Valentine church saying

I grew up & lived with my mom until my elementary days while my dad is an OFW. My mom would spend whole day & night gambling, drinking, smoking, then would come home na mainit ang ulo lalo na kapag natalo sa sugal. She would spank me with hanger, sticks, walis you know the likes. Most of the time, di naman malala yung corporal punishment niya, but merong instances na umaabot na sa dumudugo na yung buong likod and kamay ko. Papasok ako sa school, duguan yung uniform ko, naawa ako sa sarili ko kasi ako lang yung ganun sa classroom namin.
She isn't around most of the time, she buys ulam sa nearby carenderia and would employ a babysitter for me lalo na if maglalakwatsa siya. The allowance she gets from my dad, she spends mostly on her vices and binibigay niya sa family side niya, leaving almost kaunti nalang for us, so sometimes wala kaming maulam and medyo picky eater ako ng bata ako so if ayaw ko kainin yung ulam, papaluin nya ulit ako.
She would also pass out from binge drinking the night before, I was in grade 1, her live in boyfriend would bathe me himself kasi passed out siya.
Fast forward to today, my mom claims that she is a changed person, made better due to the teachings of a born again church. Ngayon, nasa 2nd husband na niya sya nakatira, magkalayo kami ng city. Palagi na siyang nag reconnect sa akin, clingy sa chat, gusto niya magkasama kami, palaging magbibisita siya sa akin, gusto niya akong ipagluto, magda drama kung hindi kami magkasama sa bday nya or mother's day, etc.
I am with my BF now and he said to not associate anymore with my mom since ganun nga yung ginawa sa akin before. Sa side ko naman, baka better na siya ngayon, bumabawi kasi nag improve na siya but my bf says na masyado akong soft hearted and if he was in my shoes, he'd cut off all communications.
What do you think po? Is there a middle ground or compromise for this? Nagpapa awa rin si mama ko sakin most of the time, di ko alam if sincere ba or mina manipulate ako. I love my mom despite all this di ko alam kung bakit soft hearted parin ako.
Up until a few weeks ago I thought I had a loving mother, but ngayon ko lang narerealize, child of an abusive mother ata ako

Greetings, Huntsmen, Huntresses, and gender neutral Hunters! Welcome to another week of writing prompts! If you are new here, this is a community-driven weekly event, and the purpose is primarily to generate creativity and have fun while doing so (whether you are a 100% real-meat person or not, we don't judge).

What will be involved Special Note for Spoilers!:

Each week, three RWBY-related topics will be posted (subject to ties and special events!). Participants can write a short piece of fiction or dialogue based on that prompt. When writing, the suggestion is to aim for 1k-3k words, however, this is not a requirement. There is no goal - this is not a popularity contest - just write and have fun! If you have any questions, feel free to ask! :)
SPOILERS:
Reminder that the spoiler embargo for Volume 9 and the Justice League movie has been lifted! You are all now free to make posts about the two without needing to spoiler tag it.

Rules (gore, NSFW, spoilers etc.)

The rules are the same as the sub's posting guidelines. Nobody here wants to see your story taken down, so please refer to them before contributing! If someone chooses to ignore these rules, the post will be removed.

Additional information

Pre-writing is welcome! /rwbyprompts is a sub with writing as a focus - there you will find an archive of all the threads as well as a somewhat fleshed-out wiki with odds and ends. :) A detailed spreadsheet of WPW things is here! Keep in mind that this houses a lot of the old prompts, but it also has links and things like early participation to previous WPW threads. We're trying this whole week-to-week thing in the face of the bajillion prompts we had built up. We might do something with them, or people might cycle them back in, who knows what could happen??
Find us on Discord at The Qrow's Nest! The permanent invite has been deleted due to Discord bot shenanigans, so dm shand if you want an invite!

The Prompts!:

Surprise! We're doing them all this week - have fun! :D
Team RWBY, plus Zwei, and Team JNPR play pirates. RWBY, except all songs are written by Sabaton. Atlas makes a space elevator near Vale and Vale is not happy with it. All out war resumes and the use of aerial drones are being used. As a joke, Yang sends pretend Valentines between the most random pairings of people she can think of. She’s shocked when all of them end up together. Team RWBY somehow travels back in time and encounters Team STRQ of the past. When Blake left her family to stay with the White Fang, she became the extremist, not Adam. Ozma agrees with Salem's plans to rule both humanity and the Faunus as the new Gods of Remnant, and has no regrets. After forsaking her mortal inheritance, Weiss is now eligible to be a Queen of the Winter Court of Fae, which is returning to Remnant for the first time since the Brother Gods abandoned it. "'s good as new. Maybe even a little better." "While bullets may wear your name, a hand grenade simply says 'to whom it may concern.'" An Atlas experiment accidentally fuses earth and remnant, hyjinks ensue. Free from Cinder, yet lost without a female figure to commit to, Emerald begins her quest for a new sistemothebestie/lover in Vacuo. The one time Port told a completely realistic and believable story. Yang and Blake discover another bonding point after realizing they both like a certain musician. Instead of Crocea Mors, Jaune has the Moonlight/Darkmoon Greatsword from any From Software Games you choose (boss fight included). Weiss and Ruby host a series of events to determine who has the best big sister. Instead of instilling fear into the hears of the people to make Beacon fall, Watts' hack sparked the Great Meme War!
Optional prompts that must be combined with one or more of the above:

Next Week's Poll:

[The Poll! is on vacation this week, see below!]()

Previously, on Writing Prompt Wednesday:

The thread
The Prompts:

• Blake tries to catch a mouse. Cue Tom and Jerry-esque hi-jinx.
• Nora and Ren get into a heated argument and start dividing team RNJR's camp in half with duct tape. Jaune and Ruby have to fix things.
• Glynda takes a day off, and comes back the next day to see Beacon in a state of...
• Jaune and Ruby have a Pokemon battle with NPR and WBY as their Pokemons.

Alternate-Secondary Prompts:

• Blake discovers all of "White Fang" had apparently redeemed themselves via "The Power of Friendship"
• [Insert character] establishes the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Black Army of Argus.
• The heroes react to finally learning what Headmaster Theodore looks like.
• The unfortunate way Yang learned that flammable and inflammable mean the same thing.
• An event from your fanfic/AU described in the style of the Armchair Historian.
• A Hero and Villain go out on a date. What happens during the date?
• A meeting between Signal Academy Instructors Qrow Branwen and Taiyang Xiao Long with Beacon Academy professors Peter Port and Bartholomew Oobleck to discuss Yang and Ruby as potential students at Beacon.
• Blake enters a dating show where Ilia, Sun, and Yang are vying for her affections.
• A comedy skit with the different Grimm as characters with different personalities as they discuss about their life and interactions with the Human/Faunus characters of RWBY.
• Domestic Team WTCH.
• A character mentally rehearses a conversation they imagine having with another character. They quickly blow things way out of proportion.
• Jaune, Salem, and Hazel reenact the scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where the title character is forced to drink the Blood of Kali.

Upcoming Events:

New Year, new events! And now we have the quarter of spring leading into summer and the 4th of July FFA, I hope you all had a great holiday!

Important Stuff and Things!

