This is a very long one. Trigger warning ⚠️
I (19f) have been in and out of long term/short term facilities since I was 12 years old. I’ve had suicide attempts and have been diagnosed with major depressive disorder. This is definitely not my first experience with a therapist. Over the years I’ve had over 6+. Not because they haven’t worked for me all the time, but because they either move onto another facility or I move onto another phase in life.
Last year I adopted a new therapist “Mere” thanks to my older sister “North”. My current Therapist “Tina” who I’ve been working with for the past 3 and a half years, switched to a facility where my insurance only covers 30 min sessions. North didn’t think that was enough for me at the time since I wasn’t doing so well mentally. The therapist she recommended worked closely with her own and offered 1hr long sessions, so I agreed wanting to try something new since my old therapist seemed to not specialize in trauma and ptsd. Kerr was highly recommended for those topics.
We started our sessions not soon after my sister offered. The first couple months were hard. Our personalities seemed to clash. Not because mine was bad, but because I was deeply depressed. I was not a joy to be around and everyone seemed annoyed with my constant melancholy. Even my therapists seemed sick of me.
Over time I learned to adapt my personality to be more palatable. My therapists loved it now that I was interacting with them and making jokes. I treated them more like friends now instead of therapists and they seemed to appreciate that. I found it funny because a lot of my issues I explained to them was faking my personality to fit into the crowd and adapt. Due to me being f a people pleaser. They didn’t see anything wrong with the change since I seemed to be getting better mentally.
I was better. I wouldn’t attribute much of my success to my therapists tho. It was nice to have someone to talk to since at the time I had no friends, but they didn’t seem to know how to handle my constant depression so I started to hide it from them. Even from myself. Over time I was able to function a lot better. I switched my sessions to only once every two weeks and I was planning on ending them all together since I was doing so well on my own and haven’t need much help in a while.
It seems that I ah e bad luck. Right when I was at my peak recovery and condition, I was raped on the first day of the new year. I spiraled back into my deep deep deep depression worse than any other relapse I had before. I survived on Benadryl and ice cream for weeks. I took the pills so I didn’t have to be awake to long. I ate only food that I liked the most (mainly unhealthily) my health declined.
My mental health was the worst of it tho. The day after the rape occurred I had a session with my newer therapist. I start telling her the details of my assault. The shock was still fresh in my brain and my memories were scrambled. I greatly blamed myself. I thought I was the weirdo.
Mere only confirmed my sentiments. Before I could fully list out the details of the night it happened she immediately started to spew accusations of my intentions that night. Saying phrases like “Well when someone is pleasuring you it’s hard to say no and there’s nothing wrong with that”
I shut up then and just agreed with her but something still didn’t sit right with me. I went on Reddit and there was mixed opinions about it. A lot of ppl validated my feelings and others thought It was my fault. After fully processing this event and fully remembering it in its entirety I can say confidently that what happened to me was rape.
The next session we had I was able to tell the full story. Mede had just said “Oh. Well you didn’t mention all this before. That’s definitely not ok”. The thing is tho, she was the one to cut me off and make assumptions instead of trying to pull out the full story. She knew I had extreme ptsd and I probably wouldn’t be able to give an in-depth detailed explanation of what happened. She still insulted me anyway and brushed me off.
I thought this to be weird but I brushed it off. When you think k you’re in the presence of a professional you don’t often question things especially if you aren’t in the mental space to do so. So ignored her.
There have been times where she’s been short with me. One time she had asked to switch a 12pm session to 5pm. When I refused she said she’d have to charge me a cancellation fee. It seemed that she just wanted to get paid for that session still and wanted to guilt me into paying. I refused and explained that she was the one who cancelled on me and she immediately backed down realizing I wouldn’t be easily pushed around. I didn’t think much of it then.
Another time. I had gone to this tattoo parlor to get my belly button pierced. I took videos and pictures of the process. She requested in our session that week to see the pictures. I agreed to send and emailed them to her in two emails. In one there was all the pictures of the parlor, the. The other had the videos of the full process. Accidentally I had added one singular picture of me. I was at school and I took a picture in the schools bathroom. There was nothing indecent about it I just accidentally pressed on that picture as I was sending the others. IT happened a lot when using your iPhone to email and I didn’t really notice.
She brought it up the next session and started to berate me for sending that singular pic out of all the obvious other intended pictures. She said it’s inappropriate to send her pictures of myself. I explained to her the accident and she seemed shocked. All she said was “oh well ok”. I don’t know why she got so triggered I’ve always kept good boundaries with her. I can’t believe she immediately started accusing me for one picture of me posing in the mirror while having a turtle neck in a jacket and everything.
Those are just a few of the shady things she’s done. Now back to current time. After I was raped. I still continued sessions with her and tried to get back on track. She wasn’t really helping. I would have extreme panic attacks on therapy video calls with her and she seemed at loss of what to do. I distanced myself from her and I started to get a little better, but then I started to have issues with some of my friends. That added onto my load of issues and started to push me to the edge.
I called my therapist the night of my attempt. I try not to call her after hours but I was in genuine crisis. I had spent the whole day being practically verbally abused by one of my friends. I was cracking slowly it surely and I reached out for help.
Otp I expressed to her how I felt betrayed by everyone around me. I asked her why everyone felt it was ok to treat me wrong whenever. Why wasn’t I able to find peace? Why I couldn’t find ppl who cared? My parents are emotionally abusive as well. That all stems into my ppl pleasing habits. I’ve let a lot of ppl take advantage of my nature because I’ve been conditioned to since birth. She knows my history and why I am the way I am. Instead of consoling me she yelled at me. “Well you knew they were bad ppl!” “If you knew they were bad ppl why are you blaming them you just need to stop hanging around bad ppl”. She then told me she had to go and hung up. She did ask me if I was safe but of course I lied. She knows I always try to see the best in ppl. I don’t see the bad till it’s too late most times. Her words stung like acid. I had been prescribed some sedatives to calm me during panic attacks. I had taken two but they weren’t helping. After that call I took the whole bottle. I didn’t want to die alone so I called my mother to stay in my room with me. Then I drifted into a deep sleep for hours into the next day’s afternoon. I had fallen asleep around 10 pm. I woke up the next day around 3pm still kicking but disordered.
I spent two weeks in a mental hospital. During that time I do t have access to my phone. I had my sister contact everyone that needed to be. Even Mere. She knew I was in there. I didn’t call her while I was there bc I was still upset at her after everything.
I was discharged but I didn’t set up a session for weeks. She emailed and called me once but I didn’t respond till I was fully settled back into my routine and okay enough to talk to her. I emailed her this
“Hallo, Sorry. I didn’t mean to ghost you. I just needed some time to get myself together. I called you just now. You are probably busy. I hope everything is doing well on your end. Sorry again. Sent from my iPhone”
I had planned to set up an appointment in the future to talk to her about everything but by the time I checked my patient portal a week or so later I had been discharged with no warning. No calm text or email.
I set up a meeting with her over the phone for 45 mins. When she first came onto the call the first thing she said was “I saw that you put our appointment for 45 mins. I changed it to 30 bc you know I did discharge you”. I thought it was pretty rude so instead of explaining everything I told her about how I didn’t have my phone in the hospital and the hospital themselves didn’t notify her because they were disorganized and were extremely unprofessional. It’s not like she wasn’t updated by my sisters anyway. When I got my phone after I got home I saw texts from her asking if I was still having a session with her. Knowing that I was in the hospital. It seemed she either didn’t care or didn’t believe I was in the hospital. In fact when she had spoken over the phone with one of my sisters she had lied to them about that night. She had told her “After I got otp with her I immediately started praying for her because I m ew something was deeply wrong” how delusional of her to say after she yelled at me and hung up.
Anyway after I explained my reasoning for going MIA she started to realize how fucked up she was and asked me how I was doing. I didn’t say much because I was done with her and she obviously didn’t intend of hearing the full story since she shortened our session. She started asking me why I didn’t want to continue therapy and seemed confused why I didn’t seem to beg her to re admit me. I told her I was done with therapy. She seemed concerned and said that she discharged me because she thought it’d be better for me to find an in person therapist. I knew it was a shitty excuse. I quickly hang up on her and don’t address anything.
I’m only processing this now because I’ve had much bigger things going on. I’m only now realizing how fucked up her behavior was. If I hadn’t spoken to her the night of my attempt I probably wouldn’t have tried to kill myself. I feel cheated out of help. I don’t feel angry at her I have to reserve that for someone more worthy of my rage. I only wished she didn’t use the fact that I would never call her out on her behavior usually. She knew my temperament and took advantage of that. I don’t think I’ll ever trust a therapist again. She victim blamed me, mocked me, berated me in my time of need, and then abandoned me on baseless assumptions that could’ve been easily cleared up if she actually listened to what my sisters and I were saying. She didn’t even say sorry when we were talking. Or express any remorse besides embarrassment for jumping to conclusions. SMH.
TLDR: My therapist berated me for trusting ppl in my life the night of my suicide attempt. Then Discharged me from her care without consulting me first. Blamed me for all her mistakes and jumped to conclusions randomly then never apologized for the baseless accusations. I am at a loss for words and at a loss for trust in therapy again.

This is a very long one.
I (19f) have been in and out of long term/short term facilities since I was 12 years old. I’ve had suicide attempts and have been diagnosed with major depressive disorder. This is definitely not my first experience with a therapist. Over the years I’ve had over 6+. Not because they haven’t worked for me all the time, but because they either move onto another facility or I move onto another phase in life.
Last year I adopted a new therapist “Mere” thanks to my older sister “North”. My current Therapist “Tina” who I’ve been working with for the past 3 and a half years, switched to a facility where my insurance only covers 30 min sessions. North didn’t think that was enough for me at the time since I wasn’t doing so well mentally. The therapist she recommended worked closely with her own and offered 1hr long sessions, so I agreed wanting to try something new since my old therapist seemed to not specialize in trauma and ptsd. Kerr was highly recommended for those topics.
We started our sessions not soon after my sister offered. The first couple months were hard. Our personalities seemed to clash. Not because mine was bad, but because I was deeply depressed. I was not a joy to be around and everyone seemed annoyed with my constant melancholy. Even my therapists seemed sick of me.
Over time I learned to adapt my personality to be more palatable. My therapists loved it now that I was interacting with them and making jokes. I treated them more like friends now instead of therapists and they seemed to appreciate that. I found it funny because a lot of my issues I explained to them was faking my personality to fit into the crowd and adapt. Due to me being f a people pleaser. They didn’t see anything wrong with the change since I seemed to be getting better mentally.
I was better. I wouldn’t attribute much of my success to my therapists tho. It was nice to have someone to talk to since at the time I had no friends, but they didn’t seem to know how to handle my constant depression so I started to hide it from them. Even from myself. Over time I was able to function a lot better. I switched my sessions to only once every two weeks and I was planning on ending them all together since I was doing so well on my own and haven’t need much help in a while.
It seems that I ah e bad luck. Right when I was at my peak recovery and condition, I was raped on the first day of the new year. I spiraled back into my deep deep deep depression worse than any other relapse I had before. I survived on Benadryl and ice cream for weeks. I took the pills so I didn’t have to be awake to long. I ate only food that I liked the most (mainly unhealthily) my health declined.
My mental health was the worst of it tho. The day after the rape occurred I had a session with my newer therapist. I start telling her the details of my assault. The shock was still fresh in my brain and my memories were scrambled. I greatly blamed myself. I thought I was the weirdo.
Mere only confirmed my sentiments. Before I could fully list out the details of the night it happened she immediately started to spew accusations of my intentions that night. Saying phrases like “Well when someone is pleasuring you it’s hard to say no and there’s nothing wrong with that”
I shut up then and just agreed with her but something still didn’t sit right with me. I went on Reddit and there was mixed opinions about it. A lot of ppl validated my feelings and others thought It was my fault. After fully processing this event and fully remembering it in its entirety I can say confidently that what happened to me was rape.
The next session we had I was able to tell the full story. Mede had just said “Oh. Well you didn’t mention all this before. That’s definitely not ok”. The thing is tho, she was the one to cut me off and make assumptions instead of trying to pull out the full story. She knew I had extreme ptsd and I probably wouldn’t be able to give an in-depth detailed explanation of what happened. She still insulted me anyway and brushed me off.
I thought this to be weird but I brushed it off. When you think k you’re in the presence of a professional you don’t often question things especially if you aren’t in the mental space to do so. So ignored her.
There have been times where she’s been short with me. One time she had asked to switch a 12pm session to 5pm. When I refused she said she’d have to charge me a cancellation fee. It seemed that she just wanted to get paid for that session still and wanted to guilt me into paying. I refused and explained that she was the one who cancelled on me and she immediately backed down realizing I wouldn’t be easily pushed around. I didn’t think much of it then.
Another time. I had gone to this tattoo parlor to get my belly button pierced. I took videos and pictures of the process. She requested in our session that week to see the pictures. I agreed to send and emailed them to her in two emails. In one there was all the pictures of the parlor, the. The other had the videos of the full process. Accidentally I had added one singular picture of me. I was at school and I took a picture in the schools bathroom. There was nothing indecent about it I just accidentally pressed on that picture as I was sending the others. IT happened a lot when using your iPhone to email and I didn’t really notice.
She brought it up the next session and started to berate me for sending that singular pic out of all the obvious other intended pictures. She said it’s inappropriate to send her pictures of myself. I explained to her the accident and she seemed shocked. All she said was “oh well ok”. I don’t know why she got so triggered I’ve always kept good boundaries with her. I can’t believe she immediately started accusing me for one picture of me posing in the mirror while having a turtle neck in a jacket and everything.
Those are just a few of the shady things she’s done. Now back to current time. After I was raped. I still continued sessions with her and tried to get back on track. She wasn’t really helping. I would have extreme panic attacks on therapy video calls with her and she seemed at loss of what to do. I distanced myself from her and I started to get a little better, but then I started to have issues with some of my friends. That added onto my load of issues and started to push me to the edge.
I called my therapist the night of my attempt. I try not to call her after hours but I was in genuine crisis. I had spent the whole day being practically verbally abused by one of my friends. I was cracking slowly it surely and I reached out for help.
Otp I expressed to her how I felt betrayed by everyone around me. I asked her why everyone felt it was ok to treat me wrong whenever. Why wasn’t I able to find peace? Why I couldn’t find ppl who cared? My parents are emotionally abusive as well. That all stems into my ppl pleasing habits. I’ve let a lot of ppl take advantage of my nature because I’ve been conditioned to since birth. She knows my history and why I am the way I am. Instead of consoling me she yelled at me. “Well you knew they were bad ppl!” “If you knew they were bad ppl why are you blaming them you just need to stop hanging around bad ppl”. She then told me she had to go and hung up. She did ask me if I was safe but of course I lied. She knows I always try to see the best in ppl. I don’t see the bad till it’s too late most times. Her words stung like acid. I had been prescribed some sedatives to calm me during panic attacks. I had taken two but they weren’t helping. After that call I took the whole bottle. I didn’t want to die alone so I called my mother to stay in my room with me. Then I drifted into a deep sleep for hours into the next day’s afternoon. I had fallen asleep around 10 pm. I woke up the next day around 3pm still kicking but disordered.
I spent two weeks in a mental hospital. During that time I do t have access to my phone. I had my sister contact everyone that needed to be. Even Mere. She knew I was in there. I didn’t call her while I was there bc I was still upset at her after everything.
I was discharged but I didn’t set up a session for weeks. She emailed and called me once but I didn’t respond till I was fully settled back into my routine and okay enough to talk to her. I emailed her this
“Hallo, Sorry. I didn’t mean to ghost you. I just needed some time to get myself together. I called you just now. You are probably busy. I hope everything is doing well on your end. Sorry again. Sent from my iPhone”
I had planned to set up an appointment in the future to talk to her about everything but by the time I checked my patient portal a week or so later I had been discharged with no warning. No calm text or email.
I set up a meeting with her over the phone for 45 mins. When she first came onto the call the first thing she said was “I saw that you put our appointment for 45 mins. I changed it to 30 bc you know I did discharge you”. I thought it was pretty rude so instead of explaining everything I told her about how I didn’t have my phone in the hospital and the hospital themselves didn’t notify her because they were disorganized and were extremely unprofessional. It’s not like she wasn’t updated by my sisters anyway. When I got my phone after I got home I saw texts from her asking if I was still having a session with her. Knowing that I was in the hospital. It seemed she either didn’t care or didn’t believe I was in the hospital. In fact when she had spoken over the phone with one of my sisters she had lied to them about that night. She had told her “After I got otp with her I immediately started praying for her because I m ew something was deeply wrong” how delusional of her to say after she yelled at me and hung up.
Anyway after I explained my reasoning for going MIA she started to realize how fucked up she was and asked me how I was doing. I didn’t say much because I was done with her and she obviously didn’t intend of hearing the full story since she shortened our session. She started asking me why I didn’t want to continue therapy and seemed confused why I didn’t seem to beg her to re admit me. I told her I was done with therapy. She seemed concerned and said that she discharged me because she thought it’d be better for me to find an in person therapist. I knew it was a shitty excuse. I quickly hang up on her and don’t address anything.
I’m only processing this now because I’ve had much bigger things going on. I’m only now realizing how fucked up her behavior was. If I hadn’t spoken to her the night of my attempt I probably wouldn’t have tried to kill myself. I feel cheated out of help. I don’t feel angry at her I have to reserve that for someone more worthy of my rage. I only wished she didn’t use the fact that I would never call her out on her behavior usually. She knew my temperament and took advantage of that. I don’t think I’ll ever trust a therapist again. She victim blamed me, mocked me, berated me in my time of need, and then abandoned me on baseless assumptions that could’ve been easily cleared up if she actually listened to what my sisters and I were saying. She didn’t even say sorry when we were talking. Or express any remorse besides embarrassment for jumping to conclusions. SMH.
TLDR: My therapist berated me for trusting ppl in my life the night of my suicide attempt. Then Discharged me from her care without consulting me first. Blamed me for all her mistakes and jumped to conclusions randomly then never apologized for the baseless accusations. I am at a loss for words and at a loss for trust in therapy again.

