q.U.B.E. 2 New 51.32 Quake New 38.49 Radiant Silvergun New 58.09 Rainbow Billy: The Curse of the Leviathan New 23.82 Razion EX New 137.71 realMyst: Masterpiece Edition New 78.08 République: Anniversary Edition New 35.49 Return of the Obra Dinn New 58.18 Return to Monkey Island CIB+ 43.09 Return to Shironagasu Island CIB+ 28.5 Risk of Rain 2 New 14.7 River City Girls CIB+ 80.23 River City Girls 2 New 50.5 River City Girls [PAX Variant] New 142.6 River City Girls Zero New 44.49 River City: Rival Showdown New 30.49 Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos CIB+ 46.5 Roki CIB+ 39.07 Rolling Sky Collection CIB+ 20.00 Root Film New 34.09 RUINER [SWITCH RESERVE] New 54.47 Rune Factory 3 Special New 23.41 Rune Factory 3 Special New 23.41 Rune Factory 4 Special [Archival Edition] New 153.5 Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin New 27.5 Sally Face [Deluxe Edition] New 224.81 Sam & Max Save the World New 43.5 Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space Remastered New 44 Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time New 70.48 Save me Mr Tako: Definitive Edition New 33.5 Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game - Complete Edition New 32.49 Sea Horizon [Limited Edition] New 42.49 Sea of Solitude: The Director's Cut New 20.00 Seabed New 40.42 SeaBed [Limited Edition] New 135.38 Senran Kagura Reflexions New 129.74 Senren * Banka New 86.76 SENSEs: Midnight [Limited Edition] New 47.43 Serious Sam Collection [Switch Reserve] New 60.49 Seven Pirates H New 51.25 Seven Pirates H New 51.25 Seven Pirates H New 51.25 Shadow Man Remastered New 48.39 Shadowgate New 62.5 Shadowrun Trilogy New 56.64 Shadows of Adam New 34.49 Shadowverse: Champion's Battle New 21.95 Shantae New 39.34 Shantae and the Pirate's Curse New 381.21 Shantae and the Pirate's Curse Box 49.62 Shantae and the Seven Sirens New 50.2 Shantae: Half-Genie Hero [Ultimate Edition] New 38.2 Shantae: Risky's Revenge New 38.51 Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn New 19.57 Shikhondo: Soul Eater New 34.44 Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne HD Remaster New 25.5 Shin Megami Tensei V New 22.38 Shin Megami Tensei V New 22.38 Shining Resonance Refrain [Draconic Launch Edition] New 48.6 Signalis New 32.03 Sine Mora EX New 23.02 Skelattack New 50.49 Slime-san New 43.74 Smile For Me New 46.94 SNK Heroines Tag Team Frenzy New 29.15 Sol Cresta: Dramatic Edition New 45.48 Sonic Colors Ultimate CIB+ 15.48 Sonic Frontiers CIB+ 21.62 Sonic Mania New 16.51 Spiritfarer New 28.95 Splatoon 2 CIB+ 19.67 Splatoon 3 New 43.99 Star Wars Pinball New 19.72 Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic New 60.49 Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords New 59.79 Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords New 59.79 Star Wars: Republic Commando New 26.45 Steel Assault New 48 Streets of Rage 4 New 33.45 Strife: Veteran Edition New 37.72 Subnautica + Subnautica: Below Zero New 32.49 Super Blood Hockey New 60.96 Super Bomberman R New 20.42 Super Mario 3D All-Stars CIB+ 82.33 Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury CIB+ 39.5 Super Mario Bros. Wonder CIB 38.99 Super Mario Maker 2 CIB+ 30.48 Super Mario Odyssey New 39.59 Super Mario RPG New 39.93 Super Meat Boy New 38.5 Super Meat Boy Forever New 25.98 Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania New 13.48 Super Smash Bros. Ultimate CIB+ 38.74 Supraland New 33.75 Sushi Striker: The Way of Sushido New 12.17 Taiko no Tatsujin Rhythm Festival New 15.5 Tails of Iron [Crimson Knight Edition] New 42.89 Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition New 30.41 Tandem: A Tale of Shadows New 20.48 Terraria New 24.66 Caligula Effect 2 New 56.3 Caligula Effect: Overdose New 61.95 DioField Chronicle CIB+ 25.46 Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim CIB+ 35.31 Falconeer: Warrior Edition New 18.88 Friends Of Ringo Ishikawa New 26.73 Great Ace Attorney Chronicles CIB+ 30.98 Knight Witch Deluxe Edition New 32.07 Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III - Extracurricular Edition CIB+ 31.77 Legend of Tianding New 51.61 Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild CIB+ 34 Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening CIB+ 32.57 Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD CIB+ 31.24 Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom New 47.46 Letter: A Horror Visual Novel [Limited Edition] New 73.75 The Messenger [Special Reserve Games Edition] New 280.00 Missing CIB+ 35.5 Mummy Demastered New 57.71 Red Lantern New 58.5 RED STRINGS CLUB [SWITCH RESERVE] New 38.5 Silver Case 2425 Deluxe Edition CIB 35.5 TakeOver New 47.41 Talos Principle New 51.62 Touryst New 68.88 Wonderful 101: Remastered New 23.5 World Ends with You: Final Remix New 53.95 There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension New 53.51 Thumper New 45.45 Time on Frog Island CIB+ 17.43 Timespinner [Limited Run] CIB+ 77.28 Tiny Barbarian DX New 33.97 To The Moon New 67.98 ToeJam & Earl: Back in the Groove! CIB+ 49.86 Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore New 66.72 Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore New 66.72 TowerFall New 45.5 Transistor CIB+ 61.01 Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes CIB+ 24.99 Treasures Of The Aegean New 17.98 Triangle Strategy New 37.47 Trigger Witch New 34.59 Trigger Witch - Limited Edition New 57.66 Trover Saves the Universe New 37.76 Turok / Turok 2: Seeds of Evil New 167.4 Twin Blades of the Three Kingdoms New 50.5 Two Point Hospital New 26.5 UnderMine New 51.08 Unravel Two CIB+ 18.35 Unreal Life New 39.15 Unsighted New 47.2 Untitled Goose Game New 22.45 