I’m thinking about getting back with my ex. We were together from 2017-2022. Broke up in ‘22 and didn’t speak at all until 2024. I broke up with her because I wanted to focus on myself and get my life together. She had sex with at least 2 guys and caught feelings for at least 1 of them. She also had a few cell phone convos with someone in my circle. I went on one single date the entire time we weren’t together. I made a mistake in leaving but I fear I will never look at her the same. Am I over reacting?

The internet is a strange place, inadvertently designed to bring out the best and worst in people. People can be whoever or whatever they want to be. For predators and malignant narcissists and who live in their own delusions to begin with, it's like a hunting ground. They can create whatever persona they wish, fill their victims' heads with lies and half-truths that paint them out to be someone they are not, and by the time their victim actually meets them, it's too late - they've already created an image in their mind of this perfect person the narcissist has convinced them they are, and it usually takes time before the curtain comes down, the lies fall apart, and the mask breaks away.
I'm no saint, and I've learned my own tough lessons from the internet. I grew up under not-so-great circumstances, only getting 5 years of education before I turned 18 and was largely raised by a computer screen. Along the way, I catfished a woman in her mid-20's when I was 14-16 years old. It wasn't intentional at first, I told everyone that I was in my mid-20's and I worked as a bouncer at a bar in NYC. I never meant any harm, I was just raised by a computer and spent all my time alone playing MMOs and learned quickly that if I told people how old I was, they'd stop playing with me. So a bouncer seemed like a job I could bullshit about easily enough, and I was a big dude at 6'1 260lbs so I figured I could maybe pass it off as legit if it ever got hectic.
I started playing with this woman in her 20's and her husband frequently. We became friends fast, and soon we were virtually inseparable on the game. Her marriage ended up not working out, and after they separated she told me she had feelings for me. I should've admitted I wasn't who I said I was then, but I was young and dumb and she was the only real friend I had, so I kept up the ruse. Eventually I did come clean, and she broke it off with me not long after. We stayed friends, albeit with my heart hurting pretty bad, for a few months afterwards - until she met Jack.
When she first told me about Jack, he sounded like a great catch. He had his own IT business in Canada, was a couple years older but not by much, and she was infatuated with him. Obviously I was crushed and didn't handle it well, being a practically feral teenager at the time, so not long after they started getting serious she ghosted me altogether. I was around 17 at the time, and shit started going off the rails for me. After I got out of juvie, I started drinking heavily on a near-daily basis and selling and doing drugs. This led to a lot of pathetic, inebriated, desperate attempts to contact her and apologize for how I acted.
After months of being ignored, eventually grief and regret turned to anger, and finally acceptance. When the pain passed and I came to my senses a bit, I had an epiphany and realized that if I loved her as much as I thought I did, the best thing for both of us would be to let her go. I was a high school dropout with no job, selling drugs to get by. She had 2 kids, and what kind of life could I provide for them? She made the right choice, my age and the fact I made a grown woman fall in love with a teenager not withstanding, and as bad as it hurt I realized it was selfish of me not to accept the way things were and leave her alone, so I did.
10 years or so later, I had gotten my shit together. Worked my way up from cleaning dead shit out of swimming pools, to an entry level position at an environmental consulting firm, to a Project Manager at one of the largest firms in the field in the DC area. I'd met someone, got her pregnant, and for some reason I felt a pull to contact her again. Not to rekindle an old flame, but because she had been a tremendously positive influence on my life in a time where I had few. She was the first good thing I had in my life at a time when I was sleeping on old blankets on a hard floor in an abusive home, and what I'd held onto from our time together wasn't our romantic relationship, it was the best friend I'd ever had. And something made me want to tell her that all that work she put into getting my head right wasn't in vain, and I'd finally made it out of the gutter.
So I messaged her on Facebook, and to my surprise she actually responded. We started talking again, and soon it was back to every day. When my baby mama got back on drugs and turned abusive and was putting my daughter's life in jeopardy on a near-daily basis, she was the one who convinced me I could fight for custody - that I had to fight for custody. So I did, and I won, and I've had full custody of of my daughter since she was 6 months old and for the 10 years since.
But eventually we parted ways again. I'd started seeing someone, and part of me knew I couldn't commit to another woman while I was still carrying on with her. Our relationship had started turning romantic again, and she had dropped some hints about old Jack that would come to the forefront later, but she wasn't ready to leave him and I didn't want to be that guy, so I sent her a message explaining why we had to stop talking, apologized, and ghosted her.
7 more years went by after that night. The relationship I abandoned her for soured quickly when I found out that chick was a carbon copy of my baby mama, and I quit dating to focus on my career and raising my daughter. But on the long, 2+ hour commutes each way from work, I often found myself stuck pondering the "what ifs". What if I hadn't ghosted her? What if our age gap wasn't there, and we'd never had to split up to begin with? I knew in my soul I was never going to find someone like her again, but I made peace with it. I imagined her happy life, her kids with Jack, and convinced myself I made the right choice.
Then COVID hit, and near the start of it, I stumbled on a post on reddit about this dude who sent his high school sweetheart a message many years later apologizing for how he treated her and telling her how her presence impacted him, and I thought to myself, "Hey, I did that!". So I started writing a reply, and for the first time told the story of this girl and I. I'd never told a soul about what happened with us, not even my family or closest friends. Maybe it was the stigma of having an online relationship back in those days that carried over, or maybe it was just too personal to share with my friends or family. It got long, so eventually I just decided to start a new thread. When I was done, it was so long I figured no one would ever read it, but I hit submit anyway and put my phone down and got back to work.
Well, I was wrong. People did read it - a lot of people. Soon my phone started blowing up. Thousands of comments, hundreds of DMs, people offering me book deals and asking if they could have the rights for a screenplay or have me on their podcasts. It was fucking surreal, and being generally a private person who tries to fly under the rader, it got overwhelming fast. Eventually I reached out to her again on Facebook, warned her about what happened, and apologized for putting her business out there.
She didn't respond for a couple weeks, and when she did we started talking again almost immediately. And then in mid-April 2020, she told me that she needed to talk to me. She spilled everything, and told me exactly who Jack was. How he would hack into her devices to spy on her, threaten to kill her and her partner if she ever left him, say vile things to her and her daughters, calling the young girls cunts and bitches. How he alienated all her friends and family, and kept them all isolated in the house her parents bought them that he would rarely leave.
And I felt deceived too. All those years I'd convinced myself that she was happy, that she got together with Jack and was living the life she deserved. In reality, Jack intentionally got her pregnant not long after he flew out to her state the first time. He quickly moved into her house, and refused to work or provide not only for her kids or their kids, but for the other 3 children he abandoned in Australia and Canada who he had no relationship with, with 3 different women he victimized in the same manner. When she was 8 months pregnant with their first kid, she was working nights doing hospice care while he sat on his ass playing videogames all night and talking to his ex. In 17 years, this fucking loser with 7 kids by 4 women worked a grand total of 5 weeks, quit his job, claimed he got PTSD from the experience, and somehow manipulated his way into getting SSDI for it. They survived off SSDI and her parents' charity for years.
But Jack was reading all of this, because like I mentioned earlier, he was hacking her devices and watching us talk remotely. Jack knew the jig was up, and slowly started to unravel. She told him she wanted a divorce, and that she was not going to sever her friendship with me again. And he pretended to take that well, going as far as to try to befriend and manipulate me. He tried every trick to keep her he'd done for years - telling her he was going to get help and would change first, then when that failed he made suicide threats and somehow got his therapist to call her and tell her as long as she didn't leave him he wouldn't kill himself, and then he tried to intimidate her. Eventually he went off the rails completely and sexually assaulted her when he thought she was sleeping.
She called me from her parents' house crying the night it happened, and I convinced her to file a police report. She did, and a couple weeks later Jack got removed from the home, served with a protective order, and charged for sexual abuse. This of course did nothing to stop Jack - he broke into their house a couple days later when she and the kids were out to upload a folder of revenge porn to his Google Drive under the guise of wanting to drop off a cake for her birthday.
Then the stalking started. Jack would relentlessly message her all day and night on Facebook, switching between rage, trying to garner sympathy, convince her he would change, and threatening self-harm. We later found out via a cyber forensics report that he was hacking into the laptop she had taken with her while she hid at her parents' and had been so bold as to steal her Victim Impact Statement and send it to all his World of Warcraft buddies as a joke.
And he didn't just stalk her, he came for me too. Constant unauthorized attempts to access my accounts for everything from Windows to my bank, spam calls and emails - shit, the wormy little fuck even got his friends to stalk my social media and pretend to be strangers to gaslight me. I ignored all of it, and he got desperate enough to send me a lovely message attempting to extort and blackmail she and I, claiming he had "all my posts" but wouldn't do anything with them if I called him. The tipping point for me is when he subscribed to my small YouTube channel - which had nothing on it but 3 videos of my daughter. That veiled threat wasn't lost on me.
But Jack fucked up. I don't know if he thought his insane nonsense would scare me off, or if in his delusions he really thought he was the bad mother fucker he convinced himself he was, but Jack didn't know jack about me. I'm a crazy fuck too, and while he was sitting on his fat ass playing World of Warcraft all day every day for the past couple decades, I was selling drugs and hanging with some of the grimiest mother fuckers Baltimore had to offer. I've seen and experienced a lot of real violence outside a computer monitor, and the prospect of a violent resolution to this saga didn't phase me a whole lot. I'd spent years trying to be a better person and avoid conflict, but I sure as shit wasn't afraid of it either. Leading up to this point, I was already trying to calm myself down and talk myself off the ledge and not pack my guns and drive out there to keep watch until the police did their thing and put him away, which took a lot longer than it should have - this fucking guy violated his protective order 80 times in just a couple weeks.
So I called him, and he spent the next 26 minutes crying over the phone like a drunk little bitch, while I tried my best to be kind and to talk him off the ledge. And yes, I did record it, and yes it is hysterical listening to it now in hindsight, and yes I still have the recording. Anyway, I told him he was scaring the shit out of her and the kids, and he promised to leave us alone and I told him if he could chill the fuck out I would try to talk her into giving him more access to the kids. The next day, she got an email from her first ex-husband - Jack had reached out to him with a link to my reddit post trying to get help from him to come after me, which he promptly shut down and sent to her.
The next few weeks were terrifying as Jack descended further into madness and became more scared and desperate. He knew she was gone and not coming back, and he was facing real charges and real jail time, and while Jack is a fucking moron in a lot of ways, I'm sure he knew a fat, greasy computer nerd with a sex offense conviction wasn't going to have a good time in County. Jack was a murder-suicide waiting to happen, the police were doing nothing to stop his stalking, and I felt powerless to help her. Eventually after he sent her $50 over PayPal at 4:00am with what appeared to be a suicide note, I had enough. I called the DA's office, asked them why the fuck this was being allowed to happen, and promised them I'd been taking meticulous notes and if anything happened to her I would be taking it straight to the media. The DA told me if I was going to make threats the conversation was over, but sure enough he was finally arrested not long after.
Ironically we had remained platonic friends through most of this, but the shared experience of dealing with this psycho brought us closer together and things quickly changed. We knew he wasn't going to stop when he got out of jail, I felt responsible for her safety after my stupid reddit post started this chain of events that led to Jack's unraveling, and with the world seemingly coming apart during COVID, decided if we were ever going to meet it felt like it was now or never. So I booked a plane ticket across the country, spent a week with her and her family, and a few days after I came home she flew out to visit me and meet my family.
We went into it with no expectations. I fully accepted we might not click and our relationship would go back to being platonic. For my part, I just wanted the closure of finally meeting this person who had such a profound impact on my life before COVID mutated or something and killed us all.
But we did click, and the next two weeks were life-changing. I met and cooked for her entire extended family the day after I arrived, and it went well. While I was there I got her mom's email address, and after I went home I had an idea. I knew her parents had met in DC, so I emailed her mom and asked her for a list of places that were special to her, and she told me about the church her parents had met in. I asked her to keep our conversation secret so it would be a surprise, and she did.
So when she comes out to the east coast, I take her on a tour through DC and park the car a few blocks down the street from the church. As we're walking by, she notices the church and comments on how beautiful it is.
I keep it cool and respond, "Yeah, that's a pretty important place.".
She looks at me and says, "Oh? Why's that?".
"That's where your parents met.".
She audibly gasps, giddily bounces a bit, starts to cry, and we pulled down our masks (fuckin covid) and kiss. Her reaction is easily one of the greatest memories in my life. What I didn't know at the time, was that her parents had told her about that church since she and her siblings were kids. When the church changed denominations, the church took the angel statue off the top and brought it back to her home state, and her parents had taken them to see it a few times throughout her childhood.
Anyway, getting sidetracked here, the sappy love story stuff is a different story altogether.
A month after we met for the first time, I had quit my job, sold everything I couldn't fit in my sedan, and she flew back out and drove across the country with my daughter and I.
Sounds crazy as hell, and it was, but it worked out better than it should have. I got a good job making more than I did back home right away, her kids loved me, and my daughter loved her and adjusted to her new home fast. And by the time Jack got out of jail for felony cyberstalking, sexual abuse, and Intimidation of a Witness in a Domestic Violence case, we had cameras all over the house, and I had taught my fiancee how to shoot - which she quickly became better than me at.
But Jack's time in jail didn't slow him down, and the 2-10 year suspended sentence didn't deter him at all. As a matter of fact, on his first day out one of the first things he did was start trying to hack her accounts again. He managed to con an elderly couple he knew threw World of Warcraft from a different state into letting him live with them, and from there he spent a lot of time and energy stalking us and hacking our devices to the best of his ability. He also convinced these poor, very stupid elderly people from his videogame to bankroll a lengthy, expensive divorce. Somehow a man who hadn't worked in almost 20 years managed to run us into over $50,000 in legal fees in two years. How a marriage with zero assets turned into a two year battle when both parties were officially in poverty before the divorce, or how the family courts never saw through the bullshit is beyond me.
To Jack's credit, he did a pretty good job remaining a thorn in our side. Largely due to the complete and utter ineptitude and indifference of the police and District Attorney who could and should have put a stop to his bullshit at any point in that time. Old Jack got hit with a permanent criminal stalking injunction and a 10-year protective order along with his probation, and no amount of effort on our part would get the police, DA, or probation to put a stop to it, despite mountains of evidence.
He successfully managed to draw the divorce out right up to the wedding we planned a year and a half prior, with his attorney putting in motion after motion to delay the process. With all our family and friends coming from all over the country and as far away as Japan, we accepted our wedding would just be a celebration and not an official wedding. Until the night before the wedding, she got a call from her attorney - he had made a call to the clerk's office at the court and got her to move the paperwork to finalize the divorce to the top of the pile, and she was officially divorced. Our wedding would be a real wedding after all, and despite Jack's best efforts, he lost again. We had the wedding on a remote ranch that we rented for a week, and foolishly decided to cater and decorate ourselves, which would have been a colossal undertaking without the extra 4 hours to drive into town and get our marriage certificate at the courthouse. But we pulled it off and it was everything we could have hoped for and then some, and we were officially married.
Jack of course didn't stop after the divorce was finalized. The list of shit he tried to do to us before and after that is too long to spell out in an already too long post, but here are some choice bits:
He wrote a demented letter to the oldest of his kids with her who severed her relationship with him, calling my wife and her mother "vipers and cowards" and promising we would "answer for what we've done sooner or later".
He continuously hacked our computers, miscellaneous accounts tied to our emails, and any other devices he could get into - dropping in remotely via Amazon Alexa, phones, etc.
He set up bots to send us thousands of spam emails, sign us up for dozens of international newsletters all at once, and requests for consultations for things like solar panel installations.
He told the kids vile lies about my wife and I, although the most egregious was when he used a court-ordered therapy appointment with his second oldest daughter to accuse me of distributing child porn, told the therapist I am an "evil man", and told him I wasn't safe to be around his daughters. This led to her being forensically interviewed by the police, where she spelled out what happened, but of course they did nothing.
He gave the two youngest children cell phones to sneak into our house, with Google accounts activated and location tracking turned on.
He sent packages to our house 5 times in the space of a few months, one of which was addressed to himself and contained nothing but a bag of Stevia and a pack of gum. These packages generally came to our door the day before his scheduled visitation with the kids.
During this time my bank account was hacked four times in the span of just a few months with nearly identical fraudulent charges. In each of these instances, I had completely changed my bank account information.
He filed false reports with CPS twice, alleging we were beating the children, locking them in the closet, and not feeding or bathing them. This led to a CPS agent coming to our house to investigate.
We brought all this to the police over and over as it happened, and they did nothing. The DA running the case wasted 5 months subpoenaing a fake email address that we told them when we reported it was fake and spoofed. After finding out about that, we went to the DA's office to find out what the fuck was going on. A Victim's Advocate met with us, and was horrified about how the case was handled, looked up the prosecutor assigned to the case, rolled her eyes and said "Oh...it's Stephanie", confirming what we already knew - this prosecutor was completely incompetent, an elect3d politician moonlighting as a prosecutor. She called us the next day to tell us the actual DA called a meeting and a warrant was put out for Jack's arrest. For some inexplicable reason, they pulled the warrant back, and the advocate told us it was because the DA was pursuing more serious charges.
Then, they stonewalled us. The Victim's Advocate we had met with that actually tried to help us was moved off our case, and the new one assigned refused to talk to us or return our calls. The few exchanges we had with her, she made it abundantly clear she had the DA Office's interests in mind and not ours. We decided to just stay quiet and let the process play out and hope for the best, up until we received an email on Friday night before Election Day from the Detective telling us Stephanie had closed the case. I assume she didn't want her incompetence coming to light, and didn't want to shut the case down before Election Day knowing we would be on the warpath.
Eventually, Jack caught wind that he was officially under criminal investigation, but clearly had no idea they were never going to press charges. He got quiet for a bit, until he was ultimately let off probation early. We still get the occasional reminder he's out there watching, but his fear of going back to jail and the belief it might happen cowed him a bit. So instead he harasses us through the family courts, filing constant bullshit motions with no evidence to support them, and for some reason the courts let it continue. Somehow a man who makes ~$800 from SSDI and is only paying $30 a month total to support his 3 kids with my wife is able to fund tens of thousands of dollars worth of legal proceedings every year, and no one in the family courts has ever stopped to ask how he is paying for it or why all this money isn't being spent on supporting these children.
But despite Jack's best efforts, his bullshit hasn't worked. My wife and I have been together for four years soon, and married for two. His kids call me dad and hate his guts, only seeing him because the courts force them to. I continue to advance in my career, landing two major promotions in the past 2 years and now running a division in one of the largest companies in my field in this part of the country. I just enrolled in college to go back to school and get a degree in family law with a focus on domestic violence. The most frustrating part of the whole experience with ol' Jack was having no one to turn to when all the institutions who were supposed to keep this from happening ignored us, and even though I'll be well into my mid 40's before I accomplish my new goals, I plan to advocate for domestic violence victims and do everything I can to lobby for change to these laws to keep as many people as I can from going through what my wife and I did. I learned that the only way to beat these people at their game is to play on the same field right along with them, and that's what I intend to do.
My wife went back to work too once she healed from some of the trauma, making $30 an hour as a personal assistant for a fella who's had two movies made about his life. Our kids struggled a bit with school and dealing with all their biological parents' issues, but they quickly turned it around and have been excelling. We're all happy, healthy, and doing better now than ever.
As for Jack? Well, he's pushing 50 and still spending his days alone, playing World of Warcraft and jerking off in this old couple's basement. Nothing has changed there, and now he's too fat, old, and visibly an enormous fucking loser to victimize women in the same way he did in his youth. I have no doubts he'll find another victim eventually, probably when these old weirdos bankrolling his life now finally wise up, but one thing Jack forgets is that karma is a mother fucker, and I have a giant database of evidence that I can and will send out to whoever I please to help pull that mask down and keep him from doing this to someone else. Nothing is more appealing to a potential love interest than hearing their man cry like a drunk bitch for 26 minutes to the man he claims stole his wife, while simultaneously admitting to sexually assaulting said wife.
As wonderful as it would have been for Jack to go to prison where he can't hurt anyone again, there is some catharsis knowing Jack will forever be in a prison of his own making. His children want nothing to do with him, and he'll never see them graduate or walk them down the aisle. Jack will die miserable and alone, and in his narcissistic delusion will still be blaming everyone else for the colossal failure of his life, while continuing to fail to grasp the one thread that ties all his misery together - himself.
And since he somehow manages to find and stalk most of my social media, I'd wager Jack will end up reading this too. I hope he does in all honesty. And Jack, if you are reading this, I want you to know that you can kick, flail, manipulate and lie, cry and complain until you're red in the face. None of it matters. You don't matter. You'll leave this world alone, as sad and bitter as you are now, and the world will be a better place for it.