I currently (40M) had my ex (35F) completely destroy our relationship while I was working out of town for a few months. This happened a year ago and wish I had these stories as a resource while going through it. I have just started to use Reddit and been reading the experiences of others here and have decided to share my story in hopes it will maybe help others. That way some good may come from some of the worst times of my life.
A little backstory for context for the story and insight to some of the decisions I made. When I turned 30 I left the major city in my Province (it is like a state if you are an American) because buying just a simple house is over a million dollars and I don't make near enough to afford that. My goal was to move to somewhere more rural to buy a house, meet someone, get married and have a child or two. It was my only dream I had and believed I could attain it. I lived out in the bush on my step dads property in a run down trailer I bought so I could save money for the first 3 years. I had my dog but the loneliness of living in the middle of nowhere had got to me. By then I had saved a fair amount of money, so I decided to move into the town. It was nice, it cut my commute down by 40 minutes, I had started to make a few friends and no longer felt so isolated. It was through my friends I met my future ex. Let's call her Kali. She had a long term boyfriend when we first met. Their relationship ended a couple of years after meeting her and we started dating a few months after.
We mostly had a great relationship for the next 4 years. The only thing was it was on again off again. She would dump me after I did anything really special for her for a week and beg me to take her back. It was like clockwork. I used to think it was because of her depression and that she didn't believe she deserved to be truly happy. Nowadays I actually think she might have been cheating the whole time and just felt guilty about it when I did nice stuff for her but I will never know the truth. I don't care what the reality is anymore anyway, Time has a funny way of making stuff like that irrelevant. We did have one bigger break of about 5 months. When it happened I took time off work to travel in my RV the whole time. From spring to summer. I really didn't like the town I lived in and decided to use that time to check out the rest of my Provence to figure out where I wanted to restart my life. She was basically the only reason I stayed for so long. I did have a decent job and family close by but most people I met there were not good people. Lots of drug users, liars, and general scumbags. I had only a few real friends there. After I got back and had decided where I was going to move to she had decided she wanted me back. She begged me to stay and be with her. She told me that she wanted to get serious. We started making real progress about getting married, having kids and looking at buying a house. Everything was coming up Milhouse and I couldn't be happier. So You can probably guess this is when my tale becomes interesting for you and life got real bad for me.
My career is seasonal. I work from spring to the end of fall and can go on unemployment insurance or find work. My dad had asked if I could help on his farm breeding horses that winter when I had still planned to leave my town. I had promised him that I would because it would give me a place to stay before people in my field of work would be looking for employees. This had been agreed upon before me and Kali had got back together. Now I have always been a man of my word. It's something I take great pride in. I have always hated liars. I don't mind a little embellishment to make a story more fun or if two people's stories are different as long as they both believe that was how the events happened. Everyone remembers things slightly off. She was upset that I had intended to keep my word to my dad but I had every second weekend off. The town my dad is in was only a 2 hour drive. So I told her I would be back twice monthly for weekends and that it would only be for 4 months. For the first two months everything seemed fine. During this time I started to look at rings to pop the question and booked an expensive spa for two days in May to propose. There was only one weird thing that happened during the first two months. On one of my visits she confided in me that her brother's wife had cheated on him and that their newborn baby was most likely not his. I was shocked that she not only knew but didn't plan to tell him. She said she didn't want to tell him for fear of breaking up the family. I told her that he has the right to know and that she was being a bad sister by knowing and not telling him. I also informed her if he found out she knew and didn't say anything that he would most likely kick her out of his life. She made me swear I wouldn't tell him. Even though I thought it was wrong I did agree to not say anything. It did get me wondering how she could not only not tell him but stay friends with someone that could do that to her brother. I think that's when I started to question her morals. The third month she asked that I didn't come out because she was "sick". I told her I didn't care, I could still come out and take care of her. She convinced me that she didn't want me to come so I just worked on the farm instead. I switched weekends so I could come out the next instead of in two weekends. The weekend she was "sick" her phone was off the whole time, lasting into the week. She told me her phone went through the washing machine. She was actually on a bender but I didn't learn that till later.
So I head out the following weekend. As soon as I arrive I start getting super sketchy vibes. I was already weirded out about the stuff with her brother and ghosting me for 4 days as we talked/texted multiple times a day normally. At first she acts great to me, cooks me steak and we go out to the bush to have a fire in the snow. At the fire she really started drinking heavily. She then mentions a guy she had been hanging with lets call him Brad. So alarm bells start going through my head. We go back to her house and she keeps drinking. I wanted to keep a clear head so I only had three beers all evening. She put her phone down unlocked because of how drunk she was and I took it to the bathroom with me to look up texts between them. I felt so guilty for doing it at first but once I see the text between the two of them the guilt is replaced with rage. I go to her room to confront her and she breaks down. First, how dare I go through her phone, this never would have happened if I would have broken my promise to my dad, nothing really happened between them, blah, blah, blah. I was furious and drove off. She blows up my phone the whole time. I don't answer. Ten minutes after I left her mother called me. She lives at her moms house. I took the call and her mom said she is freaking out and has harmed herself. I decide to go back and she has a bandage wrapped around her arm. Her mom hid all the sharp objects she could find. She was having a full on panic attack and begs me to not leave. I told her I would stay if she told me the truth. She admits to hooking up with him one time just that last weekend when she asked me not to come out. It kind of matches the messages and I believe her. I stay there till she falls asleep. Once she does I send Brad a text saying that she has a boyfriend with some screen shots of our conversations me and her have had that week. I was about to drive back to the farm when the dude called her phone. I pick up the call and tell him I am her boyfriend. He asks if that was a joke and I assure him it is not. He said he didn't know and actually apologized. I tell him that I'm pissed but if he didn't know I couldn't blame him. I should have asked him more questions but I was tired, not thinking straight and just wanted to go back to the Farm even though it was two am by this point. I get home and crash. Turned my ringer off because I know once she wakes up she will start calling like crazy. After getting the horses in for the night I decided to look at my phone for the first time all day. Around thirty missed calls and a ton of texts. I decide I need another day before I talk to her. Now while the whole day all I can think about is that it was just one time, she seems to be genuinely remorseful about it, how I'm 39 and really want children before I get too old. I took a call from her the next day on Sunday in the morning. She is still wasted. She hadn't stopped drinking since I was there Friday. We talk and I tell her that I am really upset but am willing to give us another chance. I still was in love with her and wanted to have kids, get married and buy a house with her. It was the dream I felt I worked so hard for. She was so happy I took her back and swore to me nothing like this would ever happen again. Basically I was a fool lol.
So I decided on my next set of days off to borrow my stepdads summer home on the river so we can have the place to ourselves. I grab food that she loves so I can cook her dinner and try to make it very romantic. I want to rekindle my love with her so I wanted to go all out on an amazing weekend. I pick her up and she is already a little drunk. I kind of wanted to hang sober but I don't wanna mess up with her so don't say anything thinking we can do a sober day when I take her out to go shopping and dinner the next day. When we get there she gets hammered. Kali had brought a big of bottle fireball on top of a bunch of white claws. I again didn't really drink that night. Once she was drunk and tired I carried her to the bed. As Kali is in my arms she looks up at me and says in slurred words "I don't know why you even felt threatened by Joe" I ask "what did you just say?". "I don't know why you even felt threatened by Brad" she replied. I put her to bed and my mind starts racing. Now her ex before me has a really close name to the one she said first but I also know she has a friend named Joe I only met a couple of times. They were not close or even hung out but were more like acquaintances. I go in her purse to look at her phone again but the battery is dead and I can't find her charger. I have an Iphone so I can't charge it up to look. I didn't sleep that well that night with everything going on in my head. I woke up at 6 am to her being very loud on the phone. I went out to the living room and she had drank all the booze left over from the night before. I ask her who she was on the phone with and she tells me an uber to leave. I ask why is she going to leave? Kali tells me she is upset that I tried to get into her phone. Guess I didn't put it back in her purse. Must have been out of sorts and forgot. I tell her I can drive her once I go to the washroom and get some clothes on. I go to do that, come out of the washroom to see Kali has already left. She was so drunk that she had left half her stuff behind. I decided to have breakfast before bringing her stuff to her house. After breakfast I packed her stuff into my SUV and noticed it had snowed that night. I could see her footprints out into the driveway. While Dropping off her stuff I noticed there were no footprints leading to her house, so I tried calling Kali. No answer. I left her stuff in the snow and decided to drive by her brothers and sisters house to see if there were footprints going into any of their houses but there were none. I sent her a nasty text about knowing she didn't go home, to go be with Brad or Joe or whoever and never call me again. It was a lot more profane than that but that's the gist of it. Cleaned up the house my stepdad lent me and back off to the farm yet again. The next day she blows up my phone and again I wait another day to talk to her. She tells me that she went home but I know that can't be true from the snow, but she says I must have been mistaken. She apologizes for getting drunk and leavening and that she is going to stop drinking after her birthday in two weeks. She has rented a hotel in the town I'm in for her birthday and wants to spend it with me. I agree just because I have to know the truth and want to look at her phone to make sure I am not crazy. She had gaslit me to the point I was questioning what I saw with my own eyes. A couple of days later I decided to send Joe a message on Facebook to see if he would give me the truth. I get a text from her telling me not to bug her friend and that she is embarrassed. I apologize and tell her I am excited about her birthday soon.
The weekend of her birthday comes so I go to meet her at the hotel. She brought her sister and other friend along. It actually is a really fun time. The girls did coke the first night into the second evening. I don't really like it but I figured she can let loose especially if she is going to stop drinking after her birthday. I also knew by Saturday night that they would all crash hard so it would give me time to look at her phone so I could know the truth. As I mentioned the weekend was really fun so I felt bad about going into her phone yet again. I did it anyway and my whole world came crashing down. Now I figured that I would maybe see Brad or Joe texts and Facebook messages. Seemed like Brad was done but Joe and her were totally hooking up. I also found out that she had slept with 3 other guys. I also saw she was using coke all the time now. She did it maybe three times a year when we dated but now it was every weekend. It looked like she started using regularly right before I left for the farm. Joe helped get it for her too, out of all the guys he was the one she hung with the most. Turns out he was also a meth head who was trying to quit for her. She also went to his house the morning she left the other weekend to hook up and buy coke. I was floored. I just staired and took screen shots till the early morning. I decided I wasn't just going to dump her but I wanted to ruin her life not realizing she was already doing that all by herself but hindsight is 20 20. So I started coming up with a plan of what I was going to do. I woke up the next morning and acted like everything was fine and went back to the farm. I was still so upset and didn't want to harm myself or others so had a family friend take my firearms for a while. I don't think I would have used them on myself or others but I knew I wasn't thinking clearly and didn't want them in my house while I was like that.
I didn't have to see her till I moved back because the next set I had off I had tickets for a concert in the city I used to live in. During that time all I thought about was how I was going to do something to ruin her life. I came up with some small things but my main plan was to pretend like we were fine and ghost her when my contract was up with my boss next winter. I had promised him another year after kali and I had gotten back together. Just typing it out makes me look back and cringe that I was so crazy. When I went to the city for the concert I told my best friend, my brother and a few others my plan. No one liked it and thought I should just go no contact, cut her straight out of my life. That probably was the smart thing to do but emotion was clouding my judgement. Also you all would get this story. They even informed me that because I would be lying to her, that I would be compromising my morals and turning into a worse person they didn't recognize. I either didn't see it that way or care. I have a hard time recalling what my brain was thinking during that time. All seems like a haze now that it's been a year. I think I was really upset that my dream and all I had worked for was ruined. A friend later said I may have been in love with the dream and not her. Maybe that's the reason I kept up all this insanity.
My time on the farm had come to an end and I was moving back to the town me and my ex lived in. I was set with my plan, excited to implement it and have what I considered just. But you know what they say of the best laid plans. My ex wanted to go to hang at her brothers as a welcome home party. I went but ended up drinking. Heavily drinking, to the point of black out. I don't remember much from that night but have had it recounted for me. I woke up in the drunk tank. Guess I couldn't lie and play it cool then huh? The story I was told later is, while at her brothers I had gotten drunk and loud. Kept waking up the new baby and we were asked to leave. So we caught a cab and I confronted her in the cab but all I could do was call her a lying, cheating, whore on repeat. She got upset and ran into the house locking me out. I had a bunch of my stuff in her house so I went to the door and demanded she let me in. All the while still only referring to her as the aforementioned 3 words. She told me to leave but my jacket and wallet were inside. It was below freezing at night still and probably wouldn't have made it home in the state I was in. I then kicked in her door to keep calling her LCW and grab my stuff. She was on the phone to the police, so I was taken away by them. One of the lowest points in my life. It still brings me so much shame to this day but it is what happened and I am not going to sugar coat it. I never laid a finger on her and I am so happy that I hadn't. Laying hands on women in that way is one of the scummiest things a man can do. I had to go back to her house once they let me out because my stuff was still there. I apologized to her mom who had been at her boyfriends that evening promising to repair the door for her. Kali begged me to talk to her and like an idiot I didn't just leave. I told her I saw everything and she only admitted to Brad and Joe. Lying about them and the others the whole time. Even when I brought up the screen shots she still couldn't come clean. I left just shaking my head. There is still a ton to this story but this is long enough. I could do a part 2 if there is interest. Catching you folks up to where I am now and the messed up things that happened in between.