I have managed to rescue /RWBYFanfiction from an untimely demise! If you would like to share your fanfic or make recommendations, head on over there! I know that I've said something special was coming for this, but Ruby on Rails is hard and not cheap to operate. The fanfiction indexer that I was trying to set up just isn't working and probably needs someone with more experience in RoR programming/design. I haven't completely put it to bed, but it might be a while before I can circle back to it. In the meantime, the fanfic sub has actually had a decent amount of postings - head on over and say hi! :)
No matter how bad things may get, words will always have meaning. Now get out there and write something, but most importantly, have fun! :)

Hi,
I was just called as Temple and Family History leader and am currently working on Temple Prep lessons.
The thing is…holy cow this manual is super outdated. It was revised in 2003 and nothing since and it is EXTREMELY obvious.
No mention of the covenants you will make. No mention of what the initiatory is. No mention on how it is presented. Nothing.
Also it says that women should NOT wear pants to the Temple??? And that garments should not be tried on (to test fit, comfort, size) prior to the endowment.
When I was endowed, I was told to briefly try it on just so I knew what to buy and could be comfy in the endowment session. What am I supposed to tell people in the class?
I mean, come on. When will this thing get an update? The church is WAY more open about the covenants and ordinances in the Temple. Even showing the garments and ceremonial clothing in 2014.
Am I really supposed to teach this as is? I mean I somewhat already know the answer as my Branch President said I could add things as long as it’s present in the handbook, scriptures, church’s website, etc. And available to the public, but some things (like the women not wearing pants or trying on garments) aren’t listed more so as they are assumed.
TL;DR
The teachers manual for temple prep is obviously outdated and it’s frustrating

-Spawn into my save. I visit rhodes to pay some past bounties and buy new guns. -Leave Rhodes uneventfully and head to Valentine to visit the saloons. -Visit the first and shittier saloon with no issues at all. -Visit the better saloon and bump into some drunk jackass who wants to duel. I decline but he calls me a coward so I follow him out to the alley and proceed to break his jaw. This received 0 attention from the law. I decided to loot him and everyone lost their shit. I tackled the witness in the middle of the street in front of the sheriff. The sheriff pulled their gun so I naturally pulled my new revolvers and added some holes to his anatomy. I end that killing spree with a modest $300 bounty and down to 1/4 honor. -I head to a random train station to pay said bounty and run into the mail clerk voiced by Geoff Ramsey. Some stuff goes down and all 15 people, including Geoff’s character, are gunned down. -I leave no witnesses and stumble across what I thought were raiders by a camp fire. They even “shit we gotta skedaddle” so I instinctively gunned them down. Turns out they were part of a fishing village to the left and they were pissed I just killed their kin. I committed some genocide after they shot first and lost the rest of my honor. -I thought going to Saint Denis would make sense because I read you can just say hi to everyone and gain honor quickly. Two street urchins start taunting me so I tell them off. I briefly follow them into this alley and get ambushed by 4 robbers. I managed to kill them but now somehow I am wanted for murder. I escape after taking a couple of the local police force. -I now am down to almost max low honor all because some drunk jackass in Valentine decided to start some shit.

Seriously, I'd rather PUG on Overpass tbh. The CT side on this map is killing me. Had a game where we won 9 rounds of T side and still lost with 30+ kills.
TLDR is the rotates are long, and sites are very difficult to retake. Especially when they have man advantage, as the amount of places to hide encircling the site makes you far too exposed to being traded. Also, due to Church and Apartments, T's have an easier time just hiding to run down time. Doesn't matter how well I defend B or A, the Ts just identified I was the only good player on the team and would go straight to another site after I got a kill or two. Sometimes leaving a lurker so I couldn't rotate fast.
Compare this to pretty much any other map and I feel like you can do more as a solo player on CT side. Not only are sites easier to retake imo, but you can also play in positions where a solo player can have much more influence over the round. i.e. In Mirage, I can play conn, contest top mid, and quickly support/retake A & B. In Nuke, I can play outside and quickly rotate down secret or through main. If they get too aggressive, I can push outside and threaten them from behind. Mid player Ancient, Anubis and Vertigo, etc. Inferno doesn't really feel like it has any high impact position except for maybe the Arch player deciding when to rotate. But that doesn't mean much when you can't rotate in time because your teammates can't use mollys and smokes.
Not to mention the terrible comms. Sometimes the bomb was planted on A, and none of us on B were told anything prior. But, in another round, they'd see one person Banana, say that EVERYONE was there, and I'd get killed by a lurker trying to position myself to help out. Every CT game results in me changing position every second round and rotating at the first whiff of an execute because we're haemorrhaging rounds on CT and every second round is me in a 1v3 scenario.
Is the only solution to playing CT on Inferno to just stockpile utility until the inevitable retake scenario to actually give me half a chance at defusing? Whilst not any information your team gives you? Because that feels like the only option and still not a reliable one.

Hello all, when morning comes, it will have been the first time I go to church in over 5 years. My friend will be coming along with me, however on the nearest church’s website it says that it will be a holy liturgy for the departure of Saint Athanasius (this is a Coptic church) on Wednesday
The Thursday liturgy below is not called holy liturgy.
Im wondering if this means that the liturgy on Wednesday is only for those in communion

Does anyone feel lonely at church? Sometimes i feel like everyone’s in their little cliques and therefore don’t really bother to engage with anyone new (like myself).
Naturally people make friends but it’s giving anti social. Sadly, church feels quite functional and interactions are mainly superficial or surface level. Not to mention the “say high to the person next to you” during service can feel forced…
What do you guys think? I suppose I just feel slightly isolated and not really sure if I belong or if I’m really part of it.
Have you experienced this or is this the norm?

So I’m a freshman in high school and so is the person in question. To sum it up I’m new to this school, I sit at a table with some people, those people used to be friends with the person in question but they ditched him (for reasons I’ll explain later) when is started sitting with them and I started talking to him he sat with them as well. Now the reasons I want to drop him are these following.
He is very loud and slams on the table when is mad
Other people don’t like him and I get shit for hanging out with him
He started fist fighting me at a track meet because I said “hey that girl looks 12, nvm that’s too old for you” I also said this while smiling. I also started saying a bunch of brain rot stuff as a joke and he actually chased me around the gym trying to hit me
He comes to my house and asks if I’m coming to church even though I’ve told him to not do that. For context he claims to be a hard core Christian (I’m Christian but don’t go around berating about it) yet he constantly cusses, insults people, and has no morals (he stole AirPods at a track meet and only gave them Back when everyone told him too)
He constantly calls me retarded and when I insult him he will hit me
Most importantly the people who I sit with (it’s their table not mine as far as I’m concerned) hate him but won’t show it

