Food basics ontario

my girlfriend is visiting from college right now, and whenever she does we drive out (I can't drive yet but I can learn in 5 months). On Saturday, when this happened, she had to use the bathroom on the road, so we pulled over to the gas station nearby and she used it, but she forgot her phone. I usually don't like being nosey and stuff, but she was taking a while and I got tempted to look at her phone.
I just looked at her photos, and it was all just random pictures of her friends, etc. Then I decided to look at her Instagram, and I was just looking at just random posts for a few minutes until a notification popped up from some random person. When I clicked on it there was a whole convo between her and this random person, who when I clicked on there profile was some middle aged guy. I didn't go too far back in the messages (which I really should've) but I didn't need to go far to see she sent a vid of me and her on FaceTime together, like multiple vids.
When I saw this I looked at her other dms and saw a bunch of random, again middle aged to I think really old guys, and again she dmed them vids of me and her on ft together. Before I could really dig I just decided to not look at it any longer, and swiped out the app. and after that my gf returned back to the car, and we just got food like we were supposed to.
I didn't tell her anything, and even then its not like I rly could because she's back in college for a few more weeks. But I even if I could I wouldn't really want to an extent. If I do I'm basically telling her I looked at her phone without her permission. but at the same time that whole situation is so weird to me. I should've looked further when I had the chance, because I can't help but think of the worst

I normally don’t post here because I just like to read the posts. But it’s come down to this due to a shitty situation that my fiancé is in that I have been dragged into (not her fault).
Anyways, I got offered a really good job offer in a town that was an hour from my hometown. I didn’t want to do the drive back and forth due to it being the grave shift. My fiancé lived in the town where I got the job offer so she offered for me to stay there at the place with her. She had a roommate and she ended up talking to her and asking her if it was okay for me to stay there until their lease is up (it’s up in August of this year, I moved in in January). The roommate agreed that it was fine and she had no issues with it. She said she liked me as a person and I was always really kind to her when I would come hang out with my fiancé.
The first three months were fine. No issues, no fighting, no arguments, nothing. I didn’t really see much of the roommate due to me working the grave shift so I never came into contact with her unless she was off when I had off days (which were rare). So I’d go to work come home sleep and then go back to work that night and so on so forth. One night my fiancé had her best friend over and they did a paint night to unwind after work. They painted in the living room (which is a common space to hang out that’s meant to be lived in). My fiancé accidentally left a small paint brush on the coffee table in the living room. And when I say small, it was literally no bigger than a pencil. Well the roommate texted my fiancé a long detailed paragraph stating that the living room isn’t meant for “personal items” and that it’s “not meant to be lived in” and she “shouldn’t have her stuff out there”. The roommate has her dogs toys all over the floor out there, all her pictures and frames, her alcohol on the floor by the couch, etc. And no, I’m really not exaggerating, that place looked like it was just her place even though both her and my fiancé are on the lease and split the payments. My fiancé “wasn’t allowed” to be in the living room. But the roommate was allowed to have her f*ck buddies over screwing them on the couch when we’re in the next room. It got to the point where we couldn’t ever come out of the room and basically lived in there. We ate, slept, watched tv in my fiancés bedroom. That’s no way to live. And it was all because her roommate got mad about a paint brush.
Anyways, fast forward a few weeks and everything is fine. The roommate didn’t say anything else and both my fiancé and I stayed out of her way. But my fiancé works with her unfortunately so she does have to see her some days. But I avoided her at all costs because I didn’t want to deal with the drama. I have no time for petty stuff like that. But that’s not the worst part. The worst part comes after those weeks that were semi okay. Her roommate ends up calling the landlord and saying she would like me to be added to the lease (even though in the beginning she never asked me to be added and I offered many times to pay rent and she declined it) but I would do other things like put $500 worth of food in the house (that she would eat in less than two weeks) and pay for the WiFi (that she had everything hooked up to). And even went as far as cleaning her dirty dishes, cleaning the fridge out that had her moldy food in it from months back and cleaning the dog shit off the porch from her dog that she left sit there for weeks on end. Not including taking out the 40 trash bags that she left on the porch all piled up and smelling like shit. And yes, it was 40 bags. I didn’t complain about it. I just did it and left it at that. Well she went into another detailed message to my fiancé saying that “we don’t clean up after ourselves” and “I have to clean up all your trash” etc etc. No, she doesn’t. And she hasn’t. I’m a very OCD person. I’m a germaphobe as well and I hate when things are dirty. I always clean up after myself. There’s never been a time when I didn’t. Anyways, my fiancé told her all that I’ve done to keep the place clean for them and how much I have helped and her roommate got pissed off and went on saying that if I don’t start halfing the rent with them that I can get out. And then said that my cat can’t stay (my cat is a ESA, he has doctor signed papers stating that he’s allowed to be with me and I don’t have to pay anything to have him places. The roommate didn’t know that he was an ESA and got mad that she couldn’t throw my cat out bc of it). The landlord ended up calling my fiancé (because she loves her) and told her what the roommate was trying to do. So my fiancé and I both went to meet the landlord to talk to her. Her landlord said that she didn’t mind me being there, she knew I was there and she said I never started any issues. According to the rules they don’t have a limit on how long guests can stay like some places. The landlord went on to say how the roommates old boyfriend stayed there for a whole year and that my fiancé had no issues with it (which she didn’t). And he didn’t do half of what I do around the place. The roommates current bf also stays long periods of time too. To which my fiancé didn’t care. Why would she? He didn’t cause any issues just like I haven’t. I literally barely spoke to her. I never really seen her. I didn’t do anything to make her angry at me. The people that know me know that I would never do anything to hurt anyone or upset them. I’m literally the nicest person someone will ever meet. Anyways, the landlord said that unfortunately since I wasn’t on the lease that if the roommate wanted me added I’d have to be added. That’s okay, I was fine with that. Well my fiancé told the roommate the next day that we could add me and she said “nah, I don’t want him added now. I want him out by May 1st or I’m calling the cops”. It was April 25th when she told us this. So I had less than a week to find a new place and leave. Unfortunately I had no choice bc I wasn’t on the lease and if I stayed she could call the cops and have me removed from the apartment. I didn’t want that on my public record so I ended up moving back to my home town and luckily found a two bed house for a decent price. My fiancé who said she would never move to my hometown ended up moving with me. So she’s paying rent here and there as well.
What I need advice on after this long story and yes I know it’s long but it needed to be said. But what I need advice on is, I was planning on paying the $2,200 left on the rent for the two months that’s left on the lease to help my fiancé so she doesn’t have to pay it. That way she doesn’t have to pay the rent anymore and can pay rent with me down here (which is way cheaper). The roommate stated that if we prorate the $2,200 that she would release my fiancé from the lease by signing the release form that the landlord gave her. Well, I prorated the rent and she still hasn’t signed the form. She stated it’s bc “you left trash in the room that needs to be taken out”. There’s nothing left in there that belongs to my fiancé literally nothing at all. She still hasn’t signed the form and has been ignoring my fiancé. We have tried to ask the landlord but unfortunately she can’t do anything. What I’m asking is, should I just go get my check back and should my fiancé just not pay her? I know that would be so shitty to do but at this point she’s left us no choice and no other options. She won’t work with us, she’s very rude and inconsiderate and hates us for literally no reason. Is there anything that I can do? If she just doesn’t pay will she get in trouble? A friend of mine that I work with (who is also a landlord as well) told me that if my fiancé just leaves that the rest of the rent would fall on the roommate. She’s had it happen before at the places she rents out. Is that true? I really don’t want her to be in this situation anymore. It’s stressing both of us out and ultimately making us anxious, upset and angry just thinking about it. We are planning our wedding and just moved into this new place and would like to enjoy doing that instead of dealing with this. I just need opinions and options or advice on what to do. Anything helps really. Thank you for all who have read this.

hihi everyone, now before you come for me in the comments, hear me out.
I've lived in India my whole life and I live in a metropolitan city. I see that basic human decency has become increasingly hard to find in our country and it really saddens me, especially because its part of our culture and it's dying.
From things like not bothering to throw food wrapper in a bin to engaging in utterly unnecessary and dangerous road rage, it seems like there is no sense of collective well being, the idea of being happy and letting others be happy. The norm has become being rude and indifferent and obviously this reflects in the grander scheme of things.
I feel like it's small things in attitudes of people like this that can really make or break a nation. Now obviously there are some really lovely people and I really do appreciate them but it seems like it's not the norm at all.
It's been bothering me for a while, wanted to get it off my chest and get some opinions maybe?