I (26M) caught my girlfriend (23F) in a web-of-lies.
I'm extremely devasted and my mind is clouded as I write this, but I have caught my girlfriend (23F), with which we have been dating for 6 years in a web-of-lies 3 Times in our dating period.
She has left me in my lowest point.
In the beginning of our releationship I caught her deleting a messages on her Iphone. I then confronted her and she told me that she deleted those messages because I would get the wrong impression of them and would end the releationship. She told me that she was scared to lose me, as I'm jealous of other males, which in fact is true, but I think my feelings were right all along.
I forgot the content of the message.
I let it slide, since we were in the beginning of our releationship (Maybe 1-2 years into it) and I also wasn't faithful at that time. I have even shared this with her at some points of the releationship, as I'm honest. The thing is that she said that she loves me so much that she would never do such a thing to me.
Slowly - I let my guard down, as she was with me during very hard moments in my life, where she could have easily left. As I let my guard down - I started adoring her and the thought of other girls started to dissappear.
She was extremely sweet, innocent and loving. No matter what I did - she was always there for me to support me and was always on my side.
I started focusing more on work, we were seeing each other everyday and everything was flourishing, but I never stopped being envious when she came with me at a disco/bar with friends or where there were other males.
I always felt as she had an eye out for some of them and always felt like I didn't satisfy her completely, as she had previously made remarks about our sexual encounters, which were above regular.
I slowly started to trust her more, as she continiously gained my trust by her action. Meanwhile I was 100% focused on my businesses and success.
She was working in a kid's playground and selling cakes. I was always there and supporting her.
As my success progressed - we started to go out on world trips on the most beautiful places and fell deeply in love (or so I thought)
4 years had passed by. She was still good an innocent (or so I thought).
On the 4th year - I made a project that made me life-changing money. I took her in Dubai with my whole family and spent a fortune to please them. Unfortunately - she was not happy there, I felt like she didn't support me at that moment. She didn't care what I did, she didn't care about my success. She tells me 'This is your success, not mine' 'This is your money, not mine' I told her I want to buy a house for us and she said 'This will be your house'
I then fell into an emotional pit, because everything I do is to support my family and create one wit her.
I got extremely mad, this feeling didn't fade away. I wanted to end it with her, because she didn't acknowledge anything.
The summer was approaching, we got into a fight over something (I Think I caught her again) - We separated for a month, she started crying and was working the whole month. - I went on a vacation with friends, where I cheated on her (Only kissing) and started approaching other girls. But while doing all this - My girlfriend never left my mind, I was extremely sad that I ended it with her.
I opened up her Instagram Account and saw on her story how she is on vacation with two good girls from her work and one baby (She was lonely by the looks of it and extremely sad)
I got back from the vacation and started working things out with her, I took her on a vaction, we had a bonding there, but something didn't feel right... She seemed sad.
I started gambling on crypto futures... I lost 20% of my networth... I got extremely mad.
We went back in our country and then I took her on another trip. I bought her everything she wanted, I took her everywhere she wanted, I did everything to please her. My focus at that time was entirely on her.
She wanted to go in the casino - we went. I lost money, but gave her, since she wanted to stack an amount for a nose operation.
(Not because the nose was broken or something, but because she wanted to look better)
Business started getting bad, my income vanished.....
I started trading more in order to get back to my previous amounts...
I lost it almost all.. I had 1 reserve fund which was locked and I waited a couple of months to take the funds out. She was there with me even when I lost.
She finished her operation.
I got the reserve fund. I started trading, I made half the amount back. She wanted me to buy her a car - I did. I bought a land as well, on which I wanted to start building our house.
After all that - I lost all my funds again...
She had been constantly in a fight with her parents and wanted to move out.
I had one small income left - with all the funds I had, I rented an apartment for 6 months.
During those 6 months - I focused on working, but was losing due to my gambling habbit.
She got a new job. She started going out with friends. Sexual intercourse decreased by a lot.
I told her that I don't like her going out till 6 AM in the morning. This just isn't right with me, so I got suspicious.
I hacked her laptop... she saw a notification and rushed to the house... I was able to see a lot of things, but it appears - she was deleting evidence, so I asked her to give her phone. - She gave it to me.
Unfortunately - I knew how to see deleted messages on an Iphone. I saw only one message, the content was:
'Don't message me anywhere again.'
I got filled with rage and we had a fight. She was fighting with me to get her phone back. I gave it and told her I want to end it.
As he was a famous greek singer - I was able to analyze when he had concerts and saw that on those dates - she had been visitng those concerts...
3 Days later - we talked and worked it out.... I was madly in love with her at this point. She told me that she arranges stages for him. (It's related to her new job)
My gambling habits were in full force. I lost a lot of money and couldn't afford a rent of a high-cost, so I told her - Let's move out to my mother's place and in the next 1 year I will make sure that I succeed again. (My mother isn't living inside the house, but my brother is)
She agreed roughly. So we moved and I started working, but unfortunately - The money I felt I was making was not enough, not nearly enough to buy an aparatament or build our house. She was acting kind, innocent.
I went out on a birthday party and my friend created a circumstance, where I would sleep with a girl next to me. I knew she really liked me and hooked up. We were going to have intercourse, but as I did anything - my girlfriend was on my mind and I couldn't bring myself to do anything other than kisses... I just couldn't.
She started going out with friends again. She was going nightclubbing with them, but assurred me - she was doing it for her own fun.
She was meanwhile stacking money to get a boob-job done. - She did it, made her boobs bigger. She assurred me that she was doing it for her own fun.
6 months have passed. - I stopped gambling, but she told me that she doesn't like my house, doesn't like that I'm living with my brother and she doesn't see a future with me.
She told me she would leave and go in her cousin's apartament, but he doesn't want me there.
I told her that I want to break up with her, because she doesn't want to be with me at my lowest point. I told her that she probably wants to leave the house to go out nightclubbing and find someone better than me. She felt offended (Or so It seemed), but I think that was the truth. She told me that she wants to have kids with me, she loves me, etc.
The next day: She goes out of city without telling me anything about her location. At night: she goes in a nightclub with her friends + other males.
I ask her in 2 AM - 'Where are you right now'? She comes in and out of 'Online' status. and at 4 AM I notice a follower increase on her Instagram, she follows him back - I send her a video and ask who the f is that? She responds 'What do you want', 'This is an old friend', 'Stop being envious'
I get extremely angry and stop responding. The next day I check the live photos of the nightclub and pray to god to give me a sign that I'm not delusional and exactly the next photo - She is on the same table, with the same guy, with her friends and other males. She told me she was sleeping.
1 Day passes - she starts messaging me and sending me photos with the quote 'Let's promise we will never leave each other and fix everything when things go wrong.' 2 Day passes - she starts messaging me, so I show her that I don't want to talk with her. 3 Day passes - no one messages. 4th day she messages me: "Are we breaking up?" and I told her "Do you think I want to be with someone, who constantly lies to me, goes out nightclubbing and adds some r*tards in Instagram?" She told me - "First of all - I'm not lying about anyhing" Then I ask her - "Why have you added this person in 4 AM in the morning"? She replies: "I have had him for some time now, he is an old friend" I told her that I monitor her followers and know if he is old or new" I told her that she looks like trash in my eyes at this point and she got angry She told me she isn't obligated to tell me anything and she hasn't added him in 4 AM, she will not be repeating her self.
I ask her: - Can you tell me where were you at that time (The night that this happened) ? She tells me: - Like every night - at home. I sent her a photo of the live nightclub photo where she is with him, her friends and other male friends. I tell her 'I hope this is gives you an answer for everything' 'My girlfriend died a long time ago' She starts sending laughing emojis and says: "It's good, right?" "You killed her more likely and made her what she is today" I tell her "It's possible" She responds "As you can see - he is with his girlfriend, DON'T THINK WRONG THINGS OF ME" I told her: "Don't explain yourself" "This was my last question." She is now telling: "This is a driver of... and some time ago my friend hooked up with him, this is from where I added him, I haven't added him now" I told her: "I don't think anything of you." She responds "The last two years you have not thought of me anyway" WHICH IS NOT TRUE. I tell her "I wish you all the best, I hope you find what you are looking for" She responds "Me too, be happy" I respond "I have only one question left" "When did my girl die?" She reponds "You can always contact me if you need any help" I respond: "Thank you, but I don't think of searching for contacting you anymore" She asks: "Which is your girl?" I respond "The good girl that loved me and was always with me or was this just a product of my imagination? Be honest" She said: "Whatever you feel like" I respond "Okay, good night" Then I forward the message "You can always contact me for help" and I say: "I really loved you and will miss you" She reponds: "I will never stop loving you. There is no way to stop loving a person with which you have been in a releationship for 6 years" "Good night, I will not upset myself anymore" I ask her "Why would you do this to me?" She ask "What did I do to you?" I told her "It's pointless to say, I have a lot more information that on the photo" She says "We were in this town for a doctor checkup, after that we went to a nightclub and accidentially met them (The person and his male friends)" I ask her "Will you stop with the lying?" She says "I'm telling you" I respond "Good night"
Now my question is:
I'm a sucker for her love. Maybe I'm just in love with the old her. I have never loved any girl as much as I love her. I feel absolutely terrible. Maybe part of this was my fault. Maybe it was my fault that she became like this..
What do I do from here? I don't think I will ever love a person this way.. I wanted her to carry my children and raise a family with her.