Valfaris New 39.64 Valis: The Fantasm Soldier Collection New 70.61 Valis: The Fantasm Soldier Collection II New 50.5 Valkyria Chronicles 4 New 66.81 Very Very Valet New 17.77 Wandersong CIB+ 33.99 Warborn New 16.6 Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus CIB+ 21 WarioWare: Get it Together! CIB+ 24.55 West of Dead New 39.1 Wizard of Legend New 62.66 Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap New 39.14 World Of Simulators New 45 Wreckfest New 25.5 Wulverblade New 68.83 Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Loose 42.6 Xenoblade Chronicles 2 CIB+ 48.49 Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna the Golden Country New 58.45 Xenoblade Chronicles 3 New 39.49 Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition New 45.5 Xtreme Sports New 50.5 Yoku's Island Express CIB+ 35.5 Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair New 35.5 Yoshi's Crafted World CIB+ 36.75 Young Souls New 34.49 Yu-Gi-Oh! Legacy of the Duelist: Link Evolution CIB+ 17.69 Yuppie Psycho: Executive Edition (Elite Edition) New 45.49 Yurukill: The Calumniation Games (Deluxe Edition) New 20.73 Zombies Ate My Neighbors and Ghoul Patrol New 40.09
PS4
88 Antarctica New 45.00 Antartica 88 [Variant Cover] New 185.5 Deadpool CIB+ 76.33 Deadpool CIB+ 76.33 Death Park New 75.48 Death Park New 75.48 Death Park New 75.48 Death Park New 75.48 Digimon Survive New 16.55 Divinity: Original Sin II - Definitive Edition New 71 Doki Doki Literature Club Plus! New 21.17 Helldivers [Super-Earth Ultimate Edition] CIB+ 62.97 Minecraft: Story Mode - A Telltale Games Series - The Complete Adventure CIB+ 58.41 Outriders: Worldslayer New 18.48 Revenge of The Bird King New 31.99 Saints Row: The Third Remastered New 15.1 Senran Kagura Burst Re:Newal [At the Seams Edition] New 60.49 Senran Kagura Burst Re:Newal [Tailor Made Edition] New 47.99 Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash (No Shirt, No Shoes, All Service Edition) New 71.5 Shadow Warrior 2 [Special Reserve Edition] New 235.52 Super Perils of Baking Special Edition [SEGA Outerbox] New 200.5 Swords of Ditto: Mormo's Curse [Special Reserve Edition] New 47.1 Tamashii New 734.39 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan CIB+ 51.58 Valkyria Chronicles Remastered Steelbook Edition New 30.45
Vita
2064: Read Only Memories New 67.97 88 Heroes New 40.6 99Vidas New 125.97 Hole New World New 48.82 Rose in the Twilight New 192 Winter's Daydream [Limited Edition] New 64.1 Aegis of Earth: Protonovus Assault New 26.49 Akiba's Beat New 30.25 Akiba's Trip: Undead & Undressed CIB+ 25.49 Alone With You New 38.5 Angry Birds Star Wars New 20.48 Another World: 20th Anniversary Edition New 40.49 Antiquia Lost New 34.75 Aqua Kitty: Milk Mine Defender DX New 51.5 Army Corps of Hell New 23.99 Asdivine Hearts New 35.46 Astro Aqua Kitty [Limited Edition] New 64.7 Atari Flashback Classics New 60.61 Atelier Escha & Logy Plus: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky (Limited Edition) New 168.49 Awesome Pea Collection [Limited Edition] CIB+ 40.1 Axiom Verge Multiverse Edition New 56.56 Back in 1995 [Limited Edition] New 191.4 Bard's Gold New 33 Bastion New 64.16 Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate CIB+ 23.67 Bit.Trip Presents...Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien New 33.49 Bit.Trip Presents...Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien New 33.49 Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon New 118.23 Borderlands 2 CIB+ 23.49 Breach & Clear New 308.01 Broken Age New 33.77 Bunny Must Die: Chelsea and the 7 Devils New 95 Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified CIB+ 22.29 Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified Loose 18.98 Chaos;Child New 45.61 Chasm CIB+ 60.49 Child of Light CIB+ 24.56 Claire: Extended Cut CIB+ 35.17 Code:Realize - Future Blessings Loose 14.9 Code:Realize - Guardian of Rebirth New 25.5 Code:Realize - Guardian of Rebirth Loose 14.2 Conga Master Go! [Limited Edition] New 51.83 Corpse Party: Blood Drive New 58.77 Cosmic Star Heroine CIB+ 43.25 Criminal Girls 2: Party Favors CIB+ 74.09 Criminal Girls: Invite Only CIB+ 54.49 Croixleur Sigma New 40.49 Cursed Castilla EX [Limited Edition] New 60.5 Curses 'N Chaos New 38.72 Damascus Gear: Operation Osaka New 40.51 Damascus Gear: Operation Tokyo New 41 Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair Loose 19.41 Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair Loose 19.41 Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls New 31.5 Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony CIB+ 58.89 Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc CIB+ 25.97 Dariusburst: Chronicle Saviours New 47.38 Deadbolt New 42.44 Death Mark CIB+ 23.22 Death Tales [Limited Edition] New 40.4 Deemo: The Last Recital New 34.22 Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten New 37.86 Demon Gaze Loose 22.22 Demon Gaze CIB+ 25.81 Demon Gaze II New 74.66 Demon's Tier+ [Limited Edition] CIB+ 55.49 Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax CIB+ 25.5 Devious Dungeon - Limited Edition CIB+ 67.38 Devious Dungeon 2 [Limited Edition] New 84.5 Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth CIB+ 65.9 Disgaea 4: A Promise Revisited CIB+ 25.49 Dokuro New 52.94 Dragon Fantasy: The Black Tome of Ice New 34.5 Dragon Fantasy: The Volumes of Westeria New 40.49 Dragon Sinker: Descendants of Legend New 35.5 Dungeon Travelers 2: The Royal Library & The Monster Seal CIB+ 53 Dynasty Warriors: Next Loose 16.66 Earth Defense Force 2: Invaders from Planet Space New 28.19 EMMA: Lost in Memories [Limited Edition] New 52.49 Exile's End New 39.65 Exist Archive: The Other