PART ONE THOUSAND AND TWELVE
[Previous Chapter] [The Beginning] [Patreon+2]
Sunday
Lucas stretched and yawned in bed, taking a moment to enjoy the complete lack of needing to rise before his hand stretched out in search of Boyd.
And once again, that side of the bed was empty.
Biting back a whine of dismay, Lucas rolled until he was face down on Boyd’s pillow, breathing in the cologne they both now wore. The detective in him quickly deduced that Boyd had been gone a while based on the chill in the sheets. He curled his hands around the pillow and hugged it tight, wishing it was the big mountain of a man himself instead of this weak substitute.
As thrilled as he was about Boyd finding a new career that he was so passionately driven about, he was equally happy that his fiancé took his responsibility to his clients seriously. Still, would it have killed him to sleep in just one morning instead of abandoning their wrecked bed the morning after their engagement party?
After several minutes of wallowing, he finally accepted the inevitable that no amount of wishful thinking was going to make Boyd appear and climbed out of bed. He removed his snore rings and took a quick shower.
Once he was dressed, he felt a little better.
The next thing he had to do was strip down the bed and remake it. They’d been very busy last night, which was why he’d only just woken up at—his gaze fell upon the clock— DAMN! It’s nearly lunchtime!
“I’m gonna kill him for letting me sleep in so long,” he muttered under his breath, carrying the linen through the apartment and into the kitchen, which doubled as a laundry on their end. After nine years of living in this layout, he didn’t need to see over the pile in his arms to know precisely where he was, and with the load balanced on one arm, he turned at the right moment, opened the massive frontloading washing machine and stuffed it all in.
“Hey, Unca Luke!” Maddy’s shrill voice had him leaping into the air, slamming the door shut and swivelling around in front of it to hide the evidence. “Didja pee the bed?”
His brother and his niece were sitting at the island, Maddy with her breakfast of honey-and-cream-covered waffles, which were only half-eaten, and Levi patiently waited for her to finish since the plate in front of him was empty. The latter was grinning at him as only a brother could.
He’d forgotten all about them staying over.
It took a hot second for what Maddy asked to register with him, and when it did, his mouth dropped, and he glanced at his brother, who was twisting himself into a pretzel to avoid laughing out loud. Asshole. “No, Peaches,” he said, glaring daggers at Levi for not even trying to help him out. “Boyd and I like clean sheets every day, and it’s not fair to make somebody else wash them for us, is it?”
Bright red ringlets of hair swayed as the little girl shook her head. “Daddy makes me fix stuff too.”
Lucas moved the three feet between the washing machine to his brother sitting in Mason’s seat at the corner. “That’s because Daddies always know what’s best.” He wrapped an arm around his brother’s neck in a loose chokehold and gave him a noisy morning kiss on the cheek. “Ain’t that right, Daddy?” He said that last word in a sultry purr the way Robbie would, and the reaction from Levi was priceless.
“Fuck off with that shit, you prick!” his brother swore, shoving Lucas away with all his might.
“DADDY!” Maddy squealed in horror, and Lucas clapped his hands together once behind Maddy’s chair and raised his clenched fists in victory. He’d been angling for one swear word, maybe two to distract young Maddy from his not-so-discreet linen run. Three was a veritable home run.
Snickering quietly to himself, he went back to the washing machine, loaded it up with soap and softener and turned it on. Then, he walked over to the wooden box under the window. ‘Just think what you want,’ Charlie had told him at the party. ‘It’s a Nascerdios box that Robbie fills up throughout the night.’
He stared hard at the box while he considered his options, settling on a plate of breakfast tacos with seasoned mince, fried eggs, tomatillos, shredded lettuce, and cheese wrapped in soft tortillas buttered with a thin spread of mashed avocado.
After the last month, it didn’t surprise him in the least when he opened the lid and found that exact meal sitting there, waiting for him. Maybe the quantity, since they were piled three high, but not the meal itself.
The same could not be said for Levi when Lucas turned around with the plate in his hand. “Robbie had that ready for you too?” he asked, as Lucas grabbed a glass from the cupboard and placed it and the plate in his regular sitting place adjacent to his brother before sliding into his seat. He knew Levi wasn’t questioning Viola since the box itself was made and gifted by someone with the last name Nascerdios.
The veil was an ass.
“I told you; he did most of the catering yesterday, too,” Lucas said, reaching for the jug of juice. He was curious what it would be today. Yesterday, it had been orange and mango juice, with apple the day before.
A quick sniff made it most likely grapefruit.
He tightened the roll on the first taco and lifted it to his lips, enjoying the flavours that exploded in his mouth. Because Levi had finished whatever had been on his plate, he was watching him eat as if he’d never seen it before. It finally clicked why. “You want to try one?” Lucas asked, nudging his plate towards his brother. “There’s plenty here if you want one. Too many, if anything.”
Levi didn’t need to be told twice and reached over, using his fingers just as Lucas had. “How did he learn to cook so well?” Levi demanded, almost fitting the whole thing in his mouth.
“He’s always cooked,” Lucas answered, fudging things slightly. “When he was growing up, cooking was his chore while his mom was at work. He only stopped because Mom refused to let him help in the kitchen.”
“I would’ve fought that a lot harder if I’d have known he could produce this.”
“Yeah, you and me both, bro. Even when we were upstairs, he was forever watching the cooking channels for new ideas.” Lucas didn’t want to mention that these days, Robbie only did so to critique the so-called experts. “Have you seen Boyd?”
Levi shook his head. “I was assuming he was still in with you. If I’d known you were in there alone, I’d have sicc’d Maddy onto you.”
“I can wake Daddy and Unca’ Austin good!” Maddy said proudly. “I gets me a dolla’.”
“Ssshhh, Peaches. That’s out secr—wait. Does Uncle Austin pay you, too?”
Maddy was adorable the way she looked at Lucas like he would intervene for her. “Sorry, baby girl,” he laughed, eating another taco. “You’re on your own.”
The two brothers bantered as Lucas ate, with Levi stealing another taco, bringing Lucas’ total number down to five. Maddy told them both about wanting to be a vet, and Lucas knew precisely who to blame for that. Still, it was better than her previous choice of ‘stripping’ the way Robbie and Angelo used to. Levi’s meltdown over that revelation had been priceless, even if he, too, was firmly in the ‘fuck that noise’ camp.
When he polished them and half the juice off, he poured the last into Maddy’s cup and put his things and the jug in the dishwasher. “You can hang out here if you want,” Lucas said. “The guys and I are heading out this afternoon to play some ball over at Angus’ place, but if you call Austin and find out Pepper’s roommate is still with him, the TV over there has…”
“Every cable channel imaginable, I know. Charlotte—”
“Charlie.”
“Charlie told us last night.” Levi sat back in his seat and stared at his brother. “What do you make of Larry, Luke? Does he have kids?”
“Why?”
“He watched Maddy for me last night while I was having a shower, and Maddy loves him. You know how picky she is about people she doesn’t know.”
“I know he’s married to a career soldier and was one too before being assigned to us. I’m not sure about his past, but he’s a good guy and ridiculously protective of those either in his charge or that he happens to care about.”
Levi grunted. “Charl—lie said so too. He certainly knows his Spongebob.”
Lucas squinted. “Why all the questions?”
“Just thinking out loud. If he’s going to be here all the time with Robbie, and Austin and I get called into the house together, it’s always been a struggle figuring out where we can leave Maddy on short notice. We don’t exactly have time to drive all the way over to Queens to drop her off at either Mav’s or Mom and Dad’s. I mean, so far, we haven’t needed to, but it’s a constant concern.”
Lucas frowned at him. “We’ve been here for years. Why didn’t you ask before now?”
Levi seemed suddenly uncomfortable. “You know…” he said, gesturing to the ceiling without finishing that sentence.
And just like that, Lucas did understand.
Six men, all sharing one shoebox-sized apartment with two of them being sex workers, was not where anyone would want to drop off a little girl. Even if Lucas did vouch for all of them and swore they’d all be protective as hell over little Maddy. “Look, I can’t speak for them specifically, but Charlie’s here under house arrest for the next ten months, and Boyd now works out of his studio, so technically, someone will be here all the time. There’s not a chance in hell we’ll turn you away.”
“I’ll ask her and Miss W before we go.”
Lucas looked at what the two of them were wearing. “You know, I could duck out and grab you and Maddy some clothes just as soon as I check in with Boyd, if you like.”
He watched Levi look down at the shirt and boxers that were a little big on him width-wise and across at Maddy, who still wore Charlie’s favourite Giants’ shirt.
“That’d be good, thanks,” he admitted.
“I’ll get extras, and that way, she can have a few changes of clothes here. Actually, do you want me to grab you some spare stuff too?”
Levi stiffened in his seat. “I don’t need you to buy me clothes.”
Lucas wanted to slap him in the back of the head (and would’ve if Maddy wasn’t there). “Stop,” he commanded instead. “I’m already going to a clothes shop. It’s not going to be anything fancy, and if you hate it, you can swap it out with your own stuff later.”
Knowing his brother was still uncomfortable, Lucas waved his hand at the kitchen. “Seriously, Levi, look around. Look at how I’m living, and I’m not paying a dime in rent. Llyr won’t let me since we’ve been looking out for Sam for years. Let me do this for you, so you’ll always know you and Maddy have somewhere safe to go.”
Levi glanced around, his lips tightening before he finally nodded, unwilling to say the words out loud, and Lucas clapped him on the shoulder. “We’re family, dumb-ar—dumb,” he amended, with little ears sitting on the other side of his brother. “Dumb-dumb. I meant Dumb-dumb.”
Levi chuckled and patted his brother’s hand. “I appreciate it, bro. We’ll chill here until you get back. Don’t rush … apparently, you have a gazillion cable channels to choose from, and Maddy doesn’t want to leave until she’s seen them all.”
“I don’t think you’ll live that long,” Lucas laughed and headed back to his room to grab his gear since he was now leaving the apartment. As he clipped and slid everything from sunglasses to his wallet, keys, phone, badge bifold, and ankle-holstered BUG, he almost envied women with carryall handbags that could be grabbed on their way out the door.
Almost.
* * *
((Author's note: going out tonight, so I put this out before I left. Enjoy!! 🥰😘💕 ))
((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))
I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here
For more of my work, including WPs: Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.
FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!