I am 36 years old. I don't have any friends. I haven't been in a relationship in two years. I don't make as much money as I would like. I am have a really slow recovery from a tonsillectomy and I am just having a hard time getting myself motivated to do anything.
I had one pretty good friend, an ex, and we went on a platonic trip together in March. I had a really good time and generally enjoyed myself. Got to see Chichen Itza and get some fun in at the cenotes and beach. Since then we haven't hung out though. In her texts she said the guy she has been seeing is moving out of town in a few months so she is spending time with him. She has dated him off and on for 20+ years and this has never been an issue before so I do feel like some of this is also just fatigue of hanging out with me. We didn't get in any fights on the trip but it did show we have much different priorities/personalities. She brought her dogs, they go everywhere with her, and one is incontinent so it was dictating quite a bit of our schedule but I am pretty used to this so I felt like I handled it fairly well. I also do think some of this is her boyfriend not wanting us to hangout, which is understandable. I just said No worries and we haven't talked since. She didn't message me on my birthday, but I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't remember. We have been hanging out regularly for 2-3 years so it is a bit of a hit, but it was something that felt ultimately was going to happen so I am not mad, just a little sad. I haven't hung out with anyone other than my dad since the middle of March though.
Just hurts to not have anyone to hangout with at all. I have talked to two coworkers and one of them has bailed on me multiple times and the other just said he was too busy to make any plans in the first place. I have done meetups in the past but I always just feel so awkward not knowing anyone and I am awful at initiating contact with anyone, guys or girls. I also just don't really have that many interests, even though I tend to enjoy most things I do. I own a dirt bike but haven't gotten out to use it because it is really hard to load by myself and I am just not that confident with it. And if I am doing anything alone without somebody else keeping me accountable I tend to just blow it off. I have also tried Bumble BFF but honestly was so turned off by it. I kept on getting hit on, creepy af, and it just feels awkward.
I feel like I am bad at making friends because I am not very personable and also tend to overshare and say stupid things just because I haven't talked to anyone in so long it is just kind of like a dam bursts.
I would like to get back into judo or jujitsu, but with college and my mortgage I am barely squeaking by financially, and 200+ a month is a little too much for me. I even canceled my cable plan to save some money for bills despite loving basketball. I also don't really have enough energy for active hobbies due to my tonsillectomy right now.
I work full time and am taking college classes at the same time. I was never the best student, but I have finished 9 computer science courses and a statistics class over the last 2.5 years. I have 5 classes left for my bachelors and am on course to graduate Spring 2025. Straight A's and one B+ so far so I have been really happy with my grades, but the industry has completely fallen apart over the last year or two and I am worried that after investing all this time and money into going back to college I might not be able to get a job. The best student I know wasn't able to land a single internship this summer and that really shocked me. He is an amazing programmer, better than anyone I know.
Because I have a mortgage on a little duplex I cannot really afford to do an internship to try and help my job prospects, I am going to really have to rely on doing well in the interviews. I am also planning on trying to take advantage of the career fairs and other on-campus opportunities next fall but that is so not my comfort zone that I don't want to set my expectations really.
With how busy I am it has also been a great excuse for myself to not pursue more social outlets and the only thing I do for dating is online apps and while I can get the occasional date I don't think I have ever actually had a real connection through it. I am just bad at connecting with people on a personal level, be it friends or dates. I have been on so many first dates it is kind of depressing. The town I live in isn't small, like 150k, but I feel like I am running low on options after years of failures.
I had been suffering from chronic tonsillitis over the last year. I had 5 bouts in total, three of which were back to back episodes from January to March this year. I got a tonsillectomy on April 20 and am still having problems swallowing food. I am basically still on a puree diet.
Getting the tonsillectomy was a real eye opener for me because with my ex not being a contact anymore I didn't have anyone to rely on so I had to have my father fly out and spend a week with me. I didn't have any friends to rely on and it really just kind of hit me how depressing my life is. All of my old high school friends, who I don't keep up with, have families.
The one thing I had going for me is that I had a decent physique. Due to a lack of a social life I was pretty good at going to the gym and lifting regularly. I was 6'1 and 180-185 pounds, nothing impressive but I was happy with myself. I am down to 160 pounds now since my tonsillectomy though and I am just extremely low energy all the time. My summer class started today and I am having a lot of issues just focusing after an 8-hour work day, even though I only work remotely on a computer.
During COVID I really made leaps and bounds to improve myself. I quit cigarettes after 15 years, I started going back to class. Got my own place and gained 40 pounds (in a good way) but after losing half of that weight and generally being miserable from my tonsillectomy it is just so hard to motivate myself to even go to the gym anymore and for 3 years I never had a problem getting off my butt to go to the gym, even if it was just for a mediocre lifting session.
I used to love playing video games and watching tv shows/movies but now I just find myself mindlessly watching youtube or reading and don't even have the attention span or interest in booting up a video game anymore or trying to find a show or movie to watch.
I always wanted a family, but I have never really had a successful relationship in my life and now since my tonsillectomy I have become a lot less sexually motivated than before. I don't even have the urge to masturbate anymore, and sex was never a strong point of mine in the first place, leading me to believe it will be even worse moving forward. I also just have never connected with somebody on like a really deep level and feel like years of failures/insecurity just kind of burden me a this point. And I am getting to the age now where I feel like I am almost beyond the point where this is still possible. It is weird telling somebody I am 36 and my longest relationship was only 4 months long.
I feel like I am on the right track on paper with only one year left until I graduate and I kind of really want to move even though I love where I live just so I can get a fresh start, but at the same time I am terrified I will graduate and just be in the same situation I am currently in. I also could never afford to buy another place without a better salary. The only reason I was able to afford what I currently have is because I bought during the 2020 market and got a 2.34% APR. But even with that my mortgage is close to 40% of my take home right now and I have one of the cheapest places in town.
I don't really have anyone to vent to or destress to so I just wanted to post something from a throwaway account. My dad has been texting me daily because I think he realizes how unhappy I am and I really appreciate that.
I have been wanting to go see some Nuggets games at the bar, but I still cannot drink alcohol until I am eating food again so I have just been following highlights on youtube. I also have never been a fan of hanging out at bars. I enjoy shooting pool but I am not good at social settings like that.
I will leave it at this for now. A very long, poorly formatted ramble. But I have seen much worse. Thanks.