Side of The Sky Loose 18.48 Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star Noble Phantasm Edition New 46.26 Fernz Gate New 30.69 Final Fantasy X / X-2 HD Remaster Loose 25.49 Final Fantasy X-2 HD Remaster New 61.19 Forma.8 New 32.5 Freedom Wars CIB+ 13.48 Furwind [Limited Edition] CIB+ 40.5 Futuridium EP Deluxe New 45.97 Gal*Gun: Double Peace CIB+ 32.34 Ghoulboy [Limited Edition] New 160.5 God of War Collection New 74.75 Grand Kingdom New 47.6 Gravity Rush CIB+ 44.5 Guacamelee! New 70.48 Guard Duty [Limited Edition] CIB+ 47.38 Gundemoniums New 84.18 Gunhouse New 30.38 Habroxia New 129.94 Habroxia 2 [Limited Edition] New 65.5 Halloween Forever [Limited Edition] New 74.5 Home: A Unique Horror Adventure New 35.92 Horizon Chase Turbo [Limited Edition] New 76.81 Hot Shots Golf: World Invitational New 26.19 HtoL#NiQ The Firefly Diary: Limited Edition New 59.25 Hue New 40.5 Hyperdevotion Noire: Goddess Black Heart CIB+ 35.5 Hyperdimension Neptunia PP: Producing Perfection CIB+ 35.97 Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 CIB+ 47.01 Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 CIB+ 47.01 Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth2: Sisters Generation CIB+ 60.49 Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth2: Sisters Generation CIB+ 60.49 Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth3: V Generation CIB+ 55.95 Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth3: V Generation CIB+ 55.95 Hyperdimension Neptunia U: Action Unleashed CIB+ 43.81 Iconoclasts New 96.5 Indigo 7 : Quest for Love New ? Jak and Daxter Collection CIB+ 50.49 Jet Set Knights [Limited Edition] New 100.5 Jet Set Knights [Limited Edition] New 100.5 Just Ignore them + My Big Sister Collection New 60.49 Kawaii Deathu Desu New 45.5 Killzone: Mercenary Loose 24.49 Killzone: Mercenary CIB+ 32.68 Knightin' + [Limited Edition] New 60.45 Knytt Underground New 128.14 La-Mulana Ex New 38.03 LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes Loose 11.33 LEGO Jurassic World CIB+ 13.44 LEGO Ninjago: Shadow of Ronin Loose 17.12 LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens New 28.75 LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens Loose 12.21 LEGO The Lord of the Rings Loose 10.49 Lone Survivor: The Director's Cut New 42.49 Luckslinger [Limited Edition] New 60.41 Lumines: Electronic Symphony New 18.61 Mary Skelter: Nightmares CIB+ 92.87 MegaTagmension Blanc + Neptune VS Zombies New 37.58 MeiQ: Labyrinth of Death CIB+ 25.39 Mercenary Kings: Reloaded Edition [Limited Edition] New 106.71 Metagal [Limited Edition] CIB+ 100.35 Metal Gear Solid HD Collection CIB+ 46.49 Metal Slug 3 New 115.48 Mind Zero CIB+ 20.48 Mooseman [Limited Edition] New 119.05 Mortal Kombat CIB+ 26.99 MotoGP 13 CIB+ 23.83 MUSYNX New 50.49 Muv-Luv New 53.36 Muv-Luv Alternative New 66.95 Muv-Luv Complete Set New 90.5 My Aunt is a Witch [Limited Edition] New 55.5 Mystery Chronicle: One Way Heroics New 27.94 Need for Speed: Most Wanted - A Criterion Game CIB+ 20.32 Neurovoider New 35.5 Nicole [Limited Edition] New 48.22 Night Trap: 25th Anniversary Edition New 58.99 Nova-111 New 28.67 Nurse Love Addiction New 59.18 Nurse Love Syndrome New 50.49 Nurse Love Syndrome Loose 15.49 Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas New 52 Octodad: Dadliest Catch New 46.36 Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee - New 'n' Tasty New 149.5 Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee HD New 52.5 Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD New 69.73 Odin Sphere Leifthrasir CIB+ 72.45 Odin Sphere Leifthrasir Loose 70.5 One More Dungeon CIB+ 60 Operation Abyss: New Tokyo Legacy CIB+ 31.5 Oreshika: Tainted Bloodlines New 93 Pantsu Hunter: Back to the 90s New 156.5 Papers, Please New 115.47 Pato Box [Limited Edition] New 73.23 Penny-Punching Princess New 45.41 Period: Cube - Shackles of Amadeus New 54.65 Persona 4 Golden Loose 25.37 Persona 4 Golden New 61.12 Persona 4: Dancing All Night - Disco Fever Edition New 145.5 Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds New 53.5 Pix the Cat New 28.84 Plague Road New 43.4 PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale New 31.74 Proteus New 36.49 Psychedelica of the Ashen Hawk New 51.5 Psychedelica of the Ashen Hawk New 51.5 Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly CIB+ 33.57 Psycho-Pass Mandatory Happiness CIB+ 28.99 Pushy and Pully in Block Land New 70.45 Rabi-Ribi New 93.59 Rainbow Moon New 44.89 Ray Gigant New 102.84 Rayman Legends Loose 17.37 Rayman Origins CIB+ 16.71 Retro City Rampage DX [Re-Release] New 35.00 Revenant Dogma New 35.36 Revenant Saga New 29.44 Reverie [Limited Edition] CIB+ 43.49 Riddled Corpses EX New 40.49 Risk of Rain New 38 Rock Boshers DX New 29.34 Rocketbirds 2: Evolution New 55.5 Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken New 43.2 Root Double [Xtend Edition] New 53.5 Root Letter New 46.11 Salt and Sanctuary New 100.49 Salt and Sanctuary New 100.49 Saturday Morning RPG New 50.49 Sayonara Umihara Kawase++ New 67.33 ScourgeBringer [Limited Edition] New 59.97 ScourgeBringer [Limited Edition] New 59.97 Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus: Let's Get Physical Edition New 115.5 Senran Kagura: Bon Appétit! New 150.44 Senran Kagura: Bon Appétit! Full Course - Collector's Edition New 185.13 Senran Kagura: Estival Versus Endless Summer Edition New 115.48 Sense: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story New 155.5 Severed [Limited Edition] New 100.81 Shakedown: Hawaii CIB+ 36.85 Shantae: Half-Genie Hero CIB+ 37.5 Shinobido 2: Revenge of Zen CIB+ 38.67 Shovel Knight New 96.49 Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution 2+ CIB+ 76.26 Silent Hill: Book of Memories CIB+ 76.38 Sir Eatsalot [Limited Edition] CIB+ 53.08 Siralim New 50.5 Siralim 2 New 30.49 Skullgirls: 2nd Encore New 52.81 Sky Force Anniversary New 75.48 Slain: Back From Hell [Signature Edition] New 76.5 Sly Cooper Collection CIB+ 52.27 Smart as... CIB+ 9.67 Soldner-X 2: Final Prototype New 44.12 Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed CIB+ 23.56 Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God [Limited edition] New 80.5 Soul Sacrifice CIB+ 17.36 Soul Sacrifice Delta New 105.5 Spelunky New 70.5 Spy Hunter CIB+ 24.31 Stay [Limited Edition] New 130.5 Stealth Inc: A Clone in the Dark (Ultimate Edition) New 29.13 SteamWorld Dig New 55.72 SteamWorld Heist New 52.97 Steins;Gate CIB+ 30.58 Steins;Gate 0 CIB+ 29.49 Stranger of sword city limited edition New 63.57 Super Hydorah New 47.9 Super Meat Boy New 60.5 Super Mutant Alien Assault New 34.9 Super Skull Smash GO! 2 Turbo New 42.35 SUPERBEAT: XONiC New 28.49 Superdimension Neptune VS Sega Hard Girls New 58.5 Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment New 65.48 Synergia [Limited Edition] New 110.49 Tachyon Project Limited Edition New 55.35 Takotan [Limited Edition] New 51.59 Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack New 50.24 Tales of Hearts R CIB+ 69.48 Tales of Hearts R Loose 50.5 Task Force Kampas New 36.5 Tetris Ultimate New 70.47 Tetris Ultimate New 70.47 Amazing Spider-Man CIB+ 64.75 Amazing Spider-Man CIB+ 64.75 Bard's Tale: Remastered and Resnarkled New 50.49 Bit.Trip Limited Edition New 33.5 Count Lucanor [Signature Edition] New 144.47 House in Fata Morgana: Dreams of the Revenants Edition CIB+ 99.5 House in Fata Morgana: Dreams of the Revenants Edition M+B 40.1 King of Fighters '97: Global Match New 64.81 Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel CIB+ 36.49 Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel (Lionheart Limited Edition) New 72.39 Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II CIB+ 57.82 Longest Five Minutes New 32.5 Lost Child New 56.03 Lost Cube [Limited Edition] New 50.49 Ratchet and Clank Trilogy CIB+ 72.77 Swapper New 51.48 Swindle New 27.51 Walking Dead: Season Two - A Telltale Games Series New 22.61 Thomas Was Alone New 33.5 Tokyo Xanadu New 49.32 Touch My Katamari CIB+ 33.72 Twin Breaker: A Sacred Symbols Adventure [Limited Edition] CIB+ 47.09 Ultimate Marvel Vs. 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3DS
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I (38f) am a divorced mom of two (10f and 7m). My boyfriend (37m) is a single dad of one (2f). I'm from a happily married family, my parents have been together since 1978. My dad's mom was a widow who never remarried and my mom's parents were married 60+ years. My aunts and uncles all have happy marriages. Two of the uncles divorced, but with no kids and then went on to have happy marriages. Which is not me trying to brag about my family background but to say I am completely out of my element, I don't even know what this is supposed to look like.
My ex is living abroad. We were an international family and when he asked for the divorce I took the kids back to my home country, over a year ago. He paid child support until the divorce was finalized, and then he stopped because he's petty and knows it's hard to enforce internationally. He's looking to come to my country now to be near the kids (which pisses me off because if he has money for visa and travel he has money for child support.) It was a very bad marriage. He was abusive. So my nervous system goes haywire thinking about him being around. I do not have any documentation of the abuse though, and it was always against me not the kids, so we will have to share the kids when he comes. His involvement in the kids life right now is he video chats with them probably 4 days a week and sends presents for birthdays and Christmas.
I've got a boyfriend now and we're getting serious, he's talking about me moving in and getting married. He has a 2 year old daughter he has 50/50 custody of. My kids love him and are excited to get to know her, they love toddlers. His ex and him were engaged but never married, she says marriage isn't for her when she dumped him. We would like to have a child together in the near future, considering my age.
So basically I'm wanting to start things off right, I'm soon going to be starting in person co-parenting for the first time since the divorce is final and I'm going to start blending out families. So... Advice for what's healthy, what to prioritize, what to worry about? I'm basically open to whatever wisdom you've gleaned as stepparents, coparents or as children who grew up with divorced and/or blended families.
Thanks!

About a week ago my mother (75 years old) called me up and asked if I would go to The Rolling Stones concert in Vegas with her. She had bought two tickets, her and my father and she told me she wanted to attend but that my dad wasn’t feeling very well. He is on oxygen when he is at home. He has COPD, a lung disease, and cannot get around much. Since it was a chance to hang with my mom a day before Mother’s Day and see the Stones I said heck yeah!!
I had already mentioned to my wife that on Mother’s Day when I return, we should grill some steak and scallops and lounge out a bit… play it by ear. My wife mentioned that grilling probably wasn’t a great idea and that the oldest of our two kids, our daughter, would be heading to Europe about an hour after we return home from Vegas the day after the concert (Sunday the 12th).
Our youngest (18 years old son) accompanied me to Vegas to stay at the relatives while my mother and I went to the Stones concert.
