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?

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 felt myself getting a little heated in today's CASA group discussions about "trauma." For every 10 times you'll hear that word, "resilience" will come up maybe once. I think most of us are aware of how arm-chairy and buzzworthy trauma and therapy have become. It's one of the latest cultural trends that facilitate a fluidity to presumed-more-informed conversation, without the practice of developing finer lines of understanding and distinction.
On the basis of your invocation of "trauma" you can rush to provide "help" and "services" and begin blaming an incredible amount of "mental health issues" or "unresolved childhoods." It's literally the cliche of a freshman's behavior after enrolling in their first college psychology course on blast. They've already invoked unsubstantiated pseudo-science and pop-culture explicitly not psychology as tools to provide frameworks for understanding your families. When someone infers substance abuse from a story just because the accusation was levied or any kind of drug was referenced at any level, their conclusions or assumptions go unchecked. It's predictably baking a recipe for an unnecessary mess on top of whatever the family is going through.
You can feel the tension every time you speak in "checking" ways. This happens to me routinely. One of the presenters spoke to the biased and incomplete ways that foster parents or aggravated family members might speak to the nature of the case or anyone's character. I pointed out that case managers can leave out details and massage stories to fit their ends as well. That got ignored and we moved right along. It's a real concern, and you need to know how to protect your relationship with someone who might be specifically directed to undermine your effort to advocate with the evidence.
But it doesn't feel "pleasant" or "decent" when you "want to believe the best" about your colleagues. Is it less true? Absolutely not. I was literally forced into that position from predatory supervisors and watched dipshit coworkers skip along those disingenuous lines without hesitation. Anecdotes fawning over better-inclined and capable FCMs do nothing to erase that.
So I started thinking about "discomfort" broadly. Another concept that's been wholesale abused. We needed to be way too on guard for what or whether we said might be a "micro aggression" or would cause someone to feel "unsafe" or "uncomfortable." Again, our pop psychology and propensity to overstate the noisiest out-ragers, made it so critical thinking and doubt became sinful in and of themselves. Facts don't matter in that space. "Being heard" is afforded only if you're claiming victimhood, but then, only victimhood of a certain type. The own-goal that is reactionary politics when you forgo any genuine attempt at taking someone's, almost certainly mostly irrational but nonetheless real, concern seriously is the ongoing consequence we get to suffer.
I think the more you practice observing conversational patterns, word choices, and trends, you can start to see previously "abstract" things considerably more acutely. One thing I notice is a propensity for "moving right along." I don't care what the topic is, there's a "normal" pace and pater that is preferred. Violate that, and it's time to move on. Point out the failings of the people you're supposed to trust most or even ingratiate yourself to? Let's move right along into the next module, as we all know there's nothing much more to say about that.
Another pattern I notice is the "taken aback pause." It's not precisely a reaction to being "offended," but it's a stark enough detail or way of relaying information that who you're speaking with was not prepared to engage that intensely. If they're quick, it'll be a brink-of-condescending acknowledgement before moving-right-along, or if they're not quick, it'll be a placating obfuscating of what you said to "even things out."Again, these are imprecise norms of conversational behavior around the particulars of one culture at one point in time, but they're real and of consequence whether or not you can see them.
When we use the word "bias," we let ourselves off the hook on the myriad ways it manifests. We let "bias" obscure in the opposite way that we let "trauma" obscure. Trauma is abused to over-explain what should be considered a necessary series of responses or consequences. Bias is abused to overlook how deeply it colors your propensity to engage that over-explaining behavior. You are biased, first and foremost, to your subjective experience of reality. In my experience, almost no one is that clued into their own flow of experience. Even the ones that are, or are showing the most growth and evidence, struggle, and will struggle indefinitely. This includes myself.
That's the point, though. You need the struggle to keep your wits about you. You need appropriate stressors against the things that will help you grow and incorporate. By definition, norms put that insistence to the side so we can all find a baseline mutual understanding to move right along down. The more cliched you sound, if you don't have a reflex to pause and pull back, the more you're training yourself to believe and act on "just whatever it is you say." You're a circular and totalitarian monster by default.
Add to that, you may not have any real ability or willingness to recognize how many cliches you truly are under the spell of. This is what the unironic attempts around discussions of "privilege" do a generally miserable job of explaining. We all have privileges up and down hierarchies and competencies and dozens of other metrics we fluidly transition through all day. None are necessarily going to jar you awake or indicate there's anything worth examining on their own. Your cohort speaks your language. Your education taught you the "right" things. Your hobbies and interests conform to a person of your state and stature. "It's just how things are done."
This provokes people's insecurity as a standing state of a lack of readiness. When you poke people, you'll find they don't have "real" reasons for their behavior, beliefs, or words. It's all been handed to them. They're a series of unconscious forces they're more or less molding to because that's how our brains work. Your brain doesn't care what it forms a pattern around, just that it can do so. There's survival reasons for this, as well as a story of basic capacities to function regardless of the nature of the environment that's all-but certain to otherwise kill you if you can't figure it out.
I, routinely, provoke that insecurity. I've learned to show considerably less ambivalence about the person after they've been provoked, but it happens just as an ongoing and predictable course of my practice. This is my practice. I analyze. I pull back. I try to identify and speak to patterns, even if they're abstract, but certainly concrete enough for me to anticipate them and work with or around them. I know what kind of response I need built into what I can reliably anticipate is going to be yours. I know how to piss off and get ignored by "the internet," and I know how to illicit a thousand likes. What's important to me is that I'm speaking as closely to my real perspective or agenda as possible, and not being driven by an elusive brain chemical game subject to the mercy of algorithms or inarticulate desires to unhealthily fit in.
I want to fit in, but with an ever-winnowing type of person. I want to be less-wrong in the information I share, but not at the expense of someone's capacity to hear it or learn from it if I can't be bothered to temper how I say it. I want to grow in my capacity to accept people, but not at the expense of their obligation to better account for and relay their own experience. I've been told my whole life that I'm not allowed to expect the same things from other people as I might of myself. I think this is fundamentally wrong and condescending. I think I should maintain the expectation while doing everything in my power to reduce the barriers to any one person getting to whatever heights you think I've managed or been born with.
Here again, we stay lost. How do you remove barriers you can't see or might even be dispositionally against even acknowledging can exist altogether? How many "boot straps" types can even be bothered to acknowledge the impact of the villages they're living in? How many "deeply empathic" people would entertain pairing their sensibilities to the word "toxic" under any circumstance? It's pretty easy, now, for me to see when my forthright manner acts as too blunt an instrument. Can you see where your baseline disposition and sympathies cloud your judgment and capacity to act more accountably?
I feel like "accountable" itself is poorly understood. Just count! Count the disquieting contradictory thought. Count the intensity, frequency, and severity of the feelings. Count the attempts to mitigate or times you recognized forgoing to do so. Accountability doesn't mean wildly wielding an axe to bring down dramatic consequences upon everything and everyone that wasn't noticed until now. It's just asking yourself, over and over again, what can I control about this situation? What can I act on that speaks to my values and perception?
Let's take the real world example of me and Byron. I can't control his perception of what he thought he was doing in service to the kid. I can't control his awareness of any creeping mental health issues that might have arisen. I can't control whether or not he responds affirmatively to my new boundaries. I could control telling him what those boundaries were altogether, so I did. I can affirm that I'm only going to communicate along the lines that hopefully help the boundary conditions get met before I'm willing to get more colloquial or back to friendly. I can respect that he told me our friendship is "invaluable." I can't truthfully say I think we'd be using that word in a mutually understood way until I see practical, tangible effects upon my life that counteract where I feel I am as a direct result of my expression of friendship getting grossly taken advantage of.
Until then, I'll treat him like I would any client. Show me. I'll patiently-enough nod along, provide whatever perspective or reframe that I can, and remain open to demonstrated behavior changes. I don't have to throw myself back into his fire. If I'm going to claim a desire to protect and maintain genuine friendships or care for those in my life, I'm not going to treat myself with the ambivalence I see others suffer from themselves every day.
I choose that level of discomfort. I only mildly complain today, as it's gotten dramatically better, about doing things alone and never having anyone to hang out with. Byron was my go-to spot for killing time or hanging out. Not once in my free time have I said, "You know, fuck my boundary, let's hang out there!" How could I look myself in the mirror? How could I advocate for you establishing better boundaries with people in your life? How could I ignore what I would characterize as gleeful and willful defiance of doing "better" than playing out battered-wife excuse making? I will not play-act friendship with someone who can't be bothered to work as hard on themselves or in service to me as I've been for them. That's not the kind of friend I am, so it's not the one I'll let back in lightly.
What's normal, though? No matter how bad someone fucks you, forgive and pretend to forget, right? They're "family." Life's too short. It is what it is. They didn't mean to or weren't aware. That's not who they were in the past. Holding grudges is unhealthy. Your insecurities around being isolated or alone betray you. Your obligation to play along and appease your mutual network takes over. Whether any real healing or mutual understanding comes into the equation is perfectly mute because we need to just move right along and "love each other."
I watch that dance justify literally every conceivable level of atrocity. It is the exact same self-servicing motivatedly ignorant pattern. From your god's behavior right on down through your secret satisfaction and smirk at punishing your pet a little too aggressively just that one time. What you don't account for counts on you to carry out its consequences. And you are, every day, in big and small ways, and it's predictable and fixable, but only with stuff like this. You have to own it. You have to "yes, and" like it's an improv class. You have to perpetually entertain the thought that you are a misguided monster, but that fact doesn't have to dictate your behavior going forward nor need to illicit some special amount of stress or talking in circles.
Then you might have a prayer of genuinely helping anything, because you see how you're otherwise fucking it up within yourself. You can resist the insistence to move past meaningful details. You can point to specific repeatable demonstrations of your values. You can see other people responding to your confidence of relatable recognizable capacity, and not the shadow game of peacocking virtue signaling and mantra echoing.
I will spend thousands of dollars, use all my tools, and spend every waking hour I have trying to help. I think most people I've met would say the same thing. Who is actually doing so? And in service to whom? Do you trust what drives them? Do you see equitable put in get out dynamics? Or is it codepedence? Or insecurity? Or some noble story of infinite sacrifice and unconditional love?
I'm willing to set the conditions because I expect better than what's normal of and for myself. Were circumstances reversed, I wouldn't treat you as I've been treated, and most importantly, have the demonstrated behavior from myself to trust. I've spent the time and money. I've opened the conversations. I've challenged the mismanaged powers and privileges. I've risen to the challenge of creating circumstances that inch me closer to what I actually want or think is better versus what's expected of me. It never ends. Every second you pretend otherwise, you disappear, and I have to fit your abstract abdication into my specific constructs.

This website is trying really hard to annoy it's users.
First it refuses to display the prices of vehicles, unless I sign in, which is actually against the law for advertising a vehicle in Australia. When I call them up, they immediately tell me to stop using an VPN. That's great if I was using one.. then they ask me to provide my IP address and they will "unblock me" how does this even work with dynamic IP addresses? I have no idea. This all has been reported to the ombudsman, but unfortunately I have not received a response in over 3 weeks. Surface to say, the government doesn't care, and only priority is self regulation for businesses which obviously does not work.
Now they decide to continually show me the cookie warning pop up every time I view the page or navigate to a new page on the website. They also like to do a 'are you human check' I am almost certain this does not happen with Chrome. WHIC AGAIN every business seem to TELL ME it's the only web browser that works or I should be using.
Xjsbdn
Why can't add block stop this! I don't care about cookies! Well I do, but I care for my insanity over a few privacy concerns. I HATE POP UPS AND WEBSITE OVERLAYS they RUIN the internet.
P.s Why can't Firefox provide a way to spoof the user agent so websites 'think' I am using Chrome.. and even better why can't Firefox provide a way to 'fake' the browser finger prints so a website does not know what operating system I use, or just use a generic one and screen size etc.. obviously this might brake some website, but an easy toggle on/off would be fine. Website get way to much information from their user. Information they most certainly do not strictly need.
Thanks for any input.

[Obvious spoilers for character romances, relationships, and a few character arcs. I don't recommend reading this post unless you've beaten the game.]
I’ll start off with the most obvious disclaimer: this post is not here to critique polyamory itself or its inclusion in the game. I’m all for adding the option to games (and BG3 as well) as long as it’s done respectfully and in a way that can make both monogamous and polyamorous players comfortable. This post will discuss what the game could have done better, why the characters they chose to make poly were poorly thought out, and what characters should have (hypothetically) been chosen instead. (The suggestions of who SHOULD have been chosen would give poly players MORE options, rather than less, while also maintaining character consistency and helping mono people feel comfortable too).
These suggestions are, of course, my own opinion coupled with a lot of threads I read all over the internet from three groups: monogamous players, poly players who liked what BG3 did, and poly players who felt it was handled poorly/felt uncomfortable with it. I myself didn’t care to go through the poly routes in the game but after I read some youtube comments on the Halsin topic, I got fully invested in the discussion and dove through youtube, reddit, and Larian threads to hear everyone’s opinions. As a monogamous person myself, it was interesting to hear thoughts from the poly players about what they felt uncomfortable with and how things should have been written instead. As a result, this thread is less my own thoughts and more a compilation of all the ideas/suggestions I saw people come up with.
The goal of this post is not to hate on the developers or people from either side of the debate, but to find a middle ground the developers could have used that would make both monogamous people and polyamorous people happy. The current game did appeal to some poly players, but it left a lot of other ones dissatisfied, and when half of your target audience is feeling skeptical about how you handled something, it’s good to take notice (and even though it’s too late for any changes to be made, it’s fun to talk about the hypotheticals and suggest what pitfalls could be avoided when developing future games).
This post will be formatted like so: (yes, I know it’s long but after having all the discussions and debates run through my head for a few days, it’s nice to get them all written down and out of my brain)

1. Important factors that should be considered when adding poly relationships to your game (in a way that makes at least the majority of your audience comfortable)
   
2. Which characters should have been chosen to be poly instead of the ones we got (and why)
   
3. Why the characters the developers chose to make poly weren’t ideal
   
4. Issues with how Halsin was presented
   

A few more points I want to emphasize before I start.