Little backstory: my friend and i have known each other ther for about 10 years. Our parents used to date but it didnt work out. We decided to remain friends and her mom would claim i was another one of her children. It never really felt like it but i figured my expectations were too high
Close to 3 years ago my partner and i moved in with said friend and her husband. Less than a month before the lease was up, she told me she had decided to move back in with her mom. My partner and i werent expecting this and were not in the financial position to pretty much go anywhere. Semi-luckily, her mother-in-law offered us a room to rent in her house. Id been told stories about how crazy she was but we were desperate
Things go okay for awhile. My friends dad ends up moving in too and we end up sharing a bathroom. We ended up having to set boundaries with him and basically said if you keep overstepping, youll have to start paying for your own toilet paper (which he never bought)
He ended up throwing a massive hissy fit and was yelling up and down the hallway. My partner and i locked ourselves in our room and kept quiet, but we could hear our “landlord” agreeing with him and practically egging him on
We ended up going on facebook to express that we felt unsafe and why. The first post was kept hidden but the second didnt default like i thought it would. Landlord saw and got upset. My friend also saw and had a panic attack because even though we didnt name anyone, and multiple people lived there, she knew it was about her dad.
Landlord went and told her dad that we had purposely given her a panic attack. He started storming around the house again in a rage and was threatening to “rip those bitches necks off” nothing came of it as he left the house but we were terrified.
The landlord ended up kicking us out but that was whatever because we no longer felt safe and planned to leave soon anyway
While packing, we needed to get more boxes and my dad decided to take us out to lunch. The landlord entered our room and took pictures of it and posted them on facebook, tagging us and complaining how we had left it in such horrible conditions (we were moving, of course it was messy!) she also tried saying we abandoned our cat with no food or water. He had both and we had only been gone for 4 hours!
This whole time i had been texting my friends mom, trying to get her to help with the situation, but she did nothing. Then she tried blaming us for not trying to to have a sit down conversation with everyone.
She had space but didnt offer us a place to stay. Whatever her house she can decide who lives there
We ended up moving into my dads backyard and lived in a tent for a good while until his live in landlord took pitty on us and cleaned out another room
Living there wasnt easy as there were a lot of drugs around. My dad doesnt use but had moved into his friends place to help him gain some mental stability. There was plenty of yelling and slurs being called out but things somehow worked out by the time we moved out
Part way, we thought we may have been getting kicked out as my dad had been. This was before we could find a place so we had asked if we could stay with friend and her mom for a bit. She said her landlord wouldnt like it but she hadnt even bothered to ask him.
A corworker of mine id only known for a few months told me she was trying to figure out us staying with her family of 5 in a 2 bedroom (different story) but someone id known for a decade and claimed to be family couldnt be bothered and told me to buy a house with my finacially unable dad
My friend doesnt know the whole story about how her dad threatened to kill us but she knows enough. Shes mentally unwell so she told me to not tell her until she was ready. Shes never asked for the rest of it.
Her family now keeps trying to act like everything is normal and nothing ever happened. I dont want them in my life anymore but i dont know how to confront them about it. I simply avoid hanging out with them anymore and give lame excuses. My friend keeps bringing up her mother in law and dad and it makes me panic everytime
I recently proposed and she said yes! Theres a group chat my now fiancée posted in in excitment with all the people i want to avoid, including the friend and her mother. She asked if she could post about it on facebook. I told her to wait and she later asked again and i ignored it. Turns out she posted about it anyway. I havent even posted about it! All my friends and possibly family i only talk to on Facebook got to find out from this woman i dont even want a relationship with anymore
Idk this post is long so some details were left out but im frustrated af. I need to talk to them but im worried about my friends mental health. I dont like her much anymore but that doesnt mean i should be a dick. But im also being a dick by not saying anything

Am i over reacting?
For as long as i can remember i have been saving my money to be able to move out as soon as i turn 18. Then i learned about emancipation when i was in 6th grade and that has been my plan since then.
When i was a kid i was getting hit almost everyday by my dad and my mom has always somehow convinced me that it was my fault. I was always staying at friend’s houses (as much as i could anyway because i had to babysit a lot) to try and stay away from my family. I also have 4 younger siblings who i have basically raised. The youngest two (currently 7 and 4) stayed with me in my room the moment they got home from the hospital.
I am now 15, and life is not as bad, my parents rarely hit me anymore, i still get manipulated a lot but thanks to my friends I’ve started to realize that what is happening is actually abuse and that its not my fault. I recognize the moments and try to brush it off even though it hurts.
But there are good moments, like going on drives singing to les mis with my dad, getting food with my mom, other things. And i dont want to loose those moments, especially because getting emancipated would destroy the tiniest bit of relationship we have and i dont want to loose it.
I just feel so guilty for even considering getting emancipated. Im scared that i will ruin our relationship even more then it has been ruined. I know its dumb but i still want some kind of relationship with my parents, and it hurts that they dont love me like they love the rest if their kids. It hurts that they could hit me over and over and over and not feel any remorse. It hurts that they convinced me that all of this was my fault and that i am the problem.
I just dont know what to do. I feel terrible for thinking about emancipation but also feel like it’s the only option? And thats if i can even afford it. Legal teams are fucking expensive, not only that but i have to prove that i van provide for my self for them to consider emancipating me.
Also i dont want a guardianship changed. I know thats a option and that it would be helpful, but i dont want to become a burden for anyone else, i dont want anyone else to have to take care of me even if they want to.
I just dont know what to do, i want to get emancipated but at the same time, is it even worth it?
Any advice is helpful thanks!

Somehow today when it was ready to break my fast (i'm only on 15 hour for beginner), i felt like i wasn't... ready to break my fast yet. So I decided to continue fasting.
Didn't feel hungry and didn't feel like i needed to consume food to fuel my body - not sure if it's due to the type of food ate in my last meal? (it had fats and protein.. so could that be why?)
I'm still fasting as I speak so I'll see at what hour my body tells me i need to eat. Plus, drinking tea etc helps me to not have that 'empty stomach feeling' which i may sometimes mistake that for hunger. I don't think humans are meant to ALWAYS have their stomachs feel 'not empty' -- i wonder if this 'feeling' has been conditioned in us?
I feel like IF has encouraged me to listen to my body more. It's basically prioritising 'eat only when you're hungry' over 'set mealtimes' -- and it's adage is more accurate once you've re-wired your body to send hunger signals only when ur body needs food, and not due to external stimuli or a set 'meal time'.
Just wanted to share and also hear your experiences :)