Im seeing a lot of people posting that Chronos is too op. People suggesting methods of nerfing him or adjusting. But as someone who is beating him over and over fairly easily on high fear i have this to say, learn his moves in god mode. His moves are punishing, dealing large amounts of damage in a single hit as a titan should. To really master him you need to learn him enough to do large sections hitless, learning where his blind spots are and the tells for his moves. If you keep failing at that he doesn't need to be weaker, you just need to learn.
Its situations like this that god mode was made for. A flat damage reduction is not cheating. The mode is there for a reason. It will give you the leeway to lean his moves to the point you don't need it and can then beat him without it. Mel and Zag after all are gods, there is no reason they cant use that birth right.
https://preview.redd.it/7wdldbu9s50d1.png?width=1014&format=png&auto=webp&s=b405015546991404f661961d828eafe12ccbc8f8
For my first few runs of underworld and Olympus i used god mode. Turning it off when i stopped loosing or struggling. It's a great tool for learning movesets and mechanics and if you are ignoring it out of pride i implore you to give it a try. The point of games after all is to have fun and if you are having such a bad time you are begging the devs to make the game easier in reddit, make it easier yourself first with the tools they already gave you.
That to the side, strategies i use to get easy wins. These fall under two categories, add management and burst damage.
Add Management
You need a quick mana efficient way to kill the satyrs, hourglasses and other adds he brings to the fight. This is also the reason i always choose the hades boon that kills half of them for you. (though the darkness boon he offers is also amazing, 10 seconds of invulnerability after hitting one of Chronos's orbs is really OP)
The only henchman you need to divert your attention to are the banners, use your main attack to kill them as soon as you see them in phase one, or they will create barriers over the adds that makes them tougher to ignore, but there is a large gap between the banners appearing and them casting their first barrier.
For all other mobs i like to ignore them and focus on Chronos, while i passively kill them.
To do this you want your passive damage to do around 300 hp of damage. This is your aoe cast or your dash.
There are multiple casts that can do it but i recommend Hestia and Demeter.
https://preview.redd.it/kfqerlfcr50d1.png?width=1204&format=png&auto=webp&s=7b09ef75b00b87b60362eaeb2c75db53fd416a6e
https://preview.redd.it/yhe9isefr50d1.png?width=1195&format=png&auto=webp&s=66ec3e8cdd10011f7f167f840764537808e30427
https://preview.redd.it/pngxfu93s50d1.png?width=1002&format=png&auto=webp&s=c8a5380ad2eabaaed9653d35376a87a712fcbd96
As their basic cast deals the damage over time not their omega cast. Combined with Zeus or Hestia's casting boon, which either fires a fireball or lightning bolt and lets you target your cast. Aiming at the adds without needing to move near them.
https://preview.redd.it/midkkvsjr50d1.png?width=1196&format=png&auto=webp&s=f6028a6ecbb5fb6e8218f518ae1a151727db5ff8
https://preview.redd.it/a9epj6tmr50d1.png?width=1209&format=png&auto=webp&s=08bb13adaf7bee52b768585e6592c5a3c56f61b5
For this you get a burst (fireball or bolt) of damage and sustained dps by just tapping cast allowing you to focus your attention on chronos. Both dont waste your time charging your attack which is deadly in this encounter as the titan of time is immune to the omega attack charge time slowing.
The second method of dealing with adds passively is a high dps dash attack. The best for this is posidon. Getting his dash to heroic makes it deal 200 plus damage and has knockback cc. Allowing you to dodge chronos and move in to attack him while killing his adds in the process without thinking about it.
https://preview.redd.it/un3obwirr50d1.png?width=1201&format=png&auto=webp&s=900c8f4b2ae1cc838f208565b143541b42e5b418
Heroic Breaker Sprint does 200+ damage with no poms, but this one i got as a trade for another sprint has enough damage to kill all the adds in two hits for just 10 mana This sprint was doing 360 damage per hit.
Chronos himself, burst damage and placement
Every weapon has a way to deal reliable burst damage, to beat Chronos you want one of your attacks, special or main, to be able to deal a combo of around 1k damage in a few second, the gap you have to punish him when he uses his boomerang or scythe slice attack - but if you are struggling the highest single attack damage belong to the Argent Skull and the Moonstone Axe. Both can very easily get over 300 damage per attack,
The best axe strategy i learnt from a chaos trial in the pitch black stone. The hammer ability Hell Chop which turns your basic attack into a 300+ damage chop is amazing vs bosses with the Mel aspect Axe, as it allows you to dive, do a large burst attack and then dash right out, hopefully dealing some damage in the same time. The basic strategy is to have a good damage skill, like Nova Attack on the axe, lay your cast on top of Chronos for the bonus damage and attack with the axe, using this method ive gotten the axe to 1300 damage per attack with a very wide AOE range. allowing you to take your chance, attack once for a big burst and then bug out of his range.
If you arent lucky enough to get this specific hammer, the axe is a slow but reliable way to deal 5% of Chronos's health in a single attack. Just hit him with its full combo while he uses the two punishable moves, use Mels aspect as it allows the axe to attack fast enough. The spin omega attack is great for dps and picking off adds and is how i got my first win.
The Skull is good in that it deals its damage from a range, doing 80-100 damage with a decent attack boon you can blast chronos with 300 damage per reload, much more if he is in your cast or you have extra damage boons like Hestia, Zeus or Hephestus, then move into one of his safe zones. There are two must have hammers that boost this to the next level. The one which adds two skulls, giving you 500 base damage per wave, and the one which creates the omega attack effect when you collect the skull creating a combo where you hit him for 300, dash into him, then blast him for 300 damage per skull, so another 900 burst, this is a simple 1300 damage combo that keeps you at range and mobile most of the time and will burn the titans health in no time.
https://preview.redd.it/c2naaiwx760d1.png?width=1235&format=png&auto=webp&s=5a5498752237320c01f508e52882f0d994c64b8b
Any weapon can have reliable burst added by using Hephaestus's explosion boon, which is a long cool down 300-400 burst, around 5% of his HP, that can be boosted with furnace blast to double the damage- if you are lucky with Poms you can get the cooldown of volcanic strike as low as 2 seconds, which makes this very reliable.
https://preview.redd.it/xn88yrsm360d1.png?width=1192&format=png&auto=webp&s=3ee0e7a5e5b945cc67d8e4a684e97c534934a7eb
Through the Poseidon and Hestia duo boon which creates high damage DPS on slipped and burned enemies (Which you may have from the two quick attack methods above)
As well as through Zeus blitz effect, on fast weapons like the sister blades, for example Blitz on the special could be triggered by Hephaestus's attack causing the combo to trigger for 100 damage blitz+200-300 volcanic strike and 300 furnace strike, creating a 600 damage combo by pressing 2 buttons using 3 common boons. The Zeus/Aphrodite duo boon also allows you to instant trigger blitz turning these into very reliable burst damage boons.
There are too many of these combos to mention and part of the fun will be finding ones that work for you
Placement
For phase one Chronos is pretty simple to avoid.
His scythe whirlwind attack is slower than your dash, if you are using the dash method to passively kills adds this is a good time to run into them and kill them. Dropping your cast on the big guy as you are behind him
Boomerang scythe move is easy to avoid, its blind spot is right in front of Chronos allowing you to hit with your slowest highest dps moves easily.
His wide swing and dash attack both leave a black scar in the ground, these are the only places that are hit by the attack, you can continue attacking him close up through the swing, as the blind spot is again right in front of him, for the dash, he curls his back and shakes, your signal to dodge to the side
Golden Balls/ Bullet hell attacks, at some point Chronos will start teleporting, and generating a round shield of balls, as well as leaving a time stop barrier where he was, this is clearly signposted by a gold magic circle at his feet so easy to dodge the time freeze and these balls are low DPS for him (dealing just 13 damage for me), and can be soaked if you want, but the best way to deal with them is stand near a wall, when he next teleports the balls will hit the wall and burst. However if you have revenge attacks like Zeus's bolt, maybe 13 damage is worth taking those hits for the revenge effects. a 100 damage bolt in return for a 13 damage ball seems fair to me, though ive not done this strategy it occurred to me while recording the damage it took for this post. He also creates a vortex of balls around him. These, just ignore, they have a low range, dash out of it near the styx, take a moment to recover your mana if you have a wait to regen skill or kill some of his adds.
Thats phase one, dodge around ball and vortex attack, punish his boomerang and scythe swing attack by standing in front of him in the blind spot damaging him. Looking for the arched back and shake that indicates is is about to dash.
Phase 2 - Instant death effects and you
The first attack is an instant death or damn near it, whole field wipe. One of the clock numbers will glow, that is your safe zone, you have enough time to get from the other side of the arena if you dash but the second you see a glowing number go for it.
Ticking Clock: A clock hand appears that moves around in order, if hit by the golden hand it will stun you for a second as well as damage you, but this is easy enough to dodge.
Closing circle: If the middle of the clock glows, a circle of damage is about to come, you need to dash outside of the magic circle as it closes in. Sometimes there are two circles.
Time grasp: He will reach at you and slow your time, this is pretty ok, you cant do anything about it but he doesnt do anything to hurt you while slow, just avoid hitting one of the AOE effects already on field. When testing he only ever did this once to me each battle so feels more like a flex than a real attack.
His second instant death attack is creating a black circle on the outside and middle with a range of no colour
Notes provided by Microsoft snipping tool
Time bubbles, he creates many gold circles on the ground, getting caught in one when it goes off punishes you by freezing you. For me this catches me when im escaping the closing circle and he goes right in for the freeze, but otherwise easy to dodge
https://preview.redd.it/6b323wjsz50d1.png?width=1209&format=png&auto=webp&s=50c9f00c2e504881cd301dbfa3db1c724c77a72c
Bullet hell rings, he creates three rings of low damage golden balls, easy to dodge and position so they dont hurt you. I find my little froggy buddy usually negates an entire ring just sitting there. The warning for this is red circles on the ground. The 3rd ring is too far out to ever damage you, the inner ring is a shield and will probably need to be soaked, the middle ring is far enough away you can wait in the gap and hit him with ranged attacks and still be close enough to dodge boomerang and slice.
https://preview.redd.it/2fyvphlw160d1.png?width=1582&format=png&auto=webp&s=9b88cb489e7e10e5708f266ad8c2c243b854bdfd
At half health he summons hourglasses and puts a shield around himself, you dont need to kill the glasses, but since hes shielded and bullet covered himself may as well until he moves back to a normal pattern.
The whole time he is using his three core attacks, the dash, the slice and the boomerang, All three have wider arcs meaning a bigger safe zone for the boomerang and the slice.
After 50% health there is less of a delay between all his attacks, but it stays much the same with golden balls added to the rotation more,
Just keep dodging the AOEs, stay in front of him when hes not casting those and hit hard and often.
https://preview.redd.it/8hekgdn8260d1.png?width=1615&format=png&auto=webp&s=52e6462a71ba9df580cd3ff3276b7dcb8093085a
Finally General run advice
Boon rarity, heroic boons are an amazing investment, an increase from 80 to 200 damage on posidons dash attack? insane, there are 3 methods i use.
Rare crop from Demeter, considering that this is the most reliable way taking Demeter's keepsake at the start of a run is a good call. Will take 1-3 of your boons and make them heroic over the next 12 encounters, so if you are going to take it take it early, it also helps to do that so it chooses the core boons you want to boost. Getting this as my 4th boon in order to make my main attack cast and dash heroic is something i will happily waste my hammers onThis can be supplemented by switching to Narcissus's keepsake after first boss to turn one more of your early boons heroic, just make sure to change keepsake before drinking from the fountain.
https://preview.redd.it/d2ztqte4660d1.png?width=1087&format=png&auto=webp&s=e5af945426eb7027b70e37da2b7276c79f14ead9
The opposite of this is Heras skill Bridal Glow, which makes all your boons heroic but slowly downgrades them. Only safe to take right before the final boss, but i did once get it in the final Charon shop and had fun. If not willing to take the risk on this Hera has one of the most powerful skills in the game IMO, Proper Upbringing infusion which makes all your boons rare
https://preview.redd.it/aeqkwoai660d1.png?width=1256&format=png&auto=webp&s=9e95b879774cb458b7136c71baaa8bcd1176c81c
And then combos of another of her boons for a flat damage increase to everything
https://preview.redd.it/ceexx3wl660d1.png?width=1186&format=png&auto=webp&s=2a99e6cad714c2e47cd64e19f6683eb2f60f98e0
Hera and Hestia both offer means to trade offerings for higher versions also, so running either of these goddesses will leave you with more rare and heroic than not.
Hope this has helped if anyone has a 1k plus combo not mentioned here let me know :) And before you complain the game is too hard, use god mode.
Update: For fun after this i went back to 34 fear and tried using my least favourite weapon, the torches, i wound up getting 3 hammers this run which boosted my special, an echo double and 2 normal, so my blitz special became my burst damage and my passive damage, as the circling yellow orbs took out the adds, and as i surmised above, having two vengeance effects and soaking the golden balls was an effective way to damage Chronos. I wasnt quite doing enough damage to hurt chronos, but my hex ability came in clutch for bursts of DPSFor more fun the vows i used :)
https://preview.redd.it/flganyf4w70d1.png?width=1333&format=png&auto=webp&s=f69e5ee492134889e967c2a1d5a3eee21f3be196
https://preview.redd.it/uuxeqbz8w70d1.png?width=408&format=png&auto=webp&s=cf4461ef438ce9891ae46790d846a1f437aa2924
https://preview.redd.it/ltsqsg0ts70d1.png?width=696&format=png&auto=webp&s=0649f1024d0803a6b71e2de78de72950e33101ef
Vow of blood and dominance - Opponents having more health and damage is standard of increased difficulty
Vow of fury - Honestly a buff, enemies being faster means they move into my attacks faster
Vow of commotion - More mobs isnt a problem as you can see i build up AOE damage for the end battle adds, rather than single target damage
Vow of wandering - never really feel the impact of this one, its three vow points for nothing, am i the only one who finds the zone 1 mobs harder than the zone 2 and 3?
Vow of scars, no healing, this hurts, honestly a run ender - not one to choose lightly
Vow of destitution, this seems bad, but not really, the vow of commotion adds enough mobs that you get enough gold to counter it.
Vow of panic - i leave this on for my low heat runs, it changes the way you play a little 0 mana at start of a round makes you think about and use your gain boons more effectively.
Vow of bitterness - I hate it i hate it i hate it. I lost a Hera boon when i chose her keepsake to get it! I lost a boss Zeus boon! Ah i hate this one. But in the end 3 less boons isnt that bad of a cost.
Vow of arrogance - this costs you primed mana for rare boons, but since i used rare crop and narcissus's keepsake to boost my boons to heroic it didnt have much impact at all on this run.
Vows i hate and will never use -
Rebuke - Just annoying having to chip all enemies before hurting them, it forces fast weapon styles and just annoys me enough to avoid
Haunting - maybe i suck, but battles just go forever and ever with this one
Forsaking - The FOMO of loosing a boon you wanted upsets me a lot so dont pick this one
Desperation - look i think i made good time sub 20 min here, but ive never won a game with this (or the hades equivalent on)
Abandon - 5 fear is a lot, but loosing my arcana cards is way too big a cost.
I think i could have activated vow of suffering and gone for 38 fear here, might try that one some time.