1. This post isn’t just focusing on the story and character motivations, but also on what makes the players feel at ease. You can’t make everyone happy, obviously, but there were a lot of mistakes BG3 made that could have been easily solved (with suggestions from both sides). I want to see games where both monogamous players and poly players can find the romance options they’re seeking without feeling ignored or pushed aside.
   
2. While it is easy to say, “It’s just a videogame. We shouldn’t worry about what the characters think because they’re fictional,” I say both yes and no. While the feelings of the characters shouldn’t be cared about (because they’re not real), the writers clearly wanted each character to have their own backstory, morals, opinions, and fears. I’d argue most of, if not all of the characters were written really well and in a realistic manner (as realistic as you can get with tadpoles in your brains and magical abilities). The writers WANTED us to take these characters seriously, as well as the portrayals of abuse that some of them represent, so it’s not surprising that lots of players analyze them. The fact that so many different people took the time to discuss the character romances and relationships is a testament to how well written the characters are. It’s okay to say the poly interactions felt ‘out of character’ and debate why.
   

​
Part 1. IMPORTANT FACTORS THAT NEED TO BE CONSIDERED WHEN ADDING POLY RELATIONSHIPS TO YOUR GAME (particularly when monogamous relationships are also part of the game). Most of these will be things other people have said, some of which I never even considered until they brought it up.
- Communication with the players
- Consent (particularly ‘enthusiastic consent’)
- Lying, pressure, and coercion
- Character backstories and potential trauma

1. Communication with the players

One of the biggest issues I had with BG3’s poly relationships is that the developers didn’t try to effectively communicate which options players had until Act 3 (when it’s too late to change your mind). A monogamous player could start a character romance, only to be disappointed in Act 3 when they find out the character is poly. Likewise, a poly player would assume someone is poly, then have that character change their mind halfway through. Now, in terms of narrative, this can be quite interesting, and in terms of real life, I’m sure this happens often. However, when you’re looking at it from a developer’s standpoint, it's not a good idea to do this. If you want to make players comfortable and satisfied with the romance options, you need to make it clear to them what they’re getting themselves into.
So, if you’ve written a poly character into your game, you need to let the players know. Once the topic of romance/sex is brought up, have that character confidently state their thoughts and expectations about it. This way mono players can go, “Oh, this type of relationship isn’t for me. I’ll try to romance someone else.” Meanwhile poly players can say, “This is what I’m looking for.” This way, neither party has to google which characters are or aren’t poly and risk spoiling important plot points for themselves. Likewise, if a character is monogamous, writers should do the same thing.
Two great poly examples are Act 1 Laezel and Dragon Age’s Zevran. As soon as the topic of relationships is brought up, they explain their stance on sex, relationships, expectations, and possible reasons for why they think the way they do. It’s done in a fairly natural manner and fits their character.
Of course, what makes this more difficult is a character like Astarion, whose entire personality is largely an act until he opens up in Act 2. This does make communication with the player harder, but an easy solution is: once he opens up about his true feelings, have him restate what he truly wants in a relationship. (Even that’s difficult for someone like him, who doesn’t know what he wants, but we’re looking at this from a hypothetical developer’s standpoint, not what we currently have.) Having him (subtly) express his expectations here leaves room for players to again say, “Oh, that’s not what I’m looking for. Let’s stay friends.” The devs should then leave some romance options open in Act 2 so players can reevaluate and choose someone else without getting locked out. (Again, this is obviously impossible to fix now. This should have been thought through in early development).
Consent (particularly enthusiastic consent)
One of the biggest issues I saw being brought up from poly players was the topic of consent, especially what they repeatedly prioritized: enthusiastic consent. The ideal response they’re looking for when talking to their partner is that their lover is wholly on board with the arrangement, comfortable expressing their true feelings, and doesn’t feel pressured to agree when they really don’t want to deep down. Out of the three BG3 poly options, only one of them (Shadowheart) had poly players feeling comfortable with her reaction to ‘opening up’ the relationship with Halsin (and even then, there were disagreements).
I can’t get too far into this discussion without bringing up my next point, so I’ll skip to it.
Lying, pressure, and coercion
This is the part that initially piqued my interest when reading that first youtube comment section. Many of the comments were poly people saying, “If my partner reacted to the Halsin arrangement the way Karlach and Astarion did, I would not go through with it.” Coupled with that were poly players saying, “I was hoping for enthusiastic consent and ethical poly. I was disappointed to find neither.” There were a lot of people disappointed with how the poly was written. One person even recommended it to their poly friends, then walked the recommendation back when they finished the game and felt the writers handled it carelessly.
Lots of people, both monogamous and poly, had their doubts about Karlach and Astarion’s reactions. Were they fully comfortable with the poly relationship or were they just saying what their lover wanted to hear? Were they scared of appearing weak and controlling so they pushed their own wishes down? Karlach literally says she’s not fine with it but will tolerate it because she loves you. Astarion’s true thoughts are more uncertain because he has a history of lying to make people happy and struggles with boundaries. I saw many people on the fence about both of them.
Now, in real life, there can obviously be nuance. You can spend hours discussing poly with your partner and checking in with them throughout the relationship to make sure they’re still on board. Some people may genuinely be fine with it but sound nervous at first. Others may NOT be fine with it and lie to avoid being abandoned.
The issue is that we’re addressing a video game where you CAN’T check in with your partner regularly and you only get 1 minute to gauge their reaction. That, coupled with their backstories and how the characters were written up to that point, is bound to make a lot of people (mono and poly) raise an eyebrow or feel uneasy.
While one can argue that leaving the poly relationships open ended/up to interpretation is an artistic choice or an attempt to add realism to the game, at the end of the day, you’re making a lot more people uncomfortable than you need to. There were plenty of poly players who just wanted to see healthy poly relationships with enthusiastic consent, and that’s it. They didn’t want to ask themselves if this was the right decision or if they were making their lover feel worse deep down. That’s something to address in reality, not fantasy. If the developers wanted to welcome poly players in, they should have done so in a way that makes them feel comfortable/satisfied.
This point will lead into WHO I think should have been poly instead but that’s for a little later in the post.
Character backstories and potential trauma
This is largely referring to Astarion but applies to Shadowheart and Karlach as well: If you are going to give characters a lot of layers, insecurities, fears, and trauma, you need to handle their relationships carefully. Not only are you building a character, but you’re letting players see their own traits reflected back at them. When it comes to abuse (physical or sexual), I personally think it’s important to consider player reactions to certain aspects of the game (especially those who have experienced abuse in their own lives).
I think Astarion’s sexual abuse and overcoming of trauma was well written (and a lot of people who experienced similar situations agreed). However, once the developers added poly into his story, I witnessed two prominent reactions from players:
- People defending it, saying that they were fine with poly relationships in their own lives despite going through abusive relationships (which is completely fine and valid).
- People who had the opposite experience, where they lied and said they were fine with poly to please their partners, then felt miserable throughout the relationships. (This is also fine and valid.) These players (even some who went through with the poly relationship in the game) came out feeling uncomfortable and reminded of their pasts.
The ambiguity the developers went for just made this whole situation worse, as it led to arguments and disagreements in the community, with some people insisting the brothel scene helps Astarion heal, while many believed it had the opposite effect. The same arguments were made regarding the Halsin relationship.
Again, there’s nothing wrong with writing a story and sticking to it regardless of how uncomfortable it makes people feel, but in this case, there were so many other options besides Astarion you could have chosen. I think in the long run, it’s better to leave his character away from poly to avoid making lots of people (including SA victims) uneasy when it’s an optional feature anyway. (No one would have complained if he said a simple “that’s not what I’m looking for” or “I’m not comfortable sharing” and left it at that.)
(I’ll go more into more detail about Astarion, Karlach, and Shadowheart later, but will move on for now.)
​

1. WHICH CHARACTERS SHOULD HAVE BEEN CHOSEN TO BE POLY INSTEAD OF THE ONES WE GOT (AND WHY)

Now, just because I recommend removing poly options from certain characters doesn’t mean it should be omitted entirely. I just think there were far better options available to the developers (character wise, story wise, and player expectation wise). I agree with the online sentiment that instead of taking a step back and figuring out which characters worked best for poly, the developers instead chose the most popular male and female characters and called it a day without discussing whether or not these were the ideal options.
As I was reading through everyone’s complaints and critiques of the poly implementation, I took a moment to figure out which characters would fit it best. I took several factors into account.
You need a character who poly players are confident their yes means yes and no means no (meaning they need to be a generally honest and forthright person). It’s not a good idea to have sexual trauma or a past of people pleasing/coercion because while not all SA victims are monogamous by any means, because it’s a video game and not real life, this opens the door to a lot of other issues and can leave poly players unsure if the character’s past influenced their ability to say yes or no. This is especially relevant because the game only takes place over 4 months. Not only are the romantic relationships just beginning, but Karlach and Astarion literally killed their abusers a few days ago. The pain is still fresh and a lot of healing needs to be done. It’s better to leave the sexual content away from them for now (and if poly players want to imagine the characters opening up the relationship later, they can. It just shouldn’t happen in the current game.)
With those factors in mind, I started narrowing down the characters to figure out which ones would suit the criteria.
Ones that AREN’T a perfect fit:
Astarion: two hundred years of sexual abuse (which is a lot to recover from), he just regained his bodily autonomy, he is a habitual liar, he can be talked into doing things he hates and only protests after the deed is done, even after Cazador dies in Act 3 he will do things he doesn’t want to in order to appease the player, killing one’s abuser does not magically fix all the internal issues and insecurities, the list goes on.
Gale: His issues aren’t as obvious or prominent but he also has a history of people pleasing and doing things he doesn’t want to simply to make his partner happy (see Mystra and the brothel scene).
Karlach: While she is pretty chill about the brothel, the most prominent problem this game has is that she’s literally dying. Even if she was open to poly, as someone pointed out, any loving partner would dedicate what little time they have left to focusing on her.
Shadowheart: This one has the most discussions around it because the writing is inconsistent. This is also the only romance I personally haven’t gone through so I can’t get into full details. However, what I have seen discussed is: brainwashing and memory wipes, being forced to be a “honeypot” against her will, she links her love of poly back to the cult that she spent the whole game trying to escape, her personality does a fairly sudden 180 when poly is brought up. This specific case is more of a “the poly aspect makes the writing feel inconsistent” but the issues of her cult and coercion are also very important.
That leads into characters who ARE a better fit (and bear in mind that this would require rewrites and other stuff that would have had to happen in earlier stages of development, though the tweaks would honestly be minimal):
Minthara: She may have insecurities about the Absolute and choosing her own path, but she is never insecure when dealing with romance. She knows what she wants and how to get it. While I adore her “lay a finger on them, and I’ll cut you” dialogue in the brothel, no one would have been surprised if she was written as poly. It fits her character and if she says, “Go right on with Halsin,” we all know she means it. You could honestly take Ascended Astarion’s Halsin dialogue and paste it into hers instead. The “you are mine” line would make more sense for her than him.
Laezel: This is the most obvious one. She is not only confident in her relationships and sexual preferences, but she also comes from a poly society. Like Minthara, she knows what she wants and will refuse if she doesn’t agree with something. Again, while I love her romance shifting from only wanting casual sex to becoming strictly monogamous, no one would have been surprised if she remained consistent throughout instead.
Halsin: He doesn’t have a history of lying, he knows what he wants, and he is supposed to be one of the more mature members of the group. While I think his writing itself was handled poorly (I dedicate a whole section to that at the end), he’s still a fine option for poly. My only change would be that they make his preferences very obvious in Act 1 and or 2. I saw lots of Halsin fans being super disappointed when they found out he wasn’t willing to be monogamous (and again, you don’t learn this until sixty hours in, so you’ve not only missed out on all the other romances but you can’t just go back and remedy that easily). His talk about the drow kidnapping in the brothel is questionable but that’s easy enough to omit (I saw a lot of people wondering why it was added at all. While Astarion’s trauma was carefully implemented, many felt Halsin’s was carelessly tacked on and almost fetishized.)
This final one is tricky. We know the developers wanted a male option but it’s hard when both Wyll and Gale are written as strictly monogamous. However, going by my criteria from before and therefore omitting Gale and Astarion for aforementioned issues, that leaves us only one option (and it makes sense the more I think about it).
Wyll: Like the other three, Wyll doesn’t lie to spare people’s feelings. He knows what he wants, he accepts his decisions (even the Mizora one), and he is always down to have an open discussion about anything. The only thing holding him back from poly narratively is his nobility and wish to be traditional. Just like the others, I personally like this trait, but since we’re speaking in “what if’s” we can ignore that. It’s easy enough to tweak his story to him being more open to try new things (especially because in most endings, he doesn’t end up becoming a noble anyway). I did see a few people mention that making Wyll the poly option instead of Astarion would have made him more interesting and layered as well.
Of course, these implementations would have to be coupled with them being truthful/open about their poly traits from the beginning of the game, as mentioned before.
This lineup also fixes another problem people had: the current BG3 poly options completely cut off lesbians and straight men. Only bisexuals, straight women, or gay men can have a poly relationship in the game.
What I propose (or at least pretend to since no real changes will be made) is that Halsin and Minthara are the ones who suggest the poly thing (or more ideally, it’s a dialogue option for the PLAYER to choose, since many poly people said it’s weird to insert yourself into a couple rather than having the couple proposition you). This way the options can expand. You now have
Minthara and Laezel
Minthara and Wyll
Halsin and Laezel
Halsin and Wyll
I stumbled upon some threads in this rabbit hole where people were initially debating who they thought would be poly (before the game officially came out). The three most prominent answers were: Minthara, Laezel, and Astarion (though I should clarify that at this point, most players assumed Astarion’s hedonistic playboy persona was real and not an act). On the other hand, once the poly options were fully available and explored, most people were surprised (in a negative way) that Astarion, Shadowheart, and Karlach had been chosen. They felt that poly had been slapped on to sell more games, rather than carefully implemented to fit the story.
Now that I’ve established the alternative I believe should have happened, I can expand a little more on why what we got wasn’t satisfactory. (I’d like to add a note that I personally romanced Astarion the most, Karlach once, and Shadowheart never, so the evidence I go over will heavily lean to one side, unfortunately. There are other redditors who get into the Shadowheart debate in more detail than I could. I can link these below if anyone bothers to read this far and wants to see them.)
​