So the last few years have been rough.
*note* if you're a "cheaters will always be cheaters type" tldr is don't bother reading or commenting
BACKSTORY 2019-2023 child nearly annual broken bones, lots of stress and specialist visits.
2018-2024 my wife got her associates as a medical assistant and is almost done with her bachelor's and final quarter internship while working full time and that has been hard for me. The lack of time for me and my son has really made an impact.
2019 I was injured at work and 2020 had my first surgery to try and preserve an ankle joint. That surgery ended up failing and while recovering I ended up mangling 2 fingertips in a wood jointer. 2020 I had to make the transition to a sahd on workers comp and have been since then. My lifestyle of hiking and fishing was upended because I could barely be on my feet 3 hours a day and uneven ground killed me not to mention the whole covid thing was pretty isolating.
All of 2021 was supporting her being a surrogate for a couple in City X (their egg/sperm). So, lots of trips checks and giving her injections. It was kind of proving myself to her because I was terrified when our son was born in 2017 and didn't help as much as I should have. Especially the first 3 months. Really, I didn't find out until later. We had conversations and fights at the time and id step up to do more and she would agree and tell me it was all okay. Then another fight saying I wasn't doing enough/anything and asking more and me being upset and confused. I guess at the time she was afraid to ask more, or tell me what she wanted, or her feelings, and the postpartum depression and initial feelings of abandonment didn't help.
Anyways the surrogacy went okay. I was there and supportive. Rubbing her feet and back. taking on extra load when she was tired etc. And hey I didn't pass out at delivery this time XD The end was a bit hard with 2 inductions needed and a massive 9.5lb baby and a stuck shoulder.
Then a few weeks after birth in November 2021 the nightmare began.
Out of nowhere she started hemorrhaging. She had to have an emergency D&C to stop the bleeding and scans showed a mass. Turned out the surrogate baby's placenta had some cells turn cancerous and attach to her uterus (Choriocarcinoma). 3 months later and the first 3 agent chemo failed, and her numbers were skyrocketing because it turned treatment resistant. They had to hit it with 5 types of chemo (EMACO) leaving future fertility a coin toss but more than a hysterectomy. By May 2022 the tumor marker was gone, but it was 6 months of intense monitoring and 6 months of monthly monitoring. The whole time she was in an intense spiraling depression questioning life. The meaning of all it, and how all her childhood trauma was fair. That no god would let a child live that. And questioning every decision in her life and wondering what things could have been like if she went a different direction. Feeling like she missed out on opportunities early in life. If this might be all there is (we have been together since she was 17). She said she felt like reality wasn't real and this was make believe at times.
Summer 2022 she made a new mom friend. She was pretty toxic and selfish. She used my wife for personal benefit and to go places. Yelled at her kids and treated the oldest from a prior marriage as less than (girl doesn't know her dad and when she mentioned she was part Mexican she freaked out and denied it because of how conservative and anti Mexican her new dad and his family is). Like never offered a dime, but expected food, gas, tickets, and gifts. She drove my wife nuts with that behavior. but she was desperate for a friend and loved her kids. Her friend would just talk shit about her partner pretty constantly and say my wife should be unhappy in her relationship too. Shit talking husbands behind their backs became like a mutual thing and I def hated it
Sometime 2023 she jumped into fantasy romance and fantasy smut /erotica. This progressed to an AI chat smut generator.
May 2023 monitoring was over and she was officially cancer free and had been on a health/mental health quest..
The mental health part started early in the year and she was seeing a therapist for depression and anxiety alone as well as her long list of childhood trauma. Off hand her therapist told her a few times she didn't know maybe just divorce me or something. I was super uncomfortable with this as it was completely outside her practicing scope and I didn't feel she should be providing relationship guidance, especially without me or the rest of the story. I felt a bit attacked and didn't even get the chance to give my perspective or account and felt that is pretty important after being here for a decade. A lot of negative points get omitted by her.
Summer 2023 she had some tough diagnosis for other chronic issues. Narcolepsy Dissociative Identity disorder Depression And a sleep disorder
I initially rejected this as I didn't want to accept these chronic and incurable conditions and insisted it has to be something else, that she's okay. It was taken as rejection of her.
Fall 2023 she reached out to a childhood ex bf a few states away and started an emotional affair. They kept in infrequent contact over the years and nothing ever came of it before. He has been unable to move past her or have meaningful relationships in 13 years. At first he pushed her away and rejected it, but after a month by Nov it was a thing. Texting saying I shouldn't worried because they dated before, but he ended up coming out as gay, calls in private, staying later after work. I gave it the benefit of the doubt but got burned. I found out in December the second time she wanted a private call in the car, and I checked her phone.
We started marriage counseling in Jan and I started my own therapy search as well as a condition of hers. She agreed to no longer contact the boy showed me the sent message ending it and blocked him. By Feb I found him listed in her phone as Saraa and found deleted texts and calls. In therapy she wanted to keep him as a friend and only friend and I tried this. She asked if a PO box would be okay for a birthday present, and I said no. That it crossed a line. It was also super close to Valentine's day. Next therapy I couldn't handle the anxiety and feeling physically ill when she used her phone, and we went through Jan again break off block etc.
In Feb the therapist recommended a separate space for conflict as we work on things. That too much conflict triggered her dissociative identity disorder. It was either a hotel as needed or a rv/camper. My wife was set on a camper and the only way to get a newer one was to add my credit/income to hers for a loan and I was uncomfortable on a $20k purchase. She assured me the intent of the camper was working on us and not separating/divorcing. She brought up me not having chores completely done all the time and I poured myself into it if that was making her unhappy over the years.
During this time in March I found out she got the secret PO box and had yet again resumed texting entirely deleting her logs. She had valentines gifts. birthday gifts, long distance electronic bracelets, and had an easter basket coming. Everything was put together into a box to be gotten rid of. That effort I had for chores and making everything spotless kind of died. Like there was that recognition that that obviously wasn't the problem. We lived completely separately for a few weeks until she could make a choice. We split our son and had almost zero interaction. Eventually she chose and I saw a notebook she used once in December. Basically she has started outlining a story envisioning herself as the lead character in once of her romantic fantasies and cast me and the other man as competing love interests
April and early may there was nothing. We did therapy and tackled our issues slowly. Together. Our future plans: college vs baby and the ticking clock of fertility and ifs after chemo. Etc
Last week she was going out for lilac picking and didn't text me for 2 hours and said she was at the beach. Later she showed me something in her email and I saw discord emails about a pw change and login. One bad gut feeling later and the next morning I see she deleted the discord emails and check our phone plan and her phone and see missing texts. I put in a phone record request for recent texts and text/call logs. She woke up and I said it did it and she said I was disgusting. Then admitted I was right.
She says after breaking it off she was worried he would hurt himself and just wanted to be sure he was okay and admitted to 3 texts and the discord call which i verified. Said that he was in therapy for his issues. She said she didn't want to bring it up to me because I would make it a fight and she thought she could just get away with a few texts to make sure. That she felt responsible for how much he had been hurt too.
So I did what I do with extreme anxiety and checked her work bag. I found an old journal they shared Jan to mid-march. Kind of confirmed again what was going on. Also revealed she lied to me about the trailer, or him? She couldn't get it without me and told him it was to work on separating from me easier. Yeah I kept pics in case this goes downhill because yeah, I'll gun for EVERYTHING. I'm sure that being tricked into signing a $20k contract under false pretenses for her personal benefit, secret po boxes, lying to our therapist repeatedly, secret texts, expecting gifts from the other man, career over spending time with family and a serious personality disorder on top of narcolepsy making a job hard to keep down wont do her favors at divorce/custody hearings.
So its all fresh for me again. I already have extreme anxiety and the autism doesn't help with reading/understanding people the best, although my gut intuition and pattern recognition are catching stuff fine.
WHERE I THINK I AM
Looking back, I can see that the personality disorder and narcolepsy are apparent. Dream delusion and memory issues from the narcolepsy make separating dream from reality hard as well as just recalling what happened. So whether not the "not feeling like reality is real" was a dream delusion or a full-blown dissociative episode... I can also see that messaging him was a "new" personality state. Maybe it's a manifestation of the trauma of nearly dying from cancer, maybe it's a fragment of her young identity that was created to survive her traumatic childhood resurfacing after nearly dying. But her interests and perspective massively shifted at that time and there was a clear separation between her with me and her with him. It was like this regression back to 15. Like she was molding an identity to fit his desires and interests. She took up tarot and witchy books, different music, painting, rockhounding (my interest), dried bouquets, dyed her hair and got multiple piercings. Even getting caught there was that click in her whole demeanor.
I can see how her friend may have jaded her towards me by all the shit she talked about HER husband. I can see that throwing herself into fantasy smut to cope flooded her with portrayals of unrealistic romance. That she progressed that by using an AI smut bot to hold those conversations with. Then she directly tried to process her own reality through the lens of those novels in that journal.
This "relationship" was "I love you, we can be together in 10 years". He wasn't going to leave his cushy job. Or his state. He didn't want to be a stepdad. He didn't want to support her career or have any involvement in it. She couldn't leave my state. Never saw illicit photos. No discussion of sex. It was like exactly what you think some lovestruck preteens would come up with. Like just a fantasy. No talk of bills or finances. Of moving. Of any substantial tangible entanglement.
Somehow that's easier to handle
I love her and don't want to leave her. But i desperately think she needs serious help and have told her I want her to do therapy 2x a month (on top of marriage therapy 2x).
I also think if a secret or deleted text happens again, I've got to take off the kid gloves and fight for it all. Cause well showing up at the dude's door would end in prison.
I'm sure this happening right as I fully got over last time and took a trust leap of faith on a "gay" friend that burned me will make it harder. I get the last few years have been garbage luck and I get almost dying can have profound affects though. She had been utterly loyal for 5 years (believe me I checked as we agreed to ie open book). Tying to see this with an open mind.
I get my exact expectations are muddy and part of this is just putting it into words to process for me, but I value if someone has any good input