I'm trying to blitz out getting through Spanish on Duolingo. My trial for Duolingo Max is coming to an end, but it seems best to leave it in place with a subscription. My goal is to get through the 230 units in Spanish and see where that takes me in learning Spanish.
I've seen earlier posts about people trying to set a pace of a unit a day. I was using the free Duolingo when I started, but I quickly discovered that the ads just slow things down too much. Plus fighting for hearts was annoying. Somewhere with either Super or Max, I picked up the ability to drill with the little barbell icon. This is very valuable to me.
I've seen posts from people talking about people cheating in leagues. Some of the posts talked about how fast someone was making XP. To give away my secret, here we go. This last week, I hit over 20,000 XP during the week. In the week, I knocked out my unit-a-day goal. I'm on day 18 and on Unit 10 in Section 2. Moving through the lessons rapidly causes the opportunities for the x2 XP period of time, which is 15 minutes. Once I get in the x2 XP period, I move directly to drilling. The "biggest bang for the buck" in drilling is "Speak." It's actually wonderful that this is the best pick, because there are many that believe that the weakness of an online app is not getting to speak.
When drilling when not in the x2 XP period, I listen to what is said, and try again and again to get my speech correct using my own ear for feedback. I try to imitate even the tone of the character (e.g., I drone on like Lilly, I try to be a little kid, I talk really fast, I try to sound pompous, etc.). But during the x2 XP period, I take off immediately and read the sentence. If I'm moving, I can get through the 10 sentences in as low as 32 seconds, but mostly a bit higher (e.g., into the 40s and 50s). There is some turnaround overhead in getting going to the next round of speaking (perhaps 15 seconds), so if I am moving, in a 15 minute period, I can crank out over 1,000 XP, probably approaching 1,500 XP. If there was a real battle to win the league, I can spend 100 gems to get the 15 minute period extended. I have accidentally pressed this button to extend, only because the software on my iPad has this at right about the same spot as the Continue button. So, getting to 20,000 XP for the week is a pretty doable thing--no cheating required.
The voice recognition software is a little weak at times, so when drilling, I know I missed the pronunciation, but the system gives me credit anyway.
The little three-star games off to the side of the lesson trail helps me work on fast-matching my vocabulary. The software is set up just perfect for me to fail at the very end. The company wants be to spend 450 gems or buy a package of 1-minute extensions, but I'm not going that far. My gems would be all gone too quickly, causing a need to actually thrown down real money beyond the subscription to get that extra time boost.
So that's my league strategy. This website is about gamification, and gamification is going to be something I hope causes me to actively engage in a big way in order to compete at a high level. But the unit-a-day thing is just a whole other thing. People talk about immersion as the fastest way to learn a language, but I'm not leaving home anytime soon, so immersion is going to be more of a trick than a travel plan.
So, here is my immersion plan. No, I changed my mind. That will be some other post. I'll just keep this as the post about setting the challenge for doing a unit a day for my Spanish learning. It's likely I could fall off the path rather quickly. After all, Section 1 gives the student a false sense that progress won't be that difficult. Like doing something like the Pacific Crest Trail, there are many that sign their names up at the start, but a lot fewer that make it to the end.
So, if you want in on this challenge with me, send me a friend request in Duolingo. My handle is the same. Start from wherever you are, meaning if you are on 43 units in, and think you can take the challenge from there, you are committing to being at unit 50 a week later. Maybe we will all fail to reach this goal, but maybe just shooting for the stars will get us to the moon!

Hi All,
Firstly, I’m sorry for everyone that has been hurt by infidelity/ a relationship ending. Whilst I wasn’t aware of this subreddit until I found out about the infidelity, I’ve gained (virtual) companionship and strength for what I’m going through from other people’s posts. Thanks to all who have shared their stories/ comments in different threads.
Background - me M, mid 40’s, her late 40’s. We’ve been together 19.5 years. Met in a country that both of us had emigrated to, and fell in love very quickly exploring the city we lived in together. It was pretty stunning falling in love together, and for both of us exciting that a relationship could be that good. She hadn’t had a great history of past relationships, with no real LTR, and I’d only had two previous relationships - a 3 year relationship, and a 4 month relationship that ended with that GF cheating on me.
After a year together we moved to my country of origin, where we lived for 3.5 years. Still very close, in love, but our sex life suffered significantly. I was trying to initiate sex, and she was not too interested - the standard response being “I do not want to have sex as much as you do”. She had a stressful job, and some mental health issues during this time, so I chalked it up to both of those difficulties, as well as her libido changing, due to anti-depressants and some other issues.
We were married 4 years in, and both very excited and proud to be married to each other. We eloped and spent 6 weeks travelling overseas which was filled with wonderful days.
After 4.5 years together we moved to a new country together, where we’ve lived since. It was a difficult start here - she couldn’t work, and I wasn’t making much money. Over time we were able to build towards what we wanted in our life together - more travel, pets and finally a house. Our sex life still suffered - she saying that she just wasn’t interested in that anymore/ that side of her was over. I tried to discuss it with her at times, but didn’t have a great skillset to do so, plus I said some hurtful things along the way, as I was frustrated, and hoped that it might spur her into action. Other than that, our relationship was very rewarding, to both of us. We were emotionally intimate, supportive, trustworthy, enjoyed each other’s company, and wanted to share everything in life with each other. Well, other than sex at her end. I very much wanted her, but also found it difficult to imagine her wanting me in that way.
After years of being rejected by her I did hang out with her less at home - I felt hurt by rejection, so chose other hobbies over going to bed with her at the time she did, which I know made her feel lonely. I feel bad about this, but it was to avoid further rejection.
7 months ago she left to temporarily return to her home country, to support her Father through some surgery. We had a week travelling together first, and both felt sick at the thought of being apart. It was one of the best weeks of our relationship to me; we were connecting through these new experiences, content to be in the moment with each other. There was a little sexual intimacy on the trip, which gave me hope of a brighter future in that way.
Two weeks after saying goodbye to me at the airport she met a man at a party and started a physical and emotional affair with him. They’ve been together ever since, and their affair has evolved into a relationship where they have expressed their love for each other.
Through this 7 months she was away she did everything she could to avoid me finding out - her messages to me every day were filled with love and emotion. Our calls were great, and she seemed excited to see me. But throughout I felt something was off - it felt like we were growing distant, especially due to the distance, and no plans of hers to come back. Whenever I’d press her on this she’d get upset or angry, telling me it was an emotional trigger and she couldn’t show me how upsetting it was for her. If I pushed, she’d tell me to fuck off.
When I explained how worried I was about us, she told me I was being selfish; that I should be thankful she was having time with her family, especially as her parents were both sick - this may be her last time with her Mum. She hadn’t told me that before, so I said I understood.
I went into some very, very dark places in my mind during this time - knowing something was wrong, and not being able to work out what it was. She was aware of this - she saw me unravelling daily on our calls, over months. She suggested this anxiety around us/ her was all in my head, and I needed to get a therapist to try and get over this being in my head. Thankfully I did start to see a therapist around then, even though I was reacting to something that was very real - I just didn’t know what it was yet.
5 months after she left, with no sign of her coming back we had a bad fight, and she me told her feelings of attraction towards me had changed. But she wanted to go to couples counselling to work on this, and she felt we could get past this and be better. A few days later she said she’d come back immediately to work on it - our marriage was important to her. I said if she could promise it wouldn’t jeopardize our marriage further, to stay the course with her parents, and have more time with them, as hard as that would be for me. She readily accepted, and I unwittingly given her another two months to be with her boyfriend.
Finally “it’s time to come back and be with you”. She booked a trip home, albeit with 3.5 weeks in a country en route. Every day she sent me pictures of her travelling in this country, and every few days photos to my family. 4 weeks ago I discovered by chance (using her old iPhone for a work trip as mine was broken) 6 months of photos of her with him, including the trip they were currently on. Every photo she’d sent me or my family; the next photo was her with him. I was absolutely devastated, destroyed, and see no way through this darkness and suffocation I am experiencing.
She’s since come back, showed no remorse during the first two weeks, however I did see remorse over last weekend. Nonetheless we are not going to work on it, and proceed with separation - my lawyer started that process this week.
We had one pointless session of marriage therapy where she told the therapist she was relieved that I discovered the affair, and she didn’t want to work on us, as she was still in love with her BF. And she told me she hasn’t been attracted to me for a very long time; possibly this shifted after 3 months of meeting - more than 19 years ago. She said she just pushed this down, rather than deal with it, even though we moved in, moved countries, got married, got pets, bought a house.
It’s an extremely dark period for me, 1 month after DD. I just spiral through the following emotions, one after another:
Grief - the difficulty I am having with 19.5 years of love being over.
Betrayal - the difficulty in understanding how someone I thought would NEVER do this, was able to do it so easily to me.
Deceit - the anger and hurt of being lied to/ manipulated for 6 months, in order for her to maintain more time with her AP. And the shock that , she was so good at it. And she was 100% aware that this was at the expense of me, physically and emotionally.
Shame - the feeling that I/ we allowed our relationship to get to this point (apparently very bad, even if I wasn’t aware it was that bad), where she would engage in an affai new relationship.
Humiliation - the feeling that I was so easily replaced by another man, just 2 weeks after saying goodbye to me, after a special period of travelling together. That our 20 years of life and plans and love meant nothing to her in regards to the decision to cheat/ start a new relationship.
Humiliation redux - that she only found me attractive for a very short period of time, and put off telling me this for 19 years. Every decision I made about our relationship was without knowing the truth; that she was longer attracted to me. It feels like the relationship was a sham.
Grieving the future - before she went overseas, we had a week travelling together that was (to me) some of the happiest times of my time with her. I felt renewed for our love/ life, and whilst she was away I worked on myself to be a better person/ partner, and focus to have a better future together. It’s hard now not getting that opportunity. We only had 3 years in our house that we bought, 7 months of which she was away for.
Any thoughts on how to live with this/ breathe with this would be appreciated. All of this is destroying me, and it’s hard to see how my life could ever be better, as I try to deal with all the above.
Sorry for such a long post, and I wish the best and empathize with everyone going through similar sadness.

Yes I'm using the intro animation final shot, it's much better than the actual title screen.
Overview
Well first off, this game is a solid 8/10 and I will spoil this game, so be warned incase you ignore the other spoiler tags. Anyway, I got to say that this is a solid mobile game and good Sonic game in my opinion (great work by Hardlight, who developed this game with a big budget supplied by Apple (biggest sin is that this game is an apple arcade exclusive and tbh, a majority wouldn't pay a monthly subscription for this game). They made three mobile Sonic games - dash, speed battle, and jump so they are pretty experienced with the Sonic IP. They were given the budget by Apple to make a Sonic game to put on Apple arcade which is how Dream Team was made). I played this game through the apple arcade 1-3 month free trial and if you have the free trial, I recommend using it for this game if you're interested (don't pay the montly subscription, it's not worth it even for this game). I had a blast despite my problems that come with mobile game and Sonic jank. Anyway let's go into the specifics
Gameplay (didn't played tail challenges nor sweet dreams, this is just base game)

• speed and physics are pretty important in a Sonic game and I think they mostly nailed it. It feels good and despite the boost meter being heavily nerfed, it's a blast to blitz through the levels as you find & make shortcuts to the end goal while platforming & homing attack enemies. Physics feel mostly good (except in Nightmare Maze, god what a nightmare) and everyone's jumps & abilities feel mostly pretty good. Nightmare Maze sucks because whenever you transition into a different axis, the camera shifts and the physics are completely fucked during that transition with a pretty bad slow down (my least favorite stages to visit other than Dream Factory). Yeah not the biggest fan of flying, climbing, or the gliding but they're servicable (more on that with the characters).
  
• Characters are all great and despite having only three character types with 6 characters, I'm perfectly fine with that. It means no character is best (you can try them all and just appreciate the charm of animation, which I say is worth it) and can get used to the abilites each subtype has. All three subtypes have the boost but Sonic/Amy have the jump dash and lightspeed dash, Tails/Cream can fly, and Knuckles/Rouge can glide & climb specific walls. Sonic/Amy are great for doing the time trials and getting the S-ranks for most stages, they're my personal favorites because they feel the most reliable despite having no airborne mobility because the jump dash in this game feels great and cuts a lot of corners for speedrunning/platforming. Tails/Cream have fly which isn't that good in my opinion, the snails pace you move & short ascend for how short you fly is not worth it (it's better to spam the jump button to descend and speedrun their specific levels), they're probaby the worst feeling characters in my opinion despite how cool it is to see Cream back in a Sonic game (no matter how minor it is). Rouge and Knuckles are a mixed bag, they're techinally the 2nd best feeling characters but at the same time, they're also pretty bad. Glide is fine but a bit slow and the descend is way too fast for it to be useful 50% of the time. Climb is alright, it's again pretty slow but the jank of jumping off the wall is just really bad (Sonic Frontiers pre-fixed Knuckles type of jank). Ranking them best from worst in terms of game feel, Sonic/Amy > Knuckles/Rouge > Tails/Cream. All characters are function and the levels they accommodate do remedy the jank of the other characters. Might as well add the camera into the mix and yeah it sucks. It's fine until you have to back track, accidently go off screen, or use it for exploration (more on that with controls).
  
• Level design is solid. There are 4 settings for the 12 main levels/acts, 72 side objectives, and the 4 bosses (not including the intro). Those being Scrambled Shores, Dream Factory, Nightmare Maze, and Ego City. Ranking them in terms of general level design (Ego City ≥ Nightmare Maze > Dream Factory > Scrambled Shores). Personal Ranks (in terms of enjoyment) are (Ego City > Scrambled Shores > Nightmare Maze > Dream Factory). While the level design is rather simple, it's filled to the brim for exploration, pathways, and speedrunning. If you truly want to play this game, go for everything (objectives, s-ranks, and pathways) but if not, it's fine to just progress doing just the main levels. 5 Red rings and 30 blue coins are scattered around the main stages/act 1, red rings give dream orbs (progression for the story and other zones) while blue coins give optional extras (statues akin the Smash Bros collection). This game rewards exploration with more pathways and the collectiables, I encourage to do it because these levels are dense and make the playthrough much more fun (and longer which is a bonus). Each setting has a gimmick to them associated to them (each harder than the last one and some reoccuring gimmicks). Scrambled Shores gives the basic level design with no gimmicks (at least no prominent ones I think). Dream Factory has the ooze, the rising/descending pillars, conveyor belts, and the lasers. Nightmare Maze has water tunnels and gravity traversal gimmick (think Mario Galaxy but worst). Ego City has a bit of everything from each setting along with disappearing platforms and tons of projectiles. All of them are solid and are good fun.
  
• Objectives are fine, they get the job done. Checkpoint missions are simple speed runs, dream orbs/portals are as simple as getting to the end, dream shards are fun for exploration, and race is pretty self exploratory. However, the real challenge from them (aside from the main acts with their collectables) is getting an S-rank on them. They are pretty tight because of how short each side objective is and I'd argued where I got the most enjoyment and hatred from this game. For one, they are purely optional and also reveal jank of this game because it being made for mobile and general Sonic jank. But at the same time, the thrill of getting an easy S-rank or cutting it close more than makes up for it. These objectives are fine but I recommend getting an S-rank on all of them to get the most time and enjoyable out of the game. Hardest are dream shards as you figure out a path to collect all of 6 of them while everything else is just race related.
  