This is a really long story with lots of context so I'll do my best to organize it into current situation, then his backstory and hers. I'm also not using real names or specific locations for any of this to try and keep this private. This also has some contradicting stories and because of how their relationship is structured relies mostly on information I have gotten from my sister, so I'm telling you the story I got from her first and then adding in what I've found out. I'll try to tell this as unbiased as I can but it's been a huge issue in my family for a long time now and that's a little difficult for me to do.
My (20F) sister (Olivia, 24F) has been dating this guy (Trevor, 25M) since 2021. When they started dating, she talked about him fairly often, sent a few pictures of them, ect., but then after a month she stopped mentioning him/ was cagey when we (me and my mom mostly) asked how he was so we assumed it just hadn't worked out. Then two months later she insisted that my parents (54F and 56M) and I all come to visit her college to meet Trevor before he went into the Army (she lived several hours away from my parents and several hours from my college, so I had to get a bus ticket and my parents had to get a hotel room to do this. We only met him once for dinner). Now they've been dating long distance for three years after a three month in-person relationship. She is in nursing school and is planning on moving across the country (literally opposite corners of the map) to live with him and is not applying to any residency programs outside of the Army base area (limiting her choices a LOT from her original goals and narrowing employment opportunities).
Olivia met Trevor on several dating apps, matched with him, but didn't really want to go out with him. He was really persistent, so her friend convinced her to go out with him. She lied about the way they met to our parents and told them they met at the gym through a mutual friend (she lied to me about this at first too and told me the truth about 3 months after they started dating). At the time, Trevor was working as a used car salesman and living at home (~45 min. away from Olivia's school in a rural area) because his sports scholarship had been dropped before his Senior year due to covid at the college he had been attending out of state. The university was unaccredited (I later did some internet stalking and found out it was accredited), so his credits would not transfer and he would have to start over. He was saving up money to attend school in state at the large college Olivia attended so he could go back to school. **Our state has crazy low tuition costs in-state and a full-tuition scholarship program for good high school GPA and SAT scores. There was also a "feeder" community college that had half the cost per credit hour that a lot of people would go to before the larger university if they didn't get in straight out of high school.**
Olivia told me that Trevor had applied to her college and not gotten in (she later told me he HAD gotten in but been unable to afford tuition). Either way, he decided to join the Army because his father had been in the Army. The Army would take his credit hours and he would be able to finish his degree during his 5 year contract or use the GI bill once he got out. **She is comparing the situation to our father, who joined the Army directly out of high school and used the GI bill to go to college after his 2 year contract because his parents wouldn't pay for school. He was a medic in the military, worked as an EMT through college, and then went to nursing school.** The original plan was that Trevor would be a Green Beret (special forces), he completed basic training and and got several months through training and moved to the secondary base in NC before failing the running portion of a physical by about 10 seconds and being dropped from the selection process. He then decided that he wanted to be a Ranger (another elite position). He got sent back to GA, then to the Ranger school base in WA (it took a couple of months before he was sent to WA). Again, he got partway through the training before failing the running portion of a physical by a few seconds. He is now not sure if he will be continuing Ranger school (failing the physical means no, but commanders may pass him anyways if they think he should continue). For a while, Trevor told Olivia that he might not stay at the base in WA if he wasn't in Ranger school and there were a variety of different bases he could be sent to, including somewhere in Italy, so she wasn't sure where to look for jobs. In the past month, Trevor told Olivia that he would likely stay in WA regardless of the Ranger school results.
Through this all, Olivia has visited Trevor at the different military bases countless times, driving from as far as south FL to NC and putting over 30,000 miles on a brand new car over the course of the 1.5 years she's owned it. Before she had the car, she paid for plane tickets to see him and hotels whenever she visited. At the time, she told me that he was paying for all of these trips because he was unable to visit her, was making an income that wasn't being spent, and she was working to save for nursing school and later was living off of student loans and savings during nursing school. She later admitted to me that she had paid for almost all of the expenses except for food when they ate out together and part of a hotel room one weekend.
A few odd things (to me) between Olivia and Trevor over the course of their relationship:
About a month into their relationship, Trevor got Olivia an over $300 christmas gift. He has not gotten her anything nearly that expensive since, and hasn't sent flowers for things like her college graduation or a severe emergency surgery she had last year. I don't care about monetary value or sending flowers, but I do think it is odd that he spent so much before moving away when he ostensibly didn't have much money, but now that he has an income and military sign-on bonus, he has not spent that much again.
Trevor's father left Trevor, his siblings, and his mother, but Trevor has a hat that his father gave him that he wore often. The hat says "Red Man" across the top of a picture of a Native American man wearing a feathered headdress. He has worn this hat several times around Olivia's friends and they told him they didn't like it and that it was racist. They also asked him to not wear it when he was with them and he refused because it was special to him and his father gave it to him. Olivia then told him to stop wearing it and he eventually agreed (Olivia told me that he stopped wearing the hat after this). A few weeks after this, I facetimed Olivia and Trevor was with her. She turned the camera so I could say hello to him, and he was wearing the hat. I talked to Olivia about this later and she told me that that was the first time he'd worn the hat in a while and it wasn't a big deal. Olivia has always been liberal and never racist, and I am uncomfortable that she was okay with him not only wearing the hat, but being with him while he had it on.
They dated for a little over 3 months in person before he joined the military (recently, Olivia told me that they actually met several months before she told everyone about him and that they actually dated for 6 months before he left). For the next two months in basic training, he was only able to use the phone for 15 minutes total once a week to talk to family and her. Throughout the different training programs he has completed he had sporadic and limited access to phones to communicate, and only in the past 6 months he has had access to his phone to facetime, text, and call (but sometimes he goes for a week or two without phone access). Olivia told me that they wrote letters during the time he didn't have consistent phone access. **I don't think that this is odd, I understand the military limits phone usage, etc., but I don't think they have been able to have an "average" long-distance relationship**
Last year, Olivia drove to GA to visit Trevor the weekend before Valentine's day. He had plans for them to take a pottery class, go on a hike, and have dinner at a nice restaurant. The day she got there, Trevor's barracks had their off-base privileges revoked because one of the guys had contraband. She would still be able to visit him on base though. Somehow, Trevor was able to get off base for long periods of time to her hotel, but unable to do the other activities he had planned for them.
In the past year, Olivia told me that she and Trevor were going to immediately marry when she got to WA so that they could move in together because they had to be married to live together anywhere. I and our dad- who was in the military- told her several times that this was not true, but she insisted it was. Then, his barracks were given an allowance to live off base in apartments because the barracks were being renovated/ rebuilt, so she backed off on the idea of getting married immediately after several long conversations with me. She is still insistent on moving in with Trevor, who lives with a roommate, when she moves to WA.
Some background on Olivia:
Olivia has ADHD and anxiety, and struggled particularly badly with the anxiety/ some depression after being broken up with by the boyfriend she dated before Trevor (he broke it off very abruptly, told her he just didn't love her anymore with no previous indications). Olivia is very pretty (objectively, not just because she's my sister), but had bad acne that she ended up going on accutane for at the time she started dating Trevor and was very insecure about it. She had also decided to not go to medical school, and pursue nursing instead around the same time she met Trevor. This was a very upsetting decision for her because she had been taking very hard courses and was burnt out but had told everyone she was going to be a doctor and thought that she would be letting us down by switching paths. Also around the time she started seeing Trevor, Olivia began being very cruel towards our mother (our mother had been borderline emotionally abusive in the past, but Olivia and I were both in college by then and fixing our relationships with her. She has been much better recently and Olivia and I believe that she had some mental health struggles that went unchecked that contributed). Now, several years later, Olivia told our family that she had acted like that because she was rpd by a friend of her ex-boyfriend's after her ex broke up with her. This person also gave her an STD.
I always believe people who say they have been S A'd, and we believed Olivia when she first told us, but some things have come to light that make me and my family question that. Right after Olivia and her ex broke up, Olivia told our cousin that she had gone out with one of his friends and had revenge/ breakup sex with him because he had also been dumped recently. Once my cousin told me this, I remembered that Olivia had told me about a guy she had a one night stand with after she was dumped. She showed me a picture of him, talked about how cute he was, etc. (no distress whatsoever). I know sometimes people behave in ways you wouldn't expect when a traumatic event occurs to them, but I really don't understand how or why Olivia would brag about this guy if he really did S A her.
Three months ago, Olivia was arrested for stealing a set of sheets from Walmart (incidentally, right before Trevor came to visit her on leave). She used the self check-out and only bought a small $5 item and the sheets. She held both in one hand and scanned each side because she had a cut on the other hand and was holding her wallet with it. She saw a 5 in front of the total number and thought it looked right because the total should have been about $50, paid, didn't get a receipt, and walked out. An employee at the door asked to see a receipt, which Olivia didn't have, so she pulled up her transaction history on her phone to show she had paid. At this point, the employee called the police and took Olivia into an office, where she was questioned and charged with shoplifting. (Olivia can get very emotional and probably got upset when the police questioned her, which may have led them to believe she was lying). Luckily, Olivia has managed to get the charges expunged, but the process is still ongoing. Because of her ADHD, if anyone genuinely made this mistake, I would believe it from her, but Olivia has been improving a lot on organization and being more attentive recently. It is extremely uncharacteristic of her to steal- she was honest to a fault as kids- she would break down from guilt and admit things to our parents that we would have gotten away with if she hadn't said anything.
Right now, my parents have met Trevor twice in person, and I've met him once in person and several times in passing over facetime. I personally don't think that Trevor seems to keep up with my sister or that they make each other shine, and that opinion is shared with family friends and family that have met Trevor. Olivia doesn't mention Trevor in front of our parents often because his name has become a topic of contention and argument between them. My parents don't think Trevor is right for Olivia. She has almost 2 college degrees and plans to become a nurse practitioner in the future, and he hasn't finished college and doesn't seem to have any drive to do so. Olivia is also well traveled and enjoys going to museums, concerts, etc., while Trevor has lived in rural FL his whole life (this is not Trevor's fault, and I don't think he is a lesser person because of it, but I don't see a lot of common ground between them). Trevor has not seemed very well spoken when I have talked to him and I just don't see a lot of qualities in him that Olivia values.
If you've gotten this far, I just don't know what to do. Olivia and my parents have a huge rift in their relationship right now and any mention of Trevor, with her around or not, explodes into a huge argument, discussion, or just icy silence. I want Olivia to be able to talk to me about him, and we are able to discuss things much better than she is with our parents. My parents have also started asking me about Olivia and Trevor because they know Olivia shares more with me, and it makes me uncomfortable because I don't want to betray Olivia's trust, but I'm also very worried about her. I know I can't control her actions and I'm having a really hard time trying to balance supporting Olivia but not supporting the relationship (I'm not going to lie to her about how I feel, but I don't want her to feel alienated or unloved by our family, because that is NOT the case). I also think that Olivia is romanticizing the fact that our parents don't like him because my father's parents had a rift with him over our mother when we were very young (this is a whole other story, but basically, his parents always favored his sister, his sister got (I think) jealous when he did well for himself and married my mother, who his parents initially likes, and she made up rumors/lies about my mother that turned his parents against her (this was way before our mother's suspected mental health struggles, which occured when Olivia and I were in middle/high school).
Please share any thoughts you have on the situation (am I reading too into things, is this not as bad as I think it is?), and any advice you have on navigating the relationships.
Tl;dr My sister's boyfriend lied about the circumstances of him dropping out of college and joining the military. Now I think he's lying about not making it through training for two different special/ elite forces. My sister has significantly changed her behavior and I think she may have lied about a significant traumatic event to our family. Now she is planning on moving across the country to him and moving in immediately. Our entire family doesn't like him and we're worried about her. How do I support her but not her relationship?