Okay. I need some serious advice. My partner and I have been together for over 10yrs. We have 2 beautiful children together, 8yrs and a 1yr old.
For reference….I was raised in an very religious Roman Catholic family(I am the 2nd oldest of 7 kids). I went to a Catholic elementary and high school, went to church every week, and got all the sacraments that a kid would go through. It wasn’t until the end of high school that my mind really changed about my religion. There was QUITE a few things that I just didn’t agree with and I started to distance myself from the church. I no longer consider myself catholic and no longer go to church or have raised my children Catholic. Although there are soooo many things I find absolutely absurd and appalling about the Catholic Church, I do recognize that my parents are still Catholic and just as they don’t question my choice to leave the church-I don’t question them staying within the church. I should mention-pretty much all of my siblings(except for the 2 youngest) have left the church as well. Regardless of those differences I love my family and we are all outrageously close, and my mom and dad along with my 6 other siblings are considered my closes friends and we spend most weekends hanging out. They are amazing grandparents to my kids and some of the most supportive and kind people I know.
Now. Here’s where things getting sticky. My partner has very….VERY, strong feelings about the Catholic Church. He considers it a cult filled with horrible child abuse. I don’t disagree that their is some seriously fucked up things happening within the church-and as I’ve said, there’s a reason why I left the church…but I just don’t talk about religion with my parents and I choose to just not let that effect my relationship with them. My partner is not so much that way.
So here’s what happened..My youngest brother is in grade 11(very big age gap between us). He is the sweetest kid you’ll ever meet and is very mature and overall a very kind kid. My oldest son and him have always been very close, less of a uncle-nephew relationship and more of a brother relationship. One day the 2 of them were playing at the park and not sure how the topic got brought up, but suddenly they were talking about heaven and hell. My son is a very inquisitive 8 year old and then started asking questions to my brother about heaven. I wasn’t there….so it’s hard to gather how the conversation went, but my son ended up saying to me and my partner “I want to get baptized so I can go to heaven, because that’s the only way I can go to heaven.”
I was quite upset about this, but truthfully I didn’t think for a second my brother said it to him exactly like that-or meant any harm by it-he was just a 16yr old who didn’t know how to answer a very deep question, and probably did a poor job of handling the situation…(he’s a kid after all) I explained to my son that that was not true and that his uncle was religious and that’s just what HE believed.
Now to say my partner was upset is an understatement….he was livid and started saying some extremely harsh things about people within the Catholic Church(in front of our son). Saying things like “you have to watch out for priest”, “they’re a cult”. I got mad at my partner and told him to cool off, and said that we should have an open conversation with our son about our differences with the Catholic Church-but that I didn’t feel the way he was handling it was appropriate, and came off extremely hateful and not at all a good way to have a conversation with an 8yr old. Not to mention our son knows some of my family is Catholic and I felt he was almost telling our son that his grandparents were bad people.
I ended up talking to my brother about the situation, he felt so bad and was so mature about it and apologized profusely for not handling the situation well and for putting certain ideologies in his head. He explained the whole situation to me and honestly, it was just a stupid mistake on his part and now he knows to just tell my son to talk to me if he brings up something to do with heaven or hell or religion. End of story, right?
NOPE. I should quickly mention that my partner and my youngest brother are actually extremely close. He’s known my brother since he was 5 yrs old and truly looks at him as a little brother. I’ve always loved how close they are. So, after I told my partner that I talked to my brother about the situation and how he maturely handled it-my partner says, “I’m not even mad at him….I’m mad at your parents because they’re Catholic and they’re the ones who have put all these ideas in your brothers head”. So now my partner is beyond pissed at my parents…treats them poorly and doesn’t come to family gatherings….
This is all extremely hard for me…my family has always treated my partner so well, and loved him like their own. I’m mad at my partner for being so hateful, but I’m trying to always be understanding of his frustration. I don’t like choosing between the two-but truthfully I think my partner is 100% out of line and needs to take a step back. The way he talks is so cruel and hateful and regardless if I don’t like the Catholic Church all that much-I don’t believe that speaking about someone else’s religion the way he does is kind.
I’m honestly so thrown off by his behaviour and feel like we won’t ever get past this.
Sorry for the long story…Any advice would be amazing.

Hi. So my (F17) family is very Christian and conservative. Church twice a week, Bible studies, typical family roles, purity rings, all that.
I’ve been dating my boyfriend Jay (M16) for almost two years. My parents hated him at first, but they tolerate him now. He dresses punk, has piercings, and is an atheist. The ONLY reason my parents are okay with him now is because we made up a lie that Jay wants to be a Christian and that I’ve been teaching him a lot and we read the Bible together, etc. He comes to church with us often. He doesn’t believe in it and honestly I don’t know if I even do at this point. But that’s another story.
Other reasons why my parents hate him is because his parents are “trashy” (poor) and he “smells like a sinner” (he smells like cigarettes because of his parents constantly smoking in their house, he’s actually super insecure about it.) I don’t think it’s fair at all. It’s not his fault.
Hes also never does drugs/smokes/drinks but they’re so convinced he does. Like whenever I come home from hanging out with him they’ll “check and make sure” I’m not high/drunk.
Anyways. Yesterday he was spending the night at my house. My door doesn’t have a lock on it, so we always just wait til everyone is asleep to quietly have sex. It’s never failed us before so I thought we were okay. Nope. About 10 mins in my mom swings open the door. All 3 of us were fucking horrified. She goes to get my dad, we quickly put on our clothes. They start yelling at us. Saying i was disgusting and how they should’ve never let Jay come and “corrupt me” and how “they were ignoring signs from god to get him away” I was wearing my purity ring, they made sure to bring that up about 50 times. They said I disappointed them and God and that I’m not going to be “full of his crack babies” which just made me feel disgusting. The way they were describing everything made me feel so. Disgusting.
They made Jay walk home alone. They went through my phone and prayed with me saying I’d work on this and I’d go back to being a pure girl.
I’m so humiliated. Today they said they were gonna put me in “weekly Christian counseling” (whatever that is) I saw Jay in class and he looked so sad. I just wanted to hold him. I talked to him and he also said he feels humiliated. I feel so guilty and disgusting. All their insults got to me so much. I hate that they did but they did.

