My text to fun

I am so unbelievably sick of asking to exchange contact info with someone and being asked if I'm on Facebook or Instagram or something. No, I don't want to give you my social media you fucking dunce. Why is it preferable that you have the information of my relatives and friends? Why is it preferable that I give you access to pictures of the wedding I was at two years ago? I just met you, asshole. I'm not your friend. If you want to be friends, give me your phone number so we can talk like we're actual adults or something.
I HATE texting on social media too. Suddenly when I asked you for contact information I signed up to add to the ever expanding list of different people on ten different apps I have to check because "uhm actually I use WeChat!" SHUT UP. I have an address book on my phone where people's PHONE NUMBERS and NAMES go. I have an icon on my phone that displays how many missed messages I have and I can click that button to access ALL OF THEM from people who aren't weird and touchy about giving people they seemingly enjoyed talking to basic information. There is between the range of a few hundred to a couple thousand of people working at Apple right now trying to make the experience of texting someone else with your phone number as good and feature rich as it can be, and you want to talk to me on fucking Instagram?! Literally the only other thing I'd ever want to add you on is LINE but I don't know a single person in the US who uses it, and chances are you're no exception.
The worst part about it is that I capitulate every single goddamn time. I already asked for something, the person makes a counter offer, but this is the kind of transaction where only the person getting the offer is allowed to negotiate. I obviously want a method of contacting you and you didn't explicitly refuse, and I'd look like a psycho if I made a fuss about it. So you fucked me. We just met and you already fucked me.
This isn't me trying to pick someone up either. I meet someone, have a good conversation with them, and think "it'd be fun to hang out with this person" so I ask for their phone number. 40% of the time I get hit with this bullshit, and that is a lot given what an outgoing person I am. I like making friends. Holy shit I'm so annoyed. Your phone number is not some deeply personal thing your fucking cell carrier literally shipped people's numbers and names in a book to every fucking subscriber less than 20 years ago. Holy shit.

I won't give out real names so I'll just make some up because I don't want them to be angry if they ever find this. For context, me and my ex (sam) broke up a few months ago after we figured out we were going to different schools. She broke up over text and after that I never looked at her the same way since. We got together because I figured out she liked me but I didn't like her, it was from her ex (Emma) who slipped me a note saying her ex (sam) liked me. I actually liked had a crush on Emma because we knew more about each other then I knew about Sam. The only time I ever even heard Sam's voice was when she was saying "I'll smack the shit out of you if you do", sam and Emma were arguing about something but I thought they were going to fight, it was actually friendly?. I don't know how telling someone you'll beat the fuck out of them is a "friendly argument" but I went along with it. Me and Emma were talking about things with each other and got to know each other very well. She told me about her break up and how it hurt because Sam just walked up to her and said they should break up out of nowhere. I offered to try and help her out with the relationship between them and after a few days of talking that's when I realized it was one sided love and the day I realized I should never be a relationship therapist because I fucking suck. But yeah, I liked Emma but I was to nervous to tell her, I was giving hints because usually when we joked around and she said "I hate you" or something to make fun of me, I fuck with her and say something like "love you too buddy". We were great friends until she handed me the note and I don't know why but for some reason I actually started dating her ex without thinking about her, she thought her sam was trying to get back at her when really it was my fault. One day Emma told Sam that I didn't actually like her, I only liked her last year which was true but still got to me and that I only thought of her as a friend which made me mad and I cut her off, we would try our best to stay away from each other but one day she had a gf, let's name her, Stacy. Stacy was a year younger than Emma and I was making jokes about it and I was still feeling mad from her messages so I told Stacy she was using her to make Sam jealous and I showed Stacy the messages of everything, they broke up a few days after and I've been feeling like shit ever since. While me and Sam were dating, Sam got a missed call from Emma and When we tried to call her back she didn't answer. Messages, calls, video chat, any way we could. To let you guys know, she was also telling Sam she was going to end it if she didn't break up with me, so I could only think of the worst, what if she tried one last time before ending it, it was during the weekend so I was relieved when I saw her still alive at school. Fast forward to the break up. When I told Sam, she felt guilty for sending me the messages, a few weeks later we broke up and the only thing she was saying was that she felt bad about the messages and she going to a different school, sam went on to tell me that I was getting in the way of her studying even though she only sits on her phone for the whole period and doesn't do anything. I felt really hurt but I made myself happy for sam, I apologized to sam and told her that I was going to be deleting everything about us because I didn't want to be reminded of her and I didn't want the same for her either. I'm a over thinker and I have ADHD so I can admit I did tell her in advance to block me on all social media because one day I was going to try and talk to her again and end up sad when she blocked me for trying to talk to her and sure enough, after a few weeks I kept messaging her but then blocked her again because I felt to nervous to actually start talking. Fast forward to the important part of why they are trying to get me expelled. I started talking to Emma and apologized for everything I did to her, got with her ex instead of her, found out she had a crush on me this year and it got worse because I started dating her ex. So I think she was trying to break us up and then comfort me into dating her, I forgave her for that because love can change anything. My friend stopped showing up to school because he's home schooled now and a few weeks later the girl is emo and is barely talking to everyone. Sorry for that 😅, back to what I was talking about though, we were friends for a week and she told me we have to stop talking, this also was over text but this is after a incident happened between me and Sam's friend, let's call her horny girl or just hg for short, you'll love the reason for that name in a little bit trust me😈. Emma was telling me we shouldn't talk, I asked her why and she said it's because of hg and she said she was going to IN HER WORDS "beat my ass if I got with Emma" I don't know why she gives a fuck but I think she thinks I would do that to get back at Sam, ngl if I really was a asshole I probably would have but I was going to use her because we both saw each other as friends and I kinda like her but ever since everything happened we were just awkward friends, and even if I did date her it would be dumb as hell because not only is she going to a different school but it's only two weeks before school ends. Not to sound rude but hg is on the bigger side and she is just weird, I was uncomfortable for the first week of dating Sam because hg would sit behind me and make lewd hand gestures and since Sam was facing me, she saw what she was doing and just laughed hystericly, a few sam told me was she was making jokes of Sam stroking my y'know, giving me a bj, us having intercourse and me putting my fingers in her, that's all I can remember but the rest she wouldn't tell me. I started laughing over the text until I realized she was serious and I got mad so the next day I went up to hg and told her that if she can talk shit then she can easily say it in front of my face, we started yelling and it ended with me saying i don't have to fight her because my sister can come up and beat her ass for me, my sister is known in multiple schools for her fights and some of her friends are at my school so if my sister didn't want to fight she could easily tell her friends to jump her. I'm a guy so I'm not hitting a girl unless I have to. The next day, Emma said we should stop talking and this time she ment it, I said okay I understand why you want to do that and I respect your decision and we blocked each other. I haven't been showing up to my classes and my teachers are asking if it's because of what's going on, I didn't want to cause anymore problems so I just lied and said ether I must have forgotten or I was just uncomfortable with someone, I didn't say names but I think they already knew. Yesterday I didn't show up to school and a teacher was telling the principal about my incident with hg, funny thing I want to tell you is I made a name for the friend group and it's the main three, I call them the hgg because they all are kinda kinky so I call them the horny girl group, I have some information I got from people and the personal experience so if they want to keep making shit up about me then I can easily leak it on here and on the school page. The other two girls are my ex and the second girl who all you need to know why she's in the group is because she showed us a picture, pointed at a random boy in the photo (a friend of mine whos in the school) and said that was her cruch and I can't make this shit up when I say this "I want him to make me pregnant" yeah go back and read a few more times. no typo, no mistake, you Read it correctly and to make it worse, WE'RE IN 8TH FUCKING GRADE, so lt that sink in. An 8th grade girl is saying some shit not even girls I've met in college would say😂. And I have way more shit on my ex, the only thing I can say because I don't want to give you the best part was she used to watch certain videos and did stuff to herself when she would watch them, and you might be thinking of it's just hormones, that happens at that age. Bullshit😂 she was 8 when she was doing it so you can't blame it on that. Back to the story, they have been saying stuff to the teachers I'm close to and not only trying to kick me out of a class (I don't go to, I just go because of the dogs) but they are telling the principal that I'm making them uncomfortable and some other shit I can't remember. But yeah, I'll give updates if anything bad happens👍🏽

I won't give out real names so I'll just make some up because I don't want them to be angry if they ever find this. For context, me and my ex (sam) broke up a few months ago after we figured out we were going to different schools. She broke up over text and after that I never looked at her the same way since. We got together because I figured out she liked me but I didn't like her, it was from her ex (Emma) who slipped me a note saying her ex (sam) liked me. I actually liked had a crush on Emma because we knew more about each other then I knew about Sam. The only time I ever even heard Sam's voice was when she was saying "I'll smack the shit out of you if you do", sam and Emma were arguing about something but I thought they were going to fight, it was actually friendly?. I don't know how telling someone you'll beat the fuck out of them is a "friendly argument" but I went along with it. Me and Emma were talking about things with each other and got to know each other very well. She told me about her break up and how it hurt because Sam just walked up to her and said they should break up out of nowhere. I offered to try and help her out with the relationship between them and after a few days of talking that's when I realized it was one sided love and the day I realized I should never be a relationship therapist because I fucking suck. But yeah, I liked Emma but I was to nervous to tell her, I was giving hints because usually when we joked around and she said "I hate you" or something to make fun of me, I fuck with her and say something like "love you too buddy". We were great friends until she handed me the note and I don't know why but for some reason I actually started dating her ex without thinking about her, she thought her sam was trying to get back at her when really it was my fault. One day Emma told Sam that I didn't actually like her, I only liked her last year which was true but still got to me and that I only thought of her as a friend which made me mad and I cut her off, we would try our best to stay away from each other but one day she had a gf, let's name her, Stacy. Stacy was a year younger than Emma and I was making jokes about it and I was still feeling mad from her messages so I told Stacy she was using her to make Sam jealous and I showed Stacy the messages of everything, they broke up a few days after and I've been feeling like shit ever since. While me and Sam were dating, Sam got a missed call from Emma and When we tried to call her back she didn't answer. Messages, calls, video chat, any way we could. To let you guys know, she was also telling Sam she was going to end it if she didn't break up with me, so I could only think of the worst, what if she tried one last time before ending it, it was during the weekend so I was relieved when I saw her still alive at school. Fast forward to the break up. When I told Sam, she felt guilty for sending me the messages, a few weeks later we broke up and the only thing she was saying was that she felt bad about the messages and she going to a different school, sam went on to tell me that I was getting in the way of her studying even though she only sits on her phone for the whole period and doesn't do anything. I felt really hurt but I made myself happy for sam, I apologized to sam and told her that I was going to be deleting everything about us because I didn't want to be reminded of her and I didn't want the same for her either. I'm a over thinker and I have ADHD so I can admit I did tell her in advance to block me on all social media because one day I was going to try and talk to her again and end up sad when she blocked me for trying to talk to her and sure enough, after a few weeks I kept messaging her but then blocked her again because I felt to nervous to actually start talking. Fast forward to the important part of why they are trying to get me expelled. I started talking to Emma and apologized for everything I did to her, got with her ex instead of her, found out she had a crush on me this year and it got worse because I started dating her ex. So I think she was trying to break us up and then comfort me into dating her, I forgave her for that because love can change anything. My friend stopped showing up to school because he's home schooled now and a few weeks later the girl is emo and is barely talking to everyone. Sorry for that 😅, back to what I was talking about though, we were friends for a week and she told me we have to stop talking, this also was over text but this is after a incident happened between me and Sam's friend, let's call her horny girl or just hg for short, you'll love the reason for that name in a little bit trust me😈. Emma was telling me we shouldn't talk, I asked her why and she said it's because of hg and she said she was going to IN HER WORDS "beat my ass if I got with Emma" I don't know why she gives a fuck but I think she thinks I would do that to get back at Sam, ngl if I really was a asshole I probably would have but I was going to use her because we both saw each other as friends and I kinda like her but ever since everything happened we were just awkward friends, and even if I did date her it would be dumb as hell because not only is she going to a different school but it's only two weeks before school ends. Not to sound rude but hg is on the bigger side and she is just weird, I was uncomfortable for the first week of dating Sam because hg would sit behind me and make lewd hand gestures and since Sam was facing me, she saw what she was doing and just laughed hystericly, a few sam told me was she was making jokes of Sam stroking my y'know, giving me a bj, us having intercourse and me putting my fingers in her, that's all I can remember but the rest she wouldn't tell me. I started laughing over the text until I realized she was serious and I got mad so the next day I went up to hg and told her that if she can talk shit then she can easily say it in front of my face, we started yelling and it ended with me saying i don't have to fight her because my sister can come up and beat her ass for me, my sister is known in multiple schools for her fights and some of her friends are at my school so if my sister didn't want to fight she could easily tell her friends to jump her. I'm a guy so I'm not hitting a girl unless I have to. The next day, Emma said we should stop talking and this time she ment it, I said okay I understand why you want to do that and I respect your decision and we blocked each other. I haven't been showing up to my classes and my teachers are asking if it's because of what's going on, I didn't want to cause anymore problems so I just lied and said ether I must have forgotten or I was just uncomfortable with someone, I didn't say names but I think they already knew. Yesterday I didn't show up to school and a teacher was telling the principal about my incident with hg, funny thing I want to tell you is I made a name for the friend group and it's the main three, I call them the hgg because they all are kinda kinky so I call them the horny girl group, I have some information I got from people and the personal experience so if they want to keep making shit up about me then I can easily leak it on here and on the school page. The other two girls are my ex and the second girl who all you need to know why she's in the group is because she showed us a picture, pointed at a random boy in the photo (a friend of mine whos in the school) and said that was her cruch and I can't make this shit up when I say this "I want him to make me pregnant" yeah go back and read a few more times. no typo, no mistake, you Read it correctly and to make it worse, WE'RE IN 8TH FUCKING GRADE, so lt that sink in. An 8th grade girl is saying some shit not even girls I've met in college would say😂. And I have way more shit on my ex, the only thing I can say because I don't want to give you the best part was she used to watch certain videos and did stuff to herself when she would watch them, and you might be thinking of it's just hormones, that happens at that age. Bullshit😂 she was 8 when she was doing it so you can't blame it on that. Back to the story, they have been saying stuff to the teachers I'm close to and not only trying to kick me out of a class (I don't go to, I just go because of the dogs) but they are telling the principal that I'm making them uncomfortable and some other shit I can't remember. But yeah, I'll give updates if anything bad happens👍🏽