I have a good friend that I have known for over 20 years. He got married 2 years ago and everything has been different since. For context, I am also married and have been for 8 years.
Prior to him getting married, he was always down to hang out. A couple days or even 24 hrs notice, he would be down to go to a game, hit the driving range, explore the city, just hang out. When he started dating his now wife, that changed a little bit (too be expected), but I wasn’t worried about it as he was obviously going to be spending more time with her. As they continued to date, I began to see signs of a relatively controlling relationship. Multiple phone calls and texts asking “where are you” or “when are you going to be home” or “you shouldn’t be spending money on that”, the usual suspects. It got to a point where bro time became “I gotta go she wants me home”, or not having a good time because she was blowing up his phone.
Following the wedding, things definitely got worse and various red flags started to pop up. Text messages or phone calls asking to hang out, while acknowledged, were usually followed by “let me ask her” and then not hearing back for a few days. A follow up would lead to “oh she still needs to check” or something along the lines of a runaround. When I do get a yes, it’s always “can she come” or “can she and a friend come”. Constant texting or checking in if we do hang out.
I’m getting to the point where I feel I need to step in and simply ask “bro, are we good?” followed by “bro, is everything going ok?” I don’t believe I have done anything to jeopardize the friendship and I have been racking my brain for months trying to figure out where it went wrong.
Can someone please help me with this and what to do? I’m not good at this type of stuff. I don’t want him to resent me, because I am starting to seriously resent his wife. I want to approach this gently but at the same time make sure he is OK.

so a little back story on the whole situation. I'm (17F) and my boyfriend (18M) have been dating for 7 months now, everything has been going good besides for his mom not liking me. so like i said my boyfriends mom (35F) does not like me. even tho me and her don't talk at all we know about each other. so the situation started of small, like her hanging up our facetime call in the morning when she came in his room to wake him up for school, but ever since then it just kept getting worse. she has disrespected me a few times but besides that she's been taking his phone if she even sees me on the phone with him. once she took his phone and deleted the dnd he made for me off his phone. like i said before once she disrespected me and said im gonna be talking to a bunch of guys and for my boyfriend to break up with me (im going in the army). another time she took his phone because he had a 60 in one of his classes and said i was distracting him. even tho my boyfriend tells me she likes me i know she doesn't cause someone who likes you wouldn't do that kind of stuff. anyways im kinda stuck on what to do because i love him but it's getting draining and i feel like he doesn't see my point of view on this situation.