Hi. So my (F17) family is very Christian and conservative. Church twice a week, Bible studies, typical family roles, purity rings, all that.
I’ve been dating my boyfriend Jay (M16) for almost two years. My parents hated him at first, but they tolerate him now. He dresses punk, has piercings, and is an atheist. The ONLY reason my parents are okay with him now is because we made up a lie that Jay wants to be a Christian and that I’ve been teaching him a lot and we read the Bible together, etc. He comes to church with us often. He doesn’t believe in it and honestly I don’t know if I even do at this point. But that’s another story.
Other reasons why my parents hate him is because his parents are “trashy” (poor) and he “smells like a sinner” (he smells like cigarettes because of his parents constantly smoking in their house, he’s actually super insecure about it.) I don’t think it’s fair at all. It’s not his fault.
Hes also never does drugs/smokes/drinks but they’re so convinced he does. Like whenever I come home from hanging out with him they’ll “check and make sure” I’m not high/drunk.
Anyways. Yesterday he was spending the night at my house. My door doesn’t have a lock on it, so we always just wait til everyone is asleep to quietly have sex. It’s never failed us before so I thought we were okay. Nope. About 10 mins in my mom swings open the door. All 3 of us were fucking horrified. She goes to get my dad, we quickly put on our clothes. They start yelling at us. Saying i was disgusting and how they should’ve never let Jay come and “corrupt me” and how “they were ignoring signs from god to get him away” I was wearing my purity ring, they made sure to bring that up about 50 times. They said I disappointed them and God and that I’m not going to be “full of his crack babies” which just made me feel disgusting. The way they were describing everything made me feel so. Disgusting.
They made Jay walk home alone. They went through my phone and prayed with me saying I’d work on this and I’d go back to being a pure girl.
I’m so humiliated. Today they said they were gonna put me in “weekly Christian counseling” (whatever that is) I saw Jay in class and he looked so sad. I just wanted to hold him. I talked to him and he also said he feels humiliated. I feel so guilty and disgusting. All their insults got to me so much. I hate that they did but they did.

This happened almost 25 years ago, before the age of smartphones that could look up an answer in a few minutes, and besides, there is nothing that can be looked up, I have tried to in later years.
My new wife belonged to a Spiritualist church in Swampscott MA when we met. Part of the weekly services were readings from a psychic of members of the audience.
The church was having a fair one Saturday, to help raise money for a new roof for the building. One of the events was a opportunity to have a personal reading done, so I signed up and had my reading a few minutes later.
I barely knew the woman who was doing the reading, only briefly having met her once. I doubt that she even knew my last name (It is Sicilian, different to spell, pronounce and has many vowels) but may have seen it on the sign up sheet.
So Joanne, the psychic proceeds to tell me that she had a "older woman's spirit" there who was "like a grandmother, or aunt" I am trying to figure out who it is when Joanne says that she is definitely an aunt, but an old one, like a great aunt.
The spirit then identifies itself as one of my Sicilian grandmother's six sisters. I had met four of them but I never met, or knew anything about, including their names, of the other two sisters.
So the spirit says through Joanne (and I kid you not) "of all of the sisters, I was the least rude"
Well, I had no idea which one it was. My grandmother took no shit from anyone, ever, and could often come across as rude.
So the spirit tries again and said that "of all of the sisters, I had the worst health" This was no help, I still had no idea who it was.
Then Joanne said "I am getting a name now. It is something like Pia or Pina or Nina" Unfortunately I still didn't know who it was.
Finally, the spirit stops trying to identify itself and just gives me a message that I can't even remember. Lol.
That night I called my father and said "Dad, I am going to ask you a couple of questions and I will explain later what they are about"
I asked him "Of all of grandma's sisters, which one is was the least rude?" He hems and haws some and then says "probably aunt Phyllis" (one of the aunts that I knew)
I then asked him "of all of the sisters, which one had the worst health?"
Without missing a beat, he said "aunt Pina" I didn't even know that I had an aunt Pina. Her full name was Josepina and only members of the family called her Pina.
Needless to say, this was a bit shocking to me. I have had other readings before and I have received messages from other relatives who had passed on, but I never heard anything so specific, personal and verifiable before.
It is almost 25 years later and it still gives me goosebumps every time tell the story, including just now.
Be well everyone. There is more to life than our lives on earth.

I've seen discussions on this topic on posts about the colony crises, with some saying the player is like Sindrian Diktat levels of one system influence, while others say its less or more. Going by the crises, I think these are the intended resolutions and therefore feats
Persian League: Alex likely didn't intend for people to solo the entire thing, so the canon approach would likely be to strike at the logistics fleets and make them go away
Luddic Church: Fleet repelled by either SF and surrounding fleets with player fleet assistance, meaning the player faction withstands the bullying
Hegemony: This one's a bit different, going for the full optimal resolution (fighting off 3 waves of fleets) can be considered as both having faction fleet support and no support as it is incentivized to stop the fleets before they reach the system. Still, the fleets would be a great enough blow to the hegemony to be pretty significant
Tri-Tachyon: Resolving this Crisis means either maintaining complete control of the colony system (killing a shitload of commerce raider) or dealing great damage to core world planets.
Pirates: This one proves the MC is well versed in Lober Smuggling

So my boyfriend invited me to come with him and the soccer fanclub on a day trip (leaving 10am, home by 1am) to watch the team play in Seattle. It's free and they have some spare tickets, but I'm under 19 (18F) so I need to sign a waiver from my parents. We're from Canada. It's a recognized fanclub of the soccer organization, and its all funded by them. Except for food lol.
I ask my mom and dad nicely if they can sign it, my dad is chilling. But my mom is not comfortable with the fact I'm going into another country. She's worried something may happen to me , and I'll be home quite late. She's HELLA religious, and( traditionalFilipino mom)to be honest I'm not. Idk, I'm figuring it out but it's a quite traditional Christian church.
I get my father to sign it since he's okay with it and excited for me. Hes not religious but jokes that "is Lord going to be with her!?" My mom just leaves the living room going like " she never sets aside time for God!" And locks herself in her room. Whenever she gets upset with something I do she'll give me the silent treatment.
She usually keeps our passports and I'm worried she would not give it to me at all cause I didn't "obey her". I was talking to my boyfriend about it and he sent me the law about how it is a crime to keep/conceal ones travel document.
She starts sending me texts "ur Dad consented to it I m saying I m out of the picture cause what you did is an outright act of disobedience of my will....yeah ur 18 and can go anywhere u want..abd whatever I say is garbage! Shame ur telling me about crime stuff...what about disobeying God s law? It s a crime more than a crime! "
I didn't realize, and she actually gave me back my passport, threw it on my bed. Didn't realize because I was in the kitchen. Apologized for making an assumption about a crime but, honestly. 😒😒😒
It feels like she is pulling the "God card" into making me feel bad for going to travel. I'm like 18, I have a part time job. I just passed and finished my 2 semesters in college. I'd like to travel more this summer and explore beyond my hometown.
I know parents aren't always going to agree with everything you do, but this is daunting. Like okay if I want to do something of my own, in this case traveling, she's going to make me feel bad about it? Even worse saying I'm "disobeying God" 🤣😭 Since I do live under her house, I have no choice to go with her to church. I've been going consistently, so I don't get why she's getting upset over a day trip.
Anyways, she's ignoring me full out. Silent treatment as always. I appreciate if you read this far, don't know what to do at this point. Part of me feels guilty for doing what i want, but I'm also tryna embrace it and not let her disapproval get over me. Not sure what to do and how long she's going to be acting like this around me. It's so annoying and makes me feel like she doesn't care about me because I chose something for myself.