hello. i'm new with 2 runs under my belt, both easy steamrolls on settler, closed the first seal on my first run. started my third run and decided to try pioneer - ran 3 settlements into the ground in a row. the difficulty spike seems insurmountable, going from never being threatened once in 2 runs to not even being able to get off the ground.
my first two starved to death, and my third one fell apart from resolve loss after 8 grueling years where i made zero progress while barely keeping up on food even after focusing all my resources on getting food production started and having like 3/4ths of my villagers pumping out food round the clock. i almost feel like i'm missing a core mechanic or something, but i'm pretty sure i know the basics and just can't make them work for whatever reason. for now i'm just gonna run away back to settler so i can have fun again, but i'd greatly appreciate tips.

We all want nothing more than for a relationship to be successful; to finally have that someone that you can consistently depend on and be with; to grow old with and go through life together.
We recently played the Let’s Get Deep Couples Edition card game and one question led to a whole conversation.
To keep it short, I haven’t been able to fulfill his sexual needs just in part due to traumas that I experienced and he has been patient enough to not ask me that because he didn’t want to push.
He, on the other hand, isn’t able to put in equal finances a la take me out on food dates, buy me goods, etc. whereas I put in more of the finances and secure a lot of that, of course with my own struggles.
It got to the point where he said in a defeated manner that he would understand if I left him because he wasn’t being a good boyfriend and wasn’t putting in equal efforts and would be fine with it as it would stop holding me back from being fully happy. I cried because I was shocked that he would say that instead of coming up with new ideas and ways to combat this hardship. On one hand, I understand where he is coming from and that he is ultimately looking out for my happiness but he also is really afraid of losing me.
Me, on the other hand, I now don’t know what to feel. I feel distant from him, I feel hurt that he isn’t wanting to put in the effort to keep me but instead is basically putting the cards in my hand to deal myself. I also love him a lot and can’t stand seeing him be hard on himself and be down and I hurt thinking about him having to struggle through life.
I’m conflicted because I love him and want the best for him and he does too. I’m not sure my next move. We have EDC coming up this week and after that, who knows. What struggles have you all gone through with your exes or current partners and how did the both of you overcome, if at all?

So my players are higher level and have been traveling all over the Sword Coast and when they got to Goldenfields I ran it more or less as it was in the book, but Strog Thunderblade is a problem. His incompetence got a lot of soldiers killed, and my table is entirely made of combat arms soldiers, mostly who worked in dismounted recon, so they really look at him as a real piece of shit getting all those dudes killed on guard by not listening to the recon element. He also got crops trampled and animals killed which makes the druid pretty mad.
Anyway, they get the 6 sidequests from the 6 NPCs and the first one they do is escorting the Zhent rogue, Shalvus Martholio, to Wormford. They have already killed the Wormford bat and have bad blood with the Zhents so I thought they may kill Shalvus so I tried to make it a bit of a moral dilemma. They find out he is a Zhent and decide to manipulate him pretending they are tight with Zhents to get him talking. He reveals 'Yea I am spying on Goldenfields for the network but in my report I am going to explain that the Emerald Enclave and Goldenfields are great to the Realm, they feed everyone and steward the land and animals wonderfully. My only issue is their pesky alliance with the Lord's Alliance. They feed Waterdeep, who then feel a "duty" to provide aid, like that piece of shit Thunderblade, whose incompetence nearly lost loads of food, and got a bunch of people and animals killed. I am too low rank to have taken him out on my own accord, but I plan to recommend we do take a hit on him.'
Surprisingly, my players all agreed with him. They heard his Zhent sales pitch which was basically "The Lord's alliance are all a result of nepotism, the harpers are naeive and insufferable, but the zhents can actually control crime by turning it into a regulated guild rather than pretending you can stamp it out, we would be better defenders of Goldenfields and alley to them than the Lords' Alliance'
So now how do we make Strom Thunderblade an interesting element narratively? I have one of two ideas.
The first one is he is in fact an incompetent officer from the Lord's Alliance, he is there from nepotism, he is up his own ass, his station as a military officer was bought not earned, but because of his powerful connections harm cannot be allowed to come to him. Though people in Waterdeep were tired of how useless he was and shipped him off to Goldenfields for a 1 year "broadening assignment," working as a watch commander on a section of the wall and that turned out giving him just enough power to get good men killed. The Emerald Enclave are furious with him but can't do much due to politics, the Lords' Alliance know he is an ass, but his family is too valuable to him and will predict he now has a target on his back and send some muscle out to protect him, and to advise him as they actually do have experience leading at least small units.
The second option is he is not incompetent, but a saboteure. He works for a nefarious organization such as the Kraken Society, or the Iron Throne, or both, and they use his noble status to get him in places to overhear important meetings mostly, but this time they asked him to fuck up the defences of Goldenfields to destabilize the region and shift the balance of power to make the crops in Yartar more valuable, as they have vested interests there, and believe they can control that market much safer than Goldenfields who has super fortified walls, emerald enclave everywhere, and an established relationship with the Lords' Alliance of Waterdeep.
Any thoughts on what I should do? Has anyone else punched this part of the story up?