1. WHY THE CHARACTERS THE DEVELOPERS CHOSE TO MAKE POLY WEREN’T IDEAL

Karlach:
This is the most simple of the three. On the surface, I initially thought she would be a good idea for poly. She lets you sleep with the prostitutes in the brothel, she’s pretty blatant about her wants and needs, she’s touch starved, and she initially seems like she’d be fine with Halsin.
But there are two issues:
One, in the Halsin proposition dialogue, she outright states that she isn’t really cool with a poly relationship. (She says something along the lines of, “I’ll have to chew on that for a while. I’m not sure I want this right now and don’t think I ever will.”) So she’s very blatant in telling you that this isn’t what she wants, but she’ll tolerate it because she loves you. It’s easy to see why this would make poly people feel bad and wish for an alternative.
Now, this could be fixed by changing her dialogue to being super enthusiastic, but even if you did, you get problem two: She is dying. She has weeks left to live. You the player spend most of your day fighting enemies so you only have a few hours left to spend with your lover. No kind hearted partner, poly or otherwise, would waste those precious hours on a casual relationship with Halsin when they should be focusing entirely on Karlach. Halsin will still be around at the end of the game. To the player’s knowledge, Karlach won’t.
If she wasn’t dying, I would list her as a possible poly option. But because she only has a few weeks to live, she just can’t be. Her existence as one of the three poly options was what cemented the theory (in my mind) that the developers chose the most popular romance options, rather than the ideal ones.
Shadowheart:
Again, this was the one that some skeptical poly people said felt the most right in terms of presentation. She is enthusiastic about Halsin and the twins, she participates, and if you were to pick the most likely to be cool with it, she wins.
However, there are still a lot of issues with this choice (in terms of backstory, insecurities, reasons for poly, and treatment of monogamous players). Again, please bear in mind that this is the one romance I myself didn’t do so some facts may be off or vague.
Backstory: Her entire life up to this point has been erased. She was forced to do horrific things against her will (abusing her parents, being abused herself, torturing others, seducing people). She puts up a constant act of loving torture and being evil, but as you play through the game, you realize she doesn’t actually like harming people and she seeks genuine connections and love despite claiming she doesn’t. I didn’t fully appreciate her until I did an evil Dark Urge run because while my psychotic monk, dictator Minthara, and Ascended Astarion were killing people left and right, she continued to disapprove of our evil actions despite “choosing” Shar in the end. To a lesser extent than Astarion, she does lie to the player about her wishes and intentions, which is one of the criteria I went into earlier.
Insecurities: I didn’t see this myself but I read plenty of threads about how her confidence is also an act. She is one of the only characters to continually ask the player if their relationship is still ongoing and if they’re happy with her. Her dialogue throughout the romance seems to be leading to her preferring monogamy and complete loyalty, so it feels out of character when she suddenly switches at the end of her arc. (Can real life people do this? Sure. Is it a very strange and sometimes off-putting writing choice? Yes, especially because there are very few hints (if any) of her being poly throughout the romance.) This also links into my ‘communicating that a character is poly to the player’ problem from earlier.
Reasons for poly: This is what I personally had the most issue with. If you cheat on her with Mizora, she explains that she’s fine with poly and/or open relationships and asks that you communicate with her first. Fine. No issues there. The problem arises when she explains WHY she’s fine with open relationships. It’s because Lady Shar encouraged it in the cult she grew up in. You know, the cult that abused her and brainwashed her for years. The one she spent the entire game trying to escape. She continually tries to distance herself from both Shar and the practices she encouraged. She expresses disgust in the Act 3 section when talking about how she had to torture and seduce people. She could choose to be poly for herself after the fact, but players are allowed to be a little concerned that her main reason for being poly is directly a result of her abusive goddess’s teachings.
Similar to Astarion, it is possible for someone in Shadowheart’s position to be poly in real life. Everyone is different and reacts to things differently. However, from a writer and developer standpoint, it’s better to just leave her monogamous and avoid all these pitfalls. As we saw, even with her enthusiastic consent to Halsin and the twins, her backstory and character arc up to that point still left people doubtful and uncomfortable. Again, since there are much better options for poly characters, why choose Shadowheart?
My final point for Shadowheart was about how it treated monogamous players. This personally irked me and I feel like it was the worst way to introduce poly because it actively antagonizes monogamous players and ruins the experience for them. (Thankfully Karlach and Astarion’s poly romances didn’t seem to have this issue to such an obvious extent).
I’ll summarize what people experienced when romancing Shadowheart. In Act 3, Halsin asks you to start a poly relationship with Shadowheart. If you tell him, “No, I’m not interested” he says that’s fine and will move on. No problem there. The issue arises if you keep him in your party. Despite you rejecting him, he will proceed to flirt with Shadowheart instead, which makes him seem pushy and creepy (which you don’t want as a writer unless it’s intentional). This made things particularly uncomfortable for lesbian players, though I completely understand how it would make ANY monogamous player annoyed, regardless of gender or preference. What makes it worse is that Shadowheart will then flirt back with him. The game ignores any preferences or input from the player here and they can’t respond to it. This bothered me, since the game up to that point seemed to at least respect the fact that mono players exist and want to have a romance that suits them.
But you could argue it was just a bug/forgetting to flag dialogue correctly. I could accept that, until you take both Shadowheart and Halsin to the brothel. Not only will Halsin invite himself in a third time after being rejected, but Shadowheart will say she’s dreamed of having sex with him before the player can even accept or reject Halsin’s suggestion. Most people would rightfully get angry when their romantic partner mentions wanting to sleep with one of their friends. From a writer’s standpoint, this is just disrespectful to the player’s choices and has zero reason to be this way. I’m not sure how such a mistake was made and why it hasn’t been rectified, but I’m disappointed that they didn’t at least lock that section behind the poly romance. It’s a fine scene if you HAVE agreed to date Halsin, but the existence of poly relationships shouldn’t completely ruin the experience for monogamous players. The writers should have tried to view these interactions from both perspectives, rather than simply one side or the other. And again, because the writers failed to communicate Shadowheart’s preferences early on, no one encountered this until they were three acts in and invested.
[There's a character limit so I'll have to do a part 2 to finish the Astarion points and discuss Halsin.]

I 19 female, I've been in a long distance relationship for 3 years with John (fake name) 19 male. I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety when I was 16. For context, John and I met in a group and since then we started talking. (I was dating my ex, but when I realized that I had developed feelings for John I ended that relationship.) In this group he was a big womanizer, and he talked to his ex, which didn't bother me since I never thought there was anything malicious about it. 4 months later I asked John if he felt anything for me, because he was acting romantic and sweet toward me, he said yes and then we started dating. (Note: he was jealous of my friends). A few weeks after we started dating, and all of our mutual friends knew about our relationship, and he didn't feel uncomfortable with people knowing about it, I sent him Intimate photos, he went on and sent these photos to our group, where there were more than 100 people, including our friends. When I saw it I was shocked and immediately left the group. My friends came to talk to me and so did he. He apologized, said he was going to send these photos to a group that was just him because according to him it was easier for him to see. Reading this now I realize it's a strange thing... but at the time I was so in love that I excused him. That same day we made a video call until I went to sleep, he praised me a lot, dedicated some songs to me, it was very romantic.During the next few weeks we made video calls every day, watched movies, listened to music, talked a lot until the early hours of the morning. There was a day when a girl joined the group where we were, and she and I became very good friends, there ended up being a lot of confusion because she wanted to date John, but he didn't want to. However, he always asked for intimate photos for her or for another girl in the group, he said it was to make me jealous, he ended up sending some intimate photos to her too. Well, a few months passed and I was suffering with my mental health, a few months before I met him I had tried to take my life, and I was under psychiatric care. During that time I started smoking and hurting myself, but he always helped me not to do so and always asked me to stop smoking and never use drugs. Until one day I was having an anxiety attack and felt the need to hurt myself while I was on a call with him, so he asked me to write his name on my skin with the razor. I did, he laughed. Some more time passed and I experienced what I think was an attack of schizophrenia, I saw and heard a person talking to me and asking me to do certain things that would hurt me. John stayed on video call with me while he tried to calm me down and said everything was ok and asked me to pray. That day my mother had gone to work, so I was alone at home, she wouldn't come back until 1pm. A few months later he asked me to buy some sex toys, I initially refused and was a little afraid, but then I agreed and bought my first vibrator. He always asked for videos and photos, or even for me to use the vibrator on a video call, as he always sent photos and videos and even did things on a call, I accepted. It turned out that I got sick, I couldn't walk, I felt a lot of pain, very strong cramps, I went to the hospital but it didn't help. I took some medication but none of it helped. Jonh was worried about me and asked me to go back to the hospital, which I did, but once again it didn't do much good. Then in December he asked me to buy another toy, but this time it would be a dildo. I was very afraid to buy it since I didn't have much privacy at home, but I bought it. When it arrived, he asked me to use it but I said I wasn't going to use it at that moment because I wanted to wash it first and then use it but my mother was in the living room so there was no way. He was extremely upset, he said that I had promised to use it the day I arrived and that he was tired from work and just wanted it to cheer him up a little. We argued a little and went to sleep.Cut to a few months later when he got a new job (he worked with his father), met some new people and completely changed. He became cold, distant, wanted everything his way or he would get upset and give me the silent treatment. Since then we started fighting almost every day, sometimes several times during the day. He always said he would break up with me if I didn't do what he wanted or the way he wanted, as I was "blind", so to speak, I always did everything. I don't want to go into too much detail but this but one thing you need to know is that during one of those fights he told me "welcome to hell". Since then everything has gotten worse. For me to achieve the minimum I had to do everything he wanted, how he wanted and when he wanted, in his time. If he wanted videos, I had to record them and send them to him, otherwise he He said he was going to break up with me or that he wouldn't talk to me until I sent the videos. I'm not a saint either, I often freaked out because of jealousy and when I saw that he had followed his ex I got really upset, because she was the only one who made me insecure, and he knew that. One thing I forgot to mention was that he told me at the beginning that he only followed some friends and family (he told me who was who and that if I wanted I could remove someone). Another thing I forgot to mention was that he's been in a group for a few years where his friends who are in that group always hit on him, he's kind of reciprocal with them. He never let me go there because according to him I wouldn't like the type of humor they have there... a group that sends a lot of videos and photos of naked women, women dancing.. But he refuses to leave because he "is already a long-time member there, and his friends are there", in his words. Coming back, he told me that he only followed her because she followed him first and I told him that if she followed him it was because he unblocked her, he was upset that I said that and blocked her again. Some time later I returned to the hospital with some urgency as I was unable to cope with the pain, I needed to stay there overnight whilst receiving medication. He wasn't happy about it at all since that meant there would be no videos or photos. The doctors asked me to do some tests as quickly as possible to try to find out the cause of this pain, which they thought was the kidneys (but it wasn't).This meant I had to leave the house and go to the clinics to schedule exams and take them. He was never happy when I needed to leave the house or when I went out with my family. Cut to a time later when we broke up (my initiative) and I put all the toys in the trash. He was super upset and we kind of talked back and forth (I know what many off you will think But I couldn't really break up with him. So he made me buy all the toys again. That is what happened. Well, I bought not only the toys but also some lingerie. He really liked that and it seemed like we were finally okay. But it didn't last long. Soon we fought again and broke up, once again I put everything in the trash, he came back, he forced me again Buying but he was the one who bought the things. He continued to force me to record the videos and send them to him. During this time of ending the relationship and coming back, ending the relationship and coming back, I called his friends to ask for help. John was super upset with this attitude of mine. He told me that I made a mistake and broke his trust. Then time passed and he went on a trip with his family when he returned home, it was on a day when there was a party in his city and his friends were going. When he got home he told me and said he was going to sleep. I was suspicious so I went to look at his friend's profile and guess what? His friend had just post a story where John appeared. Same t-shirt, same cap. The same face. Obviously I confronted him about it and he told me it wasn't him because he was sleeping at home. I didn't believe it but leave it behind. At this point, my best friend couldn't take it anymore, almost every day of me crying to her about John and his actions. A few weeks went by and I asked his friend if it was really John or not, he said no (I believe he was covering it up.So he went to get a tattoo, on his neck. When it was over he went to sleep. I don't remember that day well but I remember that I called him many times that night and when he answered I heard moaning.. so I hung up and told my best friend. I called again and again and when he answered I heard the sound of a car. I was devastated, I couldn't believe it. The next morning he freaked out at me, and said he was sleeping. First he said that his mother had answered the phone, then he said that he had answered the phone and that the moans were his because of the tattoo. I pretended this situation hadn't happened and we moved on. (note: I was emotionally dependent on him) Cut to January of this year, when he asked me to open up the relationship as this wasn't working. I said no, and that in my view it was like cheating but without the burden of conscience. So he continued to treat me badly. He admitted that when he first started treating me badly it was only because he wanted me to break up with him. (he thought traumatizing me and triggering me was a good idea) He told me he didn't want me to see his Facebook so I wouldn't see his relatives' profiles. When I asked about some people he followed that he had already said were cousins, he said that they were friends or that he didn't know that his friends had asked him to follow them and sending messages to them. When I followed someone he always freaked out and asked who he was over and over again, for example: I followed someone, John saw it and sent me a message asking who it was, I replied "he's a friend of mine" Then John would go on "who is he?" and again "who is he?" and again and again... Two months ago he said he wanted some time, I said very badly, he said it could be but that we wouldn't be with other people nor would there be flirting with other people. He agreed. But then we got into a big fight where he threatened me with a lawsuit, he didn't give me reasons or anything, he just said he was going to sue me. I insisted on knowing why he only said he was going to have to pay him a high price and I would probably go to prison. So for the next 3 days this was our topic of conversation, him threatening me, me crying, and asking why. Then I reached my limit On the day of the last lawsuit threat, I told my mother about him, the way he treated me and that I wanted a new cell phone number.(She didn't know, I never told her about him. Although he tried to contact her a few times. But I blocked him) So we went to buy a new contact for me, as he couldn't call me or get in touch with me anywhere. He asked some people to call my mother and my friends. My friends were talking to me and sending me screenshots of everything, so someone sent him the link to our group and he went in there and found out my new number. I was weakened when my friend told me that he was crying and that he told him that he loved me and that he was afraid of losing me. So I said okay I could talk to him. He told me some things like that he was sorry for making me suffer. I tried to understand his side. We came back. But I told him that the first thing he did I would leave. I did not go. And I regret it. He was never affectionate, or cute with me again. He continued to force me to send him photos and videos. And doing what he wanted. He was upset when I left. He didn't like me posting full body photos or showing more. Whereas he could go around shirtless, send shirtless photos to his group, post shirtless photos online. Once he published a photo of a photo with his cousin and hid it from me so I wouldn't see it (I knew he was going to this party, he had told me, it was a family party) Since then, I went to lawyers to ask for advice. One of the people I managed to talk to, as it was online and free, told me to contact the police and that what he was doing was wrong. Every time I ask him something he gets upset and says they are useless questions, that I'm stupid, I don't understand anything. Whenever he forces me to record something, he never sends anything. He always says he's tired, But if his friends ask him to go out or go to dinner or do anything, he'll go, even if he's tired. This is it. I don't know what to do anymore, I'm really afraid that he'll do something, after so many threats, and all the lies. I have the support of my family and friends. I'm sorry if there are some mistakes, I used the translator and tried to explain more or less all the information you should know. Please be friendly.