DISCLAIMER: Sorry this is a day late. I ended up having to rewrite half of this. Still, I hope you enjoy. After this, I'll be going on my hiatus. So I hope you like this last little bit of Roo-family cuteness. Thank you all and keep on keepin' on!
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Special thanks to u/SpacePaladin15 for creating the NoP universe.
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I'd also like to thank u/xskipy10 for their awesome fanart of the main cast as well as their recent Tohba meme and their fanart of Michael baysitting. You're work is a treasure!
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Thank you as well to u/Accomplished-Golf-59 for his take on Michael, Teylim, and Tohba in his submission for the Banner Art Contest, and u/Spacer_Catgirl4969 for their awesome music video featuring a pixel-art Dohkar in his bar. Be sure to give ALL of these awesome creators your love and support.
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And let's not forget u/Guywhoexists2812 who has been an awesome source of memes as well as sick pixel art, such as THIS and THIS!!!! And even THIS!!!!!! And how could I forget THIS!!!!!!!!!! Thank you so much!
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Today, we see all the reasons Teylim has to keep going in the face of adversity. For when all is said and done, love truly does conquer all. LETTUCE...begin...
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Original Story
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[Accessing Camera Function…]
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[Accessing Saved Recordings Function…]
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[Play Selected Recording?: Y/N…]
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[Playing Recording!]
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[The camera opens up on a female Yotul with a satchel over her shoulder. She is walking backwards down a paved walkway while looking up at the person holding the camera…]
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“Alright! Soooo…here we are in… Michael tell us where we are!”
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[The person holding the camera gives an audible sigh…]
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“Do I have to, Tey?”
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“Yes! Come on, it’ll be fun!”
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[Another audible sigh is heard before the person begins panning the camera around the surrounding cityscape…]
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“We are in the beautiful, literally ALWAYS sunny capital of Dayside City!”
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“And what would you say we’re doing here in Dayside City?”
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“We were just at the Public Records building getting our paperwork verified.”
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[The Yotul woman is seen reaching into her satchel and pulling out a leaflet of documents…]
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“Oh! You mean THIS paperwork? Hmmm… I wonder what these might say… Mind helping me here?”
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“Seriously?”
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[The Yotul doesn’t answer, instead shoving the documents directly into the camera. Another, more amused-sounding sigh is heard…]
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“It says that your name has been officially changed to ‘Teylim Andrews.’”
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“Mmmmhmmm. And what about this one?”
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“That one says that Tohba’s name has been officially changed to ‘Tohba Andrews.’”
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“Aaaand why do you suppose that is?”
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[A shuffling sound is heard and the camera shifts as the person holding it pulls out their own papers…]
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“Probably because according to MY paperwork, while we’re still waiting for my Application of Citizenship to go through, I, Michael Ruiz Andrews, am now the full, legal, son of one, Teylim Andrews-”
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“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEE!!!!!!”
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[The Yotul woman darts forward, wrapping the person holding the camera in a hug. The camera is set on the ground and the face of the person is now visible. The two hold their embrace, rocking back and forth…]
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“I love you so much, my joey…”
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“Love you too, Ma…”
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[Recording Ceases…]
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[Play Next Recording?: Y/N…]
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[Playing Recording!]
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[The camera opens on a small kitchen area where two beings are sat eating. On the left, a male Yotul infant in a high chair is munching away at a human food identified as “Cheerios” spread across his tray. On the right, a male human idly stirs at a bowl of cereal while tapping away at a datapad…]
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[Eventually, after munching down another “Cheerio”, the infant catches a glimpse at the human and stares for approximately one second before his tail begins wagging…]
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“Mikey?”
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[The humans attention is broken away from their datapad and immediately focuses on the infant…]
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“Yeah, Bud?”
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“I WUV YOOOUUU.”
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[The infant’s sing-song voice seems to make the human smile before he leans forward, planting a “kiss” on top of the infant’s head…]
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“MmmMUAH! Te amo, mi hermanito.”
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“Whaz dat mean?”
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“It means, ‘I love you, Little Brother’. Want me to teach you?”
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“Hmmmmm… OKAY!”
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“Okay.”
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[The human chuckles slightly before scooting his chair in…]
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“Okay, so when you want to tell someone you love them, you say, ‘Te amo.’ Okay?”
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[The infant gives a curious ear flick…]
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“Teeeh…Mo?”
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“Close! Here. Repeat after me. Te…”
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“Teeh…”
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“Ah…”
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“Aaahh…”
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“Mo…”
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“Moh!”
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“Te…ah…mo…”
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“Teeh…aaahh…mo!”
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“Okay! All together now. Te amo.”
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“¡TE AMO!”
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[The human excitedly gets up from his seat and embraces the infant…]
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“YES!!! You did it! Awesome job, Bud!”
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“YAAAAYYY!!!! ¡TE AMO, MIKEY!”
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“MMMUAH!! ¡Te amo, precioso hermanito!”
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[The camera jitters slightly and a muffled giggling is heard. The human turns to face the camera…]
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“Ma? What are you- Have you been recording this whole time?”
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“Just a little!”
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“Must you record everything?”
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“As a matter of fact, yes!”
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“MAMA!!”
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[The camera zooms in on the excited infant…]
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“Hello, Precious! Is your big brother teaching you Spanish?”
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“UH-HUH!! ¡TE AMO, MAMA!”
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“Ooooh, that is just ADORABLE! Can you teach him to say ‘Mama’ in Spanish, too?”
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[The camera pans over to the human, who raises an eyebrow. After a moment, the human smirks and gives an exaggerated shrug while shaking his head…]
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“No tengo que hacerlo. Él ya lo sabe, mamá.”
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“Pffft! Smart aleck.”
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[Recording Ceases…]
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[Play Next Recording?: Y/N…]
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[Playing Recording!]
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[The camera opens up facing a pair of beds in a small room. On one bed, a female Yotul is sat with her infant in her lap as a male human walks into frame carrying a brightly wrapped gift box…]
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“Merry Late Christmas, guys!”
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“Merry Christmas, Michael!”
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“Mewwy Kwizmuz, Mikey!”
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[The human kneels down and hands the infant the gift box…]
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“Sorry this gift is a bit last minute, but I managed to grab it while I was out with ‘Nel the other day.”
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“I’m sure it’ll be perfect, Michael.”
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“I hope so. Go on, Bud. Open it! It’s for you!”
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“OKAY!!!”
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[The infant rips away at the brightly-colored paper, and with help from his mother, lifts off the lid. The infant then excitedly starts bouncing up and down and reaches into the box, pulling out a bright-red plush…]
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“WED TIWFISH!!!!!!”
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“Oh, Michael! How? When?”
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“I had to ask around online if anyone else had plushies from the aquarium ship, and I managed to find a guy here in Dayside. There’s…still a lot of things we lost at the house that need to be replaced, but I figured this would be a good start…”
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“It’s perfect.”
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[The three embrace and hold it for several seconds before pulling back…]
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“BUT! I’m not done with gifts just yet.”
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“What?”
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“Here. Mind handing me your pad?”
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“Sure?”
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[The Yotul hands the human her datapad as he pulls a small drive from his pocket and plugs it in. After a moment, he smiles and sits down on the bed next to the Yotul. She is then seen gasping and covering her mouth with her paws…]
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“Michael…”
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“I overheard you on the phone with Aunty Triv, talking about how you wish you had some pictures of me when I was younger…”
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“How on Liern-”
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“It’s…a long story. When I was first taken into foster care after getting rescued, I was assigned a social worker to help me adjust. And after I got situated with Dad, he stayed and helped us out from time to time. He basically became like an uncle to me after a while. And since Dad didn’t really have any other family, whenever he wanted to share pictures of me growing up, he’d send a copy to my social worker. I’ve…been back in contact with him for a little while now, and it turns out he kept them.”
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“Oh, Michael…”
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[The Yotul and human lean against each other and embrace…]
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“I love you, Ma.”
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“I love you too, my joey.
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[Still leaning against each other, they begin to swipe at the pad, presumably looking through pictures. After a few swipes, The Yotul begins chuckling hysterically…]
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“Aaaawwweee…”
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“Crap, I forgot about that one!”
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“Who’z dat?”
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“That’s…me, Bud.”
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[The infant looks at the image for a while, still holding the bright red plush…]
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“Teeheehee!! Fuzzy Mikey!”
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“Can we please just swipe to the next one?”
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“Wait. I’ve seen those kinds of human garments before! Aren’t those for…LITTLE…little joeys?”
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“Look, I was a very emotionally stunted kid and I just thought they were comfy, alright?”
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“This is SO going on the desk.”
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“Please no. Any of them but that one.”
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“Nope! It’s already decided!”
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“YAAYYY! FUZZY MIKEY!”
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“God, ‘Nel’s never gonna let me live this down…”
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[Recording Ceases…]
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Memory Transcript Subject: Teylim Andrews, Yotul Accountant And Loving Mother Of Two
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Date:[Standardized Human Time] February 1, 2137
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[Warning: REM Sleep Detected: Transcript May Be Fragmented Or Incomplete…]
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Crrreeeeaak…
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My eyes slowly squint open as the noise rouses me from sleep. I let out a yawn before looking for the source of the noise. I’m…back in my house… Sitting upright, I see that my door’s been opened, beaming The Dayside’s permanent daylight into my room. I was confused for a moment. The only other person here that would be here is-
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“Uuuuhhmm… M-Mrs. Teylim?”
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I looked down, and spotted the culprit.
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Standing in the doorway was a small human child, cradling my Tohba in his arms. He was silhouetted from the daylight behind him, the light beaming past his adorable onesie pajamas creating a small blue outline around him, matching his eyes.
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Strange. For some reason, I thought he was taller…
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“Michael, sweetie? What’s the matter?”
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Still carrying Tohba, Michael made his way over to the bed.
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“Uuuhhhmmm… Tohba h-had a n-nightmare…”
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“Ooohh, is that so?”
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Something definitely didn’t add up. As he gently handed Tohba over to me, he certainly didn’t seem to be having a nightmare. In fact, even now he was still sleeping peacefully.
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Michael, on the other paw, was DEFINITELY out of sorts. He was nervous, fidgeting, wrapped up in a self-hug, and even now, refused to even look at me. Whether that was because of his nervousness or if he was still convinced I was afraid of him had yet to be seen.
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Stupid, ridiculous, Federation dogma…
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I could tell he wasn’t being honest with me. Ordinarily, I would’ve been upset about him lying, and even more so about him disturbing Tohba, but looking at him now, I knew what he needed now wasn’t a scolding.
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“Michael, you know you can be honest with me. Was it really Tohba who had the nightmare?”
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I heard him nervously gulp as he tightened the self-hug around himself. After a moment, he shook his head.
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“Mm’mm…”
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I gave a tired, but loving sigh before holding out my free arm.
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“Come here.”
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With some hesitation, he stepped closer, allowing me to pull him into a hug. Michael had a lot of issues. From what I learned from his social worker, he’d been terribly abused by his previous mother and he’d lost his father only a few years after moving in with him. And now, with Earth under attack, he simply didn’t have anywhere else to go.
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It will take a long time before he’s fully comfortable living here, I know that. I’m still not even entirely sure if I’m what he needs. I still wonder if I know what I’m doing when it comes to just raising Tohba. Even so, I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t try. He deserves a home, and a mother who loves him. All children do.
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“I'm sorry for lying…”
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“Ssshhh… It’s alright. Do you want to talk about it?”
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“It was…the one with the scary fire people…”
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Oh…THAT dream…
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Exterminators.
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“I don’t want them to come… I don’t want them to-“
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“It’s okay, joey. They won’t get you here.”
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“No! That’s not… That’s not what I’m scared of…”
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I pulled back slightly, allowing myself to look directly at him. He sniffles and sobbed while trying to wipe away tears.
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“You’re all so nice to me… \sniff** I…I-I don’t want the fire people to hurt you… I sh-shouldn’t be here…”
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My heart broke in two. This poor child had already lost so much. It only made sense that he’d be afraid of losing us too.
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I cupped his face in my paw, wiping away his tears.
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“Michael Ruiz Andrews, I don’t care what you might have heard, but you have every RIGHT to be here. And if those scary people out there think they can come and take us away from you, they’re wrong. I will never let us be separated. You hear me?”
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“. . .P-promise?”
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“With all my heart. You’re MY joey now, and I won’t let anyone take you away from me.”
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At last, Michael finally unwrapped himself from his self-hug and instead wrapped his arms around me, burying his face in my fur.
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After a while of holding him, he’d finally calmed down enough to speak again.
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“C-can I…sleep here tonight?”
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Your joey needs you.
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Yes.
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“Of course.”
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With some effort, he climbed up onto the bed and curled up next to me. I knew I most likely wouldn’t be getting anymore sleep, but that was fine. Just laying here, holding my boys in my arms. That was enough.
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One after the other, I gave both my joeys a lick on the forehead.
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“Goodnight my joeys. I love you.”
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“Wuv…you…Ma…ma…”
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“. . .Love you too...Mom…”
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I love my boys. I love my family. I love…my life…
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[Transcript Time Progression: 4 hours…]
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Beebeebeebeep! Beebeebeebeep! Beebeebeebeep!
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[Warning: Subject Regaining Consciousness…]
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My entire body protested as I twisted and turned over to tap the alarm on my nightstand. My claw slapped blindly at it until finally, the agitating alarm was silenced. My eyes squinted open, revealing…I was back in our motel room…
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Well…a girl can dream, can’t she?
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It was a pleasant dream, I’ll give it that. As I sat up, I let my legs dangle off the side of the bed as I stretched myself out and let out a yawn. Once my eyes had fully opened, and the fog had been blinked away, I was immediately met with a sight that warmed my heart to no end. My still fast asleep, and back to being tall, new son, curled up with his baby brother on the other bed.
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Precious boys. MY precious boys.
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I did my best to remember if Michael had anything scheduled with Khornel for this paw, but nothing came to mind. He’d been working so hard lately, helping to keep us above water. Now that he wasn’t a refugee anymore, we were no longer receiving stipends from the program, which meant from here on out, keeping the bills paid was much more difficult. And that’s not even mentioning having to put aside anything we can to be able to eventually have the house rebuilt.
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I kept trying for a while, I still couldn’t remember anything. For the first time in a decent while, he had a paw off.
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Good. I’ll leave him be then. He’s earned some rest.
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I let out one more yawn, before getting up. Unfortunately, while Michael didn’t have to work this paw, I wasn’t so fortunate. Thankfully, my recent injuries allowed me to continue to work from home instead of going out to the physical office. After one last stretch, I let myself slide off the bed.
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I had to give myself a moment once I was upright. While my previously broken leg had healed for the most part, I still needed to be careful of how much weight I put on it. Once I was ready, I began walking to our small kitchen area. The fridge was nearly empty. I’d need to go to the store soon.
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Thank goodness we’re staying in Soulroot, where literally EVERYTHING is expensive…
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After cutting up some leftover fruit and strayu for myself, I went back to my desk. It was impossible to not notice the small stack of colorful books on the ground next to it. They were human kid’s books donated from the embassy here in Soulroot. Tohba would be ready to start going to school in just a few short cycles…
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Will we be able to get out of here and back into our house before then?
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Sitting down at my desk and booting up my pad, I found it hard to stay focused. There was still so much to do, so much to worry about. Before, when I was feeling overwhelmed, I’d have Loh, Dohkar, or Trivah there for me. With them around, it always helped things feel more manageable. But now…now I was alone again. Loh was gone. Dohkar and Trivah were stuck on the other side of that damned fence…
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What are we going to do?
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My head lowered. I stared blankly at the desk, partly wishing I could look through it at ANYTHING other than my work.
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But then, there was a glint, just out of the corner of my eye…
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I looked up, and saw something that I couldn’t help but smile at, something that even when I’m feeling low, reminds me why I have to keep going.
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I reach out…and grab the two small frames off the corner of my desk and hold them in front of me. In my left paw, wass a framed picture of Tohba, the paw he was born. So small. So precious. So perfect. And in my right, was another picture. It was my new favorite picture.
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A small, human child…in fuzzy, blue, onesie pajamas that matched his eyes.
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My Michael. Still so small.
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These two pictures. My boys. The villains outside could take everything else. So long as I have my boys, I will always have a reason to keep going.
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I love my boys… I love my family… I love my life…
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The End