The next morning, Mothers Day, I woke up at my parents house, texted my wife Happy Mothers Day before even jumping out of the covers. We had a family church obligation to attend to until about noon before traveling back home to see my daughter off to the airport to Europe.
Here is where the drama begins. With all the hubbub of the concert the night before, the relatives and grandma being around, my son doesn’t text or call my wife (his mom) HMD that morning. I didn’t get a text back immediately from my wife when I texted her at about 8 am, HMD… I figured I’d let her sleep in if that’s what she wanted to do. My son and I do our church thing, my wife finally responds to my text saying that they are packing and repacking for my daughters Europe trip and that they want the packing job to be right. When we finally get home late in the afternoon, I give her the present that I bought my wife (her favorite perfume that she is nearly out of) and my son gives her his present… (a note and a Pink Yeti mug I had actually bought my wife a week ago that I hadn’t given her yet, just in case one of the kids hadn’t gotten her a gift for Mother’s Day).
Side note… My wife is very big on gifts. She is a great gift giver and anticipates good gift receiving.
When I walked in home from traveling I could also smell that she was cooking something, and there was a salad on the table. I figured she planned something she wanted to have for dinner, since I had been with my own mother since the day before and she, my wife had been with our daughter having a fun girls time, watching movies, getting a mani/pedi, having pho… THIS WAS NOT THE CASE. I got the evil eye right away. She started talking snarky to me, saying snide remarks which in turn, much to my chagrin I returned the remarks. It’s been tit for tat for the last 24 hours. She said her Mother’s Day was ruined and that it was my fault. That I should have planned the day for her. The blame is all in my court.
Ugh… I feel like every birthday, anniversary, Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Christmas… whatever day that retail America says I’m obligated to spend money to buy gifts… I’m not doing a good enough job. My wife buys our kids presents for Easter for hells sake. It’s too much. I don’t want anymore of it. Keep all the stupid gifts. It’s just the act of buying a thing and giving it. Its ridiculous.
Also… Am I supposed to be doting all over my wife on Mother’s Day with palm leaves and figs? If I am, I am. I just don’t see husbands doing all the work. I see kids…. Kids rubbing their moms back and making coupons for dishwashing and various chores. Kids taking care of moms and telling them what a great job they do raising them. In the arguments up to now, she is treating me like I am responsible for her Mother’s Day happiness and pointing at me saying she didn’t get what she wanted and that she didn’t have a good time. I can see how the husbands job is to orchestrate what the kids do for the moms but if I am wrong, I am wrong.
She is a great mom and I tell her that constantly. She knows I know that. I value her. My wife and I have a great relationship 99% of the time but this silly.

It was my(20m) birthday yesterday. My dad(38) and his fourth wife(35) came over.
My mom got me a Pop Mart figurine as a present. A Detective Conan blind box. My dad's wife quickly said that I'm too old for something like this and then told my mom she should have put some more thought into picking a present for me. Asked my mom if she's 'a dumbfuck.'
So I told her she is a bitch for insulting my mom in her own home for getting me a gift that I really like. My dad told me I should speak to his wife respectfully so I told him I respected his second and third wives because they never overstepped but can't respect this one because she isn't respectable. That he's already been divorced more times than Ross Geller and I'm never going to take any future marriage of his seriously again. I actually meant to say married more times than Ross but then the 'Three divorces!' thing just flashed across my mind.
Dad just said I should be more mature than this given my age, instead of deriding him. He called what I said a cheap shot and said that he expected better behaviour from me.

Me 18(m) and my gf just turned 20 i love her deeply and i understand im young but i feel quite mature for my age i have a career job and Ive been basically on my own since i was 12 but besides the point i made sure her birthday was great from the start i took her car to fill it up before she went to culinary school and on top of that decorated her car with birthday decorations and candy, presents and such but she has this friend now ive known this friend we shall call her A. i’ve known A for 2 years we were friends at first but some sort of falling out happened i’ve known my girlfriend for the same amount of time despite us only being together a few months. My brother (not blood)called me about loosing his job when i got to her house after work today. i went inside and hung out for a bit but everyone was already super drunk so i felt a little left out and her friend was already starting to be an asshole to me. But i usually try to ignore it. ive been doing real shitty lately considering i’m working nearly 80 hours a week and no family except for my “brother” and no friends since i don’t see them anymore due to my job. I’m tired but i’ll do anything to still get her to smile anyways enough of this love shit. She was already being an asshole and my girlfriend was drunk and when her friend is around her she always tries to make me feel like shit and look like a peice of shit. idk why we used to be good friends. So i went outside to call my brother and ask him if he was alright and everything, my girlfriend even came out and sat with me for a min while i talked to him. anyways fast forward 5 mins A comes walking angrily to my car and starts screaming at me (i already locked my doors cuz i knew what she was gon do) so then i rolled it down just for her to go tf off on me and start calling me names calling me a shitty boyfriend and everything in front of my gfs parents to so now i think they think of me as a peice of shit. but i tried apologizing to my girlfriend thinking i may have upset her, she wouldn’t answer me but instead just let her friend keep screaming at me. i’ve done nothing but make sure she had a good birthday and i hid how i was feeling just so i wouldn’t ruin the vibe at all. AITAH for talking to my brother for 15 mins? apparently i ruined her birthday and we usually hang out on mondays with her friend but now i will no longer be doing that. And im sick of my girlfriend taking her side all the time. Idk i just want someone there for me if that makes sense but i feel like im drowning and im so tired but ill do anything to make sure my girlfriend and anyone round me happy. And i stayed the bigger person all night by not feeding into A’s screaming to make it worse if anything i feel like she was making it shitty for my girlfriend because my girlfriend wasn’t upset in the first place

Her birthday was coming up and I didn’t really have a clue what to get her because I’m really bad at buying presents. Then it came to me - why not just get her Quest 3 and a few games to go with it??? She did play a ton of games like Age of Empires 1&2, Warcraft 2&3, Cossacs, etc. back in the day with me so yeah, she likes video games, and she bought a house bike to "exercise" at home that became, well, a dust collector.
