Boyfriends who dont care quotes

This guy, he initiates a conversation with me as i newly joined the class and we hang out together in the hostel campus outside his block. His friends play love songs blasting out of a speaker from his room as we're sitting and talking on a bench. It was kinda nice and he too acknowledged that there was a connect by saying something like how so much happened right in the first meeting. He walked me till my block and we hugged good night. He seemed to show some interest and attachment, texting me, asking to meet often, showing concern for my well being, sending posts on insta, wanting to meet everyday and spend a longer time together when we do. In fact initially im the one that wasnt comfortable with the degree of attachment and expectation he seemed to have of me and tried to keep some distance cuz i sensed something off about him. He shared a couple cute lovey songs with me and also a public playlist full of sweet lovey songs. He calls me to get a picture with him on his film camera when he newly gets it. Goes and changes his outfit to match mine when i arrive and specially picks a spot to get our picture.
But he also had this deal going on with another girl in our class who he knew and was into from 1st year. They seemed awfully close and on some probing he reluctantly reveals about how she has a boyfriend but he's still been close and loyal to her, they've made out a couple of times too. Told me that they havent madeout this semester though (since when i joined). Yeah, i was kinda disgusted by the whole thing. Felt nauseous and feverish after knowing about this. It only confirmed and strengthened the ick i seemed to have right from the beginning. All the more concrete reason to keep my distance from him. But i wanted to stay friends in some capacity. Couldnt help but care and feel affection for him though. And i know it wasnt my business or my place to say or do anything about whatever they had going on but honestly, i just couldnt help but feel terrible about it all. I couldnt help but be affected by it despite trying to keep some distance. Seeing them around all the time, seeing them together irl and on social media despite not even being in much contact with them affected me A LOT.
Our already limited contact reduced all the more with time while their's seemed to have been going fine, maybe even better than before.
His contact with me became limited to just sometimes sending random insta posts. Most of the texts came from my side and his seemed to have become even more limited than before (and he seemed like a dry texter to begin with).
During our farewell, he didn't even bother trying to get a picture with me while had many of em with her, both ones from the phone and his film camera. I had to be the one to call him to come take at least one picture together. Seemed to have taken that too with a sense of obligation.
Then i tell him that i think our level of investment and care doesn't appear reciprocal or mutually fulfilling to me so it's better we dont meet or take a last picture before we leave. He writes an awful text and blocks me a while after that. I blocked him too after that horrendous text of his. Now i see him make an insta post of all his film photographs which includes the one we took together. He still has me blocked.
I just dont understand this guy, what happened here. Was he only interested in a friendship from the get go and had no feelings/interest whatsoever? Or did he have some interest just not enough to do anything significant about it. Based on his last text it felt like i wasnt even a good friend really, so then what, was i nothing to him from the start? Idk what his problem is/was. I was open to work through things, our issues. But he always responded in a dismissive and avoidant manner, making me feel crazy and like i was too much. I dont know what i did wrong, what went wrong here. It just hurts feeling like i didn't mean much to him even as a friend. I feel like an idiot to have cared so much for him. I dont know what he wanted from me really. Especially because he literally would never communicate or express what was going on with him much.
I dont know why this whole thing bothered me so much. Why his last text still keeps ringing in my head. All these unanswered questions in my head. Why i cared so much for him despite him and the situation being bad for me.

When I was three years old I was in a really bad car accident. I didn't know it at the time, but that singular event would come to define everything about my life moving forward. What I remember about the accident is mostly a collage of backdated comments I was able to reel out of my father in the following years. He was driving me and my mom in his old '91 Chevy Tahoe through the twisting backroads of Southern Illinois, weaving his way through the gnarled branches of oak trees which interlocked into a braided ceiling overhead. A fog had rolled in, giving the impression that we were driving through a cloudy tube. Everything was simultaneously bright and opaque. I didn't mind though, as I was in the back seat working on a coloring book. My mom was in the front, talking with my dad or turning around to entertain my completed pictures.
Although I was of the age where my memory was just beginning to mature, I still recall two things very clearly from the accident. First was the sensation of breaking. I remember feeling the way a plate must feel to be dropped: weightless at first, then suddenly meeting a much larger, more solid object—the air popped like a firecracker, and the entirety of my body shattered into hundreds of fractals. And then I remember a hand. It was my dad's hand pulling me from the wreck.