I've always had a crush on Grethel, ever since we met in freshman year. He was smart, funny, kind, and handsome. He was also the half-brother of """Josh Gogh""(not his real name)"", the famous actor. Grethel never bragged about it, though. He was humble and down-to-earth, unlike his celebrity sibling.
We became good friends over the years, sharing classes, hobbies, and secrets. We also worked part-time at the same bookstore, where we would chat and joke around during our shifts. Sometimes, I would catch him looking at me with a soft smile, and I would feel my heart skip a beat.
But I never told him how I felt. I was too afraid to ruin our friendship, or to be rejected. I didn't think he would ever see me as more than a friend. After all, he was the half-brother of an actor. He could have any girl he wanted.
Grethel lived with his mom and his younger brother in a modest house near our school and workplace, while I lived in a distant suburb. Whenever we had a long break between classes or shifts, he would invite me to his place to hang out. He said it was more convenient and comfortable than staying at the library or the cafeteria.
I always accepted his invitation, secretly hoping to spend more time with him. His house was cozy and warm, with family photos and souvenirs on the walls. He had a couch, a TV, a fridge, and a microwave in the living room, and a bunk bed, a desk, and a closet in his bedroom. He also had a spare room, where his brother Josh would stay whenever he visited.
Grethel and I had an awkward friendship at first, but we soon became closer. He would tease me, make me laugh, and share his thoughts and feelings with me. He would also play video games with me, or watch movies with me, or cook for me. He was the best friend I ever had, and I wished he was more.
One day, he asked me if I wanted to go to his brother's movie premiere with him. He said he had two tickets, and he didn't want to go alone. He said it would be fun, and we could hang out afterwards. I agreed, feeling a surge of excitement and nervousness.
I spent hours getting ready, trying to look my best. I wore a simple but elegant dress, and did my hair and makeup. I hoped he would notice me, and maybe feel something for me.
He picked me up in his car, and he looked stunning. He wore a black suit and a tie, and his hair was styled. He smiled when he saw me, and complimented me on my appearance. He said I looked beautiful. I felt my cheeks flush, and thanked him.
We drove to the theater, where we were greeted by a crowd of fans and paparazzi. Grethel held my hand as we walked through the chaos, and I felt a thrill of being with him. He led me to the red carpet, where his brother was waiting.
Josh Gogh looked just like he did on the screen, only more handsome. He had a charming smile and a confident posture. He hugged Grethel, and then turned to me. He looked me over, and raised his eyebrows.
"Who's this?" he asked Grethel, with a hint of curiosity.
"This is my friend, Marie," Grethel introduced me. "She's my classmate and co-worker. We came here together."
"Friend, huh?" Josh said, looking at our intertwined hands. "Well, nice to meet you, Marie. You're very pretty. Are you a fan of my movies?"
I nodded, feeling a bit starstruck. "Yes, I am. I've seen all of them. You're a great actor."
"Thank you. That's very kind of you to say. You have good taste," he said, flashing a smile. "Well, I hope you enjoy the show. Come on, Grethel. Let's go inside. The movie is about to start."
He pulled Grethel away, leaving me behind. I followed them, feeling a bit awkward. I wondered what Josh meant by his words. Was he flirting with me? Did he like me? Did he know about my feelings for Grethel?
We entered the theater, where we were seated in the front row. Grethel sat next to me, and Josh sat next to him. The lights dimmed, and the movie began. It was a thriller, and it was intense. Josh was the star, and he stole every scene. The audience gasped and clapped, and I joined them.
But I couldn't help but glance at Grethel, who was watching the movie with a serious expression. He didn't gasp or clap, even at the most shocking moments. He seemed distant and distracted, as if he was thinking about something else.
I wanted to ask him what was wrong, but I didn't want to disturb him. I decided to wait until the movie was over, and then talk to him. Maybe he would open up to me, and maybe I would find the courage to confess my feelings.
But as the movie ended, and the credits rolled, Josh stood up and grabbed Grethel's arm. He said he had to go to the after-party, and he wanted Grethel to come with him. He said he had something important to tell him, something that would change his life.
He didn't even look at me, or say goodbye. He just dragged Grethel out of the theater, leaving me alone. I felt a pang of hurt and confusion, wondering what Josh had to say to Grethel, and why he didn't care about me.
I got up, and walked out of the theater. I looked for Grethel's car, but I couldn't find it. I realized he had left with Josh, and he had forgotten about me. I felt tears sting my eyes, and I cursed myself for being so stupid.
I hailed a taxi, and gave the driver my address. I sat in the back seat, feeling miserable and hopeless. I wondered if Grethel would ever call me, or text me, or apologize. I wondered if he would ever know how I felt, or if he felt the same.
I wondered if I would ever see him again.
I remembered the last time I saw him, before the premiere. It was the day before, and we had a long break between our classes. He invited me to his place, as usual. I agreed, as usual.
We went to his house, and he made us some sandwiches. We ate them in the living room, while watching a sitcom on TV. We laughed at the jokes, and commented on the characters. We were having a good time, as usual.
Then he suggested we play some video games. He said he had a new game that he wanted to try. I agreed, as usual. We went to his bedroom, where he had his console and his TV. He turned on the game, and handed me a controller.
We played for a while, and it was fun. The game was a racing game, and we competed against each other. He was better than me, but I didn't mind. I enjoyed his company, as usual.
Then I felt tired, and I yawned. He noticed, and asked me if I wanted to take a nap. He said I could use his bed, and he would use the couch. I agreed, as usual.
He gave me a pillow and a blanket, and told me to make myself comfortable. He said he would wake me up when it was time to go. I thanked him, and lay down on his bed. He left the room, and closed the door.
I closed my eyes, and breathed in his scent. His bed smelled like him, and it made me feel warm and cozy. I cuddled with his pillow, and imagined it was him. I fell asleep, as usual.
I woke up, and opened my eyes. I saw him, and I smiled. He was lying on the lower bunk, playing video games. He didn't notice me, and he was focused on the screen. He looked cute, and I felt happy.
I got up, and climbed down from the upper bunk. I walked over to him, and tapped his shoulder. He turned around, and saw me. He smiled, and paused the game.
"Hey, sleepyhead. How was your nap?" he asked me.
"It was good. Thanks for letting me use your bed," I said.
"No problem. You looked tired. Did you have a good dream?" he asked.
I nodded, and lied. "Yeah, I did."
I didn't tell him that I dreamed of him. I didn't tell him that I loved him. I didn't tell him that I wanted to be more than friends.
I didn't tell him, as usual. ```

I honestly don’t know what to do anymore. This friend has never been the best person, but she was fun to hang out with. She got into a relationship two or three months ago and ever since she has basically stopped talking to me and I honestly don’t know what to do anymore. This friend used to hang out with me and we would text pretty often, but I was always putting in more effort. I was willing to suck this up, but then she started seeing someone and practically dropped off the face of the earth. I communicated how this hurt me and how I wanted her to text me and hang out with me, but she would never change her behavior and she would dismiss everything I say and even say that I was the problem and it was my fault that we weren’t hanging out or talking. I stopped texting her partly because I got busy partly because I wanted to see how long it would take for her to text me first and we have not spoken one on one for almost a month.
Should I just end the friendship? Not sure what to do but I don’t have many friends so this would kinda suck but I mean we never talk or hang out so idk how my life would be different… any advice is appreciated.

I’m 24 (f) and my “dating” life has never really been that. Don’t get me wrong I know the game pretty well. Dealt with males from my age to 50. Ive definitely had my one nights and it’s okay to have sex when I don’t want a relationship or just know it’s something casual. Im very easy going I’m not easy when it comes to sex. It’s just if I want to I will if not I won’t. But why do guys romance me so much? My two dudes or flings they’ve romanced me. And I don’t know why they choose to toy with my emotions. The first guy of these specific two was saying things like “eventually” or even talked about having kids with me. Im very smart and I didn’t believe a word he said. Then boom no more text, calls, dates. The last guy was saying things like “ you’re mine” planned out dates “you’re not going anywhere” and I’ve been single no relationship since I was 16. I think I deserve atleast one long lasting relationship. I know this guy is just spitting game for sex. And I’m at the point where I don’t even want to have sex anymore right now. But my thing is why do guys toy with my emotions? It’s like they know I want a relationship and they’re just making fun of me. I don’t want to give up on love. But at this point it just seems like a lie.

Why did I cut you off you ask?
I’ve known you for 21 years.
You’re a good looking guy. Charming. Always say the right things. Attract fun people. You’re Mr Good Times.
I was your best man in your wedding. Your kids called me “uncle.”
I was always there for you. Went out of my way for you. Was the extremely flexible one.
I knew you had selfish tendencies and manipulated people. Your behavior toward me was subtle but I always recognized it. I set boundaries. I thought you were a good guy with a few flaws.
I was there for you when you had an affair and she got pregnant.
I was there for you when you went through the ugly divorce from your wife.
I introduced you to my friends, invited you to gatherings as you built up a new social network.
You hooked up with three of my friends. I invited you to a weekend getaway gathering. You asked me to invite one of the friends you’d hooked up with. I responded, “Dude. I’m not your pimp. She’s welcome to come. But you should invite her.” You replied, “I don’t want it to be like a date weekend. Just an option.”
That was too much for me. The first nail in the coffin.
Fast forward.
Within a six month period I lost my job and found out I had cancer.
You chose not to be there for me.
I was not going through good times and Mr Good Times only does the good times.
You avoided talking to me for two years. Instead, sending me texts like, “Hey. How’s it going? How are you feeling? Text me and let me know.” And, “I heard you’re going through a new treatment protocol. Text me and keep me in the loop.” And, “Hey. When this is over we need to go on a trip. Do you think we could go to Hawaii? Text me.”
The second nail in the coffin.
When I had a particularly rough week and just wanted a familiar friend to talk to, I reached out, “Are you around this weekend to chat for a bit?” To which you responded, “I have plans this weekend” with no counter of a more convenient time in the upcoming week.
The third and final nail in the coffin.
New boundary: Do not initiate contact. Do not engage.
Then, two years to the month of my diagnosis, you called and left a voice mail message. “Hey. How are you doing? We’ve kind of lost touch. Yeh, umm, sorry about that. Give me a call today and let’s catch up.”
Are you serious? Call today? Today? Today only, offer expires at midnight. Are you kidding me? After two years?
Did you think the bad times had blown over and it was safe to call?
I have nothing to say to you.
I am with my friends in the good times and through the bad times. You don’t get to pick and choose with me like you’re on a hop on hop off tour bus.
You‘re a selfish piece of shit.
You will never see me again. You will never hear my voice again. You will never read a message from me again.
Now you know why.

Is there anyone from Nepal (some text are in nepali languages too!) So, it was like end of february of 2024 ,this girl sent me friend request after chatting publicly in a random study group . I had no such expectation that a girl would send me friend request i accepted it 😅, She messaged me first , we began to talk , it seemed like she was quite interested in me , i just gave 12th boards from science stream so we usually talked about studies but she used to change the topic and switch to random topic and daily activites topic . It was fun to talk to her , she used to give reply within a second , long long messages , jati khera msg garyo uti kherai herihalne , quick response . I never got attention during my school days neither in college but this girl made me feel so special like , she cared for me alott even if it was online , I fell in love with her 😅 , I used to chat with her till 1 am after studying for 12 to 13 hrs a day , i literally used to have the best feeling in the world by thinking its all worth it to talk to her after hustling all day long , she was damn beautiful , like really gorgeous , time passed and we used to talk daily , i could never confess in the fear of getting blocked or losing her 😔, she used to send me questions , i used to solve them asap , and when exam came near , i was fully prepared so after teaching my friends online , i used to wait whole day for her to come online just to talk , but all of sudden she started to give dry replies like ok , lala , eh , ay . I first thought it was all normal then again she started reading my messages late although i didnt let my studies go bad for this as i have to make my parents proud , still it hurted me , the exam went fucking awesome , i was in the hope aba ta exam sakkiyo aja samma ramrari kura garexaina aba ta ramro sanga kura garchu u sanga , note : i never had a female friend , never talked to a girl my entire life . So she was like very very special to me that i cant even express in my word . I dont think I will ever be able to love any other girl the way i loved her , I still miss that sweet girl who made me smile after so busy day. One thing more , I fell in love with her without even listening her voice . Time passed , ani yo exam vyaiyepachi ta afai message aauna pani xodyo , reply matra tei pani max two word wala hunthyo . I am an artist , web developer , app developer I woke up all night just to create her sketches so that she can be happy and all she said was thankyou which also became so big thing for me . It hurts and kills you from inside when your favourite person is everytime online but can go all the day without texting you 😔, she came to my life when i needed noone and now ignoring me when i am only interested in her , shit man , i wish if i had never met her , every day is getting more worse by seeing dry replies from her . I dont know what to do this shit is killing me from inside , she roams in my mind 24/7 . . Fuck man ,I never thought getting attached to someone would cost my this much mental breakdown . Is there somebody who can suggest me something ? Should i still text her or leave , i am literally fucked up mentally