I bought her several games to try and so far she likes Beat Saber, Into the Radius (idk why, don't ask me why, I think she's into the entire eerie thing in the game), and PowerBeatsVR. She's exercising to Beat Saber and PowerBeats, of course, and I'm happy for her because every time I saw her do that it looked like she really enjoyed it unlike riding that bike that she bought months ago hahahaha.
I plan on getting her Puzzling Places and Deisim next, and hopefully fully convert her into a VR gamer. If you managed to convert your parents to VR players successfully, leave some advice :D

No idea where to bring this information except here so here we go. I recently received a few birthday cards all with a return address of St Jude’s Research Hospital in Memphis TN. The postage was however from Salt Lake City UT. Inside each envelope was your standard hallmark birthday cards, each different, but with no writing or anything just a print out the said “Happy birthday ” and in two were 3 100 dollar bills an in one 4 100 dollar bills for a grant total of $1000. I have absolutely no idea who this came from. The bills from what I can tell are real 100s. The envelopes and cards had no questions or told me to visit some site or anything at all! I’m curious if someone has ever been part of a scam that started in a way similar to this? I mean not complaining at all about $1000 in cash for a birthday present that’s pretty rad but like what? Why?

Why the fuck dosnt she wrap the presents? thats what makes birthdays fun is OPENING the presents. i dont understand why she dosnt wrap them, i remember she did that for Z too. It annoys the F out of me...is she that lazy?

His ex sent me this message. Sorry it’s so long! Has anybody else gotten a similar message in the past? How did you react?
Message below: “It’s been over a year of me wondering whether I should just come out and ask you or message you… but being afraid that if I do, and I’m wrong, it’ll be a the biggest mistake of my life. I have begged and begged him to tell me what you are to him, and he denies having anything more than a platonic friendship with you.
I want to preface this message with, I have no ill will towards you, I just want some answers… answers I don’t believe I’m going to get from Jared. I don’t know if he’s mentioned anything about me. So here goes…
November 2022, I sent Jared an email, telling him I loved him, missed him, and though I didn’t require a response back, I wanted him to know how sorry I was for everything that had happened and things had ended. He responded with a lengthy email telling me he still fervently loved me and how he too was sorry for how things had ended. That email lead to the last year and a half of events.
December 2022, I drove down to Roanoke and surprised him at the Carilion garage. He left the hospital as fast as he could that night, and we spent the rest of that evening together, catching up, and he left for Key West two days later. Two weeks later, he came up to DC and we had a late birthday celebration for him at Clyde’s in Georgetown and went to see A Christmas Carol at the Ford Theater. A few weeks later we drove to Jersey to see Matchbox20, by now it was the end of January 2023. Almost every week off, for the last year, he would come up and see me, if even for only two days, or I would drive down to Roanoke and spend the week with him. We spoke about our past, the hurt, and future, he told me numerous times that when he pictured marriage and children, it was only with me, but he needed time. This part is important, and I’ll come back to it later. We celebrated my birthday at a restaurant in Navy Yard, two weeks before you guys left for London. Chris video chatted with that night while we were at the restaurant eating Wagyu, and they discussed the new shipment of sunglasses Chris had gotten for Miggieswear.
The weekend of the Super Bowl, he had come seen me earlier that week, the day after he left I came to Roanoke and left the day of the Super Bowl. He told me his parents were having a viewing party and he had to go home and cook. I’m now assuming he left my Airbnb and came to your place.
That February he planned a trip to London, with Nicole, Ryan and Chris, and what he told me were, Nicole’s “friends.” Nicole happened to post a picture of you guys sitting on the plane and I was shocked, why would Nicole’s friend be sitting between him and Ryan. I sent him a message while you were on that 6 hour flight, telling him that if he had been seeing somebody, then why didn’t he tell me? There was no point in us spending time together if he had moved on. His response to me was “do you even know what you’re looking at? I’m surprised you don’t recognize her, that’s Nicole’s friend. You’re jumping to a lot of conclusions right now and don’t know what you’re talking about.” Something in my gut didn’t believe it but I wanted to trust that, so I did. I put you out of sight, out of mind. When he got back, he told me how he wished I’d been there with him, we both love history and old buildings, it’s a place we would have found magical together. I don’t know who came up with the idea of going to London, but part of me always thinks I’m the one who put it there when I shared the pictures i had taken when I went there the year we had been no contact.
We went to a Kenny Chesney concert in Charlottesville that March when I got back from my family trip to India, and he got back from London. Between work, us both traveling with our families, we were excited to see one another. We were going to go to St Augustine, but because of the weather, we stayed in Roanoke and saw Kenny Chesney in Charlottesville. The original plan had been to spend the night in Charlottesville at a hotel, but we couldn’t get one last minute so we ended up driving back to Roanoke and sneaking into the basement at his parents house and sleeping in his bed at 3am.
A few months later, we went to Richmond, and stayed the weekend, exploring the city, and watched Hamilton at the Altria Theater. A few months after that, we went to Savannah and Atlanta, where he got a flat tire driving into the garage, and spent the rest of the weekend at a yoga retreat. July, he asked me to go to Boston with him and his brother, for 4th or July weekend, but I couldn’t because my siblings were in town. Every single week, he came down and either stayed with me, or made a quick trip to spend time with me…
This past September, I found out he took you to Justin’s wedding, and I broke. I needed more from him. I have known him, been intimate with him, shared my every fear, worry, I have brought him home cooked meals from DC and surprised him at work with dinner, I’ve made him care packages. I’ve made Ryan Easter baskets and sent him birthday presents and encouraged Jared to put him in academic classes, I’ve helped Jared look into private schools for Ryan, and weighed the pros and cons of the options. I had no expectations in return from him other than, at the very least, a mutual respect and HONESTY.
I’ve seen him quite a few times since September and I last saw him in Roanoke at the beginning of March 2024. We sat in front of each other, in his car before he went into work that Monday night, and he told me, again, that when he thinks of marriage and a future, I’m the only one he pictures a marriage and children with. I’m not saying this to hurt you, or to make a point, I’m saying it because i don’t know what to believe anymore.