I ended up hospitalized for weeks after the crash. My mom was less lucky. The impact had killed her instantly.
As I've alluded to, I was young, and at the time I didn't fully understand the implications of what had happened. I knew something was missing, but it was like a word on the tip of my tongue, or the forgotten vanilla in a cherished cake recipe—coloring my experience, but not the whole of it. Not like my dad. For him, it was the whole fucking cake. He had somehow made it out with only a few scratches. I'm sure he had a really bad case of survivor's guilt, and frankly, looking back, I wouldn't have blamed him if he slumped into despair and spent his days drinking away his sorrow. But he wasn't that type of man. He got help. It took him years before he was able to recall anything that happened that morning, and most of it is still repressed, but he shared with me what he could. Or at least that's what I had thought.
My dad was a Middle School teacher since before I was born, and he kept his job until very recently. As a result, we didn't have much by way of resources. I grew up on Disney Channel and TV dinners for the most part, but I didn't mind. When I became of school age, his job actually made caring for me pretty convenient. Since our Elementary and Middle schools were connected, he was able to drive me there and back each day.
It was around third or fourth grade that I realized I was different. I didn't understand the other children or even the adults most of the time. They would say things then immediately change their mind, or they would talk about something and in the next breath forget its existence entirely. I remember one day at lunch, I had just gotten my tray of hot food and sat down with some friends. One of the kids, Alex, was talking about a stuffed bird he had won for getting first place in Mr. Curtis's pop-up math competition. We were all admiring its blue wings and white belly and sharp black beak and beady eyes. I left mid-conversation to get a chocolate milk. When I came back, I asked to see the bird again, and Alex said "what bird?" I was perplexed. "The bird—the bluejay you were just showing us." I remember all of the other kids looking at me like I was crazy. I figured they were all playing a trick on me, so I got up and went over to Alex's seat and crouched down, looking under the table, then I sprung up and tried to open his lunchbox. "What are you doing!?" he yelled. I felt so confused and embarrassed that I ran to the bathroom to cry.
And then there was another time a group of kids were laughing about a joke one of the girls, Taylor, had made about our homeroom teacher's face looking like a seal. I knew it was mean, but at the time I just wanted to fit in so I played along, but when I made a comment about her resemblance to the semi-aquatic animal, they all looked at me confused. "What are you talking about? We never said that…"
These misattributions kept happening, and it led to me being ostracized from most of the little childish cliques that popped up. I developed a quasi-standoffish temperament which I used as a shield against a chaotic world that I didn't understand. My dad eventually had me tested for ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder), but I passed the test. He asked if I wanted to move to a different town with different schoolmates, thinking that perhaps I was getting bullied, but I told him it was fine. Somewhere deep down I felt like no matter where I went, this problem would follow me.
You may think that I was simply coping with the absence of my mom, and while I'm sure that her absence has left certain holes in my life, kindly, no, that wasn't what was happening. You see, at first I didn't notice the instances of what I'll call "blinking". I simply thought that I was misremembering things: objects, words, events. They were all little things anyway. A bird, a joke, my pencil box. It wasn't until sixth grade that I realized the magnitude of the phenomenon.
I was in my dad's 6th grade Social Studies class and we had just been assigned our "Ancient Civilizations" project which involved creating a diorama of our chosen civilization and presenting its features to the class. My friend at the time, Claire, had taken my first choice of Ancient Rome (which we had a heated argument about at lunch), so I was left with Ancient Egypt. At the time, all I pictured for Egypt was a plate of sand. However, my dad and I went through some illustrated history books and pictures on the internet and he really built up the project for me.
Over the course of a couple months, he helped me shape three pyramids out of small wooden planks and a bunch of tan clay. We placed them in the center of a giant square shoebox lid which served as the container for the diorama. Then he bought some small wooden mannequin puppets and we dressed them up in cloth clothes (mostly kilts and tunics) and colored their eyes, mouths, and hair. We added a few obelisks and some small box-huts which were collected into a little village around the Nile. Finally, we added a light glaze of glue where we felt would be necessary and then covered the whole project with golden glitter.