TL;DR: Boyfriend (33M) of 5 months seems to be dishonest or keeping me (27F) a secret. Changed phone background to pic of me with him when with me, then when we’re apart, changes his background to something else.
I started dating a guy 5 months ago and we shortly went long distance after I got relocated to Texas for my new job. The plan was to work in Texas temporarily and try to move back after 1-2 years of experience but the plan has slowly changed, he told me he plans to move to Texas by the end of this year to be with me, because his work gave him the opportunity to relocate.
I have been selectively single for a while because I was remotely working and traveling; moving around a lot has made it hard to settle in one spot. But for the first time after meeting him, I wanted to settle in one spot.
Our relationship has been 4 months in person and 3 long distance now (talked for 2 months before dating). He seems like a genuine guy and checks all the boxes for me, He (White American) is learning Mandarin because he knows how important my culture is to me. He randomly decided on his own this year he was learning Mandarin. I told him he didn’t need to, and that I would still have the same feelings for him, but he thinks that learning my language will bring him closer to me and my culture.
Here is why I’m having mixed feelings; we had each other as each other’s phone backgrounds. When he came to visit me last month, I saw that his phone background had changed to some mountain landscape. He didn’t notice that I had seen the phone background change. The next morning, when I was grabbing his phone to turn off the alarm he had, he snatched the phone quickly and turned off the alarm. I went to shower and when I came out, he was showing something on his phone to me and I saw he changed it to a picture of us. But today we were webcamming (3 weeks after he visited) and he picked up his phone and I saw it had changed to a black background.
While yes, I was disappointed when I saw the mountain background initially, I didn’t care if he didn’t want a picture of me on his phone background. What seemed sketchy was he changed it the next morning. I didn’t make a big deal of it because it had been 3 weeks since we had seen each other and I didn’t want to spoil the fun of him visiting for the weekend. It was his birthday and I bought him a plane ticket and planned a surprise party for him.
Seeing that he’s back in the bay and changed his phone background back just seemed sketchy. Am I overreacting for thinking he is keeping me a secret or something? He introduced me to his grandma who is closest to him, spends his energy learning my culture, and his weekends on the phone with me… but something about this seems off to me.
He has never mentioned me in any work conversation- seems like workers don’t know about me. When I told him I wanted to come to his work and work remote from the cafe at his office (when I was still in California), he told me it would be boring and noisy. We don’t have each other on any social media either so I don’t really know what he’s up to. He tells me he has no friends and doesn’t text anyone which is a bit hard to believe. On top of that, in the past he would disappear for a few hours and not text until I mentioned I would like a text at least every 4 hours. Am I overthinking this? He has all the green flag energy, but changing the phone backgrounds seemed a bit dishonest. I wouldn’t have cared if he didn’t want me on his Home Screen, but why change it when I’m not looking? If he’s talking to someone else or keeping me a secret, why waste his energy learning Mandarin and why spend his weekends on the phone with me? The long distance + fresh relationship makes it hard for me to now trust him.. but he also seemed sincere about how he would make the move to be closer to me at the end of this year.

INTRO: First and foremost, I don't know if anyone cares, but I just reached Plat 2. For someone with a full-time job, I think I did pretty well, although my KDR is quite bad.
HOW IT STARTED: I think the game got a ton of hype in the beta for a good reason. It was explosive, sparkly, good-looking, and the CS:GO x Valorant x Apex hybrid that we were looking for. As a veteran Apex player, I can say that Apex feels so bloated these days, with so many new layers added each season in a desperate attempt to keep the game relevant, that I no longer recognize the game I fell in love with some years ago.
Ending the side story, The Finals did very well in the alpha/beta because everyone was a noob, and we were just messing around. When it got released, the classic "playing meta characters/weapons" settled in, and some powers/weapons/even classes became irrelevant, at the very least for the solo queue experience.
WHAT I LIKE: The graphics and movement system are unmatched for me. Even Apex falls short when it comes to movement and the numerous ways you can approach a situation due to the destruction physics. I think the only time Apex gets the lead is in map sizes, but we are talking about barren lands vs high-dense housing buildings.
The overall Mirror Edge aesthetics and battlefield destruction physics, combined with Apex sweatiness, is a winning combo for me. The game oozes with personality, even in the marketing materials. As a graphic designer, I recognize something that others may not. For example, on most marketing materials including the website, you can see printing artifacts and errors, which in a web environment should not make sense, but the game wants to give you the feeling of "this is a real billboard/poster that is going to be placed in the real world because this is a real event," which I think is really great.
This might be the most fast-paced game I've ever played, and I love it. It really gives you that adrenaline kick, and you don't have to walk 50 km to find an enemy team like in Apex.
Great performance, for the way it looks and moves, the team behind it did a pretty good job preserving the looks that we saw on YouTube (some downgrades happened, obviously) for the time when the game got released.
WHAT I DON'T LIKE: The game fails, and let's not sugarcoat it, we are in freefall as of now because it fails to attract new players. We all know that; even the streamers are not touching it. I think, at the end of the day, the game is not fun solo, which let's be real, not many of us have that many friends, or better yet, not often are you able to sync with a bunch of people in order to play.
Personally, I would've focused more on environmental destruction and less on the pew-pew part. I don't really know how to put it into words, but I believe the game would've been more inviting if the environmental destruction (the main gimmick of the game) played a bigger role and not the classic "HHM or MMM" team combos that we see every day. Most of the time, I play the same game where no one dares to pick the sword, the shield, or another weapon that does not make sense. I am always punished by teammates when I pick the flamethrower, for example.
The new maps are terrible, let's face it. Vegas and the Glitching map are just bad. The starting maps are glorious; the fact that they took real places (most of the time) and transformed them into an arena is genius. They could have expanded it every year with cities around the world and even inspired the battle pass skins on the country the new map was coming from but maintaining the sports apparel vibe and feel of the game.
The game is detaching from Mirror Edge's aesthetics, and this is a big no-no for me. I love skins as much as the next guy, but if you pay attention, most of the free skins the game gives you are sports apparel, which is great for the game. I don't mind if the skins are even fancier sports apparel, but I fail to see how a $19 bunny costume or an Elvis costume would fit into the game. I think the skins are random af and not in a good way.
Lastly and arguably the most important, the lack of any social interaction... I get that text chat was thought through for toxicity reasons, but I think the game could borrow a page from League of Legends or Fortnite's book when it comes to introducing the social element into the game. These things have been said before: a global chat, an actual clan system, menus that help you see who you played with, check profiles, and add those players, make players play with one another, and create the bridges that are necessary for players to connect with one another.

I (m27) got married to my beautiful wife Lizzy (28) a month ago and I just got a text from my best man. "Hey, congratulations to you guys for your newly wed life. Next time you're having a big party at somewhere rented and you've known about it for 6 months ahead, it would be nice if you did some of the preparations beforehand. Also if you know that you're gonna be drunk af and have plans to leave the rented location for bar hopping, then it might be a good idea to hire a cleaning service or something". I haven't answered yet. Yes, me and my wife did leave some of the decorations etc for the last minute, so my best man, let's call him Arnie, and maid of honor, Monica, came early to help us get the place ready. Wedding went well, everyone was having fun drinking and dancing. Even tho Monica and Arnie had a little difficulties to fit in their little awkward games of steal the groom and some small cards of dares for the guests to perform during the day. So later that night, Lizzy and I were a bit tipsy like the rest of the people, and we wanted to go clubbing. I know that Arnie isn't a big drinker and wouldn't have had more than two glasses of wine, so as the responsible sober best man, I thought he would do the cleaning after with my brother. I guess I forgot to mention that to him, since he was kinda quiet when we were calling ubers he was picking up cans and bottles. But isn't helping the groom and bride a duty of the best man? My wife is a nurse at ER, and I am a bartender, so we don't really roll on money, and weren't able to hire a cleaning service for our already expensive event. What should I reply to Arnie?

I like and hate myself at the same time
I'm scared that I'm gonna disappointed a lot of people
List thing that I have tried but didn't work
Just signup BK for tomorrow but I'm not sure if it can help
you know what?
I'm back to depresed hole again. TLDR I'm known as college student who keep failed at my skripsi.
IDK I think I'm weird because I'm feeling my life just gonna be fine if I not graduate, but I know this is just on my mind.
The real life latter will make me begging and reggret that I should have finish my skripsi.
I don't feel like doing anything again.
Today I just sleep for 12 hours, but I remember I had appointment with lecturer at 1PM.
My head hurts when waking up, I know it gonna hurt because I do this thing on some occasion in the past when I want to torture myself with strong headache.
I want to escape again, by turning off my phone. But I don't want my family come to my 'kost', because I make them worried.
My father keep nagging me about my progress too and I think he send message to my lecturer -_-,
So I'm thinking by just ignoring all the notifications.
But I have deal with my friend, he say gonna message me twice a day to ask about my progress. If I skip a day I need to pay 50k. Which is a lot for me.
Just lie to my friend that I had progress? nope, I still want to be kind and honest human being despite living in Indonesia.
But IDK why I can't be kind to myself. I'm already 26yo.
Today I set my foot on campus again after a long time (last consultation with lecturer is before ramadahan).
You know what? I'm so envy of their young age, when they can just play around and just talking about shit, anything.
I want to tell them to be persistent, focus and obsesisve to thing you want to accomplish. But who am I to tell them that?
I hope they just didn't become like me and can graduate on time.
Why I'm typing this thing again when I have to focus on skripsi?
IDK, because everytime I open my skripsi I feel tired and just want to sleep, laying on bed with my phone, reading and watching a lot of things (anything except skripsi)
Actually I have feeling like this too in the past and the solution is by writing checklist. checklist about what step by step in detailed manner to do a thing in atomic format.
Basically to stop scaring my brain and stop my false imagination about how hard this is

1. open office app
   
2. open the skripsi file
   
3. just read the title
   
4. read until you bored maybe 5m
   
5. read again the next page
   
6. open second app put on the right side of the office app
   
7. write a list of thing you should fix but don't fix it
   
8. just read read read until you bored
   

eventually the feeling to write and fix thing from the list is gonna appear
BUT ...
IDK, the action need to be done is just
READ, SEARCH and WRITE?
how hard it is? nope, is so simple yet lkafjdsafsldjkljasfdkkljdfsakjladsfjklfadsasldfjkadsfjlkadsflkjadslfkjasdflkjafhupqweifqwoefnasdlkfj
I hate writing skripsi docs because I can't see the result is right or wrong, if I think this is already right by just working on it by an hour.
Sometime it wrong by my lecturers and he give some explation why it wrong that most of the time I agreed as well.
But If I keep working on it until I feel this is perfect, it gonna need more than an hour and that make me feel lazy to working on it.
I like coding the app, making stuff work, the compiler always tell me what wrong in mere seconds or minutes. I can lookup the solution as long as it takes and it still fun.
because the compiler always say what wrong instanstly.
But the fact that I need to sync the skripsi docs and the application make me lazy to coding the skripsi project again.
It really make me want to code other thing but I end up using it as a escape from skrispi work.
*oh it's ashar, ok bye, thanks once again for people who always support me, now I want to rant to god (I know I just need to patient with the work and result but F why I'm like this)
*wiring this on text app, copy into reddit and it have many whitespace, sorry