So, English is not my first language even though I had studied it for years now, so, any grammatical error, please be excused. I also want to point out a few things up, this story is LONG, as it says on the title, we’ve been together for almost a decade, so there’s a lot of things to patch up, also, I’m not trying to paint him as the bad guy nor myself as the good guy, just trying to let it all out because there’s some details I cannot say to everyone I know, so it’s better for me to just talk about it with internet strangers, also, I don’t know if this place has a limit of characters, so if it has, it’s going to be some parts long.
So, to start this, I (27 F), broke things with my bf (26 M) Alan (Not his real name) after we’ve been together for little less than a decade because I was just so fed up with everything we lived together, not having the strength to even try and give this another go as he wanted us to. A year before meeting him on my last school year I was s*xually Ass*ulted by a man that I met on a park where I used to go dancing, not only that, but he made me believe that I was okay with what happened (I was sixteen and he was 21, here the age of consent is not until the 18th mark), he made me believed that I liked it, and made me believe that no one would ever believe me if I ever decided to report it, so I didn’t, but obviously it got me a pretty bad scar.
I met Alan one year later, his friend group was friends with my friend group, so in school we kinda merged together and he was a good guy, a great guy even, he always had something nice to say about me and he never blamed me for being scared of a group of people so anytime I wanted to buy something on the school market, he did it for me until he tried to make me come across my fear and was just behind me as I was approaching the big group gather on the market trying to make me feel confident enough to buy things by myself, after that we became closer and closer until one day I went with my friend group to recess with his friend group, but he wasn’t there, I asked one of his friends and he told me that he wasn’t feeling right and was still on the classroom, so off I went and looked up for him, we talked for a while and then he thank me for listening to him and not bug him with the “guys don’t cry”, that made us even more close to eachother and we started something, not a relationship, but a situationship from mid July to late November, when I graduated from school (He had one more year to go), on my celebration date, he asked me to be his girlfriend and I said yes, I made him meet my family shortly after and I met his.
He was a part-time gamer, and the first straw was that he believed that I would made him choose between his games or me, but no, I didn’t, even so, I asked him to teach me how to play so we could play together, I was not good, at all, but I was just glad to be on his hobbies, little did I know that would be one of the reasons I broke things off. We had fights and arguments because he was a competitive type of guy on this online games and, because I was bad at them, we usually lost games because of me, it took us a lot of work to find a solution, he had to put down some bars, because it was not healthy, also the first “or else” that he made me aware of, was when I told him that I needed him to express his emotions to me, but he took it as “Show emotions or I’m leaving you” which wasn’t the case, but worked up just fine.
Some years passed and… You remember what I told you about the year before meeting Alan? Well, we couldn’t get intimate in that way and I had to sit him and explained what happened, he was supportive and we didn’t do it after our four year mark, but again, he wasn’t as supportive as I recall, he usually push over it and only stopped moments before I got a flashback of what happened. But that one time that we did it, I remember it well, I started crying out of emotion because I finally overcame my fear, but after we finished, he stood up, we cleaned ourselves and he made me get ready because he didn’t want to be late to a friend’s birthday. Speaking of intimacy, he had a really big drive and I didn’t, but every time I tried to say “no”, he got all frustrated so I started initiating moments after I saw him like that so I could brush that feeling off of him, our intimacy was like that until just months before our breakup.
Now into another thing, I have always work, even when I was still at school, I’ve always worked to get my things, I’m not good at saving money, but I work my butt off, so when he started to gain interest on a particular expensive game, we usually used his mother credit card and the one paying it was me, he said that when he worked he bought things for us, but… This is the thing about it… He only worked 5-6 months in all of our relationship, sure, he went with his father some times to do some work, but he didn’t even saw that money because it went directly to a gaming console for himself, so in years that we’ve been together, he worked 5-6 months and the rest was payed from myself and he still took his time working as a sort of argument against me.
Now, one time, when I was on the university, a random classmate just suddenly kissed me and I was in shock, so in shock that I didn’t kissed him back, nor could I stop him, but when he went for a second one, I backed out and I went to my boyfriend crying because I thought I was cheating on him because someone kissed me and I explained every detail to him, but the guy dropped off from college, so I never saw him again and then, another day, I was in the subway and encounter my ex boyfriend while he was, actually, coming back home after his own studies, I ignored him for the most part, but he actually asked politely to let him talk to me, so we went to a public park and he actually just wanted to say sorry because he cheated on me with his ex girlfriend while he was with me, we didn’t do anything besides me listening to him and giving him the closure he was searching for, we did not stay in contact, I just said to him that it was not something that I keep on mind to this day, but if it made him feel better, I would accept his apology and then we parted ways, everything I did and said I made my boyfriend aware of and he was such in a panic that one of his friends actually went to his house and they talked shit about me because I dared to let my ex ask for my forgiveness. Those are the only two time that I recall I made him feel insecure, two times and that’s it and he wasn’t letting any of those things go any time we got into an argument.
I remember one time we actually parted ways for some days and I kissed a girl, a girl that I have liked for a very long time and only then I figured that she actually liked me back, but I was stupid enough to not go for her, and wait for this guy for us to get back together and I actually told him everything, I know I shouldn’t do it, because it would only made him feel like on the edge, but by that time I felt like it was better to come clean about everything, he knew everything about me, it was only fair that I keep it like that. But then he got jealous everything I said I was talking to her in a friendly way (he never was banned from looking into my phone) and now I understand that his jealousy was not that unfounded, because I kissed this girl while we were separated.
There was numerous times when I wanted to break things with him, but he always managed to made me come back to him, one time we were walking on the sidewalk and I told him how I felt and that I was thinking about breaking up, he got on the ground, took a piece of glass and tried to h*rm himself, but I stopped him and we never talked about it again. Another time I was home, not at work because I was injured and we had a phone fight, not breaking up, but making it subtle, then a couple hours after that I received another phone call from an Unknown number, telling me that he almost threw himself on the subway and, Injured as I was, I went to get him and Uber us to his home.
I had to make two limits for him, I didn’t want him to call me before checking if it was possible for me to talk on the phone, unless it was an emergency, of course. And that I didn’t want him to go to my home unannounced, because he did it too much and he did not respect those boundaries until there was yet another conversation about breaking up and just then, he stopped doing it. He also lied to me one time when he went to the bus stop at freaking 7 am with the excuse of “I just wanted to get some air” and the proceeded to talk to me all the way about his problems and follow me to my workplace, and then he had the audacity to get mad when I told him I couldn’t stay longer because I had to get to work, just when we finally broke off he came clean that he was, obviously, trying to get a hold of me and not “Trying to get some air” as he tried to make me believe. I even started to go to my destinations by other means because I was afraid I would encounter him in every corner that I usually go to.
One of my college friends started a relationship with one of his friends and now that we broke things off, neither of them talk to me, so I am not sure what sort of fairytale he told them in which, he obviously was not in the wrong at all.
I am not asking if I was the AH here, nor asking if I should talk to him again, I am pretty confident That I shouldn’t, I just wanted to vent, thanks for anyone who would read this loooooong story. Cheers.

What works for me might not work for you, but why not give it a try and see for yourself? Adapt my style to fit your personality and preferences.

Example Roles:

Choose 2-3 roles:

• Content Creator
• Social Media Manager
• Digital Marketer

Example Profile:

Introduce yourself in 15-20 lines. Write clearly and avoid using emojis. Instead, use ASCII bullets to list items.

Straight to the point—let’s drop the time-consuming tasks that hinder your business growth! • Social Media Automation: Streamline your posting and audience engagement effortlessly. • Content Creation: Craft impactful posts and videos that truly represent your brand. • Social Media Campaigns: Launch and manage promotional campaigns on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. • Audience Engagement: Boost interactions with strategic communication and engaging content. • Analytics and Reporting: Leverage tools to monitor, analyze, and enhance your strategies for optimal results. Let's keep this simple. I’m here to support you; just share your vision, and I’ll take care of the execution! 

Skills Breakdown:

Niche Skills

• Social Media Automation: Streamline your posting and audience engagement effortlessly.
• Social Media Campaigns: Launch and manage promotional campaigns on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
• Audience Engagement: Boost interactions with strategic communication and engaging content.

Technical Skills

• Content Creation: Craft impactful posts and videos that truly represent your brand.
• Analytics and Reporting: Leverage tools to monitor, analyze, and enhance your strategies for optimal results.

Soft Skills

• Communication
• Teamwork
• Adaptability

Portfolio/Website:

• Provide a Linktree: [Your Linktree Link]
• Share links to your resume on Google Drive (initials only for privacy).
• Don't include a picture on your resume to keep the focus on your skills and experience.
• Mention your city and country in your resume's address section, but avoid providing the exact address.
• Add other relevant links as needed.

Application Strategy:

• Use a catchy subject line for your job application emails, like "Your Next SMM is Here to Support Your Vision".
• In the email, start with an introduction, propose how you can meet the job's needs, and explain why you're the best candidate.
• Optional: Include links to your internet speed, typing speed, computer specs, personality tests (like MBTI or DISC), and an English proficiency test. Also, offer a presentation of your profile and services when you confirm the client's legitimacy.

Contact Information:

• Mobile: [Mobile No.]
• Email: [Email Address]
• Skype: [Skype ID]
• Calendly: [Link to Calendly]

Keep in Mind:

• Apply to jobs with points 10 or higher to ensure your application stands out.
• Prefer live remote interviews over sending pre-recorded voice or video.
• Avoid insecure communication channels such as Telegram, WhatsApp, and Viber.
• Carefully read job descriptions to understand all requirements.
• Confirm the legitimacy of employers by checking if they have a paid account on the job platform.
• Use a professional email account for job applications to keep your personal email account secure.

Extra Mile Email:

• Create a simple, professional email signature with your full name, phone number, and a link to your LinkedIn profile or professional website. Ensure your email address looks professional, ideally using your name without nicknames or unusual numbers.

I don’t speak my fiancé’s language and I think he is starting to get tired of it
I (21f) and my fiancé (23m) are living together in his country for 2,5 years. We met on internet and we were in LDR for 1,5 years. He’s from France and I’m from Ukraine. We both speak English pretty well and that’s the language we’ve always used with each other. He’s using English a lot and I mostly use ONLY English, like talking in my head, having dreams in English, learning new things and entertaining myself. I don’t use my native languages (Ukrainian and Russian), unless I speak to someone from my country.
I guess, I’ll give a bit of backstory on our situation before dipping into the problem.
BACKSTORY:
You probably heard about the full invasion in my country. That’s the reason I am able to live with him as I have a temporary protection.
Living in France wasn’t easy for me for a long time. I already was in few years long depression when I came here, but my experience in his hometown was so awful that I got even deeper into it. And ofc war affected my mental health too. Because of how hard the life had been for me I had a hard time learning anything, so I never learned French. I tried many times ofc. I went to different courses, but my mental health was far away from letting any information stay in my head. I’m glad to say that I’m better now and I’m officially depression free, but I still have CPTSD due to abusive family and ADHD. I’m still learning how to live my life, I don’t have anyone in my life except my fiancé.
I don’t have any relationship with my French in-laws. When I came to France I was hoping that they will welcome me and help me adapt. But they were rather cold. They are toxic people and my fiancé cut them off to protect his mental health and our relationship. But even when we were still talking, I couldn’t have any conversation with them and I would just sit quietly at the dinner table. One of his sisters is actually fluent in English, but she refused using it in front of me and she never spoke to me. All the conversations were like “tell your gf that”. Like I’m a dog. They would never try to speak to me directly.
Since then we moved to another town and I’m feeling better here, yet I’ve given up trying to make any friends or connections, since it hasn’t worked before. I would say I’m content with my life. I don’t have a job, bc I don’t know the language. Again, I tried to find one. Just like I tried to connect with people here and etc.
MAIN PROBLEM:
I really want to learn French. I always loved the language. But through our relationship my fiancé was rather dismissive about me learning it. He mentioned a lot of times how he hates French and he wishes he could just talk English. He doesn’t want to speak French with me and up until now he seemed satisfied with how things are.
Few days ago I was watching Bluey in French. He came in and scoffed (his regular reaction to hearing French at home). He said that the language sounds stupid and ugly (not the first time he made this comment) and I answered “you’re the reason I still don’t know French”. He got mad and said something along the lines “oh, I am the reason? Not the fact that you’re not studying?” Ofc I didn’t mean it this way. I believe he is a PART of the reason. He tried to help me with French before, but I prefer not to bother him with that since he’s always tired of work and because he’s very bad in teaching and he has a bad grammar (his words).
When I’m trying to involve him in my study, he usually doesn’t pay attention and when I ask him a question about HIS language he can’t even answer it. For ex. I would ask him a translation of a word and he would open Google translator, like I couldn’t do it by myself.
When we go somewhere he would speak FOR me, instead of letting me talk and then translating what I said. He would not tell me what the other person said either unless I ask him. It always made me feel like a child, but no matter how many times I told him to stop he still does it.
A lot of people who heard about the fact I don’t know French, would ask him why didn’t he help me. Why wouldn’t he talk to me in French? Why wouldn’t he encourage me? Both of us are honestly tired of these questions. It only makes me feel bad when I hear people questioning me. I obviously feel insecure about not knowing French. I feel like people don’t treat me as a real adult human being because of this. I love the language, I want to learn it, so I can have a job and people will stop treating me like a freak.
Every time I try to talk about this it’s leads to nowhere. Before it felt like he doesn’t want me to know his language, but now his attitude suddenly changed and he acts like he’s tired of me not knowing French.
I, on the other hand, tried to teach him my language, since he showed interest in it. I wrote him down different rules and broke it down for him. I found him videos on YouTube. I wrote him my own texts to practice reading. I would sit down with him and teach him. He lost an interest after short time, but it just goes to show how much I was willing to help him, when all he does when I’m learning is saying how ugly French is…
TL;DR fiancé didn’t want me to learn his language and now he acts annoyed about me not knowing his language

Perhaps it's come to attention to everyone that one of the most beloved accounts u/chihan-ki-pari has deactivated/deleted their account and I maybe partly responsible for it.
But here's what I have to say -

1. How can someone take to heart what a stranger says in the internet? If you're that insecure about yourself, how can you face the real world? Well, I'm ugly as fuck but gone are the days my insecurities overcame me.
   