I became suspicious of his relationship with you, when he mentioned going to Macchu Picchu and hiking through the mountains. As all women have the ability to find out details they might later regret, I did the same thing. Except I didn’t believe he had actually gone to Macchu Picchu. I knew his passport had been long expired since around or before COVID, and I knew he had renewed it before he went to London. But that was when I realized you were the girl in the photo that Nicole posted. When I confronted him about Macchu Picchu, he told me he had been joking and he had also already told me he’d been joking. He had NEVER told me it was a joke, he had actually refused to show me photos when I asked him for pictures from the trip… he had then proceeded to change the topic, which is what had even raised red flags in my head.
My point is, I have asked him point blank so many times whether you two have a relationship. You tell me you still love me, that you picture marriage and a family with me, but this girl is a part of your life, and you took her to a wedding with you, while I was on a trip with my siblings, you took her to London with you, and you continue to tell me she’s just a friend. I asked him again on Tuesday night/Wednesday Morning after he left work, if you two are dating, and he said no. He asked me why I’m so hyper-fixated on somebody who’s just a friend when he has a million other female friends.
In September, he told me he needed a month to clear his head, that he wanted to commit to me, but he was afraid and that he needed to get over the fear and roadblock of our past break up. I gave him grace and understood. So we took a 4 week break. Some time during that time period, he sent me a snap of doves, and said “doves, and swans mate for life.” He sent me Ed Sheeran songs telling me he wants to find his way back to me. “No Strings Attached… you are the one I love”
In November, he messaged me and told me he had a surprise for me and to look for something in the mail. He loves the Count of Monte Carlo, it’s one of his favorite movies, and he told me it was in reference to that. A few weeks later I got a candle, a silver 400 dollar Buddha candle from Thomson Ferrier. I didn’t understand the reference to the Count of Monte Carlo, but it was a beautiful gesture and present… especially because he knew how much little gestures from him mean to me.
Fast forward to January, I got another 350 dollar black skull candle from him, from Thomson Ferrier. At this point I was upset, angry and livid. I called my sister in tears that evening. I had come back to him because he told me he loved me, that he “has a fire that burns so deeply” when he thinks of me. If i had known that wasn’t true, i would have closed the chapter a year and a half ago. I don’t want $700 worth of gifts and candles, I want more. I want marriage, I want children, I want our lives to move forward, I want communication. Out of anger, I packed up the candle, his sweatshirts and clothes that he had left at my place this past year, and mailed them back to his house. I’m sure it’s sitting somewhere in his basement closet/ bedroom… along with his white Huq sweatshirt, a picture of us I had up in my house, and various articles of clothing.
What upsets me is that he didn’t just involve me this year, he involved my family. He sent my mom presents, my parents in return sent him gifts. My sister, parents and cousins messaged him asking him to come around more. There was no point in involving my family, if he was going to involve himself with you. There was no point in involving himself with me, if he was going to involve himself with you. Those leather Indian shoes sitting in his room, my dad bought those for him. That blue sweater, those green pants and that maroon shirt, my parents bought those for him just this last year.
I don’t know what he’s told you about me, but I will say this. I was your age when we started dating. I was 29 years old. He was single, that’s what everyone in our residency program thought. He would tell everyone how Shari left him one day, all of a sudden just got up and left. “I saw the look behind her eyes just change when she looked at me.” He would tell everyone his horrific dating stories. When i started dating him, there was no doubt in my mind he was single… but I was wrong. He wasn’t single, he was dating Devon, one of the nurses from Carilion, and he had been for the past 4 years prior to that. At one point when he moved to Norfolk, she had even moved in with him. Even Shari was visiting him in Norfolk during this time period. I would have never suspected it, nobody in our residency program did. It wasn’t until one day, when he told me his friends were visiting from home, and they were all going to a concert together, that I found out. Her profile picture was of the two of them together, and her Facebook relationship status said “in a relationship.” Out of my own naivety, i believed him when he told me she was crazy and obsessed with him. He told me, to him, they were just friends but she wanted more. Women do a lot of things, but no woman is dumb enough to think she’s your girlfriend when she’s not. When we moved back to our hometowns, Devon was there waiting for him. He disappeared one day for 24 hours, told me that he was helping his dad’s friend who was stranded in NC. A year and a half later, i would find out that was a lie and that he had been at a concert Florida Georgia Line concert with her. She had been visiting his grandmother with him, staying at his parents home. The irony is that a few weeks after he took her, he took me to the same concert in Scranton. Him and his family didn’t bat an eye when a month later, I showed up and was the “new girlfriend.”
Eventually Devon found out about his lies and left him, but again, stupid me thought she was a crazy girl who just wanted so badly to be with him, that she built their relationship up in her head.
Dignity, respect for humans, empathy, are the most important qualities in a human being.
What I don’t wish is for you to be in my spot in 5 years. He will paint you in his colors, make you fall in love with MB20, and take you to Augustana concerts, he’ll tell you that you understand him, and his heart in a way that nobody else does. He’ll bond with you over music, and send you songs that make you feel he’s talking about you. He is so good at making you feel seen, and involving you with his family. He’ll say he had a vision of a girl that looks like you, coming into his life, and here you are, his soul mate. And one day, the same way that Shari, Devon and I got lost in him, the reality of everything will come pouring down on you. Be careful, there are signs between the lines, and the smiles, and good times. Make sure you don’t miss those, whatever you decide.
My relationship with him, started off just like yours. Another girl on the periphery, and teetering the line of inappropriate. Everything you call him out on, will always have an excuse, and you will believe him because he’s the “good guy” who goes above and beyond for people.
I don’t wish for any woman to go through the pain I’ve gone through, the manipulation, the lies and the emotional abuse. I can’t tell you what to do, but I will say, be careful and don’t be blind to the small things that will one day become huge. The novelty will fade, and though Jared isn’t the devil, he has a lot of growing up to do at 40. It was not okay to toy with me and drag me through the mud this year. It wasn’t okay to minimize his relationship with you and lie to me about it. It’s not okay to, to this day claim to see a life with me and not commit to it. I deserve better, and you deserve better.