It was late November 2015. I was 51 and one year past my divorce (which was not related to cheating) when I became so disgusted with myself that I knew I had to pick myself up. I was alone for the long holiday, and although I wasn't really sad or lonely, I felt empty. However, I had some extra time to consider how does one picks oneself up.
I made a list of potential New Year resolutions that were individually realistic. Some were really easy and stupid like “have your chipped front tooth fixed” and “take & post a selfie”. These smaller tasks fueled my confidence and provided the energy boosts needed to tackle the more challenging resolutions, like starting a weight loss challenge at work.
Skip ahead to March 4th 2016. I had a Friday lunch date with a married client that I met two weeks prior. Of course, it was not a real date, as I wouldn't impose myself on a married woman, nor would I risk my career or my ego, especially if the signals she seemed to be sending were just a product of my wishful thinking, stimulated by checking off some boxes on the list on the fridge dated 1/1/16.
The following is my thank you note to her for a great date as well as for helping me check a lot of boxes over the past few weeks. I sent her a link to it as it is in the form of my first ever online post (one more check box, YAY!).
************************************** We were only 1 minute in the hotel room; her jeans in a ball on the floor. She sat at the foot of the king sized bed and backed her way into the stack of oversized pillows lining the headboard. I followed as If attached by a leash. I landed somewhat awkwardly on my elbows between her legs finding myself squarely face to face with the tattoo. This tattoo, that she so shamelessly revealed just a week ago, the same tattoo that has been scorching my thoughts and the same tattoo that she promised me complete and unlimited access.
It’s been a long time since I have been here or anywhere near as nice as here, between the legs of a beautiful woman 20 years younger and far out of my league....even when I was her age. I took a second to drink in my fortunate situation. I admired her panties. All day I was so hoping she would wear those same panties as before. She didn’t. These were different but similar enough. The delicate lace and silk perfectly framed the tattoo on her hip. She did not disappoint. There is a fruity jasmine scent, intoxicatingly pleasant, and oh so subtle. It is not here. I’ll need to find its source. I want more of that. (I remember being thoroughly impressed and thinking to myself “This girl is good”.)
I briefly forgot that there was someone else here besides myself and the tattoo. How long have I been down here perving out on her? I wondered. I hesitated, and then apologetically looked up half expecting a well-deserved snarky glare. What I found instead was an ear to ear compassionate smile followed by a tilt of her head and an arch of her eyebrow that said “I like that you like that, carry on”.
With confidence restored that we were still in sync, I adjusted myself so that I was in a good position to thoroughly enjoy what I came to do. I kissed the tattoo hard and gave it a good lick. The challenge for today was “Taste the Tattoo” and I won. I did a small celebration gesture that she rolled her eyes to. I continued to kiss and taste all around until every freckle got some personal attention. As I got to the upper most reaches of her inner thighs, I looked up to check in as I was about to cross a new line. For the first time she was not looking back at me but had laid her head back deep into the pillows, her eyes closed. I took that as a yes!
I marveled at the softness of her inner thighs on my cheeks as I gently placed kisses up one and down the other. As I kissed her through her panties, her hips responded by arching her up in anticipation of each next kiss. Before long, those wonderful panties were just getting in the way. I stopped and pondered whether to just slide them aside or remove them or to risk interrupting the mood and attempt a complete wardrobe removal as we were both still fully dressed except for her jeans.
I didn’t have to ponder long as she knew what she wanted and it was not any of the options I was considering. Still lying back with her head semi submerged within the pillows, she held out her arms as if gesturing for a hug. I moved up her body and when I got close enough she pulled me in for a kiss.
Unbelievably, this was our first kiss. I found it odd that we had not kissed yet and was grateful she thought to stop for a moment to have a kiss. We kissed some and then I settled in to thoroughly enjoy it. However, the kiss to come was not the kiss I was expecting or a kiss I was ready for. It was a kiss that could ruin everything.
Technically, there was one kiss before. It was an awkward kiss 5-10 minutes earlier just after we entered the room. All in about the time it took for the hotel door to close behind us, she tossed her bag on the sofa, had her jewelry off and set on the nightstand while I emptied my pockets and silenced my phone.
We approached each other, and as we met I was looking at the place where the tattoo would be under her shirt and behind her jeans. They were higher cut and could not be pulled down that far to get to the tattoo. They would have to come off. To just reach in and do that would be an uncharacteristically bold move for me. But I did have unquestionable permission to have the tattoo in any way that I desired. I reached down with both hands and took hold of the waistband on each side of the button. I didn’t see her simultaneous move in at me at first. Just as I felt the metal of the button, I felt her reaching her arms around my neck and realized that she was tip toeing up for a kiss. It caught me unexpectedly and I think it showed on my face that it did. I tried to recover and moved back in to accept her lips on to mine but it turned into an awkward peck.
I scolded myself for the selfish moment and just as I was trying to formulate a recovery gesture, she, without missing a beat, gently dismissed my fumble and gracefully restored the momentum. “Oh” she said with surprise in her tone, while looking down at my fingers ready to release her button. Then, in a more playfully quizzical tone, she followed with “I guess you want to get right to THAT then” and she stepped back away from me where I lost grip of her jeans. She replaced my fingers on the button with hers, paused, maybe waiting for me to look up to her eyes, which I finally did, then flashed me a devilishly naughty smile and pulled her jeans down to the top of her boots. She then proudly announced, mostly to herself, “You really are going to let me have fun with you, aren’t you!” seemingly shedding any doubts in her mind that I would go through with this. She then sat at the foot of the all white linen king sized bed, removed her boots and jeans and backed her way into the stack of oversized pillows lining the headboard.
Back to our kiss. The kiss that from now on I will reflect on as our first kiss
Responding to her hug gesture, I moved up her body and when I got close enough she pulled me in for a kiss. I didn’t flub it this time, but again, I didn’t know it was coming, and prolly I should have. It took only ten seconds to adjust and synchronize to each other’s kissing form. It was warm and succulent and sweet and was wonderful. I really was surprised at how nice this felt. I don’t recall married kissing being this enjoyable. I remember saying to myself “Damn, this girl can kiss”.
I was on top, in a position that wasn’t going to be comfortable for as long as I wanted this to last, so I backed away to reposition but she held tight indicating she didn’t want me to move. I gestured at the space next to her and she relented. We then settled in facing one another side by side; her smile confirming that this was a nice place. We were hugging and kissing, pulling each other closer and looking into each other’s eyes. Our legs intertwined and our hands were roaming, but not really in a sexual way, more like trying to make as much body contact as possible. I couldn’t get over how I felt so much more familiarity than there was. What I did not recognize at the time was that this was the physical intimacy catching up to match the virtual intimacy we have been sharing online.
Soon the intensity escalated and it was getting very hot very quickly. The intensity and passion that was building was not something I ever expected or planned for. This was the rare kind of making out where accidental hickeys happen and inadvertent “Oh god I love you’s” slip out. Not that either of those was going to happen but my safe, non-committal no emotional strings encounter was getting too hot to not risk introducing emotions into the situation. And that could happen.
At some point I was no longer kissing her lips and mouth but was kissing her.
I broke contact to catch a breath and maybe get some control of the fire. We stopped for a moment to breathe and cool off. She slid herself on top and I rolled over on to my back to accommodate her. She looked at me with eyes that appeared to agree that it was a good time to slow it down. She closed her eyes and she seemed to enjoy that I was rubbing her back with both hands that I slipped up under her shirt. She presented her lips for me to kiss and then her cheek for the same, then neck and ear and lips again. Her long hair had fallen down around us, surrounding our faces like a vail creating a tiny private and even more intimate space. Inside here it was darker and the temperature and humidity rose quickly. We were breathing each other’s breath between kisses. All of a sudden I noticed that Jasmine was back. Not subtle this time, but deep and fulfilling. I loved it.
This fragrance stuff really works. The next morning just after waking up, I caught an unexpected subtle whiff on my skin under my watch and my heart jumped by 20 beats. Who’d a thunk it possible?
The passion was building again but since I was aware and cautious now, I wanted to enjoy and go with it. I thought I could keep it measured and I did for a while as it does take two. The kissing slowed to half and so did the passion. However, the rest of our bodies started to make up for it and the touching evolved into the sexual. She was still on top of me and my hands were exploring and squeezing on her panty covered butt, then under and in those panties. Her body contact became more targeted as she was now very deliberately mashing her fun stuff all over my fun stuff. The kissing subsided but replaced with the audible accompaniment of her squeaks, moans and quicker breathing timed with her mashing I was no longer in control. The passion was under control but being replaced with something intimately erotic.
I abruptly escaped by gently rolling her over on to her back then getting up and knelling between her legs. I took a moment to catch my breath and wanted to say “That is getting WAY too intimate. Can we get naked and have sex now?” However, I tugged at her panties and said something dorky like “can we take these off now?” Yes, we were still both fully dressed except for her jeans
Since I am the kind of guy who doesn’t kiss and tell, (well, only tells about the kisses) and this is not the forum for it, I am not going to talk about the sexy part over the next 30 minutes. I will tell you that we did finally each get ourselves unceremoniously naked and then the sexy part finishes where it started, with me finishing all over that beautiful tattoo. Of course I did a small celebration gesture that she rolled her eyes to.
*************************************************
Cuddle time. Our snapchats leading up to this encounter were heavy on the anticipation and buildup but didn’t contain a lot of detail about or define what stuff would happen during our “fun” time together.
Me: “Ok then, tomorrow lunchtime, I’m in.”
Her: “OMG Are you saying that you are REALLY going to come here and let me have fun with you?
Me: “I’m REALLY going to come there. I am REALLY going to fully inspect that tattoo, as well as the neighborhood where the tattoo lives.
Her: “I so can’t wait to get my hands on you.”
Me: “WOW….Now that this is real and going to happen, my heart is beating so hard that I am afraid that people can see it through my shirt.”
Her: “You have to tell me, are you being SERIOUS right now? You can’t say this and not show up. It’s OK if you are teasing, but you have to say so that you are now….not tomorrow!!!”
Me: “I am SERIOUS and I PROMISE I will be there. You have gotten to me, BAD. All week with the way we have been talking..err..I mean snapchatting; I can’t get you out of my head. Then today with those tattoo snaps you sent; I can’t get up from my desk. LOL…..NOT kidding NOT teasing.”
Her: “I am BAD, and I like having FUN. I am going to have so much fun with you!!!”
************************************************
The only specific things I recall us acknowledging we would do with our “fun” was tattoo inspection and cuddle time. So as soon as cleanup from sexy time was done we both knew what time it was. For me, as good as the inspection was the cuddle was better. Just as during the sexy time we changed things up and we got to cuddle many ways. We started face to face full contact hugging just like our kissing time with some but less kissing and more being in the moment.
We were still hot (temperature hot now) and sweaty so that didn’t last long. She turned over and we spooned some. I was still craving full body contact but it was still so hot that we had to separate a bit. No contact spooning if you will, with just my one hand caressing her exposed shoulder and arm and hip with an occasional butt cheek squeeze.
It was about that time that we had our first ever personal conversation. On the project there were lots of flirty banter and some personal stories but almost always as part of a group. We had many phone calls and a few project meetings with just us two but never did the conversation get personal. Until now the only personal talks (Chats) we have had have been via Snapchat. I don’t recall who asked the first question of the other, but it was like a dam broke and we started filling in the details of our lives, our feelings and all the things we chatted about.
There was a lot to tell and we were giddy like children (child) best friends re-meeting on the first day of school catching each other up on our summer vacations. At one point she had something compelling to say and faster than a fish out of water she flipped back to facing me so she could gesture with her hand and punctuate through her expression. She landed close. Closer that I think she meant to at first and just a bit awkward I felt. But I was wrong. She didn’t back up an inch. I really couldn’t see her hand but I could feel that she was using it in the 2 to 4 inches of space between our chests. Her face was right into mine. She would lean back or up just an inch when she wanted me to see her eyes or smile or frown for emphasis, then settle back into the pillows with our foreheads or noses or cheeks touching. It was the farthest thing in the world from awkward.
If there was a recurring theme for the day it would be HOT; in every sense and synonym of the word. Again, it was getting too sweaty to remain that close. This time she broke contact to catch a breath and escape the heat. We stopped talking for a moment to breathe and cool off. She sat up, crawled to, and grabbed the (sexy time) clean-up towel that was at the far foot of the bed. She turned around so that she was kneeling facing me as she brought the towel up to her chest to absorb the beads and drips of sweat that had accumulated. As I watched, I again thought of my great fortune to be right here right now feeing what I feel and seeing the beauty before me. She pushed the towel down across her belly button and it fell into her lap.
I observed the soft sunlight reflecting off the white sheets, the white towel, and the white pillows bathed her in perfect light creating just a hint of subtle shadows in all of the right places on her angelic white skin. I started consciously taking photos with my mind. I wanted to capture every nuance and note every detail. I don’t know if I will ever be here again.
I don't recall if my next realization was comprehended in a split second, or if it took ten seconds to develop, but a terrible fear washed over me that for the first time in forever, she was beyond my touch and her next action might be to look for her panties or go jump in the shower. We were after all, deep into the second hour of her hour long lunch.
As I was preparing myself for the pain soon to come, I couldn't understand where it was coming from. I had the BEST DAY EVER, but I felt like an exhausted child who just watched the Disney fireworks finally and knows what that means.
What the hell? What is happening in my head? I don't even know this girl, let alone have feelings for her beyond she made my dick feel good at lunchtime.....and, I guess my ego is healthier since I met her. I have not cheated on my diet since she turned on the flattery the week before. I was sure it had to be somehow manipulative, but I hoped that if only a 5% chance it wasn't AND she liked me AND her mom was single, made it easy to keep my snacking to peas & carrots.
My self esteem has been skyrocketing too, as I have been checking a lot of boxes on my refrigerator. LOL, so many in fact, that I have been adding things to the list after they happened that I didn't dare put on it as they seemed pretty unobtainable just two months before. "Get sent a nude selfie, check. Have the confidence to send one back, check. Take a hottie 32 year old client out to lunch and fuck her brains out, check.
Did I just discover that I like girls who make my self esteem feel good more than I like girls who make my dick feel good?
Shit, that wasn't even on my top ten list. Smart, funny, pretty, Kind, whatever is the opposite of bitchy, fun in bed, boobs and/or an age appropriate figure is always nice, curious, someone you can trust to see you at your worst. Before today, "genuinely being a boost & support of my self esteem" was 10th.
Then BAM. I was hit in the face with the towel. Damn girl, I hope you can handle a spanking because I was just on the verge of making an interpersonal discovery of some importance over here, I thought to myself. I noticed the slightest or possibly mock look of concern on her face as she asks "you're not having any regrets or second thoughts over there are you?". I reflexively replied "Oh god no". Then with some emphasys, I continued "today was incredible. I REALLY needed this and you were PERFECT, thank you".
Again she did not disappoint. She crawled to the top of the bed on the far side and then to me over the pillows and laid down at a 90 angle to me on her stomach parallel to the headboard with her head nearly right on top of mine. She propped herself up a bit on her elbows and we kissed deeply. It was nice.
I made a few attempts to shake my internal drama, get out of my head and get back to my goal of picking my self up after my divorce. Oops, I mean back to pleasing a beautiful woman who clearly was not yet done having her fun with me. The emotional rollercoaster ride over the last hours, days & weeks completely blew out my brains ability to generate or absorb endorphins or whatever happens in a situation like this. Shortly after we had joked around while showering together, kissing goodbye (just like when I kissed my endorphin killing ex wife) and going on back to our separate lives.
I drove the hour or so home, brought my dog to the park and had healthiest and happiest cry I ever had. I don't know what I was feeling or why, but I was feeling again and it brought me much relief and contentedness.
We texted a bit that evening confirming that we each enjoyed our time together and agreeing that we should do that again sometime. The next day, Saturday, her husband took their 5 & 8 year old sons somewhere for the day. We checked in with each other again over text and chatted some about our lunch but the spark or excitement we usually had was not the same.
I reached out again that evening and asked if she was in a place that we could talk on the phone. She resisted but did call me (our first personal phone call). It took her 24 hours to let her cry bubble up. It turns out that our emotional experiences were remarkably similar, albeit from different perspectives.
She much later reveals that she felt emotionally dead for her hubby. She evolved to a bad place where she wanted fuck anyone but her hubby but still fucked him twice a week and had to appear happy to do it, killing her brain chemistry.
We rode the best and worst roller coaster in the world for 6 or 8 months....until the the Cocaine eventually wore off or the unobtainable became obtainable and it wasn't the the same rush for either of us any longer. She was the closest thing to a drug addiction that I ever felt. I never wanted anyone or anything like I wanted her.
My hope is that this story helps one person answer the question "Why the hell would he/she risk giving up their wonderful & loving family for an hour with a douchebag or a skank?"