The rift between them has caused a lot of tension in my family and now my mom wants to be in the life of her newborn grandson but refuses to address or try to mend things with my wife.
Little history: I probably introduced them too quickly. My grandmother was in town in south Florida about to move here from Illinois for a retirement community. My wife, girlfriend at the time, came with cookies or some form of baked goods like she usually does when visiting someone as a sign of affection and respect. Where it went wrong from here I have no idea. I suppose the initial crack was when wife scheduled a skitrip for her and I to have as a 1 year of dating anniversary present. We are not rich, this is a huge gift that made sense to her since I refused to let her pay rent. Our combines salaries are barely over 120k. So wife calls mom 6 months in advance because she is a planner for the sole purpose of asking my mom to watch one of our four dogs. Wife has already paid in full for the trip. Yet Mom decides it is a great idea to instead use the opportunity to hop on and take a family trip because it is the last time the family will have for a family vacation - I am the oldest of two boys and two stepsisters, my mom married the guy she left my father for who has twin girls of his own that were in the womb during the infidelity. Anyway mom completely takes over and decides to make our one year gift a family vacation, so she books tickets for a hotel nearby. Wife is bold but at the time not bold enough to stop my mom in her tracks for overstepping a boundary. At this time she still respected my mother and kind of let herself get steamrolled.
Probably skippable Family history: Now I have always had issues with my mother, resentment for leaving my father for my stepdad behind my own fathers back and constantly trying to keep brother and I from seeing “Disneyland dad who doesn’t do any of the work but gets all the fun.” my mother was very strict growing up, always bringing us to church and making my father feel guilty for not bringing brother and I on his weekend. So mom marries stepdad age 11, divorces him around 13 after asking me advice for her relationship and i encourage her to move out. Then remarries him and moves us back into his house age 15. Here I begin rebellion and normal teeenager stuff but stepdad won’t butt in because he isn’t my “biological father” so would have my mom intervene brother and i from behind the scenes. For example, I am young and messing around on the piano because music is important and I never had any formal training and mom comes in to tell me stepdad “wants to know when the concert is going to end because it is a little annoying.” Anyway, they have me prescribed adderall at 16 and in the parking lot holding my first prescription I am told that they would like me to move out and in with my father, who had chased us every time mom and stepdad moved several miles away (5 moves from age 5-15 all in one county). Anyway, brother and I are recovering alcoholics with (my) slipups triggered from interactions or visiting my mom, which mom claims is genetics from my father alone and has nothing to do with her. Maternal grandfather, mother, and I have some nasty temper problems which certainly are exacerbated by drinking (at least mine and moms).
Skitrip revelations: Wife and I are on the way to brothers graduation in Chicago, and wife has yet to reveal to me that my mother has taken over her massive investment of a couples ski vacation and it will now be a family vacation for mom, stepdad, brother, two stepsisters who are all getting out of gradschool. On the way to the airport I am told the news by future wife of my one year surprise. So I get upset and call my mom to call it off. She obliges my request and now holds resentment against me and now wife for “ruining her last family vacation.” Fine, whatever. Mother never says a word about it for months until we are out for a distant family members birthday dinner and at a table of about 8-10 people that are having a group conversation and gets real close to my wife’s ear and tells her privately along the lines of “you deprived our family of our last family vacation.” During this time my wife is frantically tapping my leg under the table because my mom can get a little aggressive. My mom saw this and later (privately to me) mocked her for doing it to my leg under the table.
Christmas blessings: Closer to Christmas maybe 2/3 weeks later we went to go see my mom and my mom had a couple drinks in her (not an alcoholic like brother and I just very sensitive to a couple glasses of wine and occasionally some hidden sips of wine or something) and invites my wife to Christmas church and out to dinner after because the family needs photos for a Christmas card and future wife “will be the photographer for it.” Now this can easily be a nothing comment but given the way my mom had been making future wife feel, it was taken as an insult. So wife declined church and showed up to family dinner just in time for photography session to be over.
The distance: Then mom moves to a fancy house up the coast and invites us up to visit. At first it is ok to bring the 4 dogs then the day before she says they will not have dogs at the house and we can easily find a sitter. 2 Dogs don’t get along, they need to be separated always as there has been two attacks on one from the other, so we can’t trust someone to come to the house and keep them separate and we won’t board 4 dogs it’s too expensive for us. Anyway we go back and forth being invited with the dogs then they retract the offer and say pick one dog to bring and leave the others and it’s just annoying, so we say forget it and don’t go. But my brother becomes engaged and decides to throw his engagement party at my mom’s new place near the beach. Great. First all the dogs are welcome, then day before they say it is too chaotic and she will pay for a small hotel room for one night for future wife and her dogs and my one (the attack dog) can stay in a crate at the house with me but I may not leave the dog to stay with her. And no reasonable cheap hotel in the area is going to accommodate 4 dogs. Anyway wife is stressed but feels obligated to come because I am the best man and I stay at the house while she checks her dogs into the hotel. Wife had made a cheesecake and brought it up in a separate car from me, 4 hour drive by the way, and night of.. my mom says no desserts for engagement party dinner, the dessert is themed or some crazy stuff. Wife shows up to dinner a little later and very flustered because of the situation plus I had relapsed on a bottle of whiskey a couple days prior to seeing my mom. Related, I don’t know. Anyway. Mom has had a couple drinks and future wife and I are talking about having children and religion comes up. Mom asks what we were thinking of doing about baptism or not and I jokingly said (guiltily to get on my moms nerves a bit) that he would have a bris and would love it if she would come to the bar mitzvah. now my wife’s mom was forced to convert from Catholicism to Judaism for her own mother in laws acceptance for a failed marriage so wife is not religious, but it hurt my wife and reasonably so when my mom replied “oh, son, I raised you better than that.” Still no acknowlegement of fault from that comment and mom thinks wife is “overly sensitive, dramatic, and childish” for wanting an apology for it.
Weddings: Future wife becomes current wife. We had gotten engaged on our next anniversary trip she planned for us. I proposed on our bike and barge through tulip season in holland with our feet in the water of the North Sea after a picnic in the dunes. her family business manufactures photo albums for professional photographers, so aside from our families all being divorced, estranged, difficult, and us trying to save money, we did not have a wedding, we just did the paperwork within a month of the proposal. I had already decided to have a baby with her before the trip so we were trying. 2 weeks before brothers wedding in Tennessee we become pregnant, so we break news immediately as to not steal limelight from brothers expensive wedding. Mom says she will cover cost of rental car so we can save money. Ok great. She books the tiny car and we pack it and head up the Smokey mountains to the cabins we are staying at. Two cabins for grooms family, one for his mother and one for his father, ten paces from each other: they havnt spoken but twice im since divorce in 1995 but through lawyers. Grandmother, mother, stepdad, 2 stepsisters and one boyfriend stayed in mom’s side. Wife and I stay at father’s side cabin with just his wife. His Wife’s 3 daughters and family’s stayed a town away down the mountain among extended family. Anyway, beautiful wedding takes place. My wife is sent into town to collect flowers and run errands for my mom which she happily obliged to since she is a solitary person and did not want wedding day drama. Day after, we are loading our rental sedan with our bags. Mom and grandma need a ride to the airport and our flight is before theirs so they will drop off the car for us 4 hours or so after we go to the airport 5 hours from current time. We’re loading the car. Stepcousin passed out in mother’s cabin night before and needed a ride. Disorganized brunch for 20 people is trying to be made. Father’s wife’s daughter books a reservation for 10 people which include her family, her sisters, me, my wife, dad, and their mom. My stepdad had left for home at this point as he had taken his own suv instead of flying with my mom and 90 year old grandma. So mom is trying to pack grandma in the car with bags and my wife and stepcousin. At this point mother asks stepmother if she and grandma are on reservation for the brunch. Stepmom says no they are not, she wasn’t sure of their plans. Mom says under her breath “fucking assholes, so typical,” and she goes into a bit of a rage to which my stepmom says here “it’s ok I will call and add you two it’s no big deal.” So we continue packing the car and realize we won’t all fit. So my wife tells my stepcousin to go ride with my father to the restaurant 10 minutes away we will meet you there. Mom says to wife, “no you go with the father.” Wife says “no I am going to ride with my husband” mom gets close to her face with her finger and says “this is my car, you can fucking Uber!” Wife is 6 weeks pregnant at this point and it all escalated from here. wife and mother start yelling at each other swearing at each other and we get into the car, mom behind wife who was in shotgun. 