This is a really long story with lots of context so I'll do my best to organize it into current situation, then his backstory and hers. I'm also not using real names or specific locations for any of this to try and keep this private. This also has some contradicting stories and because of how their relationship is structured relies mostly on information I have gotten from my sister, so I'm telling you the story I got from her first and then adding in what I've found out. I'll try to tell this as unbiased as I can but it's been a huge issue in my family for a long time now and that's a little difficult for me to do.
My(20F) sister (Olivia, 24F) has been dating this guy (Trevor, 25M) since 2021. When they started dating, she talked about him fairly often, sent a few pictures of them, ect., but then after a month she stopped mentioning him/ was cagey when we (me and my mom mostly) asked how he was so we assumed it just hadn't worked out. Then two months later she insisted that my parents (54F and 56M) and I all come to visit her college to meet Trevor before he went into the Army (she lived several hours away from my parents and several hours from my college, so I had to get a bus ticket and my parents had to get a hotel room to do this. We only met him once for dinner). Now they've been dating long distance for three years after a three month in-person relationship. She is in nursing school and is planning on moving across the country (literally opposite corners of the map) to live with him and is not applying to any residency programs outside of the Army base area (limiting her choices a LOT from her original goals and narrowing employment opportunities).
Olivia met Trevor on several dating apps, matched with him, but didn't really want to go out with him. He was really persistent, so her friend convinced her to go out with him. She lied about the way they met to our parents and told them they met at the gym through a mutual friend (she lied to me about this at first too and told me the truth about 3 months after they started dating). At the time, Trevor was working as a used car salesman and living at home (~45 min. away from Olivia's school in a rural area) because his sports scholarship had been dropped before his Senior year due to covid at the college he had been attending out of state. The university was unaccredited (I later did some internet stalking and found out it was accredited), so his credits would not transfer and he would have to start over. He was saving up money to attend school in state at the large college Olivia attended so he could go back to school. **Our state has crazy low tuition costs in-state and a full-tuition scholarship program for good high school GPA and SAT scores. There was also a "feeder" community college that had half the cost per credit hour that a lot of people would go to before the larger university if they didn't get in straight out of high school.**
Olivia told me that Trevor had applied to her college and not gotten in (she later told me he HAD gotten in but been unable to afford tuition). Either way, he decided to join the Army because his father had been in the Army. The Army would take his credit hours and he would be able to finish his degree during his 5 year contract or use the GI bill once he got out. **She is comparing the situation to our father, who joined the Army directly out of high school and used the GI bill to go to college after his 2 year contract because his parents wouldn't pay for school. He was a medic in the military, worked as an EMT through college, and then went to nursing school.** The original plan was that Trevor would be a Green Beret (special forces, linking the training pipeline here: https://www.reddit.com/greenberets/comments/xwdbta/current_sf_pipeline_correct_me_if_im_wrong/ ), he completed basic training and and got several months through the NC training before failing the running portion of a physical by about 10 seconds and being dropped from the selection process. He then decided that he wanted to be a Ranger (another elite position). He got sent back to GA, then to the Ranger school base in WA (it took a couple of months before he was sent to WA). Again, he got partway through the training before failing the running portion of a physical by a few seconds. He is now not sure if he will be continuing Ranger school (failing the physical means no, but commanders may pass him anyways if they think he should continue). For a while, Trevor told Olivia that he might not stay at the base in WA if he wasn't in Ranger school and there were a variety of different bases he could be sent to, including somewhere in Italy, so she wasn't sure where to look for jobs. In the past month, Trevor told Olivia that he would likely stay in WA regardless of the Ranger school results.
Through this all, Olivia has visited Trevor at the different military bases countless times, driving from as far as south FL to NC and putting over 30,000 miles on a brand new car over the course of the 1.5 years she's owned it. Before she had the car, she paid for plane tickets to see him and hotels whenever she visited. At the time, she told me that he was paying for all of these trips because he was unable to visit her, was making an income that wasn't being spent, and she was working to save for nursing school and later was living off of student loans and savings during nursing school. She later admitted to me that she had paid for almost all of the expenses except for food when they ate out together and part of a hotel room one weekend.
A few odd things (to me) between Olivia and Trevor over the course of their relationship:
About a month into their relationship, Trevor got Olivia an over $300 christmas gift. He has not gotten her anything nearly that expensive since, and hasn't sent flowers for things like her college graduation or a severe emergency surgery she had last year. I don't care about monetary value or sending flowers, but I do think it is odd that he spent so much before moving away when he ostensibly didn't have much money, but now that he has an income and military sign-on bonus, he has not spent that much again.
Trevor's father left Trevor, his siblings, and his mother, but Trevor has a hat that his father gave him that he wore often. The hat says "Red Man" across the top of a picture of a Native American man wearing a feathered headdress. He has worn this hat several times around Olivia's friends and they told him they didn't like it and that it was racist. They also asked him to not wear it when he was with them and he refused because it was special to him and his father gave it to him. Olivia then told him to stop wearing it and he eventually agreed (Olivia told me that he stopped wearing the hat after this). A few weeks after this, I facetimed Olivia and Trevor was with her. She turned the camera so I could say hello to him, and he was wearing the hat. I talked to Olivia about this later and she told me that that was the first time he'd worn the hat in a while and it wasn't a big deal. Olivia has always been liberal and never racist, and I am uncomfortable that she was okay with him not only wearing the hat, but being with him while he had it on.
They dated for a little over 3 months in person before he joined the military (recently, Olivia told me that they actually met several months before she told everyone about him and that they actually dated for 6 months before he left). For the next two months in basic training, he was only able to use the phone for 15 minutes total once a week to talk to family and her. Throughout the different training programs he has completed he had sporadic and limited access to phones to communicate, and only in the past 6 months he has had access to his phone to facetime, text, and call (but sometimes he goes for a week or two without phone access). Olivia told me that they wrote letters during the time he didn't have consistent phone access. **I don't think that this is odd, I understand the military limits phone usage, etc., but I don't think they have been able to have an "average" long-distance relationship**
Last year, Olivia drove to GA to visit Trevor the weekend before Valentine's day. He had plans for them to take a pottery class, go on a hike, and have dinner at a nice restaurant. The day she got there, Trevor's barracks had their off-base privileges revoked because one of the guys had contraband. She would still be able to visit him on base though. Somehow, Trevor was able to get off base for long periods of time to her hotel, but unable to do the other activities he had planned for them.
In the past year, Olivia told me that she and Trevor were going to immediately marry when she got to WA so that they could move in together because they had to be married to live together anywhere. I and our dad- who was in the military- told her several times that this was not true, but she insisted it was. Then, his barracks were given an allowance to live off base in apartments because the barracks were being renovated/ rebuilt, so she backed off on the idea of getting married immediately after several long conversations with me. She is still insistent on moving in with Trevor, who lives with a roommate, when she moves to WA.
Some background on Olivia:
Olivia has ADHD and anxiety, and struggled particularly badly with the anxiety/ some depression after being broken up with by the boyfriend she dated before Trevor (he broke it off very abruptly, told her he just didn't love her anymore with no previous indications). Olivia is very pretty (objectively, not just because she's my sister), but had bad acne that she ended up going on accutane for at the time she started dating Trevor and was very insecure about it. She had also decided to not go to medical school, and pursue nursing instead around the same time she met Trevor. This was a very upsetting decision for her because she had been taking very hard courses and was burnt out but had told everyone she was going to be a doctor and thought that she would be letting us down by switching paths. Also around the time she started seeing Trevor, Olivia began being very cruel towards our mother (our mother had been borderline emotionally abusive in the past, but Olivia and I were both in college by then and fixing our relationships with her. She has been much better recently and Olivia and I believe that she had some mental health struggles that went unchecked that contributed). Now, several years later, Olivia told our family that she had acted like that because she was rpd by a friend of her ex-boyfriend's after her ex broke up with her. This person also gave her an STD.
I always believe people who say they have been S A'd, and we believed Olivia when she first told us, but some things have come to light that make me and my family question that. Right after Olivia and her ex broke up, Olivia told our cousin that she had gone out with one of his friends and had revenge/ breakup sex with him because he had also been dumped recently. Once my cousin told me this, I remembered that Olivia had told me about a guy she had a one night stand with after she was dumped. She showed me a picture of him, talked about how cute he was, etc. (no distress whatsoever). I know sometimes people behave in ways you wouldn't expect when a traumatic event occurs to them, but I really don't understand how or why Olivia would brag about this guy if he really did S A her.
Three months ago, Olivia was arrested for stealing a set of sheets from Walmart (incidentally, right before Trevor came to visit her on leave). She used the self check-out and only bought a small $5 item and the sheets. She held both in one hand and scanned each side because she had a cut on the other hand and was holding her wallet with it. She saw a 5 in front of the total number and thought it looked right because the total should have been about $50, paid, didn't get a receipt, and walked out. An employee at the door asked to see a receipt, which Olivia didn't have, so she pulled up her transaction history on her phone to show she had paid. At this point, the employee called the police and took Olivia into an office, where she was questioned and charged with shoplifting. (Olivia can get very emotional and probably got upset when the police questioned her, which may have led them to believe she was lying). Luckily, Olivia has managed to get the charges expunged, but the process is still ongoing. Because of her ADHD, if anyone genuinely made this mistake, I would believe it from her, but Olivia has been improving a lot on organization and being more attentive recently. It is extremely uncharacteristic of her to steal- she was honest to a fault as kids- she would break down from guilt and admit things to our parents that we would have gotten away with if she hadn't said anything.
Right now, my parents have met Trevor twice in person, and I've met him once in person and several times in passing over facetime. I personally don't think that Trevor seems to keep up with my sister or that they make each other shine, and that opinion is shared with family friends and family that have met Trevor. Olivia doesn't mention Trevor in front of our parents often because his name has become a topic of contention and argument between them. My parents don't think Trevor is right for Olivia. She has almost 2 college degrees and plans to become a nurse practitioner in the future, and he hasn't finished college and doesn't seem to have any drive to do so. Olivia is also well traveled and enjoys going to museums, concerts, etc., while Trevor has lived in rural FL his whole life (this is not Trevor's fault, and I don't think he is a lesser person because of it, but I don't see a lot of common ground between them). Trevor has not seemed very well spoken when I have talked to him and I just don't see a lot of qualities in him that Olivia values.
If you've gotten this far, I just don't know what to do. Olivia and my parents have a huge rift in their relationship right now and any mention of Trevor, with her around or not, explodes into a huge argument, discussion, or just icy silence. I want Olivia to be able to talk to me about him, and we are able to discuss things much better than she is with our parents. My parents have also started asking me about Olivia and Trevor because they know Olivia shares more with me, and it makes me uncomfortable because I don't want to betray Olivia's trust, but I'm also very worried about her. I know I can't control her actions and I'm having a really hard time trying to balance supporting Olivia but not supporting the relationship (I'm not going to lie to her about how I feel, but I don't want her to feel alienated or unloved by our family, because that is NOT the case). I also think that Olivia is romanticizing the fact that our parents don't like him because my father's parents had a rift with him over our mother when we were very young (this is a whole other story, but basically, his parents always favored his sister, his sister got (I think) jealous when he did well for himself and married my mother, who his parents initially likes, and she made up rumors/lies about my mother that turned his parents against her (this was way before our mother's suspected mental health struggles, which occured when Olivia and I were in middle/high school).
Please share any thoughts you have on the situation (am I reading too into things, is this not as bad as I think it is?), and any advice you have on navigating the relationships.