As we worked on each part of the diorama, my dad helped me understand what we were adding and why it was important to Ancient Egypt. I loved the way he talked about history. He spun everything into a miraculous story. To this day, I don't think I've ever had a teacher who came close to his level of charisma and creativity. As a result, I became really proud of my diorama. I memorized all the little details and rehearsed my speech in front of the mirror for hours leading up to the last couple weeks of class. And then, two days before I was supposed to give my presentation, everything fell apart.
First, I need to apologize for deceiving you about an aspect of my story. I thought it might help you to understand what I was going through at the time. What I'm about to tell you is going to sound insane. I get that. But please hear me out. The truth is that I was never assigned to present on Ancient Egypt; everything else about Clair taking my first pick and dad helping me with the whole project and my excitement leading up to the presentation was all true, but it wasn't a project on Ancient Egypt, it was a project on Ancient Sidovan, which was a civilization located on the eighth continent called "Catalan" (the same name as the spoken language, but unrelated) which was due West of Australia in the Indian Ocean.
I know this sounds incredible, and if you want to believe it's all in my head, I get that, but I remember clearly all sorts of facts about it: the Malagasy, the same people who populated Madagascar, were the first peoples to discover Catalan and settle it. However, about five hundred years later, Indian ships would arrive and create the civilization known as Sidovan. A pidgin language formed between the indigenous population and new arriving Indians called "Hiesa" (pronounced: Hai-E-suh or Hai-ʔ-suh). Catalan had a warm climate with plenty of natural resources, but Sidovan had a dense enough population to require agricultural production. They grew rice, grain, sugarcane, vegetables, and even tobacco.
I remembered all of these facts and more. My diorama reflected the main features of the Sidovan civilization. And then two days before my presentation, I woke up and my diorama was entirely different. The hilly grasslands were traded out for sandy dunes. The Hindu statues and stone palaces became clay pyramids and large spear-like pillars. And everything was covered with the ickiest yellow glitter I had ever seen. Tears stung my eyes as I trampled over to my dad's room and banged on his door. "Dad! What did you do!?" I yelled.
"Honey?" He responded, rushing over to the base of the stairs. "What's wrong?"
"The diorama. It's ruined!"
"It's what?" he asked and ran up the stairs, leading me to my room. He looked over it for a few seconds, checking to see if everything was intact, then said, "I don't see it, honey. Where is it ruined?"
I was completely dumb-struck. What did he mean he didn't see it? "All of it!" I shouted. "The whole thing is wrong. Where's the grass and the stone buildings and the lady with the four arms and the elephants? Where is my project!?"
My dad looked at me in silence. "Lauren, baby, what civilization do you think you were working on?"
"Ancient Sidovan, of course! We've been working on this for months now! Dad, please tell me you remember."
He knelt down and put his hands on my shoulders. "Honey, your project was on Ancient Egypt. There is no Ancient Sidovan."
"Y-you're lying." I protested. "Books, you have books. On your bookshelf."
He took me into his study and showed me all of his books. None of them were on Ancient Sidovan. He even turned on his computer and typed in the name of the civilization, but all that came up was a near match "Sidon". I remember feeling the sudden urge to puke. My entire body felt like it was pumping battery acid instead of blood. "I—I don't," I started but suddenly my head felt very light, and I fainted.
When I woke up, I was in the hospital. I had lost consciousness for over half an hour, enough time for my dad to call 9-1-1 and have the ambulance transport me to the nearest ER. They ran all sorts of tests on me, but they all came back fine. After a couple hours of IV fluids and monitoring, they released me with my dad.
I ended up skipping the rest of school that week. My dad didn't make me present my diorama. In fact, he never brought the subject up again. Part of me was glad. I just wanted to forget the whole thing ever happened. But another part of me couldn't move past what was clearly the most absurd thing to ever happen to me. About a week after the incident, I tried to broach the subject, but when I asked my dad about it, he didn't seem to remember our conversation at all. He said I had fallen ill and that's why I needed to go to the ER and miss class. I felt like I was going crazy. If I was older, I probably would have voluntarily checked myself into a psychiatric ward. But I was young and helpless and alone, and I decided that if I just ignored the changes well enough, I could still get along. This proved difficult though, as the blinking would only exacerbate in the coming months.