My wife and I have been together for over 4 years and have had a great marriage together. We have a 3 year old son and everything we could need.
In November my mother passed away which caused me to go into a bit of depression where I wanted to withdraw myself from everything for awhile. I know I may not have been myself for a bit, I was drinking a bit more than I should and I wasn't always as patient as I could have been but I was working hard on turning myself around. All seemed well until a few months ago when I noticed my wife talking a TON in her recently created group chat with 3 of her guy friends and one of their girlfriends.
Normally I wouldn't care but she had seemed to distance herself from me a lot by then. Our intimacy had dropped down to about once a month. She stopped initiating all physical contact. She barely seemed like she even wanted to kiss me anymore. So I asked her to be in her group chat since she was so busy talking on there while ignoring me. This ended up causing an argument where she kept ignoring my requests and saying "she's allowed to have her own friends" even though a couple months before that she was inviting me to go to "friends giving" with them. So I dropped it as we were getting ready to go on vacation to visit some family of mine
The beginning of our vacation was alright even though she resisted every form of intimacy I tried. To be fair we were quite busy and around my family a lot, but she used to be the type of woman to drag me off to the shower or want to sneak off in the car and have some fun. That seems to have completely changed. We ended up going for a scenic drive and I noticed my wife back there typing paragraphs apparently to the group chat..so I asked her once again to add me to it because if they are in there joking around I would like to be involved as well. Once again she ignored me, so I pressed.the issue later that night. Finally, begrudgingly she added me in the chat. I get along great with her friends there so I'm not sure what the issue is. Except one of the guys in there she went on to DMing every day instead.
I noticed she was constantly sending messages to one certain guy. Not just small messages either, whole paragraphs at times. I'm not one to snoop, but I have noticed some of their conversations between each other. Most seem innocent, but once he said "speaking of looking good in things what outfit are you wearing today" and she sent a selfie. It was an innocent selfie but still... Also at one point he said "texting is cool and all but I miss hanging out with you," and she said the feeling is mutual. My wife also complained to him about us draining her social battery while in vacation, then told him he didn't contribute to that at all. He has tried multiple times to ask to come keep her company and she replied to one I saw saying it's a tempting offer but they wouldn't "get anything done" if he did. He also told her to have a great day the other day before a party we were attending and she replied with "you're the best 😊". I don't get anything like that if I message her asking about her day or wishing her well.
I brought some of this up to her yesterday because I specifically told her Saturday that I wasn't comfortable with how much they are talking and she said she would talk with him less if I'm uncomfortable with it. Well yesterday when she got home from work I asked her what she did for lunch and she said she had a red bull. Well turns out what she wasn't going to tell me was that she went and had lunch at this guys house for an hour without mentioning anything to me, she hesitated very hard to tell me this but she knew I'd find out if she's lying. I tell her how uncomfortable this makes me and all she does is throw it back at me about how she doesn't feel like I trust her. I really want to trust her...I do but there's becoming too many red flags for me to ignore. Am I the one in the wrong here? Should I just ignore it and let her do whatever she wants? This feels like an emotional affair in the works to me, but she doesn't seem to care that it bothers me.

OK, I have Three dice roll resolution mechanics. And I'm trying to pick the one that has more potential, or plasticity to use as a tool. That Or just refine and Make em better individually just for fun.
Also, I come from World of Darkness background. Also FATE, and The mecha hack.
I mostly run one shots so advancement/growth is not a huge concern, but it would be a plus.
I have some goals for them:
1 No modifiers, unless it's adding dice, or Advantage.
2 Better represent Attribute and skill levels.
3 Players have to be the highlight, no rolls by Dm if possible. But still having some control over difficulty, or drama crank.
4 Forward action. Something always happens.
5 Intuitive. Or at least easy to understand/learn
The Options are:
1.Wod 5th Original inspiration.
Attribute+Skills dots = Dicepool (d10s)
TN=6 Count successes.
Difficulty ranges from 2-6+ success.
Outcomes:
If you equal or surpass you pass with no complication. If you surpass de difficulty by 3+ Something good happens (crit)
If you don't equal or surpass, but have at least a success. You can choose to succeed at a cost.
If you have no successes, Something BAD happens
Success over Difficulty (Margin) is used in various ways.
2.Wod inspired But its Roll under with 2d10. to simplify rolls.
The sum of Attribute+skills dots (capped at 8) = Target Number
Roll 2d10 (representing attributes+skills)
Outcomes:
2 successes is a win (2 1 is a crit, something Very good happens)
1 success is a win at a cost
0 success fail (2 10s is a crit fail, something Very bad happens)

1. Step dice to better reflect Skill/Attribute level.

Dots in attributes and skills step up the dice.
0=d4 1=d6 2=d8 3=d10 4=d12
TN= 4-7
Pick the corresponding stepdie for Attribute and skill
Outcomes:
2 successes. The dice beat the Tn, it's a win (max value on both dice, or high value match, is a crit, something Very good happens).
1 success. is win at a cost.
0 success. fail (2 1s is a crit fail, something Very bad happens).
Thank you in advance. Also English is not my primary language so i'm sorry if the text is wonky. I'll be happy to clarify or further explain anything.

I (19f) have been asked by my father (45m) to go to my step brothers wedding, technically I’m “invited” but my step brother hasn’t said a word to me the only person who’s mentioned it is my dad.
For some backstory my parents are divorced and my mom got custody of me when I was 6, my dad is in the military so he never really lived close to me and I would be inconsolable whenever I had to go visit him because I hated being away from home, this only got worse when he married my step mom and moved states away.
Since he was so far away I would see my dad once a year maybe twice but the one time I would see him each year was in the summer for 2-3 months which is also when my step brother would visit my step mom, but for the 3 summers I spent there I talked to my step brother a handful of times, there’s no particular reason for this we just didn’t really get along I guess.
So basically I never talk to my step brother and I barely know him and I definitely don’t know his fiancé. I’ve “met” her twice but we didn’t talk to each other and no one even introduced us.
So today my dad texts my mom and asks her if I’m going to the wedding which is super weird considering that I’m an adult and he could just ask me but whatever, I tell my mom I’ll call my dad so that she doesn’t have to deal with this. When he answers the phone I get an annoyed “hey” which is out of character for him because he usually answers with something fun like “whaddup kiddo” so I instantly knew he was mad. He asks if I’m going, I say that I’m busy that week (which isn’t fully true but it kinda is) and then he says it would be nice if I went because I could see my grandparents who I haven’t seen in a while.
Now my grandparents are a whole different story but basically they never really made an effort to see me and the only communication I have with them is a “happy birthday” text from my grandma every year and i didn’t even get one for my last birthday and the birthday before that she forgot my birthday and sent it the day after (lol)
Back to the phone call with my dad I tell him that I’m going to be in the state that my grandparents live in soon and maybe we can arrange something then, he doesn’t really say much about that and then he says “alright I’ll talk to you later” and we hang up. I start crying because I could just tell he was mad at me but I go on with my day until around 15 minutes later he calls me back and tells me that he’s very disappointed that I can’t take 3 days to go to a family event, I’m feeling emotional at that point so I just tell him that I feel like a stranger around his family and all he has to say about that is “you wouldn’t feel like a stranger if you went to family events”
I really truly do not understand this because it’s not like my entire family is going to be at this wedding it’s going to mostly be my step brothers family and I’m just not comfortable being around people I don’t really know, especially at a wedding.
But in any case my dad is super pissed so…AITA?

TW // Grooming?
Back when I was thirteen I made a post asking people if they thought I was ugly because my step-sister and I thought it would be interesting and funny to see what people would say.
Shortly after making that post I got a DM from a guy on a throwaway account who acted concerned about a post I had made a few months earlier (the post was a vent and nothing short of worrying). I started chatting with him and he asked me a bunch of questions--things like whether or not I had people to confide in, what my home life was like, etc. It was during the pandemic and I didn't really have anyone to talk to so it made me happy to chat with him so our conversations continued.
After some talking, he started pressuring me to send him nudes. I kept trying to tell him I didn't want to but he would tell me that he would stop chatting with me if I didn't send him any. This back and forth went on for a bit before I almost gave in. He then messaged me saying that he was actually doing all this to teach me what grooming was and how to protect myself from it.
After that we chatted a bit more before a day later he did the same song and dance that he did the day before, complete with the stopping just before I broke and pulling the same "I was just pretending to teach you" line. It was confusing and it made me feel sick to my stomach so I blocked him for a bit.
Him being blocked didn't last long because I missed how nice he could be, so I unblocked him a few days later. I told him how it made me feel and he told me that he'd done this "pretending to ask for nudes to teach you to protect yourself from grooming" thing to other people before and that a few of them even view him as father-figure. He told me that if I did truly want it he'd be in a relationship with me, but not if I was only doing it to make him keep talking to me. I found this a bit weird but I brushed it off because, again, he was nice sometimes. We messaged back and forth for a few weeks after that before I just stopped talking with him.
When I look back on it in hindsight, I have a few theories on why this whole thing happened.

1. The one that I believe the most is that he was an FBI agent. Out of context this sounds unlikely but let me explain. A month earlier, I had been chatting with a grown man on twitter. The exchanges between us were inappropriate and eventually my parents found out and they made me stop using twitter. A bit after my parents found out they told me that apparently the FBI was investigating this guy and asked me if I wanted to testify against him. I chose not to. However, I think that it could be possibly be someone trying to teach me a lesson? (Though I could also be reading too much into it but I think the coincidence of it all is kinda weird.)
2. For a bit I wondered if it could be one of my parents--mainly my dad--who was trying to teach me a lesson. But I'm pretty sure that was mostly just me being paranoid because I doubt my dad even knows what the concept of a throwaway account is.
3. It could just be a really weird guy who was doing this to actually teach me a lesson or doing this for some weird kind of fetish.

None of these I'm completely set on because the whole thing was just really weird and confusing.
Most of the time when I explain this situation to people they make fun of me for not just blocking him permanently. But the thing is when this happened I had literally no one who was my friend, no one to confide in. Because it had been during the pandemic I barely texted the friends I had had before the pandemic started and they barely texted me either. My parents aren't great people and my step-siblings hated me and made me hate myself. And it wasn't like I could go out and meet people either. So when someone gave me the slightest bit of attention and didn't hate me for being too talkative, too loud, too energetic, too cringey, too annoying it made me feel like I was on top of the world. He would say the nicest things that anyone had ever said to me. He would tell me things like how if he could meet me in person and I thought I was being too annoying that he would just hug me and tell me that it's okay. And I fell hook line and sinker for it.