• The bosses are fine. Dr. Crabulous, Factory Fourmen, Guardian Hunter, and Nightmare Eggman are all just fine and probably the weakest part of the game in terms of gameplay. They are very simple and very easy to beat. Each relies on a gimmick but they're basically all the same (except Eggman). Let it go through an attack cycle and hit it's exposed weakpoint. Ranking them is whatever but Nightmare Eggman is undoubtly the best simply for being just a stage instead of a boss. You never interact with Nightmare Eggman and he's more of a obstacle to overcome during the same. Since the stages and level design are pretty solid, it makes the ending really good as you use everyone to progress through the level and it's a pretty damn good one. Yeah it's not a boss but a good final stage, so yeah it's probably the best boss out of all three of them. Ranking them is Nightmare Eggman (not a boss, but a stage. However it's' a really good stage, probably the best/most challenging/longest stage in the game) > Factory Fourmen (2 phases and it's fairly fun) > Guardian Hunter (take those boost bosses and make them mini, that's Guardian Hunter. It's fine and his 2nd phase is fine but too basic for a 3rd boss) > Dr. Crabulous (1st boss fight and the most basic. He performs shockwaves and as you damage him, he deflates which means he loses an attack. Pretty funny but not that challenging, but pretty good Sonic cutscene and the final hitpoint is pretty funny too).
  
• there are 2 types of controls, touch screen and controller. Yeah go for controller, touch screen fucking sucks. The camera in this game is fine if not a bit wonky/slow at timesbut it really sucks trying to go back or off screen on touch screen since you have to manually move the camera so much later after the action. Touch screen is fine but unintuitive compared to controller. Controller is the best way to play this game as it just ports the basic Sonic control scheme onto the controller you're using. It's pretty smooth all things consider aside from a few input delays here and there.
  

Yeah that's all for gameplay. It's pretty good aside from a few quirks here and there. Some are major and some are just nitpicks, but overall, a solid gameplay experience.
Music/Animation(also art direction)/Story (also characterization) (putting them all here since they ain't that important and base game only for now)

• Music is good but not my type of good I expect out of Sonic. It's like 50/50. Menu theme is pretty fun and the intro/ending sequence theme fucking slaps. Scrambled shores and Nightmare Maze are really solid, but Dream Factory and Ego City didn't click with me. Ambient themes are relaxing bop and boss themes are pretty good (Nightmare Eggman and Factory Fourmen were standouts).
  
• Animation is a standout in this game. The intro animation is amazing and so beautiful, I recommend watching it on youtube because it's great. In game cutscenes are great too, very expressive and full of character (yet again go on Youtube and watch it because this is the best 3d Sonic has ever been animated since Unleashed). The characters eyelids aren't the only thing emoting, the hands and eyebrows actually move in an organic and bouncy way (crazy how good these more than a decade models look when they use cartoonish animation). I recommend looking at the Dr. Crabulous intro with Sonic because it looks fantastic and one of the best looking cutscenes in the game. Unfortunately, they only make up barely a portion of the cutscenes and the cutscenes we get with the standstill comic designs are awful. They lack any character and remove any tention/emtion behind the scene. But art style and aesthetics wise? It's yet again fantasic, beauitful and graphically amazing considering I played on a Iphone (idk how it looks on PC or TV, but I bet it would look even better). Every setting is a reinvetion of a previous setting with a dream like twist to them, which makes all of them look so good. Ego city and Nightmare Maze are tiedd for best aesthetics, then Dream Factory, and Scrambled Shores. Gameplay animation is pretty good, good use of squash and stretch along with snappy timing makes the gameplay feel really smooth. Oh the phase transitions for bosses are fantastic, all of them are really good (that's the only time where I feel like all of them are equal in my opinion). Ariem and the bosses are a standout in terms of designs.
  
• Finally, story and characterization. It's aight and probably the quickest part to get through. Not offensive but simple and effective. Just look up cutscene movie on Youtube, you'll get the gist. Bringing back Cream for this game was a great choice and the development of Ariem was fine (wish there was more honestly, I feel like she could be great in Sonic canon). Eggman controlling dreams to build the Eggman Empire is a pretty cool idea, I just wish I saw more of him (even his brief moments at the start, Ego City, and as Nightmare Eggman were great). I do like how Factory Fourmen was technically a fodder boss for Guardian Hunter to roam free where we'll meet it again and defeat it as Knuckles/Rouge (it's a nice way to transition into the next stage and boss). Final stage where the characters had to fight Nightmare Eggman and keep Ariem safe while progressing to the Reverie had some solid moments and cool final hurrah as Eggman almost beats you until you blast through as Sonic. Characterization is mostly fine (carried by the animation) and the voice acting is fine (generations/lost world/forces/colors type of characterization and voice acting). The way that dream orbs were used to explain why and how we can unlock the characters is pretty cool way to explain why we don't get all the characters right off the bat (that's simple yet effective way to incorporate game design into the story). And I do like that Sonic and crew got their woos, ohs, and yeahs back (brings back a flavor of their personality back in gameplay). Ariem and Knuckles carry this game tbh in terms of characterization and banter.
  

Holy this was long and unnecessary but I feel like the game sort of deserves it. So what do you think of the game? Do you like, dislike, love, or hate this game (ignoring the apple exclusivity) and do you agree or disagree with my take of the game? Love the critism and praise since it brings good discussion. Have a nice day :)

First to say, I am not married and haven't been unfortunately yet. I am wiring here, because I have seen that there are quite a few mature and knowledgeable people here. So your advice matters to me a lot. Back to the topic.
Hey all, I am 26M, and have been single for about 6/7 months. I am out of a quite long-term relationship. 7 years. I am at a point, where I feel like I have moved on and am ready to find a partner to who I can commit. Not looking for hookups. In fact, I have been with only one woman, my ex, who I thought would have married by now and have kids with, but life is a bitc*.
About me: I am a software engineer, so an introverted guy, but I am not a geek. My hobbies are working out (yeah what a cliche, but I like it, and it has been my go to during the breakup, really helped me a lot), going on hikes (I mean long 30km hikes to mountains), riding a motorcycle, reading, and learning new stuff (currently I am reading more in depth about crypto and investments in general, and flipping apartments). I do own my home, paid off already, so I live on my own.
I don't use social media, I have a facebook account which I only used to chat with friends and family (I am not from USA and iphones are not that popular here, so we mostly use facebook messenger). I don't have any other social media, except Reddit. I don't think I am an ugly guy, because I have received quite a lot of compliments and girls hitting on me in high-school. After high-school I was with my ex, so I haven't looked at any other woman, so can't tell if I fell of the attraction ladder. I have already dealt with the issues that lead to the breakup. I think it was mostly my fault. No cheating or abuse, just plain old complacency, which is the saddest part. I have been trying to be more social and outgoing and am still working on my social skills. But I am mainly focused on working and trying to grow my side hustle and investments to actually make a living out of them. I will probably still do software development part time in the future as a safety net.
With this being said, is my lifestyle making it hard for me to find a partner. I am not looking for a girlfriend or a girl that I can casually date and so on. I am looking for a partner that I can build a family with.
I know that you have to become what you want to attract, and although I am not there yet, I am going into that direction.
What should I improve and how to meet a nice, shy girl, which will like my lifestyle and be hyped to be a part of. Looks is not that important for me. If we have a connection and the communication is going well.
Although to most of you guys's standards I am quite young, I have been ready to be a dad for about a year now. Don't ask me why I didn't propose to my ex then, I can't tell you yet, I am still struggling with figuring that out.
Self-improvement, status, money is important, but for me the most important thing is family. I have been imagining coming home to a wife and kids, and seeing my hard work paying off.
I got out of topic a little bit, and sorry for my not so perfect english, it's is my third language.
Any advice on how to improve my life, so I can attract the woman for me will be appreciated.

Hey all, I am 26M, and have been single for about 6/7 months. I am out of a quite long-term relationship. 7 years. I am at a point, where I feel like I have moved on and am ready to find a partner to who I can commit. Not looking for hookups. In fact, I have been with only one woman, my ex, who I thought would have married by now and have kids with, but life is a bitc*.
About me: I am a software engineer, so an introverted guy, but I am not a geek. My hobbies are working out (yeah what a cliche, but I like it, and it has been my go to during the breakup, really helped me a lot), going on hikes (I mean long 30km hikes to mountains), riding a motorcycle, reading, and learning new stuff (currently I am reading more in depth about crypto and investments in general, and flipping apartments). I do own my home, paid off already, so I live on my own.
I don't use social media, I have a facebook account which I only used to chat with friends and family (I am not from USA and iphones are not that popular here, so we mostly use facebook messenger). I don't have any other social media, except Reddit. I don't think I am an ugly guy, because I have received quite a lot of compliments and girls hitting on me in high-school. After high-school I was with my ex, so I haven't looked at any other woman, so can't tell if I fell of the attraction ladder. I have already dealt with the issues that lead to the breakup. I think it was mostly my fault. No cheating or abuse, just plain old complacency, which is the saddest part. I have been trying to be more social and outgoing and am still working on my social skills. But I am mainly focused on working and trying to grow my side hustle and investments to actually make a living out of them. I will probably still do software development part time in the future as a safety net.
With this being said, is my lifestyle making it hard for me to find a partner. I am not looking for a girlfriend or a girl that I can casually date and so on. I am looking for a partner that I can build a family with. I know that you have to become what you want to attract, and although I am not there yet, I am going into that direction. What should I improve and how to meet a nice, shy girl, which will like my lifestyle and be hyped to be a part of. Looks is not that important for me. If we have a connection and the communication is going well.
Although to most of you guys's standards I am quite young, I have been ready to be a dad for about a year now. Don't ask me why I didn't propose to my ex then, I can't tell you yet, I am still struggling with figuring that out. Self-improvement, status, money is important, but for me the most important thing is family. I have been imagining coming home to a wife and kids, and seeing my hard work paying off.
I got out of topic a little bit, and sorry for my not so perfect english, it's is my third language.
Any advice on how to improve my life, so I can attract the woman for me will be appreciated.

Y'all I've been cheated!
I had 200 rat shillings, went to Crow-Crease Cryptics and tried to buy 200 maniac's prayers for my 200 rat shillings. My rat shillings are gone and I never got my maniac's prayers! Has this happened to anyone else? Maybe this is a bug in the new rat market system?
I am trying to get correspondence plaques for bejeweled lenses (who else is on the Zub train?). I'm a new PoSI just trying to make it in this dark city.
- Fela Kismet

Quick backstory, im a 21F and my dad is 44M. This is the one person I hate most yet cant fully because he'll always be my dad.
At such a young age, I was forced to hide his coke/drugs, cheating and his inappropriate behavior around me and others. When I was 7, I can visibly remember the day he groped my behind when mom wasn't around. This mans "superior complex" left him to believe he was unstoppable.
Hundreds of people idolize my father for being a "leader." There's not one person that doesn't love him for whatever reasons. My dad holds a lot of power and treats random strangers with the utmost respect, yet didn't give an ounce of that for his family. I always thought I was a "daddy's girl", I was respected by everyone in public just because I had his last name. Soon enough I realized that it was a front and he only took me out to make other people think he has a good relationship with his family.
I could go on and on about the physical and emotional abuse that he put my mom, sister and I through, but I really woke up when he brought up the piano.
When I was 15, I got a super cheap plastic piano gifted on Christmas from my dad. 5 years pass, I am cleaning my room and realize the piano in the corner of my room has run it's course. Seriously, this piano was old and cheap. I proceed to take the piano and dump it in the trash.
He stopped by the house and saw the piano in the trash.
"Have your stuff out in 3 days" sent via iphone
My head begins to spin "Where am I going to go? Why is he kicking me out? What did I do wrong?" He held so much control over my emotional state. When I asked for the reasoning, he said it was because he bought it and I should have asked for permission because what I did was disrespectful.
In that moment I felt a lightbulb, it's as if I had finally woken up. I began to realize that the strings he had over me, threatening to kick me out, making me feel guilty for a gift that he gave me, needed to be cut. I was ready to take charge of my life. No more holding money over my head, or making me feel sad for never meeting his standards.
"Sounds good." sent via iphone
I quit my job, sold my car and moved across the country. I knew it was bad when I physically wanted to be as far away from him as possible.
Things are a lot harder here, trouble making money, no car and need a new place to stay. Although nothing would be worse than being anywhere near my dad.

Hey folks - following up on the Full list of all artists with badges : post I thought I'd try to start a full-on beginner's guide/FAQ for people who are just starting the game and/or have questions. I hope this will become a living document and all of you Soundmappers will start contributing your knowledge and insights.
I'm not a developer (though I think they're doing a great job!) or gaming expert, just a fan of the game. Hope this helps!

What is Soundmap?

Soundmap is a location-based mobile music collection game. Think Pokemon Go, but with songs. You collect the songs and then can trade them for other songs or “coins”, the in-game currency.

What kind of device do I need to play this?

This is an iPhone only app for now. Dev notes that an Android version is coming in the summer sometime.

Is Premium worth it?

Short answer: Yes. (if you intend to play the game long term)
Think of the standard edition as a demo. Reminds me of the shareware model from back-in-the-day (dating myself here). Premium unlocks so many features that make the game truly playable in the long run – expanded collection range, level, etc.
I’d say the lifetime license for $20 is a really good deal. You’re supporting the developers’ hard work so that the game can continue to grow and prosper. And believe me, I’m normally a person that doesn’t pay for ANYTHING on the App Store, but the hours I’ve put in to this game made it worth it. I’ve been neglecting Tears of the Kingdom in favor of this.
You can also get premium if you invite 8 friends to join but I haven’t tested that functionality. I’ve heard mixed reports of it being bugged, but the game purports to have 4500+ users go premium via this route.

Where are the best places to go to get songs/drops?

I don’t know how they determine where things drop but I'm guessing it’s some combination of cell phone signals and users who have the app installed. As such, places like open fields and parks are pretty sparse, but where I’ve found the most drops are:
· College campuses
· Malls/shopping centers
· Tourist attractions
Also remember to regularly “scan this area” when going to new places to refresh.

How can I tell if something is a rare, shiny, and/or epic on the map? Do they have their own drops?

Rares are easy to spot because they are darker and glowing, and they stand out against the yellow perimeter.
Shinies have their own drops (looks like a shiny mixed with a regular drop) but, if you’re lucky, can also be pulled from other common, uncommon and rare drops (this is very infrequent, however).
The developers initially created standalone epic drops but took them out of the game because of spoofing/cheating. As of now, the only way to pull an epic is from other drops, but they appear at an even lower probability than shinies.