So I've been applying to jobs for months now and finally managed to land two interviews out of the hundred or so jobs I've applied to. One of then is all green flags so far and seems awesome. Full-time with benefits, paid training, all that. Pay is a bit lower than I'd hope for, but for an entry level job I am NOT gonna complain. I interview next week for that job.
Now the second job.... lol. I was scheduled to have a phone call screening with the recruiter last week. They were gonna call me at 2:00pm and we would talk a bit about the job and then set up an in-person interview with the directomanager for another date. 2:00 rolls by and I'm waiting nervously for the call. Then it's 2:15 and Im wondering if I'm missing something. Triple checked my emails and nope there's no contact info other than an email, and it said THEY would call me. I waited and waited and finally emailed them and said I never received a call, and asked if they would like to reschedule. I thought I was getting ghosted so I started working on other stuff that I needed to do instead. At 2:47 I finally got a phone call. Supposedly the recruiter didn't have it in her calendar. She said THREE people reminded her that she was supposed to have a call at 2:00. I was like "oh uh, okay." Because how else do you respond that? I'm not gonna tell her it's alright when already I'm getting red flags right off the bat. But the rest of the screening goes as expected, and so we went ahead and set up an in-person interview for May 22nd.
On May 13th I received an email that said the position was filled by another candidate. Before I even had my interview. But they "might" have a PRN position available instead of part-time, so I could either cancel the interview or I could interview anyways in hopes that a position would be available. So understandably I was a bit irked, but I said I would still like to interview because we already got this far. So then I got a confirmation email and at the bottom of the email it stated, in bolded red letters, this:
"*Always remember professionalism is important. Don’t ruin your chances at a great career. It is never a good idea to be a “No call/No show”. If you need to cancel or reschedule your interview, please contact me at ____ and I can assist you."
It literally made me laugh out loud. I wonder how many times they've had no call/no shows in order to put that note in an email as if we're elementary students. I'm very, very tempted to do that just out of spite because of how much time of mine they've wasted so far. What a joke.

still in shock and still processing it. I don’t have any friends or anyone I talk to outside of work so I’m using this throwaway account. Her and I had been together just over 6 years. I knew during our first date that I wanted to be with her forever. Today I came home from work and she was waiting outside our home with her father. I asked what was going on and she said she was leaving me and that all of her things had been moved out already. I asked why and she said because I had been cheating on her. She said that she had found hair in my car, women’s earrings in our home, and two different shades of foundation on my face when I’ve come home from work. It has happened in the past that she would find a hair in the bathroom that didn’t match ours, or a couple on my clothes, and we would get into an argument. But it’s been a year or more since that’s happened. I can honestly say I’ve never cheated on her. I don’t make any kind of physical contact with anyone other than her except a fist bump or hand shake at work. I keep my location turned on my phone and keep it visible to her, and have her as the alternate face to unlock my phone. That’s mostly in case something happens to me, car wreck etc. I only go to work and the gym. She said that my location shows me at apartments that are across from my gym sometimes when I say I’m at the gym. There are two women at work that I work with and I’ll mention them in stories about work, but I’m their supervisor and have always kept my relationship with them professional. I’ve never hung out with anyone I work with outside of work, and I don’t even spend my breaks with them, I just chat with them while we work. I had a few days last week where I was feeling very depressed and could barely get out of bed and had to force myself to go to work, and I snapped at her and was short tempered with her. I know it really hurt her because she has been in relationships in the past that were abusive. I’ve never gotten physical with her, never punch walls, nothing like that. I just get short and angry and I get that could be a trigger for her. I just wish that was why she was leaving me because that happened. I just don’t know how to process it. I’m still in shock and I know it’s going to hurt when I wake up. I sent her a text letting her know that I wish we could’ve tried couples therapy and that if she wants to try, just reach out to me, but that I respect her wishes either way. She just thanked me for being amicable. I have no idea what to do.
TLDR: fiancé of six years broke up with me for cheating when I have not cheated. I’m completely in shock and have no friends or family to talk to.

I'm from India and got the device in US. When I try Jio 5g network (local network provider), this phone does not even detect that network. The same SIM card in my Pixel is detecting 5g network. Tried resetting network settings, device is up-to-date and Google Play system is also up-to-date. Any ideas how to fix it?
Reached out to customer support as well, but the steps they suggested do not seem to work. Worst case option is return the phone to US, but would love to avoid that.

I (22f) and my now ex (23m) were together for 3 years, living together for one. We have a dog together and I’ve known him for almost 8 years now. When I knew him in high school, he was always obsessed with me. He always really liked me and was so nice to me, and as a not necessarily conventionally attractive person, that was the first time I really experienced someone really being into me.
I fell for him really fast because it just seemed like this guy loved me me so much, he told me he loved me before we were even dating and he would just constantly tell me I was the one for him. I loved him so much.
This past December, I went through his phone and found out he was cheating on me with his coworker and it had been going on for a few months. We broke up but in February, we started hanging out and seeing eacither again (my big mistake) and we started officially dating again over a month ago.
The night before last, I had that same anxious feeling again. It was like 3 am and I got up to go through his phone. At first I couldn’t find anything and I was so relived, and I actually put his phone back, but something kept telling me to look again so I did.
I went on Snapchat and through a separate tab I found a contact who he had silenced the notifications for, the name also a man’s name but the little bitmoji was a female. I go through it, and find a million times more than I expected.
He’s been cheating on me the entire 3 years with a friend of his. And not only that, part of the fun for both of them is making fun of me and humiliating me. Saying awful things about me. There were messages of him calling me fat, ugly, disgusting, literally name it and he was getting off on calling me that to this girl.
I even contacted her to verify that’s actually what I was seeing, because I actually know this girl, and she confirmed everything. She said he really enjoyed saying bad things about me and telling her how much better she was than me, and she got off ok feeling like she was good enough to make someone cheat.
I feel like my brain and body don’t even know how to react, I’m genuinely in shock and don’t know where to go from here. How do I begin to process that the man who I thought has been in love with me this whole time actually hates me and thinks I’m fat ugly and disgusting as well as a million other hurtful things. What do I do?

I can’t believe I’m resorting to this, but I have a strange question and I’m seeking confirmation.
Is there any legitimate reason that someone who uses WhatsApp on their iPhone, and occasionally on web, would have discrepancies between the chats and dates from one format to another?
For example, on the web a chat with a certain person shows all the way at the bottom of the list of chats. This chat is empty, but has a date from a couple of months ago suggesting that was the last time it was used (messages were sent and received.) Despite this chat being at the bottom of the list, and the recent date, there are older chats above it. But on mobile, the chat with this particular person does not show at all.
Does any one have a hope of explaining what’s going on? Is it possible the web is the accurate more ‘up to date’ one and the date stamped on the empty chat is real, or could there have been any kind of bug that made an old chat show on web but not mobile? And if so, is there an explanation for the recent date?
I hope I’ve made sense and someone can help. Thanks.