I grew up in a small rural ski town where I was one of the poorest kids in my elementary school. My mom had just moved my brother and me away from my dad and we were struggling, we lived in motels for a bit and crashed at some of her friends' houses before moving into a cheap basement suit with two bedrooms, my brother got his own while I shared a room with my mom. There was only one twin-sized bed so she would usually sleep on our armchair in the living room so I could have the bed. She worked two jobs at a grocery and convenience store while putting herself through night school in the town over. We didn't have much money for food so my school lunches were always one item, usually some form of squash or a Ziploc of lentils. Being in a mountain town in Canada you can imagine how cold it was in the winter; we didn't have a car so my brother and I had to walk to school in freezing temperatures, by the time we got there I was in tears with a red nose and my hair frozen solid. It took a while for things to get better but they did when my mom got her nursing license and picked up a stable job, eventually, we moved up to middle class and the moment I was old enough to work I wouldn't stop. I saved almost everything I made from the age of thirteen. My brother joined the military and I focused on school and sports so I could get into college which I'm glad to say I successfully did. I moved to the city for school and everything was so different, all of the friends I made came from ridiculously rich families and went out almost every night since they had the money to spend on drinks and clubs. I'm in engineering while the majority of my friends are in some form of the arts, we got along because I'm a bookworm. I was speaking with one of them who I'll call Shannon, she's in screenwriting and cinematography in the hopes of becoming a director. She mentioned to me that she wants to make her student film centred around poverty and the working class to shine a light on it. During this discussion, The Florida Project (a great movie) was brought up, I told her that I related heavily to that movie and she kind of huffed a laugh and then said "What? Did you live in a motel or something?" To which I answered "Yes," With a straight face. I could tell that Shannon felt bad since she clearly didn't know how I was brought up since it isn't something I tend to slip into casual conversation. Shannon asked more questions about my childhood and what it was like to live in poverty, we left the topic alone after that day but two weeks later she came to me with her screenplay and asked me to read it. I was appalled to say the very least. She had taken my very personal stories and turned them into an extra shitty episode of Euphoria. Everything I had told her had been put into her script but not as I told them, the main character went through these things and was unphased by everything that happened, disappointed in her mother for not doing enough and fighting with her evil drug addict brother. I wanted to cry, specifically at the depiction she had turned my family into, my hard-working and loving mother was written off to just be a slacker when in reality she was doing absolutely everything she could to give both me and my brother a good life and then my straight edge military brother was turned into the scum of the earth. The depiction of my poverty she wrote had me sick to my stomach, the main character was a sex addict, the mother was an alcoholic, and the brother had a drug addiction as well as abused the main character. I told her that not every person living in poverty was poor because of an addiction or crutch and sometimes it was just an unfortunate circumstance, in our case, it was fleeing from my abusive dad and trying to get on our feet. It also irked me how she had written it to be completely tragic and sad but I was a child for most of it and didn't realize how bad it was; when the power would go out it would be a fun game of lights out for me and my brother, we didn't understand why my mom was so stressed out when we had to stay in hotels, all we knew was that we got to share a bunk bed and go swimming in the indoor pool. I wanted her to understand that we were still regular people when we were impoverished, we were just that, regular people who didn't have much. Shannon seemed embarrassed that I was so upset about what she wrote, it took me fifteen minutes to read the entire thing and we sat in complete silence as I did so, when I reached the last page I was crying. At first, she thought I was crying because I was so moved by her glamourization of addiction and poverty before I told her that I hated it. That was when Shannon began to cry. I had shut down her screenplay as soon as I finished it and I asked why she was crying. She moved on to say "It's loosely based on what you told me, it isn't meant to be you and your family." I wanted to laugh when she said this, even the name of the main character rhymed with mine, she kept the tragic events and cut out the good memories as well as the good nature of my mom and brother, I was livid. I want to tell you about one scene that made me want to strangle her: The family's power went out on the main character's birthday so they lit tea candles to see in the dark, the mother lit a cigarette with one of the candles before calling her daughter a slut and putting it out in her birthday cake- what happened in real life was the power had gone out on my birthday, my mom worked all day and came home with a discounted pride cake since my birthday is in June. My brother and I had lit the tea candles long before my mom came home, she smeared the 'Happy Pride!' text on the cake replaced 'pride' with 'birthday' using Nesquik then used the tea candles to light the candles for my cake. This was the first time I had ever gotten a birthday cake, I was eleven and it's one of my happiest memories to date. I'm realizing this is too long so I'll finish it off, she's proceeding with the student film despite me asking her not to and offering different plots to follow instead. Shannon had blocked my number and I haven't heard from her in a week aside from awkwardly seeing her around campus to which she looks the other direction and ignores me.

Some context I am F 18 and my boyfriend is M 18 this happened on May 12.
When me and my boyfriend first got together my one and only condition was no drinking. I absolutely hate drinking and I hate what it does to people. My dad was an alcoholic and I already have many of his traits so I am personally scared that if I drink I’ll have the same reaction to alcohol as him. So after explaining this to my now boyfriend he agreed and said he doesn’t really want to drink anyway and agrees to not drink anymore. This week we went on vacation with many of his old friends and people I didn’t really know too well for prom. He hadn’t really talked to these people in about a year almost two since we got together. His mom (who I can’t stand and also abuses alcohol) was also there along with some other parents. The first night was good we had fun and enjoyed ourselves without drinking.
The next day was prom and after getting ready and pictures we left for the dance. While there one of the boys at the beach house we were staying at asked my boyfriend if he would be drinking (btw this boy calls himself Rrezzy and has no future plans.) After being asked that my boyfriend told “Rrezzy” to ask me when he did I said no and that was that. My boyfriend didn’t say anything to me until I asked if he wanted to he said no then I asked if he was lying and he said yes. I got upset because why would he want to drink, he said he would give it up if we got together and I thought he was having fun being sober with me. If he did end up drinking he would have went back on his word and I would be the only sober person there. On the way back to the beach house we didn’t say a word to each other and I didn’t see him for a little when we got back. I then got a text from him saying he was going to drink.
I asked why and started crying I said we were going to break up if he drinks which he knew because i had told him that would happen before we even got together. He said “Then we are going to break up” and I started crying even more. It felt like he was choosing drinking and partying over me with people he didn’t even know anymore. I walked inside and saw him sitting on the couch with his drunk ass mom. I then walked outside to the front porch and told him to come outside so we could talk in person. After maybe 15 minutes of talking he was unsure if he would drink or not. His mom then came outside and I walked down the stairs because I didn’t want to be around her. I was still in earshot and heard them talking she was saying how we should just break up and how I’m not the one and I can’t handle him leaving ( he’s going to college soon 5 hours away.) After she left I went back up and asked what he was going to do and he said we are breaking up then went inside.
I started panicking and crying when I tell y’all I broke down I’m not being dramatic he’s my person and I couldn’t believe what was happening. I went inside after a little and saw him standing next to his mom by the alcohol I started crying and went into the other room so people didn’t see. After about 40 minutes I texted him to come to that room and when he did he smelled of alcohol. I told him I changed my mind and wanted to still be together I’m fine with him drinking if it is what he wanted to do. He didn’t respond then I asked if he even wanted to be together before all this happened. He said no and that he doesn’t want to date anymore. I tried to convince him to just talk to me and we can figure it out. He stayed but said some horrible things. He started saying how he always thinks about breaking up with me and cheating on me. He started crying and said I shouldn’t be with him and that he’s a horrible person he kept saying how he wants to go party with girls while I’m not around. After about 30 minutes of that he laid down and was still crying I was trying to help calm him down and he did after awhile.
He ended up saying how he still wanted to be together and he wouldn’t drink again. The next morning we were talking about it and he said he was sorry and that he is just scared of leaving. I forgave him and we are still dating today. I just cannot forget about everything he said he explained that he just said it because he was mad and upset but I just cannot forget about it.
I really don’t know what to do and I’m just so confused. We’ve already talked about it for three days now but anything he says just doesn’t help ease my mind. And I can’t just keep bringing it up because it makes him veryyyyyy upset when I do. I just need any and all advice on how to move forward.

Hi. Just wanted to hear other people’s thoughts or perspectives about this situation
So i’ve been dating this guy consistently for 3 months Jan - March. We see each other once a week. We hit it off pretty well. I stayed at his place a couple of times, he stayed at mine too. He seemed very sweet and gentle.
Last month, he went on a trip outside the country and he said he’ll see me when he comes back this May. It’s already mid May and i havent seen him post anything even stories. I remember when he went on a quick trip and he posted pics and also got to show it to me. He never texted me again, his last text was that he’ll see me when he gets back. We’re actually both not good texters, we only text each other few days before we meet, there are also random how are yous but it’s not too often. We’re both in our 30s and very busy so I thought that’s cool as long as we consistently see each other. He is also not active in socials but last month he was liking my stories
Idk what happened. The last time we hangout it was pretty fun, we tell each other what we can do on our next dates and all and i found it pretty exciting when he plans our dates.
Anyway. I was wondering if this is something common for some guys to do? I find it really really weird. I never had the feeling that he didnt like me, and I believe i never did anything wrong. We never argued or anything like that. Im starting to worry more if he’s okay??? Lol

TW: Alcoholism, drug addiction, violence, suicidal ideation, sex abuse
This is going to be a LLLLLOOONNNNGGGGG one. This story goes back quite a way, but yesterday was the tenth anniversary of the ending to this story and I'm feeling it, still got some guilt about everything that happened, wondering what I could have done differently and I just want to vent it out and hope to get some closure from it.
This story started in 2010.
Characters in this story (names are fake, duh!):

• Me, Guy, 32M at the time, 45 now.
• My BFF Stephanie, 33F at the time.
• Stephen, 40M at the time, Stephanie's boyfriend.
• Maryse, 27F at the time.