2 occasions on the trip I had to stop the car because mom had taken off her seatbelt to stand over the seat and scream in my wife’s face with so much vigor that spit came on to her face multiple times. I’m trying to tell them both to behave and mom sit down shut the f up. Mom is telling wife to get the f out of the car and find a ride, she has no right to speak because she’s “new here” (dating and living together for 3 years at this point). The following brunch she apologized in a crowd with a hushed voice at a table of 20 people trying to have a group conversation again privately to my wife “I’m sorry you get so upset” and my wife told her “that is not an apology.” The following several hours in the car with grandma and stepcousin and wife were some of the most uncomfortable moments of my life. At a gas station I pulled my mom aside and said I need ther to give a huge apology, that it was so nasty and inappropriate, my brother and I are used to abusive language and aggressive behavior but to my pregnant wife and any other human being it is disgusting and unacceptable. Sitting in the car was quiet for many hours until we got to the airport. No speaking about what happened just mom happy go lucky about Tennessee and Dollywood and wife and I in shock, cousin still half in the bag from a fun wedding, grandma 90 years old probably confused about what happened.
The family groupchat: Im waiting on an apology from my mother to my wife who is extremely hurt and expressed to my mom loads of time she needs to reach out and apologize. We’re not talking until she will do so. It is bugging me and keeping me up at night. My appendix flares up and I am admitted to the hospital with emergency appendectomy. Still pregnant Wife suggests I reach out to mom to let her know what’s going on. So I text mom I’m at the hospital and will have surgery. I send a pic or something that on my end says hasn’t gone through. Mom group texts our family group with stepdad, his daughters, brother and his wife, and grandma that I am in the hospital and attaches the pic I sent of me in there. Then she continues to rave about the success of her startup company and how they got FDA approved clinical trials finally completed or some pivotal moment that made the text about her. Wife and I are in a hospital so the picture comes up on moms end as unable to have been sent. Mom assumes that my wife has blocked her phone, so mom removes my wife from the chat. Wife is rushing home to take care of the dogs at this point and is not alerted on her phone, but on everyone else’s phone it clearly reads “(mom) has removed (wife) from the chat.” Immediately I text my mom and basically say how dare you do that to her she is the one who insisted I let you know out of respect and mom responds with blah blah she did this she did that I will not have it. So I go back to the family chat and remove mother. At this point I let everyone in the chat know what my mother has done and how she refuses to take responsibility for how she made my wife feel, address her feelings, apologize or do anything at all to reach out about the wedding incident or even inquire about the wellbeing of the pregnancy for her first grandchild. Stepdad finally steps in and tells me “enough.” Grandma says “shame on you.” I am dumbfounded. This is a hush hush family that hates to have anything out in the open and likes to maintain a picture perfect image. For examples; 1) I and wife were on the family Christmas card of a photo taken at the wedding that the whole world received except for wife and I. 2)brothers alcoholism was to remain hidden from the family as was his rehab treatment and how it affected his career. Now understand that they like to keep things quiet but that is not how I want to handle my problems, these things trigger alcohol use and violent outbursts on my part that I no longer wish to live through. Now appendectomy’s are pretty simple so I recovered quickly (it don’t rupture we just took it out). But during the time I was scheduled to be under anesthesia, stepdad reaches out to wife to have a chat and clear the air. Wife waits until I come to so i can be there and I hear the conversation. He claims to be here as a middleman like a business meeting to fix things once and for all. Wife and I are like wow great. He then proceeds to double down on my moms behalf that they will not be apologizing or meet any of her demands as she had already apologized as confirmed by 90yo grandma who was in the car and my mother herself. The term he used was stalemate to describe the situation. Wife and I are shocked but she has me keep quiet to show me what he will say. He proceeds to yell at her and they were screaming at each other, again steamrolling the conversation assuring us that he was down the middle yet maintains that mom has made a sufficient apology that needs to be accepted and wife needs to grow up and move on, then wishing her luck with the baby and a nice life. Next day I call stepdad to see how it went. He reassures me that he has done all he can and everything is back to normal. At this point I call him out and tell him I was conscious and explain to him what an apology is. But there is no dialogue with this guy like there is no dialogue with my mother. He proceeds to talk loudly over me like she does and basically call me a piece of shit for the amount he and mother have done for me. I speak to him first time like I never have before by calling him a hands off father and a pussy of a man who finally reaches out while he thinks I am under anesthesia to yell at my wife then pretend it’s cool, and I basically tell him he has never done a single thing for me to try and develop me into a man or nurture me as a child into an adult, but he thinks taking me on fishing trips and ski vacations are equivalent to love and nurturing growth and development just like my mom does. I reassure him that he has no right to talk about family being that he ruined his own as well as mine and couldn’t even tell my dad to his face that it was him who was sleeping with my mom behind his back when my dad came to him very upset as a friend when he got an anonymous phone tip at work one day. Then him and my mom laughed about it in court when my dad brought it up during the divorce. We ended with swearing and I felt very happy for finally giving my true feelings to him.
The birth: Months go by and nobody has said a thing. I can’t sleep at night seeing how much love I am getting from my father and his side for the baby, and my wife’s family, then thinking about how my own mother hasn’t reached out a single time. I’m dreaming about beating up my stepdad and it’s driving me mad. So weeks before the due date I reach out to my mom begging her to clear things up and apologize to my wife. Nothing. A week later i tell her how disappointed and abandoned I feel and want her in the family. Nothing. Baby comes a couple days early. Everyone is excited. Mom texts me begging for photos and to let everyone know. I tell her my brother and two stepsisters have received photos. I ask her to please reach out to wife she still needs to make amends for what’s happened between them and all she needs to do is reach out. Mom’s responses have been defensive, derisive, projecting, playing victim and referring to herself as a kicked puppy. Telling me my wife needs to apologize to her and making the conversation about mother son instead. She is beating around the bush. And she is sending me photos of my own baby that I did not send her. Her friends are congratulating me that I did not tell. Again she is pretending that everything is ok and it is not. She asked me to apologize to her husband for what I said on the phone that day. I said ok, watch this. So I sent the guy a message that was very apologetic and not passive aggressive or backhanded comments in any way. Still my mom won’t say anything.
Now: Baby is 6 days old. He is the best thing in my life and I wish my family were involved but it seems like I am living in a fantasy world where everyone can be happy together. I can be a jerk and have a terrible relationship with my mom, but I want more than anything to just feel loved enough where she can swallow her pride and make amends with my wife. Thats it. And she asked the other day to put a family group chat so everyone can be involved… for real? I know she is stressed with a high pressure job, but it seems heartless to me. She asks what big items she can get for the baby. Mom, baby is here we have everything for a couple months already. I said the biggest thing you can do is reach out and have a heart to heart with my wife so this rift can end and we can at least be cordial if you two can’t get along. I don’t think it will happen.
How do I mend this relationship between my wife and my mother?