I was going to pick up a drop and it’s greyed out now. Did someone get to it first?

Yes. Drops are shared with other players so someone might have gotten to it first! On the discord people have complained that in popular areas people camp out to wait for the timers to reset and then pick up the drops right away. So if you’re in an area where you don’t see a lot of grey drops enjoy it while you can :-)

What do the numbers on the epics mean?

The lower the number, the more valuable it is. #1 means it’s the first copy someone found from a drop. Think of it like collecting comic books or trading cards. Numbers over #25 just read #25+ and over #100 read 100+.

How does the trade economy work? What is X worth? How much can I get for X?

The game’s trade economy generally follows basic rules of supply and demand with commons being worth the least, uncommons more, then rares. What’s “fair” is subjective but in my experience the general range has been this, hard-to-find artists being more:
· Commons: 100 - 500 coins
· Uncommons: 300 - 1500 coins
· Rares: 500 – 3000 coins
· Common Shiny: 500 – 1500 coins
· Uncommon Shinies: 1000 – 10000 coins
If a track is really popular and/or new, expect to pay more (for example, the Kendrick/Drake beef tracks were at premium for a while).
Rare shinies and Epics are all over the place though, with people asking for literally a million+ for a #1 Kanye West epic. I don’t know if they get it but certainly 6 figure trades for the most popular shinies and epics are not out of the ordinary.
Hip-hop seems to be the most universally popular genre, with artists like Travis Scott and Playboi Carti fetching the highest trade prices. Female pop stars like Taylor, Lana, Billie, Olivia, etc. have selling power. K-Pop (StrayKids, NewJeans, BTS, etc.) are also very popular, but a bit more niche.

How do I earn coins?

· Buy via in-app purchases. This ranges from 2 bucks for 1000, to 100 bucks for 100,000.
· Invite friends. Get 1000 coins for each person that signs up.
· Through trade by offering songs.
· Get your free daily drops.
· Converting unwanted songs to coins.
I’m usually free to play on everything (aside from buying the premium license) so I ended up doing the latter three to earn. You can really stock up with some good rares or a couple of lucky shiny or epic pulls.
Converting commons is a good way to earn some coin quickly in the early game, and your pull to earn ratio is usually pretty good, especially if you’re able to farm drops in your area. However, as you get more coins, try to keep and sell commons via trade instead as you’ll be able to earn some coins and get a common back in the process.
Try to avoid converting uncommons or rares whenever possible. Even if you offer them cheaply for a few hundred coins it’s better than burning them outright. Also, you never know what people might be interested in – one person’s trash truly is another’s treasure. Conversely you can get some really great songs that someone is just looking to be rid of.

How do I convert songs to coins?

Long press (hold down) on an individual song to convert to coins. If you hit the … next to “Your Collection” it will give you the option to “Select to Sell” and you can convert songs to coins in bulk.

How do I offer coins in a trade?

When you “request to trade” you’ll see that there’s an “add coins” option. Click on that and add the desired amount of coins. If you are aiming to trade coins only, just use any throwaway common to facilitate the trade (no way to trade without using at least one song.)

What is the benefit of setting favorite artist(s)? Does it actually work?

The favorite artists does work to help you increase probability of picking up your favorites, moreso if the artist has a deep discography. I set Taylor Swift as a favorite and I picked up a bunch of her tracks. (I love classic hip-hop and R&B but I’m a Swiftie nonetheless lol). It does take time as the overall drop rate is still low even at 10x.
I would recommend setting one unique artist for each genre if you’re trying to accumulate. (I.e Taylor for pop, Kanye for hip-hop, SZA for R&B, etc). This can help with badge collection as you’ll see next.

What are artist badges and what are they used for?

When you collect a certain amount of songs by a particular artist, you earn a badge. This badge is a picture of the artists’ face (or a full body shot of the band), and you can designate a favorite artist badge to appear next to your username throughout the game. You can own multiple badges per artist. Badges are categorized as follows, depending on how many songs you collect:
· Bronze – 5 songs
· Silver – 20 songs
· Gold – 50 songs
· Platinum – entire discography (song count varies by artist)
· Diamond – entire discography plus 5 shiny songs
A full list of artists with badges can be found here on my other post about the topic. So far the badges themselves seem cosmetic but they are a great way to keep track of which artists are most popular (and thus fetch the highest trade prices).

How do I know how many songs are in a specific artist’s discography?

After you collect the gold badge for an artist, the game will provide you with the count of the remaining songs to collect for a platinum. As far as I know this is the only way (and thus only works for badge artists).

What are lootboxes and should I buy them?

Lootboxes are basically a way to purchase drops with coins. They can be very, very useful if used correctly and at the right phase(s) of the game.
~Daily Drop – free: You can select a free drop of the genre of your choice (or randomly). It resets everyday at midnight. Always pull this everyday. Most of the time it’s common, but I’ve pulled some really good uncommons and rares from this. And it’s free!
~Daily Free Coins – free: Self explanatory. Always pull this everyday. The reward gets larger and larger as your streak gets longer. For example, my next reward after 42 days of playing will be 1040 coins.
~Fav Artist Drop – 2000: This is a drop that becomes more valuable as you get more experienced/powerful in the game. It drops commons thru rare so I wouldn’t use this in the beginning. However, if you’re working towards a platinum badge it becomes invaluable as it becomes one of the only ways you can complete your collection as you find it harder and harder to trade for what you need.
~Best of the Best – 2000: You can pick your genre here and it gives you a pull from a random popular artist in that genre. Note: "best" doesn't mean "rare" necessarily. I've pulled rares but other folks have pulled uncommons. Also, "popular" artist doesn’t necessarily mean badge artist, so be mindful.
~Super Rare – 1000: This is the absolute best drop for beginners aiming to build a collection for trading. As it says, you get a guaranteed rare, though it’s a blind drop (can’t pick genre). With 10,000 coins you can get 10 rares and in conjunction with stuff you collect around town that’s a great platform to start building from.
~Today’s Top Hits – 1000: If you love the most popular songs you can try your luck here. I just tried this to see what I’d get and I got a Taylor Swift rare. Most of the time you should get a rare but not sure if it’s guaranteed.
~RapCaviar – 1000: This is for the hip-hop fans. As it’s curated you’ll get a currently popular artist, but rarity is not guaranteed. I pulled an Uncommon Yeat most recently.
-New Music Friday - This is a new one offering new music that comes out on Fridays. I think it's free but it's a little bugged right now so more to come on that.

What is the point of exp and levels?

Every time you level up you get a 2000+ coin bonus (more at higher levels), which is a nice incentive to stay active. The higher your exp, the higher your worldwide rank, which so far looks to be just bragging rights. The higher your level, the more exp it takes to level up.
How to earn XP:
· Common song: 20 XP
· Uncommon song: 50 XP
· Rare song: 100 XP
· Shiny song: 300 XP
· Epic song: 800 XP
· New drop visited: 20 XP
· New artist seen: 20 XP
· New person traded with: 20 XP
· Daily check in: 100 XP
However – the exp you gain in a week does have an impact on your league position.

What are leagues?

Leagues are another way to compete with other Soundmappers and earn a little bit of coins as well.
Each user is assigned to a league that consists of 30 random participants of a common rank. Like the artists, there are Bronze/SilveGold/Platinum/Diamond Tiers. You advance (or maintain your rank) by earning XP. Top players in each tier get some coins. If you rank highly enough you get promoted, if you are too low, you get demoted to a previous rank.
Check out the in-game League FAQ for more info. (I tried to link it here but it keeps trying to post some huge goofy Notion ad alongside the link so I'll not do that).

What is Discord and why does everyone keep talking about it?

From Wikipedia: Discord is an instant messaging and VoIP social platform which allows communication through voice calls, video calls, text messaging, and media and files.
There is no in-game messaging system (yet) so Discord is the platform you can use to communicate with other gamers to negotiate trades, advertise things you’re selling, contact the developers about desired features. The devs are active and you can often get very good insights from the help and announcement channels.
However, as with any social chat community there is always the danger of people getting toxic/abusive in the general rooms. Generally I stick to direct messages about trades, and everyone I’ve spoken to in DMs is nice and polite, but your own experience may vary.
If you click on the “chat” icon in app it will automatically invite you to the discord.

Why am I banned?

If you’re unlucky you’ll find yourself locked out of login with an error that your account has been banned. Generally, if you’ve violated the terms of service (we all read those, right?).
From what I’ve seen, the following things can get you banned:
· Location spoofing (using apps/tools to pretend you’re in a different place than you actually are)
· Scamming (trying to trick people into giving up high value tracks for nothing, etc.)
· Invite spoofing (using fake emails to sign up for multiple accounts and then using those to get free premium
If you think you’ve been falsely/mistakenly banned, send a help ticket and plead your case.
That's all I've got for now. Good luck and have fun! I hope both this subreddit and the Soundmap community grows and prospers.

My husband and I have been married 8 years. We are both Catholic, and we met because of the church, both volunteering playing music for some of the masses. We have one kid, a daughter, who’s 7 years old. My husbands never been into sex, which was fine, because neither was I. Not that I hated it but, it was definitely something I could live without, and to be honest I’ve never really wanted that much, it always sounded weird to me. And, because of our religion we both waited til after marriage anyways. I discussed my thoughts about sex with my husband before we were even married, and I was relieved because he felt the same way, because not many men do. So many men especially in modern society pressure women into sex so lucky me! I find one who doesn’t! Except flash forward more than a decade after meeting and apparently he’s gay. We’ve had sex to have our child, obviously, having a child was something I’ve always wanted despite my disinterest in sex and my husband seemed mostly into the idea too, so after we got married we did try to make a child, however after I got pregnant we’ve just never had sex since. Which, in retrospect, I really should’ve seen as a sign, but for years I just assumed we were on the same wavelength of not needing sex in our relationship.
Anyways, as to how I found out he was cheating on me, it really wasn’t even intentional. This last Monday night my daughter, who‘s 7, had this idea to steal my husbands phone when he was asleep and use his thumb to unlock it. It’s the kind of thing a 7 year old does to be mischievous I guess, I’ve never felt a need to snoop on my husbands phone myself, I really assumed up until this he was loyal, I’m close friends with all his female friends so why would I need to worry...! Although in retrospect too I missed a lot of signs, and he was always sort of secretive with his phone, but he’s also always talking about how Apple and Facebook are spying on you, that there’s hackers and that kind of thing... I don’t know. It feels stupid looking back on. Anyways, I walked into the living room after taking a shower to find my husband dead asleep on the couch from a messed up sleep schedule, and my daughter playing on an iPhone that’s definitely not hers as she doesn’t have a phone, so I asked her what she was doing, she admitted pretty fast and handed the phone over to me. It was open on the notes app she was using the drawing feature to make a drawing, I exited out of the app and on the Home Screen I saw a few apps that immediately stood out to me. Namely: Tinder, Grindr, and Daddyhunt. I wasn’t 100% sure what Grindr or Daddyhunt were but I immediately had a sick feeling in my stomach, as well as a suspicion, which was soon confirmed. I opened Tinder and scrolled through just the screen where it shows your messages, and they were all male names and profiles. I definitely must’ve looked as shocked as I felt, because my daughter asked me what I was looking at to make “that face”, so I said it was nothing, closed the app and turned off the phone like nothing happened. I then got my daughter ready for bed. Later that night I researched what Grindr and Daddyhunt were, which of course were what I thought, I’d even heard of Grindr before but when I first saw the app name I really tried gaslighting myself.
But there’s no ignoring it, now. I feel like an idiot for ignoring all the signs. Not only was there the disinterest in sex, but I look back and see a lot of things, the way he would smile at his phone and I’d ask why and he’d say “nothing, just something a friend texted”, the time he complimented this strangers gay flag tattoo, all the times he’s gone over to a friends house or that he had to attend business at his job, not stating which friend or what specific business, his interest in romcom movies like Legally Blond, Heathers, Mean Girls… like, am I stupid? Has he always been carrying this big gay flag around and I’ve been too blind to notice? For a decade. How long has he known? Who else has he had sex with? How many people is it? Does he love any of them? Does he love me? This entire decade of my life, spent with him, and he’s gay.
And the worst part is, I’m not even sure if I should tell him. Or if I want to. If I do, then it’ll mean most likely divorce, which I really do not want our 7 year old daughter to suffer through. Or worse maybe is if I tell him and we stay together, then he’ll know I know and our dynamic will have to shift. Already we haven’t been sleeping in the same bed most nights, most nights usually either I or him sleep in my daughters room, or he’ll fall asleep on the couch, it’s rare we actually spend the full night sleeping together. Before having our daughter, after we married, at least then we would every night, for that first year. But then with job changes, moving, and of course our daughter, I guess it all shifted, and it happened gradually and at a pace I never even noticed how disconnected we had become. Because of how connected we were at the beginning, I assumed our connection still stood, and now I’m realizing how distant apart we are. A selfish part of me also doesn’t want to confront him because it would mean having to explain to my family, coworkers, friends, that I’d married a gay man, we’d had a relationship for 10 years, and he was cheating on me. Even if I don’t get into specifics with anyone outside immediate family and the closest of friends, I have to admit I see it as embarrassing, on my behalf. If I don’t confront him it means everything can stay the way things are. But another part of me knows too that the way things are right now is mostly surface level, not real, and that by not confronting him I’m continuing this false narrative in favor of fake happiness. And doesn’t he deserve to know the truth? And deserve a life without me, if that’s what he wants? I’m not even pissed at him. I should be pissed, I really should be, but I‘m not. I’m mostly just in shock, and pissed at myself for not noticing. I’m not mad at him like I thought I’d be. I’ve continued on this week as if everything is normal, and it’s been surprisingly easy to play this part as if nothing happened.
I think I should confront him, but I am so, so conflicted. I cried just a bit ago for our marriage, and I think also from stress, whereas I haven’t cried at all this week before today. I have no one to talk about this with in my real life. Should I confront him? Would it benefit our relationship, and benefit our daughter, would it be the good thing for him and for our family? If so, how do I do it? Do I just tell him bluntly that I know? Do I gather more evidence first? How do I start that conversation? Is there a certain way to word it, to make the conversation go smoothly? If I don’t, then what then? Do I continue pretending like everything’s okay, and that our marriage is not a sham? Do I try to rekindle our connection, if not even romantically, just to be closer, so that maybe he can tell me himself? Will he ever tell me himself? I’m so exhausted. It’s 6 AM that I’m writing this, and I woke up 3 AM alone in the bed unable to sleep, and cried.