Background and intro
I had known Stephanie for many years and we had the kind of friendship that made her BFs and my GFs uncomfortable to put it lightly. We had never crossed that boundary and I wouldn't consider us in the friendzone, we were just friend, but the kind of friend where she would sit on my lap with her arms around my neck or her head on my shoulder.
At the start of 2010, Stephanie met her then boyfriend, Stephen. He tolerated me and my friendship with Stephanie because I also had a gf back then. She liked Stephanie, wasn't at all jealous of my friendship with her, so he didn't deem me too suspicious. Then my gf and I broke up for reasons unimportant and all hell broke loose for Stephen. He became convinced that I would try and steal Stephanie from him. He insisted that Stephanie introduce me to her female friends or female friends of his. Thus began what I called the year of the 50 blind dates. It was probably closer to 20, but still I like saying the year of 50 blind dates. Most of them were unremarkable and never went beyond the first date. There are some fun stories in there if anyone wants to hear them eventually!
In July of that year, I had to switch gears because I had to focus up and study for a professional exam for a certification important to my career. This exam required close to 600-800 hours of study over a 3-4 month period. So I hunkered down, told Stephanie to stop the blind dates for now because I had to focus on that. She respected my wishes and, other a text here or there, we went low contact for the last two months before the exam.
Except for one fateful night in September. Her birthday was in September and she always threw these big bashes at her house. She would throw a big pool party that started around noon and would go on to the wee hours of the morning. I knew she would harass me to go to her party, so I made some quick math and figured I would lose more energy and time trying to dodge her calls, texts and most likely visits at my place than by just going to the party itself. So when she called me to ask, I just said: "Okay I'll go to your damn party, now git." I texted her I would get there in the evening probably around 8. She texted back "Great, can't wait. Now study, bitch!"
So I ultimately get there around 8PM. Basically everybody is already drunk off their gourd. Stephanie sees me, squeals in excitement and runs to me in her bikini and just jumps in the air and slams into me, wraps her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist and gives me a big hug. I hug her back and just keep walking back to the pool where she had started, carrying her with me. I just duck my head around hers and say hi to Stephen, who just glares at me.
She drops back down and I give her her gift. We chat for a few seconds and says "There's beer in the fridge and food in the dining room." I told her I'd be right back.
I go inside and grab a beer from the fridge. I head to the dining room and the table is against the wall with a buffet of sandwiches, tomato pizza, salads, etc. I grab a plate and start putting food on it. I was focused on the task because I was starving. I barely noticed, sitting at the end of the table one of the most stunning woman I have ever seen. I just see her in my peripheral vision and I do a quick double take, quick glance at her and back to the food. I do that a second time. And finally a third time. At that point she is just straight up staring at me and I can't help but chuckle and whisper under my breath "Subtle Guy, sub-tle".
Thankfully she starts laughing too, saving me some embarassment. I look at her and greet her. She says "Hi, I'm Maryse and I'm guessing you're Guy?" I just nod and we start talking. At that point, I just thought I have no shot with her, she's so far out of my league that I'm just gonna talk to her until she sees one of the "models" hanging out by the pool and ditches me for him.
So I'm not feeling like I'm playing for anything, so I'm just myself and not nervous, just talking to her as I would any friend. We chat and she laughs at all my jokes, she gets all my cultural references. She never gets up or ditches me. The plate of food I had made and the beer I had gotten are sitting on the table next to me untouched, I was too busy with the convo to think about food or beer anymore.
After what felt like only 20-30 minutes, Stephanie comes in and tells me, fake grumpy: "So that's where you disappeared to. I invite my best friend to a party and he spends the whole night talking to someone else." I laugh and go: "What do you mean the whole night? I haven't been here that long." She says "Dude, it's 2AM. You've been here for 6 hours..." My jaw dropped and I just said: "Wow, time flies when you're having fun." Maryse chimes in, with a big smile: "It sure does!" That made me happy as you can imagine.
Now I was a little stuck because where Stephanie lived, there's no night service for the bus and the subway had been closed for an hour or so. I figured I would cab it. So I turn to Maryse and tell her: "It was absolutely lovely to meet you and I enjoyed our conversation very much." She says that she did too. I continued with "At the moment, my schedule is incredibly hectic. I'm basically working full-time, studying full-time and sleeping part-time. So I don't have a lot of free time, but if she was interested, whatever little free time I had, I would love to call her or text her to keep on getting to know her."
I see Stephanie in the backgroudnd, looking like a proud mama at how smooth that came out, knowing I was always anything but smooth with women, as proven by the string of blind dates! Maryse has a big smile and we exchange numbers. I go to Stephanie to wish her a happy birthday again. While I'm talking to her, my phone buzzes with a text from Maryse: "Just checking!"
I asked Stephanie "What's the best cab company to call in this area?" Maryse chimes in: "Where do you live?" I tell her where I lived and she goes "It's on the way to where I live, I can give you a ride if you want." Stephanie raised an eyebrow in surprise. I learned later, she did it because it absolutely was not on the way to her place, like, at all. I say that I would love that as it would give us a chance to keep talking.
We get in her car, driving to my place. We talk, she asks me what I'm studying as I hadn't mentioned it earlier. I tell her all about the boring maths I had to study. Much too quickly, we get to my place. She parks in front of my building and we keep talking. At some point, I tell her: "Normally, this is where I would try to "trick" you into coming up to my place..." She interrupts me: "You wouldn't need to trick me. I'm willing and able!"
I tell her that "As tempting as that sounds, I know who I am and I know that if you come up and things proceed to where they're going, I'm not going to be able to study for the rest of the month. I have a kind of obsessive mind and when I find someone or something I like, I can push everything else to the side in favor of that. So to make sure I can still focus on my studying, I have to go up by myself."
She looks at me, a little disappointed but then says, half-jokingly: "We don't have to go up, there's a backseat right there!" We laugh and I give her a kiss and wish her a good night. I managed to stay strong and go back to my condo. Damn it, why did I have to stay strong!!!
My exam was at the beginning of november. During the month of october, we texted a bunch of times and talked on the phone. We went for coffee a couple of times and dinner once. She respected my boundaries and never pushed for more, which I appreciated but also hated at the same time, if that makes sense. The exam came and it was a monster of a Friday. I slept for basically 18 hours after the exam as the adrenalin dropped and my system crashed.
I texted her when I woke up at around 1PM. She was working at the clothing store Stephanie owned. She said "I'm off at 5PM, wanna meet me." I said: "Duh! Why do you think I'm texting? ;)" So I met her at the store downtown. I asked if she wanted to grab a drink, go for dinner, or what. She proposed going to her place and getting some take out. Stephanie who was closing the store at that moment, came up to us and said: "Hey, so what are we doing?" I said: "WE, that is Maryse and I, are going to her place and getting some takeout. Bye!" I'm sure you'll understand when I tell you that no food was ever ordered that night!
Thus followed a whirlwind month of November where any free time we had was spent together, and I wasn't going to complain!
The troubles
By the start of december, things were still going great with us. One saturday night, we were having dinner at a restaurant and I mention that this coming Friday is my office Christmas party, that it's employees only, so we wouln't see each other that night. She tells me: "Oh sure, that's fine! It'll give me a chance to go see some girlfriends I've been neglecting lately." I said "Great! BTW I also got us a reservation at [this great restaurant she had mentioned a few times] for next Saturday, so we could go there and I'll tell you all about my party and you can tell me all about her night with the girls!"
That was settled, I thought. I was wrong. On Thursday, we had spent the evening together at her place and I was about to leave to go back to my place. She tells me: "So are you coming to meet me at the store tomorrow or do I go to your place?" I reminded her: "Neither, tomorrow is my office Christmas party and we won't see each other tomorrow." She said: "Oh right, I forgot." I asked her if she had made plans with her friends like she had mentioned last saturday. She said that they were all busy tomorrow and weren't available.
She suggested "If your party is boring, maybe you could come meet me." I retorted that it wasn't going to be, knowing who was going to be there.
"Yeah but what if?"
"But it won't"
"But what IFFFFFF?" she kept insisting and I kept saying no. After what felt like 30 minutes of that (probably only 2-3 minutes in reality), I had enough and just said to end the argument: "Okay, if it's boring, I'll come. but it won't be." She said: "Cool" with a big smile on her face. I came to learn that that smile meant "Challenge accepted".
The following night, my colleague and I were pregaming in a conference room before leaving for the party proper and my phone buzzes. Maryse was wishing me a good party. I replied. She texted me again. I replied. She texted again, but I was in a conversation with a colleague so I didn't reply or even look at the phone. My phone buzzes again. Still talking, and didn't want to be rude to my colleague. Another buzz. I just kept talking. Phone buzzes differently, she was now calling because I hadn't answered her texts.
"Why aren't you replying to my texts?"
"Hey, sorry, was talking to my colleague Patrick."
"What? you don't want to talk to me?"
"I am talking to you now."
"Why didn't you reply to my texts?"
"Because it would have been rude to my colleague to pull my phone out while talking to him."
"But you're talking to me now."
"Because I thought something was wrong, maybe it was an emergency."
"I wanted to talk to you, that's all."
"Well, gotta go back to the party. Talk to you later."
She kept texting and if I didn't reply right away, she would call after two or three missed texts. After about 2 hours of this, I stopped answering the texts. When she called back, I asked her: "Aren't you supposed to be working?" which started another round of guilt-tripping of "why are you asking me this? you don't want to talk to me?" At that point I had had enough and wanted to enjoy my party. I remembered that the Blackberry (no shaming old tech!) I had had an annoying feature, but I was hoping to put it to good use at that moment.
Whenever the battery would get really low, like less than 1%, it would let out an ear-piercing BEEP for about 3 seconds, reminiding you to charge it and giving you a heart attack all at the same time. It would do that even when you were in silent mode. It had happened a few days earlier when I was with Maryse. I figured, if I press a button on the Blackberry, it would make a beep too that could be heard through the phone. So while I was talking to Maryse, I pressed my thumb on the space bar for a good 3 seconds and sputtered; "what... the .... what?" trying to put on a somewhat believable performance.
She asked what that noise was and I tell her that it was my blackberry letting me know I was low battery and it might shut off any second. I told her "Listen I'm gonna wish you a good night, I'm having a good time at my party so I'll see you tomorrow at 5PM to go spend our evening together. I hope you have a good....." and hung up mid-sentence. I promptly shut my phone off and went back to the party. I concede that I may be a bit of an AH for that move.
The party was great, I got drunk much quicker than I expected owing to the fact that I hadn't had a drink in over two months because Maryse didn't drink so I didn't either when we were together, and we were always together. At 1AM, I went home and passed out on my bed.
This is another place where I may have been an AH. I didn't turn my cell phone back on and I unplugged my home line too, because I wanted to sleep the deep sleep of the drunkard. I woke up at around 1:30 PM, not knowing it was already too late. In my mind, I was meeting Maryse at 5PM to go out on the town that night. Maryse had other ideas as you'll see.
So like I said, I woke up at 1:30PM and was sticky with alcohol sweat, so I went straight for the shower to get clean again. While in the shower, my stomach grumbled with hunger and I started daydreaming of bacon and eggs. That pushed me out of the shower right quick. I dried myself off quickly, tied the towel around my waist and went to the fridge. No bacon.... booo. Looked at the egg compartment... no eggs... booo again. Okay then, how about a cream cheese bagel. No cream cheese, damn it. Look in the pantry, no bagels.... god. I was starting to get angry. Okay, cereals then. I pick up the cereal box, that mofo was empty and I get mad: "who's the idiot who puts the empty box back in the pantry?" I remembered I live alone.
I close the fridge dejected and see the grocery list stuck on the fridge, taunting me with everything I wanted to eat for breakfast written on it. But I felt like if I went to the grocery store hungry as I Was, I'm just gonna pay 600$ and not get one single healthy thing to eat. I then remembered there's a restaurant next to the grocery store that serves breakfast until 3PM. I get excited! I get dressed quickly, grab my wallet and keys, put my boots on, my coat on, wrap my scarf, my tuque and my gloves and go to the restaurant. If you notice, I didn't mention my phone in there.
I get to the restaurant and confirm that they still have breakfast and get even more excited when she confirms it. I order the "heart attack", at least that's how I nicknamed it: 3 eggs, 3 servings of bacon, 2 sausages, and, I guess to give one peace of mind, fruit (or to be precise, one single solitary slice of orange). Now that the food is ordered and coming I figured I would check if I have any messages. I pat the pocket where my phone always is. No phone. uh-oh. I start clutching evert pocket, no luck.
I wonder if I should go back home after the meal before going to the grocery store and decide against it, it would be too long a detour. So I scarf my breakfast down, rush through the grocery store. I get home and set my bags down in front of the fridge. I go pick up my blackberry. I turn it back on. The little tape icon tells me there are messages on my voicemail, at that time there were no red dots with a number in it to tell you how many.
I connect to the voicemail while starting to put the groceries away. The little automated voice tells me "You have 25 new messages." I pull the phone away from my ear, look at it in disbelief as if saying: "are you f'ing kidding me?" So I press 1 to start playing the messages.
Remember: Maryse knew I was at a party with a dead phone, no chargers and I probably wouldn't get home until 1AM. From 6:30PM, when my phone died, to 11:34 PM, when she went to sleep she left me 9 messages. BTW I know she went to sleep at 11:34PM because she left me a message saying "it's 11:34PM and I'm going to bed. Thinking of you." The 9 messages were in the same vein. These are the salient details, but the messages were all much longer.
She woke up at 7:15 the following day, I'll let you guess how I know that tidbit of information! She left me 5 more messages like those from the day before: 7:15 woke up. 7:35 going to take a shower. 7:55 out of the shower. 8:25 getting ready to leave for work 8:50 walking out of the subway to go to the store.
She leaves me another message at 9 that was different. She sounded very excited as if she had had the best idea in the world: "Hey it's 9AM, I'm about to start my shift. I know we're only supposed to meet after my shift, but what if you came and met me for lunch so you could tell me all about your party." I just did my best Scooby-Doo "Ruh-Roh" and chuckled that I blew that, not thinking the calamity that was awaiting me.
Another couple of messages to talk logistics: "I could take my lunch at 12 or 12:30, let me know which you prefer." "I'm taking my lunch at 12:30"
A slightly worried message: "It's 11:15 and you stil have not said if you were coming or not, are you okay?"
The first bomb goes off and I knew I was in trouble then: "Where are you? We're supposed to meet for lunch and you still haven't given me any sign of life, you're not answering your home phone either, what happened?" Reminder: we were not supposed to meet for lunch, she suggested doing so a couple of hours earlier and I never agreed to anything. I guess she told her colleagues I would meet her for lunch and it was now fact and could perhaps make her look bad in front of her colleagues.
The second bomb drops: "It's almost noon now, WHERE ARE YOU? Stephanie says you're probably sleeping off your drunk, but I don't believe her. I'm sure you got yourself a slut and cheated on me. Didn't you? didn't you, you asshole." Stephanie knows me very well, but that wasn't enough for Maryse it seems.
Ensued four more messages from 12:30 to 1:15, where she starts sounding more and more drunk and accusatory, spewing more attacks like in the message above. At that point I already knew it was over, there was no coming back from that. I can understand having trust issues, but that was nuclear. I don't tolerate jealousy because of horrible experiences with a couple of jealous toxic exes.
A final message comes in, and it's a different voice, that of my best friend being more than a little angry: "Hey Guy, listen, Maryse tells me you had a Christmas party yesterday, so I'm guessing you're sleeping off your drunk, still. But call me when you get this. I put Maryse, who's f'ing drunk, in the backstore so she can dry off and "do inventory". She can't be on the sales floor obviously and I just don't feel safe sending her home in the state she's in. Call me to tell me how you want to handle this."
At that point I had finished putting away my groceries and had put my boots and my coat on and was making my way to the subway to go to the store. I call Stephanie and tell her I got the messages and I was coming. She was right, I was sleeping off my drunk and had just woke up (didn't feel the need to mention the breakfast and grocery store). I ask her if she knows what I'm gonna do when I get there. She says that she knows and understands. She knows my bad history.
When I get out of the subway, I call her again before getting to the store. I ask her how she wants me to do this. It's her store and I don't want to create drama in front of her customers. Does she want me to wait outside and she tells Maryse to meet me in the street or do I go in the store and she takes me to the backstore and I do it there? She says to come to the store.
I walk in the store and every saleswomen on the floor looks at me and gives me the biggest case of the stink-eye. They only have Maryse's side of the story, so they think I did all these horrible things. I see Stephanie in the middle of the store and I walk towards her. She shakes her head and points me towards the cash register. I look over there and see Julia, a salesperson that I've known for a couple of years and really like, who also happens to be the biggest gossip in the store. I understand what Stephanie is trying to do. She's gonna make me tell her my story in front of Julia so Julia can spread the "good news" to the other employees and rehabilitate my name possibly.
So I get to the register and say Hi to Julia. She barely acknoledges me. Steph joins me. She asks me:
"How are you?"
"I was better an hour ago, before I listened to those voicemails. I had gone to our office party last night, had a great night, got drunk off my ass, got home at around 2 and woke up around 2."
Julia asks "Maryse told us you were supposed to meet her for lunch."
"No we weren't. I have a reservation for tonight at XYZ restaurant. I was supposed to take the day to do errands, stuff around the condo and meet her here at closing time. She suggested that it could be fun if I came at lunchtime to meet her, but that was never the plan."
Julia asks again "But why didn't you answer your phone?"
"It ran out of battery last night during the party and when I got home, I was so drunk that I forgot to plug it back in. I only plugged it when I woke up at 2. That's when the messages came in."
Julia asks "She says she tried calling your home line and you didn't answer and your machine didn't kick in."
"Yeah, that one's my fault, I knew I wanted to sleep and telemarketers have a habit of calling me early saturday mornings so I didn't want to be awoken by a call for a rug cleaning service, so I unplugged it yesterday morning, knowing I would be drunk when I got home and forget and be angry if I was awakened by a telemarketer."
Julia gave me a hint of a smile, showing me she was starting to believe me. She asked me a few more questions and then she asked what I was gonna do. I told her that whatever I'll do, I would tell Maryse first.
I looked at Stephanie and said: "Can you open the back store so I can go see her?" So we went to the backstore. As we reached the door, it swung opened and out popped Maryse, looking absolutely terrifying, I actually jumped back when I saw her. Her usual perfect makeup was completely smeared, her mascara streaking down her cheeks from the crying. Her hair was disheveled. She was a mess. Apparently, she had had enough of waiting back there and was planning on leaving the store to go home and had put her coat and boots on.
When she saw me, she went into an unhinged rant about me being an asshole for cheating on her, me not being great in bed, me not treating her right, etc. I let her vent everything she had to say, I looked at Stephanie and apologized for creating such a scene in her store. I tell Maryse we should go outside and talk in private. She keeps on yelling, but when I grab her hand to lead her outside, she follows.
When we get outside, her anger had started to wane a little, or maybe just her energy. I was able to talk to her to explain everything, how I had gotten drunk, had overslept (alone) and woke up at 2PM. I reminded her that we were only supposed to meet at 5PM not for lunch. The anger was leaving her and a smile almost appeared on her face. Through all of this I was being very calm and patient with her, which she interpreted as me not being mad at her. I then said in a firmer tone: "However..." and let it hang for a second.
The beginning smile vanished. I continued: "When you accused me of cheating on you, that broke me. That triggered memories of toxic exes who would always accuse me of cheating, not trusting me when I would tell them where I was, snooping on me, stalking me. Because of those experiences, I have a zero tolerance policy for jealousy. I told her that if she was behaving like after only two months of dating, it didn't bode well for the future and I have to protect myself."
At that, the tears started again and she just turned and ran/waddled away. I told her to wait, but she didn't hear me. I turned towards the entrance of the store to see basically all the employees and customers milling around the door trying to catch the drama. I went back inside to talk to my best friend. The mood had definitely changed and no one was giving me the stink eye anymore, but I didn't really care. I was just sad that it had ended, but proud of myself for having stood up for myself.
So AITA for getting drunk and keeping my phone turned off?
There is a lot more to this story and if you want to learn what happened afterwards, then read on.
The immediate aftermath
So I went back inside the store and talked to Stephanie. I told her that I had a reserrvation for XX restaurant and if she wanted to go with Stephen, she could take it, I wasn't in the mood for a dinner. She said "I already have plans for tonight, but thanks for offering." Julia said she would go with me if I wanted, but I just said that I wasn't in the mood to go out. I just wanted to crash and eat a pizza and get into a food coma.
Stephanie said she didn't feel comfortable leaving me by myself and I should join them at her house. They were having friends over to play board games and it could at least distract me a little. I said why not. So brimming with enthusiasm, I went to play bored games. I left early as I wasn't in the mood. I was feeling a little better, but still a bit down. I thanked Stephanie for the invite and left. I got home and just passed out on the bed.
I woke up at around 7AM the next morning and I saw along the corners of the window the tell-tale signs of a snow-drift and got excited as it was the first snow of the season. I pushed the curtains aside and looked on to see a beautiful white carpet outside. It was early enough that very few cars had marred the whiteness. I was admiring it when I noticed that, against the red bricks of the building across the street, there was a pink blotch. As I focused, the blotch became human shaped and I cleared my eyes enough to realize that it was Maryse and she was raising her cell phone to her ear.
On cue, my phone rings. I pick it up. Still sounding drunk, she asks me if we can speak. I ask her to give me five minutes to get dressed and I'll meet her down there. She asks why she can't come up. I say that I'm not sure I want her in my apartment. She says that it's cold out. I say: "Good, then this will be quick."
I get dressed and meet her outside. I'm still bleary-eyed from having woken up 5 minutes ago, but I try to get my wits together. I tell her that we're going to walk to the subway. It 's a 10-minute walk normally, but with her drunkenness, it might take 15-20 minutes. That's how long she has to tell me what she wants to tell me.
She wants to apologize for accusing me of cheating on her. She says she knows I'm a great guy and... I may be the A-hole at this point too, but I start to drift off in my little bubble and start daydreaming about, if I go back to bed, would there still be some residual heat or would it be cold? I could take a hot shower and warm the bed that way. I could still hear her in the background making excuses, saying how she had been cheated on, but I wasn't really listening.
During the daydreaming I notice it got quite quiet. I look on my left and she's not there, I turn around she's a good 5-6 steps behind me looking angry and she says: "you're not listening" I just say: "when you're right, you're right." I tell her that I understand she's been hurt too in the past, and I hope she can work to resolve her issues, but I was done and I'm going back to bed. I was a bit harsh there, but I was tired and still down.
I walk past her and get maybe 10 paces past her when I hear a scream coming from her. I turn around and I see her messing with something inside her coat. She pulls out a chef's knife with like an 8-inch blade. That wakes me the fuck up. Byebye bleary eyes, hello wakefulness. better than a cup of coffee or a red bull I tell you!
So she's got the knife, she's screaming something that I can't quite understand. She gets quiet and then she charges at me with the knife. If I'm being honest I could have stayed where I was and she probably would have missed me anyways, but someone charges at me with a knife, I'm gonna nope out of there. I take a massive side step and once she gets to where I was and realizes that I'm no longer there, she turns her head towards me and says heyyyyy.
At that point, I have a moment of clarity and see what's gonna happen. She's drunk running one way and looking another, I know she's gonna trip. As I predicted, she stumbled over her feet and starts falling to the ground. I start praying to god and anybody who would listen: "Please don't let her cut herself. I don't want to have to explain this to the doctors, EMTs and nurses. I don't want her drunk ass deciding to take revenge on me by saying I did it."
Thankfully, she winds up in a sitting position on the sidewalk holding the knife up and it was clean. Thank god for small miracles. She starts crying and, other moment of clarity, I know she's gonna turn the knife on herself now. I jump towards her and I realize I was right, the knife starts moving towards her left wrist. I tackle her, grab her right wrist and twist it so she drops the knife. I pick the knife back up and put it in my pocket. She looks at me crying and says: "Why did you stop me?"
I pick her up and take her back to my building. In my building there was a couch in the lobby, so I take her there and I sit her down and plop myself next to her. I look at her and wonder out loud: "What am I gonna do with you? What can I do?"
She goes: "Just let me go, I'll be good." I tell her that's not going to happen. I realize I have three options and I give her the three options.
"So here's the choice I give you.
1- I pull out my phone, call 911 and tell them about the attempted murder back there and they send the police to arrest you. I don't want to do that because that could derail your life and not get you the help you need. Besides, they might not do anything anyway as it's your word against mine.
2= I pull out my phone, call 911 and tell them about the attempted suicide back there and that you need to be placed on a 72 hour hold. I could do that, but at the same time, again it's my word against yours, so maybe they don't believe me.
3- I'm gonna hazard a guess here. From what I've seen, you have alcohol problems. So I'm gonna guess you were in AA, had been sober for a while, I want to say 6 months, maybe less, when we met."
She confirms my guess.
"alright so option 3, I'm guessing you had a sponsor in AA." she nods "we call them up and tell them about your relapse and what happened this morning. Can they come get you and take care of you?"
She takes her phone out and picks a contact and calls. She hands me the phone. Someone answers and I explain the situation. They said they were coming right away. I give them my address, they get here 15 minutes later. Maryse had fallen asleep in the meantime, so I wake her up gently and help her to the car. Off she went.
I went back to my apartment and just crashed back to sleep.
A month later
Mid-january, my phone rings and I see Maryse's number on there. I send her to voice mail. Another call. Voicemail again. 5 minutes later, Private number calling. "Gee I wonder who that could be." Voicemail once more.
Afterwards, I didn't get any unidentified callers for a little over a week. One afternoon, I was at work and my phone rings and it's a number I do not recognize. I pick up.
"Hello."
"Hi, is this Guy?"
"Yes, to whom am I speaking?"
"This is Hannah, Maryse's sponsor. we spoke last month." I started fearing the worst.
"Yes, I remember. How can I help you?"
"Maryse tried to reach you last week and you rejected the calls. I think it could help Maryse if you listened to what she had to say. You're obviously not obligated to entertain her, but I think despite everything that happened, you still care about her or you would not have called me that morning."
"You are right, I do still care about Maryse. I'm just not sure how good it would be for her to meet me this soon after everything that happened. I understand wanting to work through the 9th step and making amends, but..." She interrupts me.
"So you know about the steps."
"Yes I have friends in the program. which is how I could guess that she was in the program too that morning."
"You know it's important."
"I know. I know. How about this: we meet in public at a cafe, you would have to be there. Not necessarily at the table with us, but nearby in case she needs help, in case meeting me causes her pain. Tell her I promise to be in a more receptive mood than I was that morning."
So we make an appointment for that saturday afternoon.
I get to the coffee shop. She's already there, and so is her sponsor. I realize happily that she's not wearing makeup. I say happily because that means she understands that this is not a date, but something serious. She's still stunningly beautiful, and I feel sad almost right away.
I grab a coffee and go join her at the table.
"Hey" I say,
"Hey. So this is gonna be uncomfortable, but thank you for agreeing to meet me and for coming, I appreciate it more than you know. I'm sure you heard I quit the store."
"I have, I'm sorry about that, I hope you didn't do it just because of me."
"No, I needed time to focus on myself for now."
She proceeds to tell me about how I wasn't far off with my guess. She had been sober 4 months when we met. Now she had 39 days. She tells me that in AA, if you are single, they recommend not dating anyone new for at least the first year of your sobriety as it can cause issues, similar to what happened with us. I was like her "drug" and as long as I was available, she could get her fix. But the moment I wasn't available all hell broke loose, and that is what led her back to drinking that day.
I told her I'm glad to see her back sober again this quickly and I hope she can get all the help she needs from it. I ask her if she wants to talk to me about her drinking.
She starts to share a story about how she started drinking at around 11 years old. When puberty hit her, she got into a deep depression because the sexual feelings she was starting to feel were triggering responses. As a child she had been abused by two of her uncles repeatedly and her parents never believed her. They accused her of trying to make herself interesting. That was until they caught one of those uncles red-handed.
They finally believed and took the necessary steps to protect their daughter. But they were poor and they couldn't afford therapy. So she never really got help for it. At 11, she started self medicating the depression with alcohol. When alcohol wasn't enough, she added drugs.
At that point, I was full on crying. She asked me if I wanted her to stop. I told her that she doesn't have to stop. That the tears are there because that was one more thing we had in common. I was also a survivor of sexual assault as a child. In my case, it wasn't a family member, it was only a stranger, so it only happened once. But I also self-medicated with alcohol at the onset of puberty, switching to drugs later on too. I was lucky to avoid the pitfalls of addiction, but I was still dealing with my demons, slowly making peace with them.
So there we were, sitting at a coffee shop, both crying and holding each other. I tell her that I think it's great she's getting help for her alcoholism and addicion, but was she doing anything to help with the underlying issue, the original trauma? She said no, she couldn't afford therapy. I tell her that I am a member of a survivors group and if she is interested, I could get her into a meeting and perhaps learn to heal that part of herself too.
She said that she could give it a try. I tell her I have to talk to the other members to know if I can bring someone new and I would let her know. If they said yes, we would go to her first meeting together, I would introduce her and then we would coordinate so that I never went to meetings where she was. I wanted to do that because I wanted her first few meetings to be about healing and I didn't want our own history to be intertwined or mixed in with that.
After that, we left both feeling content and, while not necesarily happy, at peace if you will. Later on, I contacted Stephanie who was one of the "pillars" of the support group (that's how we met) to ask her if it was okay for me to bring in a new member to the group. She said sure. She asked if it was anyone she knew. I told her she would have to meet her at the meeting if she decides to come.
We were having a meeting the following day. I called Maryse, told her the time and place, and she said she would be there. She came to the group meeting and was shocked to see Stephanie there but Stephanie kinda guessed that it was Maryse I was referring to.
I introduce her, we start sharing stories, talking about how we're feeling, etc. The meeting was good and Maryse liked the vibe. So for the first six months after that, I never saw Maryse and we planned which meeting we would be attending to ensure we didn't cross paths. She started feeling much better.
After maybe 2 and a half years, she finally felt ready and she started dating again. She met someone and she fell for him. They were together for about six months, she looked happy. Unfortunately after about six months, she caught him cheating on her. We tried supporting her, being good friends, cursing his name, doing all the things we could to make sure she didn't relapse. But on April 5th 2014, she ODed on heroin. She was hospitalized for 2 weeks after that.
Hannah took her in and she set up a room for Maryse. She was still in a fragile state, so a group of her friends and I started taking turns watching over Maryse, making sure there was always at least one person there with her to keep her company.
Despite our vigilance, on May 14th 2014, when Hannah was out running a quick errand, she was gone maybe 15 minutes tops, Maryse found a way to cut her wrists and she died. We found a note saying that "the OD was not an accident, and neither was that. Thanks for everything you did for me. I love you all, but I can't do this anymore."
It feels good to write that story (I'll just ignore the fat tears rolling down my face!). Thanks for reading this far and sorry for the long story, I just started writing and couldn't stop. I apologize if it was a bit of a bummer.