How men talk about their ex’s and other women is an indication about how they will one day talk about and treat you. That is the worst and best lesson i have learned. I’m 34, years of my life wasted, and he took another year of my life knowing full well, this is how it would end. He’s sat on the phone with me for hours talking about how stupid PA’s are and if you were going to not be a doctor, at least become an NP, who has better bedside knowledge. Why would he say that, because i suppose you’re a PA and it minimizes the significance of even having a relationship with somebody who isn’t as intelligent as he is. The lack of respect will always be there, you just have to look for it.
Dishonesty, and manipulation are a plague, and if that’s who you are at 40, it is who you will always be unless you recognize that something needs to change. Where there is no accountability, there can be no change. I’m not the exception, I’m the same as the two girls before me. He’ll show you text messages where he never responded to me, even though he replies on Snapchat where every thing is erased. I cannot believe i didn’t see the signs. He will make me look crazy and laugh at me, the same way he showed me messages from Jen, and Elisabeth, and Devon, and made them sound crazy to me. I guess that’s his MO. The same way he told me you were nothing to him.
I was going to send you this message, two months ago… i then decided not to because he convinced me he wasn’t dating you… I saw him less than a month ago in Roanoke, i begged him to tell me that he was in a relationship with you. He said he wasn’t, again, he told me he was going to a wedding alone with only Ryan and that he wasn’t taking you. I then begged him to tell me that we were done and that he didn’t love me anymore. His response was idk what’s going to happen a year from now, i know I’ll see you again. His response every time has been when im ready for a relationship, emotionally, do you want me to finally let you know? I don’t care to be with him anymore. I’m so over it but i really think you should know the type of person you’re dealing with.
He has put me through so much hell for a year and a half of my life, stringing me along acting like he’s doing me a favor while he works on his own mental health and claims to still love me when we are together.”
TLDR: my SO’s ex messaged me saying he’s been seeing both of us for the past year and a half. Has anybody experienced this before. She sent me pictures from the past year of them and their text exchanges

I lost my almost 10 month old son on Mother’s Day. He had a long and complicated medical history but he died from acute liver failure, we just were not able to get him a liver transplant in time. Due to his other medical condition he didn’t qualify for a live donor organ.
My fiancé and I held him in our arms as we left this world. I have no idea how to navigate this. I feel so lost. My son was supposed to finally come home, and instead he developed liver failure and died in just under 2 months time.
My son is an identical twin, so I find this to be an added layer of complexity to how I feel. I know I am a mom of three kids, I know I am a twin mom because I had two beautiful twin boys, but I don’t feel like I can really say that about myself anymore. How am I suppose to always celebrate my baby that passed and not be sad at every milestone his twin brother has? How am I suppose to fall back into life with two kids under three when I feel like my heart is broken? How am I suppose to plan a celebration of life for my son when I should be planning his first birthday. How am I supposed to sign birthday cards from my family? I don’t want him to not be included… I am just so lost…
I have moments when I just feel numb. I’ve been burning myself at both ends for so long trying to manage his health conditions and him being in hospital, and being a present parent to my other two children…
I’m just looking for support, advice…
Thank you

I’m new to wood working but I’m blue collar so I have tools. My mom lost 2 kids before my brother sister and myself, had a very hard life but her entire world is her kids. It’s all she cares about and makes her happy. I Want to build a like shrine type like with a picture of myself , brother , sister , her mom , her dad , and my two baby brothers that passed away. I want her favorite picture of each person maybe with a Bible verse under it. The kicker is at the base of the frame with all 7 of her favorite pictures I want her favorite item of each of us. For example the teddy bear my little brother brought to every one of his cancer appointments all at the base of the photo board. I’ve never done any woodworking but I’m blue collar and will spend whatever money I need for materials and tools. I’m also not artsy at all but my mom has saved me from suicide twice in my life and she’s had the hardest life and I want to put a huge smile on her face for her birthday. I guess I’m posting this for help or advice from experienced woodworkers who can lead me in the right direction in tools , materials , coatings , epoxy , and mainly design because I’m not artsy. A concept or a template to follow or what you think.
If you made it through this thank you very much and I love you guys. Any tips or advice would help.

Can’t believe she’s 48 years old already btw did draw this today last night had to sketch but here is charlotte giving a present/gift since it’s her birthday today

Running late today. Yesterday was such a bust I basically gave away all my clicks and got nothing in return Sad Panda. Anyways on to the fun!
First a HUGE Thank you to those who have helped out. I am soooooo close!!
Also thanks to those that log in everyday! Every point matters!!
My birthday is May 24th.... these will be my only presents lol. Happy for any help!
Happy if you pick anything! New to this and have given a lot and love swapping!
Happy birthday to me and thank you very kindly!
Farmland 207001082
Farmland 225610752
Fishland 206477643
Fishland 211462611
I can do Shein all BUT magic 10 gifts or.money tree, and temu all but hat trick and farmland I have available.
BrookeLynn xoxo!

I beat [Redacted] for the first time today. Coincidentally or not, today was also the first time I tried mouse and keyboard controls. That was my first run with mouse and keyboard, no practice, no nothing.
Now, maybe my build was blessed (fairly standard staff attack build with a very lucky hammer). Maybe I just finally figured out how to work through all the visual noise in phase 2. But I do think mouse and keyboard was a big player in my success, despite the fact that I absolutely preferred controller for Hades I.
I think it has to do with the fact that a lot of the time, you have to dash-cancel while channeling, which is something not really present in Hades I. In that game, you’re only ever either moving or attacking, not both; in Hades II, a lot of weapons and tactics require you to move and attack simultaneously (looking at you, torches). And yes, aim assist helps make these possible with controller, but in a game that requires careful positioning and decent magick management, missing a kill because aim assist didn’t let you aim between two opponents can be kind of rough.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this. Controller is still probably better overall for certain weapons, the axe and twin blades probably. And it’s always a matter of preference. I guess what I mean to say is, if you took the “controller recommended” thing too seriously at first, maybe give mouse and keyboard a shot. It was pretty intuitive for me, at least. Btw, the only change I made to controls was binding cast to scroll wheel button (I think the gamers call it M3?). Because I’m not reaching away from WASD to do a cast every two seconds.