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

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

Currently planning my trip to the Bay Area during the Fourth of July weekend. I'm staying with my uncles and have visited once before where we knocked out many of the more touristy places in SF like the ferry building, fisherman's wharf, palace of Fine Arts, DeYoung, Golden Gate Park, and even Muir Woods and the Sutro baths. I also visited UC Berkley and explored around there for a day.
I was hoping to get some suggestions of places to visit/activities on my trip, although I'm planning to spend a day in SF they don't have to be centered there as I would like to branch out and see some new sites also. Open to light hiking, beaches, food recs (especially seafood), museums, flea markets, and guided tours; basically, I am open to anything besides drinking/bars.
Any and all suggestions are much appreciated.

Please share some tips on how you cut off your parents, how to deal with feelings of missing them or relying on them. My parents did take care of me (food, school, shelter, allowance) but I’m done dealing with their emotional immaturity. This is the conflicting part because my brain appreciates the basic taking care things that they did for me and I can’t let them go because of it, even though I’ve gone through the tens or twenty times of being subjected to projection and the lack of emotional intelligence and competence. I’d like to focus on removing toxic people from my life forever, and this includes my parents.

Age: 34 Gender: Female Height: 5’2 Weight: 164lbs
No known health issues. Non smoker.
I feel dumb posting this. Last week (5 days ago) I was eating very hot food. While taking a bite I sucked in, kind of taken aback from the heat. When this happened, a peanut from the curry got sucked back. Immediately I felt like my lungs were on fire and there was not much choking or coughing when it happened.
I went to urgent care per my nurse friends advice and they didn’t even see me. They came out and told me in the waiting room that basically it was either ER for a bronchoscopy or wait and see if I develop a lung infection which feels like a sick joke.
All week I feel like I’m constantly clearing my throat trying to move something, like when you do recovering on the tail end of a cold. No wheezing. Chest is a tiny bit tight but that could be anxiety. It just feels like light congestion and inflammation on the right side of my chest. No fever. O sat 98-99.
How long am I supposed to give this? Is it really until my body potentially breaks out into a full on infection? Could it be days? Weeks? Can I try to cough it up? What are even the odds it’s down there? I think what really has me convinced is how my lungs felt immediately. Like my lungs were slowly coated in curry for about 30-60 seconds.