this is my first time posting on reddit, im looking for any kind of advice or input. i (17F) have been with my boyfriend (19M) for almost six months now, our anniversary is in 2 days. this is my first relationship and his second relationship, we’ve had problems since we started dating, we’ve never been in a fight over anything ive done, just gonna be completely real im a very anxious person and a huge perfectionist in every aspect of my life and since this is my first relationship i have been extremely diligent to do everything right, i cant say the same for him. hes hurt me emotionally so many times throughout this relationship, he can often be careless and doesnt consider me, and then doesnt see a problem with that. hes fucked up in so many MAJOR ways that have literally landed me in the hospital, no physical ab*se is happening, but he is still the cause of my reoccurring doctors visits. i wont get into all the ways hes hurt me emotionally and done shit thats fucked me over since this post is intended to be ab my current predicament with him, but i will just say that it gets BAD. hes never cheated on me as far as i know, i believe women should never trust men so im not saying this because i trust his every word, i just genuinely dont think he would have the balls to do something like that, plus i am literally the catch of his life. his friends and mine and just people we are acquainted with often ask me how he pulled me and say to him and i that im way out of his league, my boyfriend says this as well. i dont want to come off as cocky or anything like that at all, i am a very humble person irl, but i just want to paint the picture of our relationship for anyone who can help me out right now. i do know that im very very pretty, patient, caring, generous, kind, understanding, polite, and poised. i grew up with an eating disorder most of my life and never believed my appearance was good enough or held any value, so i made a point to not have a rotten soul, i made a point to really really work on myself on the inside, so that i could fall in love with being alive enough to realize that my appearance was not the most important thing. throughout the years my insecurity faded away and ive gotten to a point in my life where i know who i am, i know that im a truly good person, and i know that im really good looking. ANYWAY sorry for that whole spiel but it will be relevant when i get into whats happening in my relationship at the moment!!!!
my relationship has a lot of really good moments, i can be so real with him, we are always laughing on good days, he can be so kind and caring and chivalrous at times, i feel so safe with him in those times, i believe we have a really genuine connection.
NOW for the current issue… i broke up with him this march (we were only broken up for exactly 24hrs) due to the build up of fucked up shit hes put me through, him following pornstars on insta, liking girls thirst traps, disappearing to LA when i was in the hospital because of him, and the list goes on and on and on. my point is, one of the reasons was him following porn stars and liking that kind of content on social media. we are not an on and off couple, this is the only time we’ve broken up, and the whole 24hrs that we were we quite literally stayed on the phone, throughout the whole evening, night, morning, and his whole work day up until we met up to continue talking ab things in person. i was extremely explicit in the fact that his current behavior was unacceptable, i wasnt going to stand for it, and that i would have a 0 toleration policy for any boundary crossing, fuck ups, or general asshole behavior in the future.
i told him that i had 2 options, i could either follow through with my decision to leave him based on what has actually happened in our relationship, or i could trust him saying that he was going to change and give him a second chance. i am really in love with him and i want him to be a part of my life, as i want to be a part of his, so i chose to stay with him and give him the opportunity to prove to me he could be better, and continue to be a better man from that point forth. things have been really good since i made this choice, hes made a major effort to be better in every aspect, and made positive changes to his own life, he seems happier and seems to have more energy and more of a lust for life since this, and i am so happy to see that. i could go on and on but basically things have just been really amazing.
NOW FOR THE REAL TEA!!!! 2 weeks ago i found out i was pregnant, and had to take the abortion pill a few days after that, he was really amazing throughout the whole process, but its been hard for me nonetheless, the way doctors treated me, having to hide it from my mom, having morning sickness, the hormonal up and downs of it all, the fact that being pregnant is my biggest fear, combined with other stress in my personal life. ive been kinda down lately due to this, it was just a hard thing to go through esp at my age, but ive been making an effort to take care of myself, not slip into depression, and move forward with my life. ive been doing well more recently, but it was just a rough patch for me personally. my cat has also been sick since ab the exact same time i found out i was pregnant, and ive been super stressed ab that and losing sleep taking care of him all night and day, every night and day.
REALREAL TEA TIME. REAL TEA. since my cats not doing well, i decided to hangout with my boyfriend after he got off of work the other day, just to get my mind off of it, get out of the house, and enjoy life for a bit. we ended up having an AMAZING night, like seriously so good, i fell in love with him all over again ab 10 million times that night. at the end of the night we decided to go back to my place and sleepover there. he went to sleep soon after we got home, but i stayed up because i needed to take off my makeup and take a shower. before showering, i decided to go on his phone to send myself cute pictures we had taken and also to take a peak at what hes been up to. things have been so good lately and i wanted to prove to myself that i made the right decision in staying with him. unfortunately things did not go so well. i ended up looking through his phone for a few hrs because i found LOADS of hentai and porn he was looking at on reddit in his history, porn on discord, repeating onlyfans links in his search history (which were dated to the DAY after i found out i was pregnant and would have to have an abortion), i found a group he was in on facebook that consisted entirely of borderline porn, and i found messages he had deleted on facebook of him messaging a girl and asking her to send him nudes and telling her that she was sexy dated to when we first officially got into a committed relationship, his recent searches on reddit were all groups that consist solely of porn, his link history on reddit contained onlyfans links, and there were onlyfans models in his recent searches on insta as well. i was absolutely devastated, i was feeling so many things and wanted to end it right then and there, i decided to take my shower, do skincare and all of that stuff, go to sleep and tell him what i found in the morning. it was like 3am at this point. i finished getting ready for bed around 5:30am and went to my nightstand to plug in my phone, my boyfriend is a super heavy sleeper so i didnt think him waking up was even a possibility, but he woke up and asked me to come cuddle in bed with him, since he was half awake, i knew if i got into bed he’d start cuddling with me, and i could not handle that so id have to push him away, leaving me no choice but to confront him at that time instead of in the morning as i had planned. so i said “hey (bf’s name), do you wanna tell me why you’ve been looking at loads of porn on reddit” he quickly became fully conscious when he realized what was happening. he was still out of it but kind of trying to talk to me and ask me what was happening, i didnt say anything, i grabbed my pillow and a blanket and told him to go back to sleep and that we’d discuss it in the morning, he asked me where i was going and i said to sleep on my couch, then i gave him 2 options, i said he could either leave right then and there, or go back to sleep and we’d talk ab it later in the morning and i would sleep on my couch, but i told him we were not gonna have the convo right then and there. i went downstairs and set up my couch bed, then i was like wait a damn minute why am i the one sleeping on the couch, i came back upstairs and told him that i changed my mind and that he could either leave or sleep on the couch. he never made a decision and we ended up having the whole convo ab everything right then and there, i remained stern and i was clearly angry but i did not raise my voice or throw out insults. at first he tried lying to me and saying it wasnt him and all this other bullshit, but eventually he admitted that he has a porn addiction. i was still extremely upset, i understand that its a common thing in my generation, porn-like content is all over social media and so easy to access, but it still shook me to my core. porn addiction is a real thing but like idk how to deal with this, i am so hurt and feeling so many things, there was SO much of it and it all feels like cheating to me. this is making me question everything ab our intimate life, it makes me feel like it doesnt mean anything to him. idek when and how he has the energy to jerk off because we both have a high sex drive and see each other rly often, so we have LOTS of sex and im never the one to tap out after multiple rounds. its not vanilla either so its not like theres some sort of unfulfilled desire happening, i really do not get it at all, and i am SO unbelievably hurt. i dont know if i can ever move on from this or forgive him, or “help and support and reassure” him as he tries to quit this addiction. it feels like im begging my bf to only have eyes for me. like im support him in his endeavor to stop looking at other naked girls. nothing about it feels right and i dont know what to do. i love him so unbelievably much, but this changes everything, i wish this never happened because i do want to be with him, i just dont know how to, or if i should, now. any and all advice would be appreciated. i am completely undecided on what to do from this point on.

Raksha Bandhan, the festival that celebrates the bond between brothers and sisters, is a time to express love, gratitude, and affection. While the sacred thread of Rakhi is central to the tradition, exchanging gifts is also an integral part of the celebration. If you're looking for meaningful Rakhi gift ideas to surprise your sibling, here are some thoughtful suggestions to consider:

1. Personalized Gifts

1. Customized Photo Frame: Capture your favorite memories together in a personalized photo frame, engraved with your names or a special message.
2. Customized Mug: Gift a mug featuring a memorable photo or a heartfelt message, reminding your sibling of your bond every time they enjoy their favorite beverage.
3. Personalized Jewelry: Choose a piece of jewelry, such as a bracelet or pendant, customized with initials, birthstones, or engraved with a significant date.

2. Sweets and Treats

1. Assorted Chocolates: Indulge your sibling's sweet tooth with a box of premium chocolates or a selection of their favorite treats.
2. Traditional Indian Sweets: Delight them with a box of traditional Indian sweets like ladoos, barfis, or rasgullas, adding a touch of nostalgia to the celebration.
3. Gourmet Gift Basket: Curate a gourmet gift basket filled with gourmet snacks, nuts, dried fruits, and artisanal treats for a decadent Rakhi surprise.

3. Wellness and Self-Care

1. Spa Gift Set: Treat your sibling to a spa-like experience at home with a luxurious spa gift set containing bath bombs, essential oils, candles, and pampering skincare products.
2. Fitness Tracker: Encourage their health and wellness journey with a fitness tracker or smartwatch, helping them stay motivated and track their progress.
3. Journal or Planner: Gift a beautiful journal or planner to inspire creativity, organization, and mindfulness, allowing them to set goals and jot down their thoughts.

4. Tech Gadgets and Accessories

1. Wireless Earbuds: Upgrade their listening experience with wireless earbuds or headphones, perfect for music lovers or those who enjoy podcasts and audiobooks.
2. Smart Home Devices: Enhance their living space with smart home devices like smart speakers, smart bulbs, or a virtual assistant, adding convenience and efficiency to their daily routine.
3. Customized Phone Case: Personalize a phone case with a unique design, photo, or monogram, protecting their device while adding a touch of style.

5. Books and Literature

1. Bestselling Novel: Surprise them with a bestselling novel or a book by their favorite author, providing hours of entertainment and literary escape.
2. Inspiring Biography or Memoir: Gift an inspiring biography or memoir that resonates with their interests or passions, offering insight and motivation.
3. Coffee Table Book: Choose a beautifully illustrated coffee table book on topics like travel, art, photography, or nature, adding aesthetic appeal to their home decor.

6. Handcrafted and Artisanal Gifts

1. Handmade Artwork: Support local artisans by gifting a piece of handmade artwork, pottery, or sculpture that adds character and charm to their living space.
2. Handcrafted Jewelry: Surprise them with a unique piece of handcrafted jewelry, showcasing craftsmanship and creativity while adding a touch of elegance to their wardrobe.
3. Artisanal Candles: Set the mood with artisanal candles crafted from natural ingredients and infused with aromatic scents, creating a warm and inviting atmosphere.

This Raksha Bandhan, show your sibling how much they mean to you with a thoughtful and heartfelt gift that reflects your bond and appreciation. Whether it's a personalized keepsake, indulgent treat, or practical gadget, the gesture of giving speaks volumes and strengthens the cherished bond between siblings. Choose a gift from Rakhi.com that resonates with their interests, preferences, and personality, making this Rakhi celebration truly memorable and special.

I'm not seriously advocating for this, but I think it's fun to theorize. Here's some effects I think we would see (after a chaotic transition period):
Economy
Untold numbers of men return to work as there are no superior distractions to work anymore. People would go to work out of boredom. Existing workers would become more effective due to less brain rot and less time wasted staring at a phone during work hours.
Fertility rates
Birth rates would likely go up. Look at the American fertility rate between 2002-2006, it was slowly trending upwards (while already being at replacement levels). Then a downward begins in 2007 begins with the release of the iphone (financial crisis probably had an effect as well, but it never recovered due to mass adaption of smart phones in the following years and rise of social media).
Mental health
Mental illness would drop like a rock. No more brain rot from social media and short form videos. Porn consumption plummets. People would spend more time outside socializing, since there isn't much to do at home (except maybe watch TV, which gets stale fast). Lack of dating apps would probably help too.

Hey there,
I have been lurking here for quite some time. After gathering enough information I have made by first foray into setting up my own Unraid media server. I got a nice define R5 case running a i3 12100 and so far everything seems to be going splendid. My current plan is to run 1 18TB and 1 18TB parity, maybe soon adding a third drive depending on how full it will be once I dumped some of my accumulated external HDD data on there. I figured just starting with 1 HDD now while setting things up and filling the drive, so that the parity drive won't slow things down. It also might have a different production date so that it won't fail at the same time in the far future.
I ran a preclear test as recommended in one of Spaceinvader One's videos on my first new 18TB HDD. This took some time but has been running in the background, so I just needed to be a little patient in my enthusiasm.
Now in the report it says it found one reallocated sector. How serious is this? Do I need to replace it? Would the shop I bought this consider this sufficient evidence for a replacement? I look forward to hearing your insights.
Here's the report if that helps:

#################################################################################################### # Unraid Server Preclear of disk 14J0A031FQDH # # Cycle 1 of 1, partition start on sector 64. # # # # Step 1 of 5 - Pre-read verification: [22:09:25 @ 225 MB/s] SUCCESS # # Step 2 of 5 - Zeroing the disk: [22:11:03 @ 225 MB/s] SUCCESS # # Step 3 of 5 - Writing Unraid's Preclear signature: SUCCESS # # Step 4 of 5 - Verifying Unraid's Preclear signature: SUCCESS # # Step 5 of 5 - Post-Read verification: [22:09:35 @ 225 MB/s] SUCCESS # # # # # # # #################################################################################################### # Cycle elapsed time: 66:30:07 Total elapsed time: 66:30:08 # #################################################################################################### #################################################################################################### # S.M.A.R.T. Status (device type: default) # # # # ATTRIBUTE INITIAL CYCLE 1 STATUS # # Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0 1 Up 1 # # Power_On_Hours 0 67 Up 67 # # Temperature_Celsius 24 30 Up 6 # # Reallocated_Event_Count 0 1 Up 1 # # Current_Pending_Sector 0 0 - # # Offline_Uncorrectable 0 0 - # # UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0 0 - # # # # # #################################################################################################### # # #################################################################################################### ATTENTION: Please take a look into the SMART report above for drive health issues. RESULT: Preclear Finished Successfully!. 