2. Maybe they needed a reason of their own to leave this platform and I, along with many others, gave them a reason? If it is the case then it's pathetic.
   
3. You can clearly notice how active they were in here. Maybe they wanted to get rid of this addiction and leave?
   
4. Or they still use an alt or multiple alts and still lurk around here.
   

To end, I just want to apologise for what I said. But one has to be able to digest a few jokes/sarcasms here and there. Intolerance in this matter surely won't take you far in life. The real world is even brutal.
I wish you peace.
I hope you found your mukti.

Okay I need advice…To start off with this story. I graduated high school last year and as soon as I turned 18 I got on Seeking. Honestly I don’t come from money and I was headed to college soon my dads a single dad so I decided to find a way to pay for school. It wasn’t my best idea but I did it. I also was a virgin at the time and had a lot of guys texting me. I was going to meet this other guy the day I met my now current boyfriend/sugar daddy. But the other guy ended up getting drunk so I met up with my now bf. Our age gap is pretty big I was a month into being 18 and he was 48. We met up at this hotel in my town and as soon as I got there I regretted it. He was friendly and I was very shy around him. Right after we had sex I went to the restroom and made up something about how my dad was asking where I was at it was like two am. I left the room and went to my car and cried I felt so ashamed that I could do something like that. As soon as I got home I showered and blocked him on everything. A week goes by and I tell one of my good friends and we went to Walgreens to get a plan b just to be safe. I realized soon after that I kind of enjoyed it in a way so I unblocked him and we met up again. When he first messaged me he was offering $750 a week but he only would give me $500 max. I was a little annoyed but naive. I quickly realized he wanted a relationship out of this whereas I wanted a sugar daddy only. I’m in college and I have no time for a relationship. I also had never been in a serious relationship so I became very attached to him. I would rant about past ex bfs and how I would miss them and I guess he got annoyed and started it doing it back to me. In the beginning I only saw him as a sugar daddy so I would post pictures of myself in bikinis and he would get mad at me but I wouldn’t care because he didn’t mean anything to me at the time. After a while I slowly fell in love with him I was shooked because he was old and I was young. Around this time one my siblings were getting skeptical about how I was getting money when I bark worked and went to school. She soon found out and outed me to my whole family. For a week straight my family would call me all sorts of names and that was definitely a low point for me. I was feeling really bad at the time and wanted to run away with him. I later found out he was watching porn behind my back and I felt so mad and sad at the same time. How could he have me and watch those things I thought. He swore to me that he would not do it again and he watched it when he was younger so I guess he kind of got addicted to it in a way. I forgave him and we went on with our relationship. We’ve since been together for almost a year. About two months ago I saw him in many girls likes and follows. They would post there body’s and everything. Not shaming that because I used to do that I was upset with my bf because he would get mad at me and call me insecure when I would do it but liked pictures of other girls doing it. I confronted him about it and he said he was sorry and that he wouldn’t do it again. Fast forward to last week I was hanging out with him and I kept checking my phone thinking my dad was going to call because I sneaked out to see him. My bf got suspicious and told me to open up my phone so I did. I showed him my messages and snap and he saw that a guy friend had sent me a streak. He was so upset and saying why I was texting another guy. I told him it was a exchange student friend I met in high school and I had a streak with him to keep in touch he was really mad and so I tried to apologize and comfort him. After he said he forgave me and then he got on his phone. Keep in mind he never lets me get on his phone. He owns his own business and he says he doesn’t want me to see his business plans as if I would know what to do with them. I went to his instagram messages and he snatches his phone after he does that I grab it from him and see he texted this girl that had her arch pic as her profile pic. She had slid up on his story and said baeee where he replied with what she said that he had tooken a long time to reply where he said a little:) with a smiley face. I was furious I had drove over and hour to see him and I got my things and I was crying hysterically. He told me he was sorry but somehow blamed it on me. He started yelling at me and saying if you think I want that whore then leave. I was like wtf you texted her back and I’m the one getting shouted at. I later forgave him but now I feel like I let it be okay for so long he’ll just do it again. I’m so in love with him and I don’t want to leave him. I would like someone different to see it in another perspective. Did he make mistakes that I should just forgive or should I just leave now?

Advice on my situation. It’s a sensitive one as it’s around finance but I don’t know what to do.
My boyfriend I and have been together for nearly 3 years. He is 5 years younger but a senior manager at the same place I work, we met through work. He was in the process of buying his first house and I had just split up from my engagement to my previous partner so didn’t want to get too heavily involved too quick, especially contributing to the deposit. He could afford that on his wage on his own. A year later I have moved in with him and with him earning more than me he pays slightly more towards his mortgage than I do but everything else is split 50/50.
I recently saw his internet banking. I know I have no right and I wasn’t snooping I just saw it but I want to start looking towards the future, marriage, children that sort of thing and I’ve been saving as much as I can. He tells me he has too £800+ a month and he’s been saying that for the last year. He also said he has £3k on a credit card even telling my mum he wants to sort that out first before he plans on popping the question. What I saw did not confirm this. There is double that on his credit card and less savings than I have despite him being on £20k a year more than me and supposedly saving more than I do each month. He says he only banks with a particular bank so I don’t think there’s even another account somewhere. Apparently to buy the house he didn’t use all his savings so where has this money gone? Why is he lieing to me? I almost feel betrayed and very insecure 😕
How can I approach this?

Advice on my situation. It’s a sensitive one as it’s around finance but I don’t know what to do.
My boyfriend I and have been together for nearly 3 years. He is 5 years younger but a senior manager at the same place I work, we met through work. He was in the process of buying his first house and I had just split up from my engagement to my previous partner so didn’t want to get too heavily involved too quick, especially contributing to the deposit. He could afford that on his wage on his own. A year later I have moved in with him and with him earning more than me he pays slightly more towards his mortgage than I do but everything else is split 50/50.
I recently saw his internet banking. I know I have no right and it wasn’t on purpose, I didn’t go snooping but I do want to start looking towards the future, marriage, children that sort of thing and I’ve been saving as much as I can. He tells me he has too £800+ a month and he’s been saying that for the last year. He also said he has £3k on a credit card even telling my mum he wants to sort that out first before he plans on popping the question. What I saw did not confirm this. There is double that on his credit card and less savings than I have despite him being on £20k a year more than me and supposedly saving more than I do each month. He says he only banks with a particular bank so I don’t think there’s even another account somewhere. Apparently to buy the house he didn’t use all his savings either so where has this money gone? Why is he lieing to me? I almost feel betrayed and very insecure 😕
How can I approach this?

To whoever reads this,
i love you
i love your smile i love your laugh i love your personality i love your hair (or lack thereof) i love you even if you have insecurities i love your accomplishments i love you even if you have failures i love your eyes i love your beauty i love your handwriting (or the way you communicate) i love the way you dance i love you on your happy days i love you even on sad days i love you on the days you feel lonely i love you on the days you feel helpless i love you on the days you feel like no one cares i love you on the days you feel forgotten i love you on the days you feel unmotivated i love you on the days you feel loved i love you on the days you feel sick i love you on the days you feel motivated i love you on the days you feel depressed i love you on the days you feel stresses i love you on the days you feel crazy i love you on the days you feel hopeful i love you on the days you feel cuddly i love you on the days you feel clingy i love you on the days you feel amazing i love you on the days you feel beautiful i love you on the days you feel like a failure i love you on the days you feel angry i love you on the days you feel aggressive i love you on the days you feel horrible i love you on the days you feel safe i love you on the days you feel unsafe i love you on the days you feel vulnerable i love you on the days you feel weird i love you on the days you feel ok i love you when you're healthy i love how you sing (or hum or feel the music) i love your taste in music i love your taste in movies i love your taste in tv shows i love the way you act i love you even if you cry i love you when you're kind i love you even if you you're mean i love you even if you're alone i love you even if you can't feel i love you even if you feel too much i love you even if you can't take life anymore i love you even if you feel like it's too much i love you when you're asleep i love you even if you have nightmares i love you when you have dreams i love how you believe i love you when you believe in yourself i love you even if you don't believe in yourself i love you even if you hate yourself i love you when you love yourself i love the way you think i love you even if you have problems i love your solutions i love how you support i love you even if you're in pain i love you even if you're hurt i love your promises i love your secrets i love your attitude i love you sass i love your creativity i love your voice (or lack thereof) i love you hand gestures i love your stories i love you even if you have wounds i love you even if you have scars i love your face i love your past i love your future i love your present i love your outfits i love your style i love your art i love your honesty i love you even if you lie i love you even if you're tired i love you when you're energetic i love how you look i love how you cook i love you when you're adventurous i love you even if you're scared i love your imperfections i love your perfections i love you even if you worry i love you when you talk (or communicate) i love your opinions i love you even if you have headache i love you even if you have a stomach ache i love you when you help others i love you when you're mature i love you even if you're immature i love you in the hard times i love you in the easy times i love you even if life isn't bright i love you when you're responsible i love you even if you're irresponsible i love you even if you fight i love you in your darkest moments i love you in your brightest moments i love your heart i love you in the day . i love you in the night i love you at midnight i love you at 3 am i love you at all times i love you at your best i love even if your worst i love the little things you do
i love all of you i love you when you're you
i love 𝙮𝙤𝙪.
and even if this is not mine.. spread it around the internet, everyone needs of love <3
-a stranger who cares <3

Yes, there are many uncut men who publicly wish for circumcision to be made illegal. Just check Twitter. Or Reddit. Or anywhere on the internet.
This is so, so, so embarrassing. I don't think people understand just how embarrassing this is.
Imagine seeking to control an entire public...every single parent's choice...every single sub-culture in America...just because you're insecure about your penis. Then imagine pretending it's a righteous cause by fabricating a human rights violation in the men who are more fortunate than you, and getting off on calling them "victims" because it comforts your victimhood and inferiority complex. Then imagine hiding behind a couple cherry-picked, token cut men, as though their brainwashing should speak over the vast majority of other cut men and everyone else with basic thinking skills. Unimaginably selfish, dishonest, disrespectful, cowardly, stupid. Shameless, and not in a cute way. It is sad and scary how desperate uncut men are to cope.
We don't ban practices just because uncut men are triggered that circumcision exists on the basis of their problems, and that cut men are cleaner, healthier, happier, grateful to avoid their problems and naturally chosen over them. We don't punish the public just because uncut men are guilty that they damage public health ). And we don't uplift uncut men at the expense of entire groups and cultures of people.
But none of that matters to uncut men who are so extremely insecure that they would sacrifice science, medicine, cultures, art and the freedom of the entire public just to be at peace with themselves. Pablo from Twitter would apparently wish for X amount of women to receive cervical cancer, X amount of men to receive penile cancer, or basically jail the entire Jewish community, just to cope with his ugly dick if given the choice. That's horrific, unconscionable, nauseating, and truly foul.
It's astonishing, hilarious and a travesty that even one human being, one human being of the 8 billion and change who exist, supports any of these uncut men who have so such dangerously low IQ, self-control and character that they would sooner project their problems onto an entire public than counsel their problems.
No, neither circumcision nor circumcised men are going anywhere, ever, no matter how violently, uncontrollably triggered uncut men are by their existence.
And since uncut men are so hellbent on making it a competition, let's settle this. Which is better, cut or uncut? Well, being uncut is so awful and miserable that uncut men are prepared to literally hurt millions of people just to cope with their dicks. So, that's that.