About a month ago I was looking for a place to play indoors and somebody on FB had recommended I try a local hotel with a gym where they host pickleball games. I decided to give it a try. When I went I met a really nice woman who was a beginning player. I gave her some tips and she asked for my number because she wanted to get better. She texted me a couple weeks later and told me that she had signed herself and her husband up to play in a mixed double Pickleball tournament. The format is that each team plays 1 other team 3 games to 11 every Tuesday night. When she texted me she told me that her husband had hurt his knee and she asked if I would fill in for him. I've never played in a tournament and it sounded like it might be fun so I said sure. We met one time before we were gonna play and I gave her some strategy tips. She is truly a beginner and had no knowledge of even the most basic pickleball strategy. She told me that she and her husband had lost every game they played so far.
A couple days before we were to play she texted me saying opponents were somewhat unpleasant to play with because they were very competitive. She really wanted to win because she was tired of getting her ass kicked every week.
Like I said, I've never played in a tournament so I don't have a rating but I'm pretty good. I had a feeling that I would be better than the players in her tournament and that turned out to be the case. I decided to play about to about 80% of my ability. I wanted to play well but not in an overly aggressive way.
Our opponents quickly figured out that I was much better than her husband and weren't too pleased. After we won the first game the other team told her it wasn't cool to bring a "ringer." I felt very awkward because obviously I don't have any emotional vested interest in the outcome of their tournament but they clearly do.
In the next game they beat us handily by simply hitting every shot at my partner. So here's where I'm not sure if I did the right thing. Since they were just gonna target her the whole time I decided to start poaching. So I did just that and the other team got really upset. After one point they yelled at me, "why don't you just let her play?" To which I responded if you're just gonna hit every ball at her can't we have a counter strategy. "We" ended up winning the last game. They were pissed off and my partner was elated, lol. She thanked me and I told her I wouldn't be filling in for her husband again because it made me feel uncomfortable and I don't think it's fair to the other teams.
So... AITAH for poaching in that situation? I'm honestly not sure so I'm curious what you guys think.