I 21F have been dating my boyfriend 21M for just under 2 years
I want to start this by saying I know snooping through phones is wrong and I feel really guilty for it but here’s kind of my explanation of why I did it
Me and my boyfriend have quite a large Friend group. There’s one girl in this group that quite often makes little comments like how attractive my boyfriend is and how I shouldn’t worry about her and his relationship because they’re just really really close friends. There was also one instance where we slept together and she just happened to sleepwalk into the room while we were doing it but it just sounded like a big coincidence how time it was.
I’ve brought the fact up that I’m uncomfortable with him speaking to her a few times, but I’ve never said that I want him to stop speaking to her because I don’t want to be that controlling kind of person but my brain got the best of me so he was at the gym to see if there was anything that she had been saying that was kind of crossing the lines a bit I looked on Snapchat and there wasn’t too much to find. There was one video where she sent a photo of her ass and said oh my God remember how small my bum used to be what she just kind of shot down and said that he wasn’t looking there and it was kind of brushed off and but apart from that there’s only one or two small little things that like friends would send to each other. I wasn’t too concerned although I would prefer he didn’t send them to her, then but when I was on there, I found something else that has upset me
So the girl in the friend group really isn’t as much of an issue that was all resolved but while on text I saw a message from a girl he was speaking to while me and him were still speaking.
(to fill in on the history at this point I had known him for six months three of those I’ve been actively flirting and admitting my feelings and he was reciprocating that that’s what it’s kind of the speaking phase)
I looked through some of their messages and a lot of the flirting he was doing with her sounded very similar to the flirting he was doing with with me at that time I know we weren’t dating so it’s not that big of a deal that he was speaking to someone else test all your options But the bit that upset me as well we were away on a group holiday. There was about 20 of us away me and him slept together (I was his first) and and after that seven of them continued travelling while the rest of us went home once he got back to the UK he then messaged this girl saying that he had got back and hope she was doing well with a x on the end
Fast forward nearly 2 years I’ve gone on to look on his phone and saw this messages. There’s been no contact after that message he had said after we slept together, but I’m still the fact that he had her after we had slept together and the fact that she didn’t reply I don’t know if he , chose not to speak to her or he just chose me because she didn’t reply
So my question is should I tell him that on his phone so should I bring up the fact that the girl in her friend group has been a bit flurry and I don’t like it or should I bring up the fact that he was still speaking to a girl when we were sleeping together before we got together or should I just let bygones be bygones since it was two years ago even though knowing this information is driving me a bit crazy
—
TL; DR my boyfriend was flirting with another girl after we slept together for the first time (he was a virgin and we weren’t dating yet) but hurt as he told me he wasn’t speaking to anyone
Should I tell him I know ?

Hi all. My dad was a narc, my ex husband who was physically abusive was a narc, the guy I dated soon after divorcing my ex husband was a narc. Unfortunately I didn't know about narcissist but I have learnt alot in the last year or so.
The last narc I dated came in as my rescuer after I divorced my ex husband that situation wrnt south real quick after months. He finally got me in his Web then he'd go and come back as usual and this went on for almost 3 years and I broke up with him a few times in there as well. I was actually dealing with his drug addiction, his narcissist mother who's also an alcoholic amongst other things. It was hell. Anyway I finally had enough after him and his racist mother had their finally attack and walked away in October 2022. Since then I had a 2 hovers in that year which didn't work and he was pissed and I had a reverse hover in June of 2023 when I was still recovering and didn't know the ins and outs of narcissist people. Anyway, from that day I went no contact. He said that he was seeing someone which I'm not surprise cause although he is Hideous on the inside and out he has all the ascetic of a normal person. House, car, good job, so he can get someone who's still asleep if he tried dangling money in their face. I said to him I didn't need someone onto of me to be over him and I never heard from him again.
I did hear from his friend the next month and later on thar year which I realised he was a flying monkey. Everything he'd ask me he'd go right back and tell him I assumed and I knew that was the case from the last phone call cause the friend said to he me that the ex has someone new which I knew he was seeing her for a long time but hoping that I'd some how come back to play his game cause she is not high grade supply like me. Definitely a downgrade when I saw the picture of them that year. She's clearly trying to look like me but won't ever be me. Nevertheless, I don't care about him her, I'm just indifferent to the situation and to be honest I hope he stays there and gets whatever he thinks he's looking for. He's an Evil vile person and so is his mother and they'll get there's either in this life or the next so will my ex husband.
I changed my number since last year and I have no social media. I deal with my ex husband accordingly for the children but my knowledge on narcissistic people has helped me tremendously so I can manage in that situation but with the last I hope he will never contact me again as I see no way he can. No one he knows has my contact number, he thinks I've moved city cause that's what it told his flying monkey and that same week I spoke to the flying monkey and gave no interest in him, his new supply of show any interest of ever getting in contact or back with him he immediately posted his picture of him and the new supply which I hope to believe that since he's upgraded her my smear campaign can end, flying monkeys can stay at bay and he can move on with the trash he deserves and I can continue to live my life.
It's been 1 year and 7 months since I left the last Narc. It's been 11 months since no contact with him directly and 7 months since no contact with the flying monkey. I think I'm safe. My advice would be to take your time to heal, find your faith, search for your purpose, invest time, love and energy into yourself and the people that truly love and care for you and always remember that actions speak louder than words. Never look at ascetic but look deep within a person before you connect yourself intimately with them. I've learnt the hard way and at 38 I haven't given up on love I'm just giving myself time, enjoying my children and being patient as I believe what is for you would never pass you by and I'm a good person so I will receive my blessings on this life or the next.

My partner (m19) and I (f19) have been dating for almost 2 years now. Him and I are in different universities and in a medium distance relationship as he comes back home almost every weekend. We started dating a month before he left for college and had quite a rocky start. I would say I was extremely trusting in the starting of the relationship and felt quite secure. None of the issues we had were related to a third person. But as time went on, a couple of my friends who go to the same uni as him started telling me things about his behaviour which slowly made me lose my trust. For instance, one time he went for a party, got shit faced and the next thing you know two girls were carrying him to their room. I got to know this a couple of days later through a friend. When I confronted him about it and asked him what happened, he just said he didn’t remember. Another time some girl complained about him touching her inappropriately. Somehow I convinced myself to get over these things as it wasn’t like he straight up cheated on me. Like he toed the line but never crossed it. My dilemma now is, looking at his past, I don’t know how much I can trust him, especially in a situation where drinking is involved. He’s made a new female friend in his uni and whenever he’s with her he’ll never text me or tell me. It’s only after they’ve met he mentions that he met her. What really throws me off is that usually when he’s with his friends he does check his phone and texts me. Even if it’s only one text. But when he’s with her there’s just radio silence from his end, till he gets back. One time he went to her house, I had injured my neck so he came to meet me first. He told me that he’s going to her house with another friend of theirs who was a guy. So I didn’t really mind. His plan was to go there for an hour or two and then go to the gym. One thing about him is that he never misses a day of gym. Even when we met on Christmas, I really wanted to watch a movie with him at home, but he told me he had to go to the gym. Anyways, he reached her house around 6 and I called him at 10, and he was still at her house. I asked him if his friend was still there with them and he told me that he had to leave early. I asked him why he missed gym, his excuse was that he had too many brownies and his stomach would hurt. We fought about this and eventually I had to get over this too. Fast forward a couple of months, we decided to go for clubbing and he invited his female friend too. We were commuting in 2 cars. He was with his female friend, another friend of his and one of my friends while I went in the other car. They reached before I did. While I was on the way, my friend called me and told me that my boyfriend and his female friend went to the bathroom together, and like kept going together. His other friend asked my friend if they were going to “f” each other and that he could sense a vibe. I reached the club and started noticing things myself. Even after I came he was still holding her hand and taking her to the washroom. I confronted him about all of this after we came back. His only defence was that he didn’t want her to get lost and he was the only person she knew there. What pissed me off was that he had no problem with me going to the washroom all by myself. But ofc he didn’t want her to get lost. Anyways currently they’re still friends and meet one on one. Till now I’d never asked him to distance himself from anyone, not even her. But everything that has happened keeps bothering me. It’s like I’m living with a dark cloud over my head just waiting for something to go wrong. I never had a problem with my partner having friends of the opposite gender, but there have to be boundaries. I’ve made it very clear how uncomfortable this relationship of his makes me. But he chooses to do nothing about it. His defence is that they’re just friends and he can’t just “throw people out like trash” I never asked him to do that. All I wanted was for him to respect our relationship and have some boundaries. Now I don’t know if I’m overreacting and just reading into all this too much. Any advice on how to deal with this would be much appreciated🙏🙏