I am m17 and my ex is f16, and I need some advice. I still feel like there is a chance for us again, but I need some advice from another perceptive.
When I was 16 last year I met my ex-girlfriend and we dated for 5 months after knowing each other for 4 beforehand. We rushed our relationship, as it was our first, and we did a lot of things before waiting. We talked about marriage and how much we loved each other only after 3 months.
Last year she broke up with me because I didn't respect her boundaries. I would bike to her house late at night to try and talk to her about our problems and I destroyed our trust when we shared social media passwords (bad idea). Before she broke up with me she took a week's break to reminisce, I guess? Anyway after the break we hung out and it was good I was still obsessive and clingy so the day later, she broke up with me. From my perspective at the time it seemed like she just didn't want to communicate with me when she was angry or in her feelings but I've recently looked at our old texts and my heart has sunk. I was constantly spamming her, even when she was asleep and couldn't respond, sending paragraph after paragraph showing my insecurities. I won't get into what argument started all this, but I had found something I had no business finding from years prior that made me insecure for some reason.
Since then, after looking back at our old conversation the day we broke up, my perception has changed. She told me that she didn't want to break up but my neediness had gotten too much. The whole conversation I was ignoring her, and flaming her for "victimizing" herself.
I say ignoring, because today when I looked at the text a year later, I didn't recognize anything that she had texted me, but I remembered everything that I said.
That's going to be almost from a year ago (May 27th) and I still have never apologized to her about this, we have spoken since and apologized about other things but, truth be told I didn't think I did anything wrong until I re-read these texts today.
3 months later, after absolutely no contact (I was blocked, but she occasionally unblocked me from time to time as I can remember) She texted me saying "I know you probably hate me but I want to know if you're okay" I waited a bit to respond but eventually we had a calm and respective convo catching up a lil bit. The topic changed to "trying again" and she told me she wanted to, as she felt she made a mistake.
In my head, I was overjoyed. For the past 3 months, I had been waiting for this, not thinking about a single thing. But I didn't listen to my heart. Instead of using the no contact to heal and forgive, I had become full of loathing and pride. Since I didn't originally understand what I did wrong in our relationship, I had fully expected her to put all the effort into making our relationship work again, as I thought and assumed she would as in my eyes she was at fault. We met twice, just going on walks and talking. On the 2nd walk, I asked her about the guy she had met at a party and started getting defensive. She assured me it was nothing she only saw him at the party, and she didn't have feelings for him and she didn't pursue him at all, and for some reason, I didn't believe her. I still remember that walk, I kept bringing up the bad parts of our relationship instead of rebuilding it, which we had both agreed on before hanging out again. I was supposed to be having a sleepover with my friend but instead, I was walking around with her and it got very late.
Honestly looking back, I didn't care about her talking stage or how we broke up, I still had my heart set on being with her again regardless. But for some reason, it might have been pride, insecurities or both, but I kept constantly bringing it up, to get an apology out of her.
Then my friend's dad found us in his truck and screamed at me.
We haven't talked since.
But i was petty on social media and i had returned the gifts she had given me just to hurt her.
Fast forward to December, I decided I was going to send her a letter. I dont remember what was on that letter, but I know it was a bunch of begging fake apology bullcrap to say im sorry. It was not heartfelt, just a way to try and get her back but it seemed desperate.
I was desperate. She gave me a second chance and I blew it.
Weeks go by and I get a call from the police. Her mom went to them to tell them to not contact her anymore. I was heartbroken.
I listened to the police and didn't contact her.
I still look at her TikTok reposts all the time tho, and she still reposts a lot of stuff I think is about me. Her old friend and I talked a lot about how she felt in August when we tried again, and she told me that she hadn't been in a relationship since, and convinced me to send the letter. Anyways the tiktoks are Sometimes good, (TikTok's about still thinking about your ex, )and sometimes bad, (TikTok's comparing your ex to the Kendrick Lamar line: "I hate the way that you talk, walk, dress" 💀) I feel like that isn't enough though cuz shes probably just trying to live a tv life, by expressing tiktoks I dont know.
The whole reason I came here is that my friends saw her recently with another guy, but they told me she didn't look happy and they weren't holding hands.
We've been broken up for longer than we've been together and i haven't spent a day not thinking about her. I do think our relationship was worth it to me and i feel more mature but i feel that its too late. If anyone took the time to read this full thing, I am so grateful and I would love your advice.
Thank you.

I am m17 and my ex is f16, and I need some advice. I still feel like there is a chance for us again, but I need some advice from another perceptive.
When I was 16 last year I met my ex-girlfriend and we dated for 5 months after knowing each other for 4 beforehand. We rushed our relationship, as it was our first, and we did a lot of things before waiting. We talked about marriage and how much we loved each other only after 3 months.
Last year she broke up with me because I didn't respect her boundaries. I would bike to her house late at night to try and talk to her about our problems and I destroyed our trust when we shared social media passwords (bad idea). Before she broke up with me she took a week's break to reminisce, I guess? Anyway after the break we hung out and it was good I was still obsessive and clingy so the day later, she broke up with me. From my perspective at the time it seemed like she just didn't want to communicate with me when she was angry or in her feelings but I've recently looked at our old texts and my heart has sunk. I was constantly spamming her, even when she was asleep and couldn't respond, sending paragraph after paragraph showing my insecurities. I won't get into what argument started all this, but I had found something I had no business finding from years prior that made me insecure for some reason.
Since then, after looking back at our old conversation the day we broke up, my perception has changed. She told me that she didn't want to break up but my neediness had gotten too much. The whole conversation I was ignoring her, and flaming her for "victimizing" herself.
I say ignoring, because today when I looked at the text a year later, I didn't recognize anything that she had texted me, but I remembered everything that I said.
That's going to be almost from a year ago (May 27th) and I still have never apologized to her about this, we have spoken since and apologized about other things but, truth be told I didn't think I did anything wrong until I re-read these texts today.
3 months later, after absolutely no contact (I was blocked, but she occasionally unblocked me from time to time as I can remember) She texted me saying "I know you probably hate me but I want to know if you're okay" I waited a bit to respond but eventually we had a calm and respective convo catching up a lil bit. The topic changed to "trying again" and she told me she wanted to, as she felt she made a mistake.
In my head, I was overjoyed. For the past 3 months, I had been waiting for this, not thinking about a single thing. But I didn't listen to my heart. Instead of using the no contact to heal and forgive, I had become full of loathing and pride. Since I didn't originally understand what I did wrong in our relationship, I had fully expected her to put all the effort into making our relationship work again, as I thought and assumed she would as in my eyes she was at fault. We met twice, just going on walks and talking. On the 2nd walk, I asked her about the guy she had met at a party and started getting defensive. She assured me it was nothing she only saw him at the party, and she didn't have feelings for him and she didn't pursue him at all, and for some reason, I didn't believe her. I still remember that walk, I kept bringing up the bad parts of our relationship instead of rebuilding it, which we had both agreed on before hanging out again. I was supposed to be having a sleepover with my friend but instead, I was walking around with her and it got very late.
Honestly looking back, I didn't care about her talking stage or how we broke up, I still had my heart set on being with her again regardless. But for some reason, it might have been pride, insecurities or both, but I kept constantly bringing it up, to get an apology out of her.
Then my friend's dad found us in his truck and screamed at me.
We haven't talked since.
But i was petty on social media and i had returned the gifts she had given me just to hurt her.
Fast forward to December, I decided I was going to send her a letter. I dont remember what was on that letter, but I know it was a bunch of begging fake apology bullcrap to say im sorry. It was not heartfelt, just a way to try and get her back but it seemed desperate.
I was desperate. She gave me a second chance and I blew it.
Weeks go by and I get a call from the police. Her mom went to them to tell them to not contact her anymore. I was heartbroken.
I listened to the police and didn't contact her.
I still look at her TikTok reposts all the time tho, and she still reposts a lot of stuff I think is about me. Her old friend and I talked a lot about how she felt in August when we tried again, and she told me that she hadn't been in a relationship since, and convinced me to send the letter. Anyways the tiktoks are Sometimes good, (TikTok's about still thinking about your ex, )and sometimes bad, (TikTok's comparing your ex to the Kendrick Lamar line: "I hate the way that you talk, walk, dress" 💀) I feel like that isn't enough though cuz shes probably just trying to live a tv life, by expressing tiktoks I dont know.
The whole reason I came here is that my friends saw her recently with another guy, but they told me she didn't look happy and they weren't holding hands.
We've been broken up for longer than we've been together and i haven't spent a day not thinking about her. I do think our relationship was worth it to me and i feel more mature but i feel that its too late. If anyone took the time to read this full thing, I am so grateful and I would love your advice.
Thank you.

I am not The OOP, OOP is u/lolfuckno.
This post was originally posted to weddingshaming.
There was already a BoRU post by u/autochthonouschimera, which didn't include the last update yet.
TRIGGER WARNING: cheating, child neglect, extreme entitledness, talk of abortion
MOOD SPOILERS: infuriating, confusing, frustrating
The new update at the bottom of this post has been marked with --- ---
Original story was posted on December 7, 2021
Okay, so this girl I know from high school is getting married. We're both 22, for reference. In our senior year of high school she got pregnant, with baby daddy A who will be referred to as Adam. Her super conservative parents kicked her out and she ended up moving in with a friend's family. She barely graduated high school. The only reason she did were because of the generosity and support of our teachers and students who volunteered to help her, which is how we met. We were in the same law class in the morning and she had the worst morning sickness that really affected her ability to be in class. So, I took extra notes for her, tutored her, and brought her her stuff if she hadn't come back by the bell. I wasn't the only one who did stuff like this for her and I know she really appreciates all the assistance we gave her. She had the baby a month after we graduated.
She'd signed up for a 911 dispatcher course for after high school because where we live it's a good steady job, with opportunity for certificates and promotions. But she didn't realize how intensive the course would be and had to drop out. She started working at a grocery store bakery, just until she had a better plan. Adam started an apprenticeship while working part time at a hockey rink, and proposed to her literally the day of her eighteenth birthday, and brought up marriage because "it's the right thing to do" (I don't really agree with that but this isn't about me) and she was always refusing.
She started cheating on him after a while (we're all 19 now), and eventually leaves him for another guy because... She's pregnant again and it is far more likely that this guy, baby daddy B who will be referred to as Brad, is the father of the child. Neither of them can afford lawyers so getting any kind of custody agreement is a mess, and then their parents got involved and they did 50/50 split (still not made official). She has the baby, that does turn out to be Brad's, and everything is okay for about nine months, when she finds out Brad has been cheating on her with his TA. Brad decides to pay child support but doesn't really want contact with the kid, only around holidays and one weekend a month for his parents' sake.
She moves back in with her parents (we're all 20 now) who only accept her back because there's grandchildren around. On the plus side, (when she's 21) she gets to take that year long dispatcher course, and passes with flying colours!
After working as a dispatcher for a year (we're all 22 now) she meets a police officer we'll call Chad, who's 26 and married... And Adam's second (?) cousin (I can't remember how they're related, just that Adam and Chad are related somewhat distantly). She has an affair with him (infidelity is super common among cops apparently). She gets knocked up, his wife divorces him, Chad proposes because "it's the right thing to do", she accepts, and her parents kick her out again for being a [insert expletive here], she moves in with Chad with her two kids. They've started planning the wedding, which... Given the background is something akin to a dumpster fire. Adam is LIVID. He was desperately in love with this girl and hasn't really recovered from what she did to him, and while she rejected his proposals years ago, she's accepted one FROM HIS COUSIN WHO PROPSED FOR THE SAME REASON HE DID.
Adam has basically made a call for loyalty in the family, dividing everyone one who should go, who should give money, etc plus they're having trouble planning anything because of COVID. Her parents have outright said that they're not going, along with half of her family, and her younger sister has been going around and sabotaging what plans they can make.
She has asked me to be a bridesmaid, I said that I couldn't because I live in a different province now, but the truth is, I do not want to be wrapped up in that clusterfuck in any way . I'm just watching the arguments and events unfold on social media because this is quite honestly the most entertaining thing I've seen all year. It's weird to me that she even asked because we're not friends, we never have been. We were friendly strangers in high school, I just helped her out for one class because she needed help and I could give it to her. I was just being nice. But based on how she turned out I'm just sad for her. Three kids in four years, and she's alienated so much of her friends and family because if her actions, and I'm torn between feeling sorry for her and putting my head in my hands.
EDIT 1:
First off, all of your comments are hilarious. Second, I'm going to answer some of the common questions.
We're from a city with over 400,000 thousand people, she just comes from the neighbourhood that is made of either bible thumpers or white trash, with no in between. But the high school we went to was in a completely different neighbourhood than that.
Our school had a pretty good sex Ed course, and they gave out free condoms and had resources to help girls get birth control, and they had programs in place for if students ever got pregnant/were going to be teen parents (they also had one of those classes with the dolls for girls who were high risk at teen pregnancy but she wasn't high risk so she wasn't in that class) I don't if BC just didn't work for her, or if she never tried it.
She started alienating her friends after the affair with Chad came out, because people weren't exactly jumping for joy that she'd broken up a marriage (Chad and his ex didn't have any kids, thankfully, so there were less obstacles). When people weren't immediately ecstatic for her she started getting very snippy, rude, and was "calling the bitches out" on social media for not supporting her new relationship or pregnancy. (Tbh I'm really worried about her health because having this many babies so close together is just not good for her health, mental or physical.) People are also worried that Chad will cheat on her "if he'll cheat with you, he'll cheat on you" and think she should avoid marrying him so that she can just leave him if it happens.
I'll give you updates as they come out, but so far it's just a lot of yelling on social media (mostly from her), some relatives slut shaming her, and people who are just really worried about her because, as funny as this is, this doesn't seem like healthy behaviour.
EDIT 2:
First off, I realized I never gave this girl a name. For the sake of clarity we'll call her Beth. I realize that I didn't mention this before, but all of these are fake names.
Second, to everyone commenting that Chad is at fault for his marriage breaking up, believe me I'm well aware of that. It is his ex wife and her family/friends who solely blame Beth. Chad is also older than her and has more life experience, so I do believe that he could potentially be taking advantage of her naivete. However, she is also an adult who is capable of making her own decisions and has chosen to make poor ones in the past.
Third, people who are upset that I'm posting this story here, claiming I'm humiliating her. She has been posting about this mess on every social media platform she has since they got engaged in July. She put this out there long before I did except she did so in front of friends, family, employers, and coworkers, as well as internet randos.
Fourth, despite getting engaged in July and attempting to start planning then, I was only asked to be a bridesmaid three days ago. I knew that there was a mess going on but I didn't really pay attention to it until she asked me to be a bridesmaid. I tried to ask what was going on, I said that she should talk to someone, but when she completely brushed me off I checked her FB and Instagram and found out about all of... This.
Fifth, I realized that I didn't really talk about how disastrous the wedding planning has been going, see here you go:

• they've had to rebook three times because venues and vendors kept cancelling when infection numbers got worse even thought their wedding was months away
• Beth has been flipping between having the wedding while she's pregnant saying she's proud of her bump, and wanting to wait until they're born because she feels fat, which is unfortunate because she's been breaking down due her insecurity on a public platform
• Beth is currently seven months pregnant
• Beth's great aunt was going to give her her wedding dress to wear (after she gives birth) but Beth's mom freaked and stole the dress from said aunt before Beth could get it and is now keeping it, the great aunt says she's too old to get in a fight and has shrugged it off
• Chad's immediate family is paying for the wedding and has been cut off by the rest of their extended family for 'choosing Chad'
• Beth's wedding colours are pink and green, which is usually a nice combo but the specific shades don't go great together, they're her and Chad's favourite colours, which is fine but she literally made a video talking about these colours for 14 minutes on her insta and both of her kids are just full on bawling in the background and she's ignoring them and she's gotten some flack for that
• Adam is finally settled into his trade and has now hired a lawyer and is trying to get primary custody and not allow his daughter to go to the wedding
• she's planning a zoom baby showebachelorette party and has sent out a registry and she's asking for crazy expensive things
• she's also set up a go fund me to help pay for a honeymoon and is making a lot of posts about how no one loves her cause the fund only has $1267 of the $20k she wanted

I'll update when I can but I'm still in school and while I do want to help her, she's refused help offered in the past and there's only so much of this I can take mentally right now.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
UPDATE:
Hey everyone, so some stuff has gone down, and it doesn't look like it's over yet. Sorry, I didn't update sooner, but Rona came back with a vengeance and totally messed up plans with uni and family. Anyway, onto the update.
From the last update - 16th - Lots of ranting and chaotic wedding planning on social media, she found a dress and has decided she will get married while pregnant, they found a local wedding venue that is very lovely, but I'm shocked she's still trying to book stuff with all of their previous venue cancellations.
December 16th - Her little sister unblocked her to call her a s*ut and tell her that all her wedding plans were stupid. This resulted in a petty and entertaining facebook war until the little sis blocked her again on the 17th.
December 18th - Beth went nuts on social media because Adam had "kidnapped" their daughter, what really happened is that because courts are moving at a snail's pace due to COVID and Adam had reason to believe that their daughter was not safe living with Beth he decided to just... Not give her back. They don't have a custody agreement, and when Beth tried to call the cops they couldn't do anything because he was kinda right. There were dozens of videos on her various social media accounts of her ignoring their daughter, yelling at her daughter for crying or doing other things that toddlers do, it turns out that everything she needed was bought by Adam, food, diapers, clothes, toys, daycare (while it was open) etc. on top of the unofficial child support he was paying every month (which turned out to be $500 a month, a number I find ridiculous because Adam was already paying for literally everything) because she refused to buy anything for her daughter and insisted it was Adam's responsibility. Additionally, after the immediate post-birth appointments, Beth never took baby A to a doctor's appointment, she always deferred that to Adam. Baby A's pediatrician has NEVER met Beth. Beth even tried to get Chad to push back or intimidate him or something, but the local police where we live are under one hell of a microscope after a bunch of dirty cops got busted a couple of years ago. Basically, the cops, and the social worker they ended up calling, ended up saying there was nothing she could do until they get to court. The social worker tried to get her to go to therapy and parenting classes, but Beth refused and went on a fifteen paragraph long rant on Facebook about how she doesn't need parenting classes or therapy (she really, really does though) and called the social worker some choice words.
December 19-24 - Just a bunch of ranting on social media, calling everyone who doesn't enable or justify her behaviour cuss words, slurs, and a whole bunch of other horribly creative things. Also, both she and Chad are under investigation at work now, but she has no idea why. I'm gonna take this time to remind everyone that 99% of this info is coming from her public social media pages where her coworkers are friends and place of employment is listed.
December 25 - I am officially embarrassed to know this woman. I didn't go on her FB page until the evening cause I didn't want to deal with drama, first thing in the morning, on Xmas. In the morning she put on a very beautiful blue maternity dress, got Chad in his police blues, and baby B in a purple romper, and then live-streamed her and her family going to the courthouse to get married on Christmas day. (According to her Twitter, part of this was because their newest venue cancelled on them after COVID numbers spiked) Overall, a pretty tacky thing in my opinion because she stated plain as day, several times, that she intended her wedding anniversary to eclipse Christmas for her children because it's just "so much more special, you know?" (I am so glad that Baby B's grandparents are filing for guardianship) But here's the thing... The courthouse isn't open. Because of COVID for one thing, but also because it's Xmas and Canada has a predominantly Christian history. She proceeded to have a full meltdown, and when Baby B cried because, y'know, the kid's mom was screaming up a storm and scaring her, Beth called her a c*nt. Yup. So done with this bitch.
December 28 - I ran into her at a vaccine clinic cause we were both getting our booster shots. She didn't recognize me at first but one of my old bosses (cause I used to work at the hospital the vaccine clinic was in) called my name and said hi, so she came up to me after my old boss had left. We talked a bit while we sat down for the mandatory waiting period after getting the shot. She asked how I was but didn't even wait for me to respond before she started ranting and complaining about her life. I was just going to sit there until the time was up and then just politely make my exit, but when she started talking shit about her kids something inside me snapped. I just said "Do you even like your kids? Do you like being a mom?" She got pretty quiet for a second and then said "no". Idk, her voice and demeanour completely changed and we just sat in silence until our time was up. I said goodbye but it was really awkward.
December 31st (today) - I just looked at her feed and, this is such a shocking what-the-actual-f*** moment. She's thinking about giving up her kids. She went on about how recently she was asked if she liked her kids or being a mom, and how she realized that she didn't. She hates her children and blames them for ruining her life, and how she doesn't want to be a mom. I mean, nothing is official yet, but what the hell?!
I'll update as stuff happens now that I have the time, but this whole thing has been a big giant mess. Also, sorry for any formatting or grammatical errors, I'm not used to using Reddit on my PC.
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UPDATE
Okay, so, some stuff has happened and most of it's good? Also, the TL:DR for this update will be at the bottom
Jan 4th - Beth (and Chad) stopped posting on all social media. I was actually a little worried she died, I mean this woman posts everything short of her trips to the bathroom on IG.
Oddly enough, this got people messaging or interacting with her social media pages because she was usually the one to start contact, and that contact was usually yelling. No one heard from them and some people started to be like "should we call the cops for a wellness check?" Until Chad posted a status saying that they're fine but are "busy, please stop trying to contact us right now". Everyone listened but it was weird.
Jan 11 - I got a notification that Beth and Chad are active on social media again, but I didn't feel like drama so I didn't check out any of their posts.
Jan 12 (today) - she messaged me on FB asking me to be her MOH. She also kept going on about the resort in Cancun that she and Chad were looking to have their wedding at... This coming February. Omnicrom is really bad where we are, so no one should be travelling anywhere. I've actually had to delay my trip back to the province where I go to university. No one should be travelling anywhere.
Beth also found out that Chad was cheating on her with one of her co-workers and called the woman a "homewrecker" on FB tagged her, and posted the texts she found on Chad's phone. But Chad is the "love of her life" so she's forgiven him, but not the other woman. Which I find very hypocritical, considering how she and Chad got together.
She also sent pics of possible bridesmaid dresses and they are the most hideous dresses I've ever seen. I know that some brides do that thing where they want to look a million times better by comparison but this was just ridiculous. One of them looked like a partially deflated balloon with feathers strapped to it. She also openly admitted that she expected everyone attending to pay 3k, 2k would go towards that guest's stay at the resort and 1k would go to her and Chad and they will expected wedding gifts, so that they could get their room for free. Apparently, she talked to someone at the resort and if she got enough people to book their rooms she and Chad would get theirs for free. She also wanted the money to be given to her instead of directly to the hotel so that people wouldn't realize that she was taking 1k of their money. Beth sent me a pic of the wedding dress she wanted, and it's definitely a clubbing dress. If that's what she wants that's fine (and for the record I do think she would look great in it, Beth's (current) dream wedding dress ) but she wants all the guests to be dressed black tie. And she's already sent a list of unreasonable requests. Such as;

• all women must wear heels (for a wedding in the beach???)
• no one is allowed to have a baby or be pregnant (really?)
• girls must have longer than shoulder length hair, boys must have very short hair, only and inch or two long
• no one is allowed to be skinnier than her
• she will be providing diets for everyone attending based on how she wants us to look
• she and Chad must get bachelor and bachelorette parties both in Canada and in Mexico that need to be "fit for a king and queen" and both must be paid for but anyone but the bride and groom "cause that's just tacky"
• no unnatural hair
• no tattoos (you have five tattoos, Beth, and in the dress you want all will be on full display)
• no one is allowed to talk to her directly, they must speak through the MOH and BM

Honestly there's a lot more but I didn't feel like typing all that out. She's posted the list on FB and IG and people are already calling her a bridezilla.
I was also just kinda weirded out because aside from the previous convo at the hospital and when she originally asked me to be a bridesmaid, we haven't spoken since high school. So I respectfully declined, stating that the virus and school were my top concerns right now. Then, I decided to check her socials to see if she'd posted anything. She had and everything was basically how it was before the hiatus... Except her kids are nowhere to be found. No "look at my cute baby" pics are kids crying in the background of her videos. Nothing. Though, based on her new pics of herself, she's given birth to baby C. I mean, she's definitely still recovering, but she also definitely had a baby and that baby is not on any of her socials, so when she responded to my decline with an attempt at guilting me to be her MOH, I asked her where her kids were. This was her response.
"Oh, I left them at the side of the road in our way home from the hospital those moochers could walk home lol"
I was like, please tell me you're not being serious (especially cause it looks like she had the baby days ago). And she replied "I was just joking you shouldn't be so serious all the time". Honey, you made a joke about child abandonment/abuse, you're not being serious enough. And then I finally got the update on the kids.

• Baby A is still with Adam, Beth signed away her rights
• Baby B and Baby C have been given to a mutual cousin of Adam and Chad who is infertile (tbh I didn't need that last tidbit of info or the three paragraph long rant about how God hates infertile women, I didn't even read all of it, I couldn't, and I didn't think that Beth could be so cruel to even think those things). I checked out the FB page of Baby B's grandparents and they're happy with their grandchild's new parents, it looks like the cousin and her husband and welcoming them to the family as another set of grandparents and will let them have access to B. So yay!
• One thing I do need to stress though is that because of COVID the courts in our areas are either moving at a snail's pace or closed, so none of this is "official" but Beth (and Chad) has signed paperwork and all that needs to happen now is presenting that to a judge.

And when I rejoined our convo she said the doc she had for baby C gave her brith control, and she was surprised cause after her first pregnancy she asked her doctor for it but he refused to give her any. She mentioned that her old doctor was also her mom's and sister's doctor, she ended up asking the doc who delivered baby C to be her new doctor, so I hope that works out.
After learning all this my convo with Beth started to go down hill...
Beth: wait, did you actually think I would just leave my kids at the side of the road! I just didn't want to be a mom, but I wasn't a bad one
Me: Beth, I think that you've been through a lot of trauma in the past few years, and that it's gotten to you mentally and that you should speak to a professional.
(Of course, Beth has been a bad mom, but she does need mental health help and I wasn't going to convince her to get it, or to not tell at me, if I said that )
Beth: what? You think I'm crazy?!
Me: no. I think that getting kicked out as a teen because of a pregnancy and having your family actively reject you and try to sabotage you must have been very painful. Plus, pregnancy puts a lot of mental stress on women and you've had three in such a short time span, I just want you to take care of yourself and get what you want in life, and I think that will start with you taking care of your mental health.
Beth: what I want... IS FOR YOU TO GO STRAIGHT TO HELL! Beth then calls me every cuss word, expletive, and derogatory word she can think of one of the words she called me was a derogatory word about people from my ethnicity and my blood is boiling that she thought it was okay to say that to me.
So, I'm now on her hit list. She's been blowing up my social media all day, on her last FB post where she called me a slur she said that she still expects a good wedding gift from me. Yeah, no. So I've blocked her on everything, and I've decided to completely cut off contact. This will be my last update.
TL:DR - Beth went on a social media blackout for a bit, had baby C. Gave up all her kids, baby A is still with Adam, Baby B and Baby C are with a mutual cousin of Adam and Chad and baby B's grandparents have access. Chad cheated on her and she forgave him, but she probably shouldn't have. She's decided to have her wedding in a little over a month in Cancun and is expecting unreasonable things of everyone already. She asked me to be MOH I respectfully declined. I also suggested that she talk to a mental health professional because she's been through a lot in the last few years and she cussed me out, she also called me a derogatory name directed at people of my ethnicity and that was the final nail in the coffin. I'm now on her hit list. But her kids are safe and I have no interest in going to wedding so I'm cutting contact completely and have already blocked her on all my socials. I'm refusing to be involved with her anymore and will not be updating on the situation.
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--- EDIT - NEW UPDATE --- - JANUARY 25, 2023 - TL:DR AT THE BOTTOM
Hi, everyone, I didn't think I would be making another update, but here I am. I don't know if anyone will even care but whatever. I saw a YouTuber, Charlotte Dobre, do an entire video about this post on Facebook (which was funny, she did it well), [editor's note: here's the video in question and also: check out Charlotte Dobre's subreddit !] and got so nervous that Beth was gonna see it. Turned out, she's seen it and does not give a single damn, because as I pointed out, the majority of the info in this post came from her public social media. She also doesn't know who posted it (more on that in the update). I am still no contact with Beth and have no plans to change that anytime soon, but we have mutual friends who have told and shown me what's happened.
First things first, she and Chad did get married, but they eloped. According to all sources they are completely and utterly miserable though. Chad has proven to be and overall lazy and unfaithful husband, and Beth has really gotten into feminism (with a focus on reproductive issues) after she started using birth control, and Roe v Wade getting overturned (even though we're in Canada) really caused tension in their marriage. As it turns out, Chad thinks that abortion is murder and God created women for the purpose of making babies.
Beth tried to argue that not all women want or should be mothers using herself as an example, and then Chad went ahead and used her as an example of why women should be forced to have kids, because in the end she gave kids to an infertile couple. She didn't take that well and said that her entire life and future was ripped away from her and destroyed the second she got pregnant with baby A. Adam was never slut shamed or demeaned like she was, both at home and at school (which is a fair point, myself and many others were helpful and supportive but there were a lot of people who judged the hell out of her and said really nasty stuff) and that if she hadn't gotten pregnant she would've gone to college or university because she lost the general and financial support of her family with that positive pregnancy test. Chad has made a Tinder account. Beth was informed but it doesn't seem like she gave a damn.
So basically you could cut the tension with a knife.
And with her family, her sister came out as gay and cut off/has been cut off from their parents. But she's got a partial scholarship so she's doing okay. She and Beth are NOT on good terms but have met up and acknowledged that their parents messed them up by being religious nuts and their parents encouraged them to be competitive with each other and sabotage each other. Apparently their dad's motto is "competition brings out the best in everyone" (ugh). But they've talked and that's good enough for now.
Neither Beth nor Chad have custody or visitation of their children, which Chad is starting to regret because he's suddenly getting more and more into the church and religion. Chad talked to Beth about getting baby C back but Beth shut that down hard and warned the cousin who adopted baby C (officially and legally btw).
Beth started going to therapy after she and Chad got married, which makes me very happy and excited for her.
There was a rumour going around that Chad has a mistress and it took me a while to confirm, but it's true. He's cheating on her with a paramedic and she knows. Beth is fully aware. Idk if she plans to do anything about it or just continue to ignore it, but I hope she leaves his ass. I'm still not gonna talk to her, she crossed so many lines, but she's grown and improved a lot and her life would be a lot better without that sac of scum in her life.
Now, I have given a few details in my post that should've revealed my identity to her, namely her asking me to be her MOH. I have found out that she actually asked around 15 girls (including myself) to be her MOH, without telling any of us about the others because she was trying to get money from all of us and because her mental health has just been very bad and she needed help. And of those 15, 8 have been going to school out of province and of those eight we all had basically the same classes in high school. And apparently doesn't remember our discussion at the vaccination clinic and had major blow up with everyone she asked to be MOH. So she knows it's one of 8 people and reportedly has no interest in trying to narrow that number down. (Chad did the same thing with his groomsmen, but idk any of the numbers)
TL:DR Beth and Chad got married (eloped), are miserable, have zero custody or visitation with any of their children, Chad's cheating and Beth doesn't appear to care, Chad is super sexist, Beth is a feminist now, Beth's sister is gay and they've talked but not reconciled, Beth asked too many girls to be MOH for money and doesn't know the ID of who made this post.
Dear "Beth", if this post gets forwarded to you or somehow graces your phone screen, leave Chad. He's trash and you'll be much better without him in your life. And though I'm not willing to talk to you again because of your words and actions, I do wish for you to have a wonderful and happy life.
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I'm not the OOP!