Up until the time of the project, I hadn't been able to directly observe the phenomenon. It was always in retrospect that things disappeared. It was during the summer after sixth grade that this changed. I still remember the first time it happened. I had just gotten out of the shower and was drying my hair in front of the mirror. After it was dried, I threw on my clothes then went to tie my hair up in a ponytail, but as I went to set the elastic tie, I felt its weight dissipate in my hand. I gasped and held my hand out. The circular black band was gone.
Fast forward to seventh grade and the blinking had spiraled out of control. Reflecting back on it, most people would probably have assumed I was drinking psilocybin-infused water, as the delusions were somewhat consistent with psychedelic phenomena: except these distortions were real (at least they felt that way to me).
I'd wake up and grab the box of Special K but end up eating Cheerios. The McDonalds logo would look yellow and red one day, but purple and black the next. I'd be watching a show, and then a different show, and then a different one. It was as if the entire universe was a Christmas tree with millions of lights, and the lights kept shifting hues randomly, faster and faster, and I was the only one who could see their changing colors. I remember one night my dad made spaghetti for dinner and we went out onto the porch to eat it. While we were sitting, I saw our neighbor's house, a two story townhome, blink and become a single story bungalow. I gasped, and my dad asked what was wrong, but when I tried to explain he just gave me a strange look. For him, no matter what changed, the world was "always that way". While for me, it didn't have "a way".
The situation peaked when Clair, that friend I mentioned before, disappeared. I texted her (my dad had bought me a BlackBerry at the beginning of summer break) but didn't get a response. When I asked her other friends if they knew where she was, I got the usual "what are you talking about?" look. I knew right away what had happened, even though I didn't want to believe it. I went to the teacher and asked if there was a Clair in our class. She said "no". I broke down in front of everyone. I couldn't take it anymore. I ran out of school. The lady at the front desk tried to stop me, but I just barrelled past her. I kept running until I got to a big park across the street and bawled my eyes out until the police arrived and escorted me home. When they tried asking me what was wrong, I didn't say anything. There was literally nothing I could say that they would understand.
That night I prayed to God for the first time. My dad wasn't a religious man. He went to Catholic church with my mom when she was alive, but after she died he never went back. Still, I knew how to pray, even if I never did it. I copied some of the people I saw praying in movies and interlocked my fingers and knelt down on my bed, stuffing my head into a pillow. "Dear God," I said, "Please, please, please help me." I told Him about my struggles and asked Him to make them stop. I spent an hour saying the same things over and over again. And when I was finished, my little body was so tired, I fell right to sleep.
I knew something was different the second I opened my eyelids. I didn't only feel relieved, but I felt… embraced. I felt like someone was watching over me. I felt like I wasn't alone. I moved through my day with cautious apprehension. I didn't want to get my hopes up only to be let down. But to my surprise, the blinking had stopped. At least I couldn't remember any of the inconsistencies, and to me, that was a win. I began to pray regularly, and the more I did, the more I could feel the sense that someone was looking out for me. It was like I was getting a big hug from some cosmic force that loved me and wanted me to be happy.
I made it a habit to pray regularly. I asked my dad if he could take me to a church, and he agreed to take me to St. Mark's, the same church that he and my mom used to attend. Over time, I realized that the actual church services weren't as important to me as the praying. For whatever reason, there was something about praying that was like a glue for my brain, holding the entire universe together. As I got older, I considered that maybe it wasn't that the changes were no longer happening, but that I simply didn't see them anymore. In other words, maybe I was just becoming like everyone else. Either way, I didn't mind.
In my teenage years, I got into mindfulness meditation. I thought that I'd want to go into religious studies and become a theologian, so I started to learn about Eastern traditions in addition to Christianity. I joined a bunch of different school clubs to meet kids of different faiths: Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam. I tried to find a common thread which linked them all and would explain what happened to me as a child. The metaphors of Heaven and Hell, Good and Evil, the Taoist Yin and Yang—duality. Every religion seemed to speak about a way of being that would lead to a better place. In some cases that better place was a physical future existence, and in others it was merely being in contact with the perfection of nature or the present. Metaphorically, the teachings could explain what I had gone through in a kind of loose way, but there were no explicit statements about my condition.