About two weeks ago I thought about writing a story under 1,000 words. Would you believe ... 2,093 words? Enjoy!
At 9 PM, my roommate Martine pulled her knees closer to her chest and corrected her balance on the bay window bench seat. She never once looked at me as I finished neatening up the living room behind her. I didn’t expect her to notice me. She was waiting for her new love interest, Baylun. Nothing short of setting her clothes on fire would break her concentration before he arrived.
That’s why I didn’t bother to ask her if I looked okay. Yes, I wanted to make a good impression on Baylun because being presentable is being polite. Also, I didn’t want to give Martine any reason to leave me without her monthly half of the rent. If she left despite me being as perfect as I can be, well, nothing I can do about that. And given how intensely she was staring out the window, I wouldn’t be surprised if she expected Baylun to propose tonight. On their third date.
As if she’d read my mind, she spoke without turning her head. “Would you add him to the lease? I mean, if you like Baylun?”
“My Aunt Gloria might okay it. There’s enough room here. We can ask.” Why did I feel the need to appease her and pretend I wouldn’t be uncomfortable as the third wheel in my aunt’s rental house? My best guess is because appeasing and pretending are the cornerstones of my life, I’m very good at them.
Luckily, Martine was already not listening. “He’s here,” she whispered, sliding off the bench seat. After picking up her silk shawl, she partially opened our front door. Footsteps coming up our front steps stopped at what I presumed was the top step.
Beaming, she opened the door and invited him in. The man who entered had to duck to get in and I had to stop myself for apologizing to him. He was well dressed, looked like the proverbial “million dollars” and as he bent to give Martine a kiss on the cheek, I saw his eyes.
I froze for a moment, staring at the wrinkles around his eyes. Inhaling sharply, I blinked and shifted my gaze to Martine. She’d described Baylun as mature for his age. She’d failed to tell me he was at least middle age. That may sound ageist and I’m sorry for that but Martine and I are both 22 years old and Baylun looked twice that. He might be kind and, as Martine mentioned more than once, rich, but he might also be constantly on the lookout for a younger model than the one currently on his arm. Far be it from me to pass judgment without proof, but I would need more than Martine’s affirmation to feel comfortable with him as a roommate.
Introductions were short if not sweet. Baylun extended his hand and shook mine, which gave me some relief. If he’d kissed my hand I would undoubtedly have done nothing except internally cringe.
“Are you ready?” he asked, looking first at Martine who nodded enthusiastically. Then he looked at me and raised his eyebrows as if waiting for a reply. My jaw dropped, in real time.
Martine stared at me for half a second before jumping in to save me. “Lise was just getting her sweater, right, Lise?”
Thanks for covering for me, Martine. My plans for the night included pjs as soon as you guys left, but how could I say no? Except for flat out saying “No” which would be unthinkable.
“Right, I forgot it, and where are we going?” I squished in behind Martine, reached into the closet and took the top sweater from the neatly folded pile in the sweater drawer.
Baylun made a noise that was probably meant to sound like laughter. “Heddon’s Hill. To see the stars. Cloudless night tonight!”
Martine clapped her hands a couple of times, giving me a jolt of second-hand embarrassment. “Baylun asked me to keep it a secret. He brought a bottle of really good wine. It’s in his car, right, babe?”
Baylun didn’t say anything as he put his hand on her cheek like she was a child. She stared at him, as if in a trance. He didn’t purr audibly but that’s the best way I can describe his facial expression. Then I looked him in the eyes and the silence that followed hurt my ears.
A wave of panic immobilized me. I looked away and struggled to put on the sweater.
When he spoke, he whispered but it felt like thunder to my ears. “Perhaps a heavier outer layer?”
Martine snapped back into reality. “You look cold. Grab a hoodie, we’ll meet you in the car.”
That was the out I needed. “You know what, I feel awful. Go ahead, enjoy. I’ll take cold meds and try to be awake when you get back, to hear all about it.” To convey sadness at missing out on being a third wheel and resigned acceptance of impending illness, I grimaced and shrugged.
Martine considered me for a moment before agreeing. She leaned gently against Baylun’s arm and squeezed his hand. “Could we be back in an hour, babe?”
He turned his full attention on her and nodded. “Yes. We will. Goodbye, Lise.”
I thought about saying goodbye and decided a coughing fit would be more suitable. As I covered my mouth with my left elbow, I waved weakly with my right hand. The two lovebirds got into the car and when I heard it backing down the driveway, I poured a couple of teaspoons of night time anti-cold liquid down the sink. To make sure I smelled like I’d taken it, I licked the spoon before washing it.
When they returned, Martine walked in at a slower pace than usual and Baylun put his arm under hers as soon as they were both inside, so she could lean on him. She didn’t seem upset. She also didn’t make eye contact with me. My first thought was she had a bit too much wine, but we’ve had drinks together. She’s always been a little louder, a little more animated after a bit of alcohol. I started wondering if she’d consumed something other than wine while stargazing. Not judging, just trying to find an explanation that didn’t scare me about her health.
Instead of speaking to me, Baylun nodded and continued supporting Martine, helping her through the house. I reasoned he was taking her to the bathroom or her bedroom, so I squeezed in beside him and ran to open her bedroom door. Baylun led her to the far side of her bed so he was facing me, and helped her to lie down.
Except he didn’t lay her down right away. He held her halfway between standing and lying down, stared into my eyes and put his mouth on her neck.
I know how this sounds. My brain undoubtedly recognized the set-up. Yet I was unprepared for what happened.
Baylun retracted his lips, revealing two bloody fangs and touched Martine’s neck as if searching for something. Just before his fingers found them, I saw two wounds on her neck. He positioned his fingers so his fangs went into the wounds. Martine shuddered for a second, then sighed and stopped moving.
I inhaled sharply. Nothing made sense and I couldn’t remember how to move. When I realized my hand was still on the door handle, I leaned on it slightly, turned and ran to the front door.
Baylun met me there. I didn’t hear him walking or running. He wasn’t at the door and then he was, positioned to prevent me from opening it. He wasn’t frowning. He didn’t lean towards me or touch me, for which I was grateful.
But his eyes. They sparkled, they were bright and lively, and they were wrinkle-free. He looked my age, not middle aged. He looked like the guy I’d met an hour earlier, only younger.
I took a step backwards.
He took a step forward and spoke, his voice quiet and calm.
“If you say anything to her about what you saw, I will deny it and she will believe me. Then I will show you what it’s like to burn in hell.”
This was the second time in one night life handed me a “get out of trouble” card and I grabbed it with both hands. Frowning with the hopes of presenting as confused, I asked, “Okay, I thought it was very kind of you to bring her home, but I think I get it. What’s our story if she asks?”
He crossed his arms and studied me for a long moment. “I’m glad you understand. You can take credit for getting her into bed.”
I nodded and brought my left hand to my mouth, trying to look thoughtful. “And you asked her to text when she gets up tomorrow? Or is that too much?”
He chuckled and uncrossed his arms. “That’s just what I was thinking.” He stared at my mouth.
A rush of fear froze me in place. “Everything okay?”
“It will be.” He pointed at the right side of my mouth.
A sharp pain on the side of my face woke me up. It was still dark. I was in my bed. I tried sitting up and learned my pillowcase was stuck to the corner of my mouth.
Instant panic. I picked up the pillow and ran to the bathroom where a quick glance in the mirror above the sink revealed the substance wasn’t glue, it was blood. As awful as that was, my initial reaction was “Better than glue.” A little warm water on a face cloth eased the pillowcase off my skin and I set the case and face cloth on the counter.
For a brief moment I felt absolute relief. I held onto the sides of the sink and took a deep breath.
A drop of blood landed on the right side of the sink.
Blood could be from biting my lip, or inside of my cheek or even my tongue in my sleep. Or a nosebleed.
Another drop of blood landed on the sink.
It was so weird. Nothing hurt. Not my nose, not my lip, not my tongue. I struggled to figure out what I did, why I would be bleeding. Did I do something foolish before I went to bed?
I couldn’t remember going to bed.
Time to look in the mirror. There wasn’t any obvious damage, so I used my fingers to move my lips away from the right side of my mouth.
My canine tooth was missing. Another, sharper tooth was working its way out of the gums. That’s where the blood was coming from.
I leaned in and looked more closely at it. The emerging canine was definitely tearing through the gum, making it bleed.
A scream worked its way up my throat. I stood up, ramrod straight, shut my mouth and gently placed the face cloth on it.
I tiptoed down the hall to Martine’s bedroom door. It was shut. She was breathing in a regular pattern, not quite snoring.
I came back to my bedroom and checked my phone. 4:45 AM. When did I come to bed? Baylun was here, I remembered him with Martine and then at the door. Seems like he’s gone, unless he’s sitting in the dark in the living room or kitchen.
Any other day, Martine would be waking up in two hours. If she does, I don’t doubt she’ll be excited to hear Baylun wants her to text him.
I want to throw up. A few hours ago, life felt so normal. Now a giant canine tooth is pushing its way into my mouth. Maybe the other one is, too. I don’t care to find out. I also don’t want to go to the hospital where I’ll run out of answers before the staff run out of questions.
Maybe I can take a couple of days off work, see if the new dental situation affects my sleep schedule. Maybe I can find a night job.
Or maybe I’m a vampire, condemned to a life of hunting humans and being hunted by humans. I’m going to wait until Martine gets up before posting this. She might have a lot more information on this.
My mind is clearer now. My memories are back. It’s time for me to disappear from Martine’s and my Aunt Gloria’s lives. I can do it. I must do it. For their safety, and for mine. Everything is not okay. Not yet.

Long story short. I (24 M) have/was seeing this guy (25 M) for a year now who I met off of Grindr. At one point we were hanging out with each other every week, met each other families, planned to live together in the future, said we loved each other, the whole nine yards. I felt like we were building towards a relationship however he never wanted to be exclusive until he started his nursing program for school and gave me hope that he would be open to a committed relationship once he started school so he wanted me to wait for him.
He also imposed the boundary that we could not have sex with other people, which was fine. Unfortunately, within the last couple months I feel like he has become distant and neglectful in our relationship as I always felt like I was the one trying to see him, calling him more then he call me, planned our dates etc and i generally felt like he was taking me for granted and feeling unappreciated. An example was that I am in Grad school and asked him to plan something to celebrate since I finished my first year of school and he only gave me the excuse that he "Wasn't in the celebration mood." Of why he couldn't do it.
Anyway, I brought these feelings up to him, and he always expressed that he would treat me better and put in more effort. However, I feel like he never did it consistently, and I was tired of bringing my feelings up as I was tired of him not even doing the bare minimum. Anyway, the last time we saw each other, we got drunk cried and got into an argument where I suggested we break up due to these feelings. He didn't want to break up and wanted to keep going, giving me hope again, and I agreed to stay if he was able to remain consistent. (He expressed my emotions also ruined the day for him.)
Fast forward to last Friday he finally got accepted into his nursing program for school, and I wanted to celebrate with him since I knew he was off this weekend. I texted him around 4 when he got off to make plans to see him, and he was beating around the bush in confirming my plans, and then he stopped texting all together. I figured he went to sleep because he was tired from work. Well, around 9, I go on grindr because I was bored and saw his profile in my city saying that he was 2 miles away from me. (We live 30 minutes away from each other in 2 different cities, so why are you in my city at night?)
So i screenshot his profile, texted him, and called him on why he has a profile in my city around 9. He ignored my phone call and did not text me back until 12 that night asking me why I am on Grindr anyway (The difference being is that I always been transparent that I was on the app looking to make gay friends since I have none in my city. Plus, I ALWAYS told him when I was in his city. So why was he being sneaky? As he told me, he deleted his account)
He said he was "Riding around with a friend" and that I'm acting like he was fucking when he was just looking on the app. Truthfully I didn't care because it was the principle of it that you went all afternoon not texting me and couldn't even confirm plans with me yet you're riding around with some random that you never even talked about before. If i didn't even catch him on Grindr then i know he wouldn't have told me he was in my city and that's why i had to end it. Like what else have you been doing that I don't know about?
Anyway, after I broke up with him, I unadded him from social media, and he blocked my number and tik tok. I thought about texting him from my friend snapchat or text now to reconcile but idk if I should. I feel like he played me and I hate how a year of my life with someone who i thought was my best friend went to us being blocked. I so badly wished he gave me a rational explanation of why he was on the app as I do care for him, but caring about someone shouldn't lead to me being hurt.

I live in Portland, and our public transportation doesn’t enforce fares especially on the trains(MAX). So it’s full of degenerates that play their music without headphones straight from their phone or to a Bluetooth. For the sake of not getting stabbed most people will ignore the perpetrator of shitty music. I will ask if they could turn it down if they are next to me, but usually just walk to the other side of the train. Well, my anger has gotten the best of me and I took my Bluetooth speaker and blasted Dying Fetus while some dude had shitty mumble rap on a distorted speaker. They turned theirs off, but I let Dying Fetus play until my stop, about 3 songs. While using Spotify it shows tour dates. They are coming here on Sunday May19th. I usually listen to rap and Black Keys type rock. So of course in honor of Luke I got tickets. $30 + $10 fees. I only regret I don’t have any MK merch to wear there. I’ll report back on Monday to Sgt. Thomas.

Hi everyone. What I’m about to explain is going to be pretty outrageous. With that being said, I would really appreciate a judgement-free discussion and an open mind.
My boyfriend and I have been together for 20 months. My boyfriend has been on probation for the last 5 years. He gets off probation at midnight today/tomorrow. I would rather not explain the reason he was on probation, but I will explain the restrictions he had and broke:
• No drinking/going to bars (He broke this rule every weekend)
• No doing drugs (this one is obvious; but he also broke this one almost every weekend. He was buying and using coke and lying to me about it. Gaslighting me and making me feel crazy for thinking he was on coke. When I caught him the last time 6 weeks ago I threatened to call his probation officer if he used again - hasn’t used since)
• Not allowed access to social media at all and no access to a computer unless monitored by work. (He had a hidden computer I found 4 months ago filled with social media, dating apps and chat sites where he was sexting every single day. Before this, him and I didn’t have a sex-life and I would cry about it. He would give me bullshit excuses and tell me things would change (they never did) He had been cyber-cheating on me our entire relationship. When I found the computer, I confronted him, he deleted all accounts and got rid of the computer. Our sex life has slightly improved but he still doesn’t initiate sex with me.)
• Also had a monitored phone app that could read every message, look at every website, block certain apps/websites, etc. This app will be taken off tomorrow.
He would also somehow pass lie detector tests when asked if he did any of the above. Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Why the f*ck are you with this guy?” Unfortunately, when I found out about the coke we were already 9 months into our relationship. When we started having intimacy problems, I would just masturbate and try to feel connected to him in other way. And when I found the computer, we were already 1.5 years into the relationship and I love him too much to walk away. Yes, I know I deserve better. Yes, I know this is borderline abuse. I ended up calling his dad and told him everything. To hold him accountable. He idolizes his dad and he’s the one that got him out of trouble the first time. He swears up and down and won’t hurt me again, because hearing me cry when I found the computer made him realize he was fucking up.
I’m trying to find healthy boundaries to set now that he’s free. Mostly revolving around his phone, since it will not longer be monitored. He knows I don’t want him to get another computer. And he knows I don’t want him to use coke. I want to be more intimate; but at this point I don’t think we’re compatible in that way. I guess I just want a list of things to say to him where he knows I’m serious about not being fucked over again. Or lied to. Or manipulated. I can’t threaten to call his probation officer anymore.
I’ve never known him as someone who’s off probation,’but he has sure acted like he has been off for a while. Again; I know that I deserve better and that I should have “ran”. I’m asking for help on setting boundaries so that they are clear. If he crosses a boundary or lies to me again, I will be gone.
TL;DR What are healthy boundaries I can set for my boyfriend who gets off probation today but has lived like he’s off probation and has constantly lied to me?