Just a rant since i can't afford a therapist right now.
We have been together for almost two years and at first our sex life was great but now my bf doesn't seem to be interested in sex as much anymore. I try to initiate but he always turns me down so we have sex only when he decides to which is not often to me (like three times a month, maybe more, maybe even less). We have a great relationship outside of bedroom, we live together, I love him so so much but this thing just frustrates me. I did communicate it with him but he says he's fine the way it is and it's not gonna change in the nearest future. Btw, it was the same with his ex too, she would also cry for sex and he would turn her down every time. For context, we are 22 years old so I suspect testosterone issues since there are other signs as well ( for example, he suddenly gained weight but he was really skinny all his life).
Now, to my feelings. I just feel empty inside (no pun intended), like there is a hole inside me that can't be filled no matter what (no pun intended again). Like no matter how happy I am, this dissatisfaction just always follows me everywhere. I don't feel pretty and I don't feel desirable. It hurts me that he's not attracted to me as much as I am to him. I'm afraid he doesn't view me as a beautiful woman but more like a cute and funny gremlin next to him. To me, sex is what divides our romantical partners from our friends. Sometimes it feels like we are just rommates. We hang out, we cuddle, we cook together and watch TV but that's it. Sometimes I forget that I'm still an attractive girl.
When I was on an all girls trip we went to the club. Honestly, I don't like clubs and I don't support clubbing when you're in a relationship unless you are together but that was the only time and it wasn't intentional. It was supposed to be a bar and it Was for some time but then the people arrived and the music started and me and my best friend decided to just dance a little cause we also met two girls (you know, drunk friendship in a club toilet, one of you have some relationship problems, classic) and also we were already drunk. At the club several guys hitted on me I obviously turned down every one of them (I'm not really attracted to men unless it's my boyfriend, especially to men who go to the clubs to pick girls) but it felt shocking. Like man i forget I'm still young and attractive. Like someone still wants me for the way I look and for my body.
Long story short, I had issues with thinking people only date me because I'm interesting to talk to not because I am pretty. I wasn't really interested in sex until i met my boyfriend and lucky! those people were not that interested too. And after that I had people interested in me Only because of my body and not my personality at all. So my boyfriend loving both was some kind of revelation to me and him turning to just liking to spend time with me and talk to me wakes up in me that past trauma? i guess. Or better say insecurity.
My bf was the one who got me into sex as an enjoyable activity I can look forward to. I did have sex w girls before him and it wasn't bad but I didn't care if I had it or not, it just didn't cross my mind. If it happens, great, if not, also great. And later on when i started having sex w men I just had sex for the sake of it and didn't get any pleasure out of it. Yay! Penetration! But he made it great. Like I actually started to orgasm with him, I started to like it and want more of it.
I know I am attractive. I want to have so much sex while I'm still young and pretty. I want to explore different things (not like threesomes and sex parties but something I can do with my bf only). And it pains me that I'm wasting my youth.
It may sound silly but it just feels horrible. I have all kinds of self doubts on top of having general relationship anxiety. I'm devastated. I'm spiraling every day. Some people say it's better to just break up if you have sexual incompatibility, some say it's actually fixable (like if it's testosterone issues). I know he loves me, I know he's not cheating or anything and I just really don't want to bother him with my intrusive thoughts. But I really feel undesirable. I feel like I'm 13 years old again and no guy will look at me cause I'm not feminine enough.
I just want my boyfriend to want me. Anytime I read the post from the girl saying her bf want wayy more sex than her I think girl if only I could trade the situations with you oh my god. I shut myself everyday. I try to convince myself sex is not that important and the realisation that to me it is and I can't change it hurts so much.
I don't want to break up over it for now since I still believe there are ways to fix it but if they will be unsuccessful? I don't think I'm gonna be able to continue this. And I don't want that. For me, I believe there should be only one serious partner in my life and we would get married and live haplily ever after. Like I'm not living in a fairytale I know people break up and sometimes it's for good. I've also had relationship before but they wasn't as serious. And I don't think I will be able to trust another man in my life. I don't want to live with someone, make our home cozy, building the life together and then just become a strangers. Like I won't be able to handle it over and over again. And I have severe trust issues towards men since a lot of them are cheating and not over their ex. Yes, I used to date girls before and this is my first boyfriend and it feels like a Nightmate. I've never had trust issues in the relationship before. I've never worried there could be some girl they be texting or whatever. Just pure mindless happiness. So sweet. Well not until I started interacting with men and was introduced to all kinds of mischief, lying and all sorts of disrespectful things. I don't hate men if I sound like that but my experience with them was awful and the things I've read on the internet and the things my friends told me don't make it easier for me to trust them. For background all of my new friends in the past few years are guys and I always spend time in the all boys company (bfs friends, my girl friends live in different cities so we don't see each other often) and they are great people and i care for them so much but boy! some of them shouldn't go near a woman until they deal with their issues. I don't know why I'm even explaining myself I just don't want reddit people to jump on me for stereotyping. I do trust my boyfriend though mostly. We had some issues (kinda serious ones) but we resolved them and now I'm almost healed and he actually grew as a person too and changed. So I don't want it go to waste.
I just really really hope it will be resolved and I'm willing to wait. Not because I don't believe i won't find anyone ever again but because I actually do love my bf and I like that we are both growing in this relationship. I just realized how stupid i sound. Like i cling onto the relationship cause he's the first person to give me what i wanted 😭 It's not like that I promise I actually view relationship way more rationally than it may look like but I was just ranting uncontrollably. Yeah, I would be fine if we broke up but I don't want that and I don't see it as a solution.
Anyway, I hope it's not some kind of lesson to learn fron the universe but a strong bond between us developing.

Sorry for my bad english
Well, I have been with my girlfriend for a little over 2 years, I am M19 F19, we are about to start college and there are changes that I did not expect so soon.
My girlfriend is not one to have a lot of friends or girlfriends in general, she always had 1 or 2 at most and lately we are spending more time together than we have in a while.
She started talking to high school classmates these days and I was happy that she had friends outside of our relationship.
She started talking to a guy she met before she met me, she told me once that she used to like him a few years ago, and a few months ago we had a discussion in which she mentioned that she dreamed about him doing romantic things and it didn't affect me because I knew it was part of her past but I found it weird, since she almost took it as an excuse to end the relationship, according to me because she was confused.
These days she started to make contact with him and a few more friends that she told me about making a group between them, when she mentioned it to me I felt a little surprised and a little insecure, I mentioned it to her and she told me calm is just that I want to have friends and I thought it was a good idea to contact them and take the friendship again well, I replied it seems good but I just wanted wue keep in mind that it makes me a little uncomfortable that situation, but I do not want you to change or stop talking to her then ended that conversation without getting to much , just me accepting the idea.
Yesterday we went to an event in which I went away from her for a while to go to the bathroom telling her that I would wait for her at the entrance because her father was going to pick her up, so I could accompany her to the bathroom, then time passed and I saw her going out with a guy that didn't look familiar smiling and laughing and looking somewhat flirtatious while talking to her, then my mood changed, I felt jealous and insecure (I must admit that I was very rude) I approached her without knowing how I should act because she was not meeting and being friendly with guys in general, and even less if they were strangers so I went to meet them and I went ahead of them in an abrupt way, with a face of a bitter feeling I went out and went ahead to meet her father, she had dropped something but I only saw it out of the corner of my eye while I was picking it up and I don't know for sure what happened with the guy I was with, then I got to her father and I said goodbye with a low voice while I went on my way (I know, very rude). By the time I got home I grabbed my cell phone and started blocking and unblocking her and the networks and unfollowing her and things I'm not proud to say, then I calmed down and thought better of it and it didn't make sense what I was doing.
She sent me a message apologizing for how she left and asking me if it was ok because the previous attitude is not normal for me (I am usually too affectionate and attentive to her so she thought it was weird) then I explained to her why I was that way, she told me it was a partner from an ex-job that just told her what happened with that place, I felt partly relieved and embarrassed by my attitude, and all that night I behaved in a bad way with her so to speak, then she sent me messages saying your way of acting and the way you treat me when you get like that, I do not like and it makes me uncomfortable, to think that if I have more friends when you see me you will behave that way and that is very selfish of you.
In the night tonight I dreamt 2 times of her being with the two guys I mentioned to you and it put me in a weird mood, the first one being of her dating the first guy, being affectionate and such, the second one with her ex co-worker kissing and being boyfriend and girlfriend while I watched. Today in the morning I told her about the dreams and she said it's your problem to think I'll be with other guys and it got me thinking.
It's worth saying that I'm a little insecure physically, because of my height and how skinny I am, I've always struggled with jealousy for years, I try to handle it and not let it affect me too much but it always comes out in one way or another.
I don't want to keep feeling like this, pretending like I feel good in front of her, because it affects me, my relationship, my mood and therefore everything else.
How can I stop feeling this way? What do you think about my situation?

We all know that in today's world there is an easy access to informations worldwide. We are specifically talking about Genz here. For thousands of years...hell... since our ancestors were monkeys...they had been meeting the opposite genders, having babies with them. Until now. Until the end of the earth, this cycle will go on. Now I'm not saying they didn't masturbate or had any sources. Ofcourse it is healthy...if it's done in check right is what people say...just like weed. Then you end up smoking all day lol. Whatever suits you.
But if we talk pre internet era...our forefathers didn't have much access to vulgarity apart from those few seconds of sex scenes or from the magazines.
But if we talk about now...dude...we got tonnes of sites according to your fantasies which is there to give you a rush for a short amount of time, followed by dissapoinment. We dont even masturbate to pictures like we did ten years ago. There are legit videos for every category, every age group...we can rewind to our favorite part of the videos to reach the orgasm. Its wild. Just with the help of a smartphone...cuz computers went away long time ago...so there's no problem when it comes to getting your privacy to jack off to your favorite porn
What happens is that your mind gets used to the stimulation of magazines...then you switch to soft videos...then towards hard ones...eventually you have explored every genre of porn, every fucking fantasies you had naturally, fantasies which you started liking due to porn, everything you consumed you gave no fucks. You thought it's free, but it isn't bro. You sell your soul literally everytime you access that shit.
And people in their fucking 20s are facing EDs and arousal related issues...ITS sick. Considering that 20s is the epitome of sexual and physical health. In today's generation, a 22 year old guy has the testosterone level as equal to his grandfather. That alone should actually make you think what the fuck is wrong with this generation?
Anyway moving towards the hazard...children who started porn from a very young age, got naturally addicted to it... This shit actually fucks with your brain...because your brain develops around the age of 25. This unnatural way of getting stimulated through porn makes you a total loser in life. You can't talk confidently, you feel insecure, you feel like less of a man from inside, you get no girls...even if you do once or twice, they see through you and say goodbye to you.
Now I'm not saying that y'all have ED. But...you get more erection in porn as compared to when you are with your girl. When it should be opposite. That is actually sad.
I am 24 years old I have been struggling with Adhd which makes my low dopamine producing brain vulnerable to porn addiction. I have been masturbating since the age of 11. Don't get me wrong it's hard, really hard to let go of this shit, specially for me. I've never had a girlfriend. I always crave the intimacy, the touch, the pillow talks... I have screwed my life right. But I am seven days clean now. I've been working out, keeping myself busier, doing a thousand squats a day...getting sunlight, eating good food and water...getting good sleep, throwing my phone away after 11 pm...
Now the question is... is it all solved? Nah. I do get triggers...but...I think of my girl whom I'll meet in the future, I gotta be strong for her. She deserves the best possible man outta me and I'll do it for her, for me, for my life. I know you can as well...you should. Be the best possible version of yourself.
I heard this line somewhere...and it says "Its a shame to not see what full potential your body has, and how best you can be"
All the best Fuckers...You got this :)