I'm 19 years old and from Ontario. My problem isn't money (well it kinda is), it's that my mom has life360 on me is very against me getting for adhd even though sp many ppl think I should (one of universities counselors). I even did a few checklists and yeah I need to get tested. my family doctors clinic is 20 minutes away and my mom would see I'm stopped at the clinic. I've can we help? Going to keep this short because I have an exam in like 14 hours I havrntlooked at the material for. but basically multiple ppl have told me to get tested for adhd.i thought it wad a word co opted by social media to give a label to eccentric people and the label started to really bother me. I just did the asrv-v1.1 checklist and I selected Fer often the most so maybe I should get tested regardless of my hesitancy. I was taking anxiety medication for a while

Period: 1900-1908
The South Asian population in Canada grew by 5000%, with most of the new settlers being Punjabi Sikhs living in British Columbia, often working in nearby towns in Washington.
Anti-Asian Riots in Vancouver (1907)) - 10,000 white Canadians attack Japanese, Chinese and South Asian Canadian residents, homes and businesses in Vancouver. Most South Asians in the city were former military vets who kept weapons in the house, so they protected themselves from most of the violence that was inflicted on the Chinese and Japanese communities.
Bellingham Riots (1907) - inspired by the riots in Vancouver, 400-500 white men "threw the East Indian workers into the streets, beat them, and pocketed their valuables." 125 Indians fled the town.
Continuous Journey Act is Passed (1908)—In response to anti-Indian sentiment in Canada, the government passed a restrictive immigration act requiring Indians to travel directly to Canada from their country of origin. This was done to try and make immigration from the subcontinent essentially impossible, as ships from India would stop in Japan or Hawaii on their way to Canada due to the distance.
Period: 1967-1981
After Pierre Trudeau's "points system" to immigration, the South Asian population in Canada grew by 3295% - unlike in past decades, most new South Asian immigrants in this period came to Ontario instead of BC.
W. Pitman's 1977 report to the Toronto Transit Commission, Now is Not Too Late, highlights that out of 31 racially motivated attacks on transit, the vast majority have targeted young men of "Indian-subcontinent origin."
In 1976, South Asians living in Toronto reported rampant discrimination in the workplace. In 1977, South Asians protested against racism at Toronto's Queens Park. News articles from the same year show random acts of violence against people of South Asian origin in Ontario, including agitators forcing their way into homes and throwing bricks at South Asians in a city an hour west of Toronto.
Current Period: 2016 - Present
The growth rates have been nowhere near what they were in these other two periods. Based on immigration and census data, this period probably saw the South Asian population grow by between 45% and 55%. What's different this time around are:

1. Numbers: This ~50% growth rate represents an addition of about 1 million people. The highest gains to the South Asian Canadian population in history was seen between 2016 and 2021, and the 2026 Census may reveal even higher population growth in sheer numbers.
2. Location: Facing strains on affordability and in the job market in traditional immigration hubs like Toronto and Vancouver, much of the new migrants are moving to outlying areas. As many are coming to Canada first through the community college system, they are accepting offers in areas without an established South Asian community. For example, in the relatively remote city of Timmins, where there were only 170 South Asians out of a population of 41,000 in 2016 - there are now over 6,000 international students, mostly from India. Other cities and towns have seen the desi population double (Kitchener), triple (Oshawa, Charlottetown, Halifax), up to a 900% increase (ex. Woodstock) in less than a decade. If the population grows more rapidly than people's attitudes and exposure to our cultures do, this can cause major backlash.
3. Visibility: Where past generations of Desi blue-collar immigrants worked in factories and warehouses in Ontario, and in the lumber mills, construction and canneries in BC - new migrants tend to be in the customer-facing service industry (fast food, retail, delivery). While population figures have increase significantly, many Canadians may only interact with South Asians in these places, which leads them to believe the rate of population growth is much larger than it actually is.
4. High Profile Negative Media Reports: From the 2018 Humboldt Bus Crash to the Killing of Harjit Nijjar to Extortion by South Asian Criminal Syndicates. I don't to have to spell out all of the negative press lately, but aside from the Lower Mainland Gang Conflict - South Asians have not had such a negative image in the public eye.

This is not some conclusive peer-reviewed study. History is a great teacher though.
Will it get better? There are things we can control like advocacy, unity and standing up for ourselves and others. If there is a link between mass immigration and racism, it's beyond our control. The government is restricting the number of student visas issued starting September, 2024. As it stands, there doesn't seem to be any media reports about how South Asian Canadians are discriminated against due to the rapid growth in immigration, though many of us feel it. I think this is a conversation that needs to be heard by politicians and journalists as the sentiment could affect everything from employment, to social lives to housing. This may just be something we have to endure for the period, as generations in the past have had to as well.
TLDR: We are currently experiencing rapid immigration-driven population growth in the South Asian community in Canada. There seems to be a link between this growth, especially to places where we have not already had a presence, and the racism directed towards the community by those who live in those areas. If people's attitudes and exposure don't change as fast as the community grows, this could be a major cause of the racism many of us experience.

Millennial here. I’ve noticed a trend where when I walk up to order something a lot of Gen Z kids will just stare at you. Like they don’t say “Hi!” or “what can i get for you?” - Do I just happen to keep getting rude gen z’ers or is this a thing? Or maybe they don’t think it’s rude? Is there some reasoning I don’t understand?
TLDR I’ve worked in food and the service industry for years so it always blows my mind. When I was 15 I was working as a food cashier and that’s just the basic way to greet a customer.
It happened again today. I walked in, didn’t get a greeting (was the only customer) but figured whatever, then she comes over and just stares at me from across the counter. So weird. So finally I say “Hi!” with a smile and she just stares at me. At this point I’m like maybe she didn’t hear me, so I say “Hi!” again and she just stares some more…..😂

I have a 1 year old cavapoo. He’s neutered and he has no prior health issues. He’s about 11 pounds and the only medication he takes is Simparica Trio. He’s the happiest, sweetest boy ever. He loves to eat and he loves to run around and play. Now on to the issue.
Around 24 hours ago, my dog woke up in the middle of the night and threw up. I didn’t think much of it because sometimes it just happens. He had been normal all day and eating as usual. I cleaned it up and we went back to bed. He ended up jumping off my bed at some point in the night and had diarrhea EVERYWHERE. I woke up to it in the morning.
He was not himself at all. He looked so sad and just mopey all day long. He loves to eat everything and refused everything under the sun, including cooked human food (chicken). I got him to drink some water here and there.
Throughout the day he threw up at least 10 times. Just straight liquid. He only had one bout of diarrhea which was the one in the house in the middle of the night. I finally made the call to rush to the emergency vet when i noticed specks of blood in his last round of throw up.
We get there and they basically told me that he sounded good, vitals were good, no fever, no abdominal swelling or pain when touched, and his gums weren’t pale so he wasn’t that dehydrated. Overall his physical exam was fine. They gave him an injection of anti-nausea stuff and some fluids just to be on the safe side.
The vet stated she was okay sending him home. It’s been around 8 hours since the vet visit and i’m still worried sick about him. He drank a little bit of water, still won’t eat, still laying around, but he has peed and had one more bout of diarrhea two hours after we got home from the vet. His last vomiting episode was probably 9 hours ago.
Maybe i’m overreacting and I just need to let whatever upset his stomach run its course but i’m just so worried. I don’t know what would’ve made him sick as he didn’t get anything new nor has he gotten into anything (that i am aware of). He is up to date on all vaccines and he doesn’t really go anywhere and hasn’t been in contact with other dogs.
When do I make the call to bring him back in? If this is just a case of gastroenteritis, when would you expect to see improvement?