Hi everyone,
I'll try to keep this as short as possible but I need to add context.
My wife (30F) and I (32M) have been together for over 8 years, married for 3. In the past I've been cheated on in my only 2 real relationships. I have always fully trusted my wife and never thought she'd ever do anything behind my back. I've always struggled to trust people, and I'm currently going through diagnosis for autism. People have always taken advantage of me, be it friends or more.
Last year she was hospitalised for a few weeks after experiencing a psychotic episode. She's finally at a stage where it seems like she's back to her normal self. But we haven't really had sex since. It's felt awkward for me as if someone is not in the correct frame of mind, I don't want to pressure her or feel like we're having sex and she doesn't want to. I don't know if that sounds odd, but I don't want to take advantage or anything, or do anything she regrets.
Recently, I've been experiencing joint pains, and it seems I may have Rheumatoid Arthritis. I'm waiting for the diagnosis but it seems to be one thing after another. Because of this I've been extremely anxious and upset. I've been seeking reassurance from her. In the beginning she was so reassuring, then one time I asked her and she couldn't promise she'd stick by me which I found strange. The following day she said she didn't mean to upset me and was just having a moment which I understood as it's not easy. Then I noticed she was constantly texting another guy that she 'accidentally followed on instagram'. I didn't think anything of it as it's fine for her to talk to other people, that's fine. I don't want to be controlling. But I noticed she was talking to him so much every day. I had a bit of a breakdown over everything happening (There's also a lot of other stuff going on a the moment and it got too much). I then asked her about the guy and she said it's nothing and she will stop talking to him. I said it's not a problem that you're talking, I just want some reassurance that there's no feelings etc. She was adamant she would stop talking so I left it at that but felt bad also, as I don't want to come across as controlling.
Today she wanted help with her watch. To do so , I had to use her phone to access the app to help her. I closed the app by swiping up like you do on iPhone and noticed chats below. It seems she was still messaging this guy but had it on muted notifications to hide it. I didn't look into the messages as they're private and again, I don't want to be one of these controlling people. But it's made me feel so awful.
Basically, I have no problem with her talking to others, but the way she's deliberately deceived and lied to me, It's really cut deep. The one person I feel like I could trust with my life. With my health issues, I'm really starting to consider if she would stick by me. It seems like this is an exit plan for her. I'm still shook up so maybe I'm overreacting but I'd love to hear your views please.
The guy is local and of similar age. If she's wasting my time, I'd rather just know so I can go off and live my life whilst I still can as never know how the RA may progress.
Am I being over protective?
Thanks so much.

Rating manipulation has been at the heart of a lot of controversies in chess lately, often resulting in cheating accusations. What if we could better control how rating is gained so as to dis-incentivize activities that lead to controversy? I propose an adaptive k-factor scaling in Elo computation so that the seriousness of a chess game directly affects how much rating can be gained or lost.
Here's a few recent examples of rating manipulation that led to controversy:

• young Hans boosting his rating with engines while trying to get paired against strong players for the experience of it (let's not side-track into what everyone thinks really happened or not)
• Alireza farming his way to the Candidates
• Hikaru's "interesting" win streaks while farming 2700s-2900s
• Brandon Jacobson fooling around with his mates during Covid and boosting each other's ratings (again, I'm going to just take him at his word regarding his temporary suspension from chess.com)

So what's my solution? Let's scale the k-factor of each game proportional to the number of participants in the event. Casual online blitz? There's only the two players involved, so very small k-factor. If they play enough games together you can still gain some decent rating after a while, but you can't just boost your friend willy nilly. Titled Tuesday? Quite a high k-factor since there's a lot of people playing, which indicates that it's a serious event. Viewer arena organized by a streamer? Moderately sized k-factors in most cases with a few dozen participants; large streamers would probably be able to organize large events with large k-factors. Random Open tournament in Spain that happens to occur just before FIDE calculates ratings for the last Candidates spot? Moderately high k-factor because it's a serious established tournament, but just not a very big one. Grand Swiss? Hella big k-factor because that's very serious business with lots of players. A 4-player "tournament" where it's mostly 1 guy playing the rest in succession? Yeah, that gets the same tiny k-factor used for casual 1v1 games. Not a viable way to boost your Elo very much.
In short, the k-factor should be scaled by something like (# participants in the event / 100). There should be a cap on how big the scaling factor can be, probably around 2.0. I'm also flexible on what exactly that divisor should be. Maybe more like 20, maybe more like 200, I'm not sure.
What are the ramifications of all this?
All the weird things that I've mentioned above would be disincentivized and less likely to occur.

• By making it very hard to gain rating in casual games, there would be less incentive to cheat in "meaningless" games. "Meaningless" in quotes because currently any casual game on chess.com has the same meaning as a Titled Tuesday game in terms of rating.
• By making small- and medium-sized tournaments have smaller k-factors, they wouldn't be as viable a path for farming Elo
• Hikaru using "dark arts" in matches outside of tournaments wouldn't be so lucrative for farming Elo, so he probably wouldn't do it as much, and it would give the likes of Kramnik less to complain about.

The most interesting ramification is what happens to open tournaments vs invitationals. Invitationals are generally very small, and would end up with moderate k-factors at best. That means top players who participate in them won't be able to change their ratings very much by just playing each other. But in the meantime, every big open tournament is going to have a big k-factor, and its winner will probably gaing a lot of rating. As such, I think this might give more people outside the top-20 more chances to break into the top-20 at least for a short time just because their rating would be more volatile. I think this would be great for chess.
So, yeah. Let's scale the k-factor by some measure of seriousness of each game. We can get sensible scaling ratios by just looking at the number of participants in the event. This would disincentivize a lot of rating manipulation behaviors that have led to controversy, and it would simultaneously incentivize a bit playing opens vs small invitationals. Adaptive k-factor scaling could improve chess quite a bit both online and in person.
What do you think?

Im just tired read or dont read comment or dont this is really the only place i feel safe to vent and i just want to thank everyone here for that it means the world to me and when you guys help others its one of the few times i actually feel joy this is gonna be a long post so thats a heads up
11 years ago I was 5 my parents got in there first of many arguments i remember trying to stop them but no one responded to me i went to my sister she didnt look at me i remember being horrified and hiding in the closet all day no one looked for me or even cared this was the start ever since that day i felt obsolete, missing, empty whatever u wanna say my parents started constantly calling me names saying they hate me im useless im stupid beating me up saying im where everything went wrong etc i always hated it i began hating them all they did was beat me i tried so hard to satisfy my dad he said he wished he had a son that came out top of his class i did that for 4 years straight and he didnt care he was fascinated with cars so i became a car guy to attempt to impress him. Nothing he liked planes so i studied those then drones and so on so forth my whole life i chased his acceptance i swear i hate myself for that he was the biggest bitch ever my mom wasnt much better she kept going back to him after every fight and blaming me because that makes sense she always beat me broke my stuff blamed me for all her fuck ups in life she did so often i hate her beyond hate her and dad those pieces of shit after about 4 years of their shit i basically lost all emotion, not like emo style or anything but i can’t remember the last time i had a genuine smile i didnt put to make someone feel better or to hide something i havnt loved anyone in forever i hate everyone ive been betrayed so many times i just refuse to trust anyone anymore all my friends talk about there depression and i always offer a helping hand and after that they just disappear and ignore me its to the point where someone can text me and expect a response next week i hate using my phone at all because im afraid to turn into a slave for my phone like the rest of my family i lost interest in all my hobbies all i think about is dying in 2021 my dad did something shitty that basically resulted in my parents divorcing and this is where it went from awful to misrable for me my mom and dad kept blaming me and beating me once i tried to tell them about my mental issues to which they told there whole families and laughed at me but when my sister said the same thing well they took her spoiled ass to therapy my parents treat me way worse but ofc she has to act dramatic and i just have to suffer and stay shut no one except for those who read this post actually know about my depression i feel so alone fighting a pointless battle for 11 years i feel like no one loves me or cares for me i feel empty and dead my sister thinks im spoiled because my mom bought me a abused iphone 11 that she found for dirt cheap its the first decent thing ive got in 4 years unlike her spoiled ass ive had 2 girlfriends cheat on me with losers which obviously hurt my uncles betrayed me i have a gf at the moment but i feel no love towards her i dont want to hurt her and tell her i wanna break up i dont wanna put any stress on her by telling her im depressed i dont want to see anyone suffer especially because of me but she also ignores me all the time resulting in me feeling worse i just wanna die ive been going through hell for 11 years i dont wanna continue anymore i want someone to ask hey how are you today for once i was a bad person when i changed all anyone wants to see is the old me i fucking hate people thank you for taking the time to read my post it really does mean a lot to me have a wonderful day

For context, this is all relating to playing on chess.com. Background will be at the beginning, the meaty part will be at the end if you want to skip straight to it.
TL:DR I’ve been losing a lot of games to lower level players lately and I’m suspicious that cheating is becoming more prevalent.
Background: I joke around with my friends and tell them I have only three hobbies: drinking beer, reading books, and playing chess. But I’ve started having an issue with that last one.
According to chess.com, I was at the peak of my game at the beginning of 2022. I was rated 1898 in rapid (January 2022) and 1388 in blitz (February 2022). As of today, I’m 1572 in rapid (I rarely play rapid on chess.com these days) and 997 (?!) in blitz. I’m going to explain how I perceive this, and hopefully you guys can tell me why I’m wrong.
For starters, this is my daily schedule. Wake up, go for a run, get ready, play chess, go to work, come home, play chess, cook dinner, study chess while eating, read, go to bed. Chess obviously takes up a big part of my life. I play both online and over the board. For reference, my OTB ratings are 1534 for clasival, 1499 for quick, and 1419 for blitz. All of these are USCF ratings. Not the best, but it’s the top 1/3 of USCF players.
Today, I fell below 1000 on blitz. This came after 6 blitz games, of which I only won one. My opponent in my last game had a 90.5 accuracy and I had 77.3 (this is average for me on chess.com). I plugged the PGN into Stockfish 12.1 (I’m too lazy to upgrade) and frankly, I couldn’t find any faults in my opponent’s play. They weren’t choosing the best moves 100% of the time, but they were about 60% of the time, and the worst move they made all game was the fifth best, according to my engine.
The meaty part: I don’t normally evaluate chess.com games as in depth as this last one, but I’ve lost to sub-1000s on a fairly regular basis recently. Losing to people who are 400+ points lower than my OTB rating seems absurd. At first, I thought I only made foolish mistakes or blunders online, maybe because I never put the same thought and effort into it as I did OTB. But after diligently reviewing every OTB game lately, both rated and casual alike, I find that the mistakes are the same OTB as they are on chess.com, albeit equally foolish.
When I joined chess.com 8 years ago, my chess rating online was significantly higher than it was OTB. Has this changed? Is chess.com now lowballing the hell out of us?
The questions I’d rather get the answer to are these: is cheating running rampant on online chess right now? Or did I just turn idiot in the last two years? Should I give up? Is this happening because I don’t pay for the $100 version of chess.com? Should I move over to lichess? Should I just give up playing online altogether and just stick to my Sunday games in the park? Should I hang up the pieces and move to checkers or backgammon?
So many questions, such little answers. Honestly, I haven’t decided if I’d rather just be a poor sport about losing or if I’d rather chess.com be inundated with cheating. Let me know what you think and please tell me I’m wrong.

I'm writing this here because Samay Raina is the reason I got into chess.
I started playing chess in June 2023. But in January 2024, I watched one of Samay's old streams, which piqued my interest in chess. I understood that this game has so much depth and is fun. I started playing it with some seriousness and reached a 1500 rating in Blitz. (before that I have played 1000+ bullets games on mobile without pre-move)
However, my rating wasn't rising after 1500 because I struggled with the mid-game and end-game. To address this, I started playing 10-minute Rapid Games, where I experimented with mid-games and end-games against lower-rated players(my rating was 800 then). I only played Rapid for two months until my account on Chess()com was banned for "CHEATING" i.e. Fair Play on May 2nd.
During this period, I also played on Lichess()org, where I have a rating of 1700 in Rapid, with my highest rating on Chess()com being 1500.
The question arises: Why would I cheat against players rated 1300?
I appealed the ban, but they denied it, accusing me of cheating without presenting any evidence. (Maybe I cheated in my sleep, who knows?) I decided to let bygones be bygones when they offered me a chance to retain my old username and email to create a "2nd account," which I made on May 8th.
Additionally, I created another account during the appeal process, where I reached almost a 1500 rating in four days. Butttt that account also got banned for "ABUSE." Let me explain what kind of abuse they accused me of: I wrote 'bye' to my opponent when they were losing or had lost, just to tease them, which I did most of the time. Apparently, this is considered abuse. I know full well that I haven't written a single bad word in any chat.
In the past on Lichess, I did engage in actual abuse towards an opponent who stalled the whole game after reaching a losing position for the entire 8 minutes. For this, I received a warning not an account closure. Since then, I haven't said a single bad word to anyone in the game chat.
To be honest, I feel like chess is a closed gated society where if they don't like you, they'll kick you out for no apparent reason. CHESS IS NOT A SPORT, and people wonder why such a fun game like chess is not popular. Just go to the Gotham Chess channel; he made a video of a GM who got banned because he defeated Danny with some bullshit opening. If Chess()com, the biggest and most well-known platform, does these things, maybe people will just stop playing chess.
(I AM ADDING MY ACCOUNT's IN THE REPLY)

Hey guys, do you feel like Dhar found this sub? I just feel like he did because sometimes there's shorts that subtly reference this sub. Like in one short titled "Punishments in Dhar Mann be like" where Dhar Mann played a judge, and then let someone go because they said they were sorry for stealing massive quantities of iPhones because they needed the money to feed their family, then sentenced someone to 30 years in prison for cheating on a test. There was another one titled "Dhar Mann haters be like". In that one, he could've used that video to handle criticism in a good way, but considering it's a short, it's just a goofy ass video, and Dhar writes off anyone who doesn't like his channel as "haters". He also could've addressed that people have their own opinions, but instead turned into an ego stroke at the end of the short. Idk guys, what do you think? Do you think he found this sub, or do you think it's just out of pure coincidence?