Im sorry this is gonna be really long. I have a friend who I have texted since I first was allowed to text. She is a nice, unjudging person, and I appreciate her personality. I do a thing with my friends where I send out the time at certain parts of the day. It is like a way to know who can chat. She has always been one of the best at answering them. Now, my dilemma is this. Because of my tradition I am always texting first. And she will answer. And I ask her how she's doing, how her night went, if she ate today, how is she feeling, etc etc; but she never texts me. She never asks how I'm feeling. Never asks me how my night went, never asks about me. Which is kinda disheartening, but I thought that maybe she's one of those people who likes to talk about herself. But she doesn't talk about herself anymore either. She doesn't expand, or lead on with any of my questions. She just says something like "im boring" or "my life isnt interesting". So, naturally, I assumed she just didn't want to talk anymore. But, due to the Soundings, she knows if I don't text her. And then will text me. And if I just send the Sounding, and she answers, and I don't say anything, THEN she will ask a question. What's her deal? I pointed out how difficult it is for us to talk and she said she didn't find it difficult. I don't want to just ghost her, I see her at church all the time, but it's really aggravating to be being FORCED to try to make a conversation. What should I do? Sorry this was so long but all answers are greatly appreciated!

A while ago my mom caught me self harming, instead of her getting me the help I needed all she did was humiliate me she went up on stage at our church and told everyone, told random doctors asking if something is wrong with her. All she would say is if she’s a bad mother, ive never liked or loved her. My brothers just told me that they’ve been through worse and im just a baby. I’ve struggled with my mental health all my life and I feel like I’m stuck in a cell with no way out but death. The reason I self harm is cause as a man I wasn’t allowed to feel emotions my mother would think I’m gay or things like that cause I got mad my sister took my toy. So I led to self harm to punish my self if i felt anything. Plz anyone read this and reply if you can relate

Ever since my partner (M 25) and I (F 25) have started dating, his parents have been disrespectful to both of us. My partner and I live apart from them but whenever we would visit, they will take that opportunity to give us interventions and have long serious talks with us about what they don’t like. Recently they flew here to attend my partner’s graduation ceremony and they were staying for 5 days. My partner and I had to completely clear our schedules for that week to spend time with them. Throughout the week, I was not only disrespected by his parents, my presence was basically not acknowledged. His mother would talk over me and only speak to his son even though I was right there in front of her. Especially meal times when she would go “What do you want to eat son, order whatever you want to eat.”. Or when we would go shopping, she would go up to my partner and say “Pick whatever you want, I’ll buy it for you.”. The worst part of it all is at the end of the day when we would part ways. She would hug her son and say goodbye and not say a word to me. Only when I say bye to her first, she would merely look back while walking away and utter softly “bye”. That’s not it. His parents are somewhat devoted Christians while I’m not religious. My partner is nowhere as devoted but still a Christian. His mom would take the opportunity to bring religion up whenever she could. In a condescending tone she would ask “So how many times did you visit the church?”. “So are you going to go?” This has always been a difficult and uncomfortable topic for me, even though I do go with my partner at times. His dad on the other hand, is no different. In front of me he would act all nice but as soon as it was the end of their 5-day trip here, he went guns blazing. I’ll start with the first morning they were here. His mom went to the bathroom when we were having breakfast and he suddenly said “Just a piece of advice, do not speak to my son separately. We should be able hear everything you say and talk about so we don’t feel left out.”. Immediately I’m thinking, “Oh so I can’t even converse with my own partner normally when we’re hanging out with you guys.”. Going back to the end of the 5-day trip, he would make use of the group chat that we created during the trip to start nitpicking things and saying what he didn’t like about me during the trip. “We are your elders. Respect begets respect.”. First of all, I have been nothing but respectful to them throughout the entire trip even though they treat me otherwise. Even after all that they have said to me and how much they’ve expressed their dislike and how much they intimidate me, I will still respect them because they are my partner’s parents after all. But both his parents texted and said that I did not respect them at all. And when my partner asked him to clarify on what specific occasion did she disrespect you, he replied “Her body language...”. Maybe he was relating to my body language in which I was feeling scared and intimidated the whole trip. But if not, I had no recollection of being disrespectful. And to top things off, he is currently asking my partner to pull up all of his bank statements and telling my partner to write down all expenses for him to dictate whether I have been “leeching” off of my partner. My partner and I have always been sharing our expenses equally. So this is what we are currently dealing with. Any advice on how to deal with toxic in-laws/parents? My partner and I are being pushed to our limits. Even his own mom told him “I do not respect you.”.

I(17f) and my mother(53f) have really only had eachother. I will admit, I have luxuries like a phone, iPad, laptop, AirPods etc that she’s bought for me which I am grateful for. Since I am an inly child, and my father isn’t around I am her support system ig if you put it that way. She’s an immigrant, making me the first to go to college in the states. With that said, I’m counting down the days to finally leave for extended periods of time, and distancing myself, meaning I’m purposely looking for a college that’s over a 2-3 hr drive from where I live(she doesn’t like driving over an hour). Though I love my mother she has her qualities that seriously make me consider leaving. First, she is very narcissistic. From where she comes from, she doesn’t believe in therapy and if you seem “depressed” her first option is to tell you to go to a psych ward. Not even as a genuine answer but as a threat, like she knows what goes on there and how dehumanizing it can be and wants to make you stop feeling what you do. But when you do express your feelings she turns it into a her problem. “Why are you sad when I do everything give you” If I’m feeling down about my looks or weight it’s nothing uplifting, it’s usually “maybe if you washed your face more or ate less you wouldn’t feel that way,” or “I’m this age and my skin look better than you so I don’t know how to help you”. I’m currently struggling with my hair journey and it’s previously been damaged by heat and not proper care and she blames it on my hair styles (which are mainly just slick back buns because I don’t have much time to do much in the mornings) but when I ask for advice she goes silent. She rambles on about how perfect my hair was when she used to do it but I wanted to do “grown” hairstyles. The grown hairstyles she’s talking about is straightening my hair once for a dance and figuring out how to define my curls. The hairstyles she used to do was back when I was 9, when I wore Jo-Jo bows and barrets. Second I’m never “good enough” even when there’s no one to really compare me to. My grades are pretty high but not perfect hundreds so I’m scared if I ever get a B. I test higher than most my friends but she automatically compares them to me thinking they are the perfect poster child just if they have better skin than me. She doesn’t even know them she just “guesses” by their appearance. Third she expects me to do EVERYTHING. I understand she’s an immigrant so she might not know stuff but she doesn’t really “try”. For school in middle school to now I had to enroll myself and answer to the parent questions. I text her coworkers. If my friends parent text them a simple “thank you for letting her go to the party” or wtv I’m the one who needs to respond. At stores or businesses of some sort I have to speak for her, even if she’s perfectly capable(she knows a great amount of English it’s not like she can’t speak it well). Even for job interviews, i had to create an email to send to her boss that said she was sorry for quitting out of the blue that last week and to accept her back(I was literally 13 worrying about if we were going to have a steady income anymore)Recently she’s let some family say at our house for some time to settle into the us. They speak the native language my mom grew up with and I can maybe make basic sentences, but I can’t hold an actual conversation let alone even understand song lyrics in that language. My mom is religious so we go to church and my entire life we’ve gone to an American church that spoke English. The second those people came they complained and forced my mom to go to a church with their native language which is now 5 hours long with no youth group of the sort and doesn’t speak English at all. I’m an Outcast and I can’t talk to the others so I usually bring a book or something. When we got home one day, the people were complaining about how I don’t pay attention in church and read books instead of listening. I try to explain I can’t but all they do is make fun of the fact I can’t understand the language and how can I not know it, like I literally was never taught and just picked up on done stuff when I was younger. But the fact is instead of standing up for me it understanding my point of view, my mother sides with them and laughs at me as well. So now, a few days later I am writing this mixing up all the emotions and coming to this conclusion. I really want to know if it’s just teenage emotion and some Alternative ways I can let them out or if I genuinely have a right to feel like I do so, aita?

Guys after struggling my whole teenage and adult life I’m finally free.
It’s simple and easy to do and you’ve heard it a million times but until you understand it with all your heart, you will continue to struggle.
Believe in the Lord, repent, confess and walk with God daily.
I used to think to repent meant to turn from your sin. It doesn’t. If it was that easy, everybody would do it. Repent means to change your way of thinking. Repent means to make up your mind about your sin. You have to hate it. You have to decide that no matter what, you are going to change.
If you walk according to the spirit you will not carry out the desires of the flesh. This verse doesn’t say you might not carry out the desires of the flesh. It says you will not.
I finally started reading my bible everyday, praying everyday , going to church and I cut back drinking and started working out. I have no urges guys. I have no desire to indulge in this filth anymore. It’s gone. I pray you guys begin to understand how to break free. I know how it feels.
If you wonder if God has left you, he hasn’t. He’s made it clear he hasn’t left me .