***
I want to fast forward to why I've decided to write about this now. To give you an idea of where I'm at, I'm now 25 and working on finishing my MA in Computational Linguistics. I know that's a bit of a switch from what I was thinking when I was a teenager, but I really only interested in religion because of the value praying afforded me as a child. I didn't actually have much interest in the subject, itself. After my first year of college, I changed to an English major, which ultimately led to me taking a linguistics class and enjoying it so much that I switched tracks in my Junior year. Considering the state of the world, I thought minoring in Computer Science might help me financially in the future, so I ended up charting a path which I figured might lead to something like developing translation software.
Anyway, everything was going fine until a few weeks ago. I was out at an all-night diner with a few of my friends from the program. There was Jeremy, Martin, Bella, Jordan, and Macy. We had been working on a group project together involving modeling construction grammars by generating primitive 3D structures using C# and running the code through a game engine (it's a bit weird, but essentially we were trying to create a multidimensional model for language using a similar but more advanced concept than other LLMs), and just had a breakthrough. It was 2AM though and not a brain cell existed between the six of us, so instead we focused on a different problem: Macy's ongoing breakup with her semi-long distance trucker boyfriend. We tried to explain why Mike wasn't going to work out as we ordered a round of milkshakes and waited for the lone overnight kitchen worker to scoop out three balls of ice cream from the Deans carton for each of us, blend it, then have the server deliver the vintage diner glasses on a plastic tray.
I dug into my thick strawberry shake with a spoon. It was delicious. I kept eating but focused back on the conversation. I remember feeling something odd about one of the scoops, but I was so entrenched in Macy's story that I didn't notice the metal shard in my ice cream until I felt it against my lip. "P-tuh" I spat out the shard and ice cream all in one motion, then covered my mouth which I was sure was bleeding. The silver blade was probably as large as my thumb, and it had two jagged edges, as if it was fastened for the purpose of causing damage. "What the fuck!" I yelled.
Everyone at the table turned to see what was the matter. "Hey, Lauren, you okay?"
I spoke through a covered mouth, using my free hand to point at the table. "That was in my—"
But it was gone.
"In your… shake? Was something in your shake?" asked Jeremy.
I froze. In that moment, the stories of my childhood that I had only remembered as faint nightmares came back in a wave of crushing terror. How could I have been so stupid to think they would simply vanish forever? No, this isn't the same thing, I thought. But deep down, I knew it was. I drew my hand away from my lips and saw that it was dry—no blood. When I looked back up, all of the blood in my veins went cold. My friends were… smiling at me. Their lips were elastic like taffy, stretching to reveal their teeth. I could feel them radiating malevolence, as if the only thing holding them back from picking up their utensils and stabbing me to death was some thinly veiled force field. The moment lasted for what felt like half a minute, then Jordan said two words which made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
"Found you"
The words ricocheted in my now adrenaline powered skull. But just as he spoke them, the world blinked and my friends were back. Bella reached out and grabbed my hand. I pulled away, but when I saw her concerned expression, I relented.
"Sorry, guys, I think I'm going to have to call it." I said.
"You sure, L?" asked Jordan. "You look like you just saw a ghost."
"Yeah, thanks, but I just…" I stumbled for a lie, but when one wouldn't come, Martin stood up and said he'd walk me out to my car.
"Thanks," I said as I got into my little 2015 Jetta. "It's just been a long day."
"No problem, Lauren. You know, if there's ever anything—"
"I know," I said but didn't mean. Some things just couldn't be shared.
I drove for about five minutes before stopping at a gas station. I pulled in and parked near the back. Then I interlocked my fingers and prayed for half an hour. I apologized for not taking my praying seriously and asked to once again be granted peace. Unlike my younger years, I also drifted into other avenues of thought. I imagined my mom. I pictured the whole arc of my life, all of the little decisions that led me to where I was. I cried for a long time. I felt like that little girl again reaching out for help. I still felt so lost, so out of control; there were so many things missing, and I was so confused.
I decided then to take a trip back home and visit my dad who was now working as a private tutor. He made enough prepping affluent students for the ACT and SAT that he could spend his free time pursuing his real passions: reading and writing. When I arrived at his doorstep that weekend, he greeted me with open arms. "How are you, kiddo? It's been, what? A year or so?"
It was actually more like two years, but I didn't tell him. I just smiled and nodded.
"Well, come in."
The house was almost exactly how I remembered it. Linoleum floors, beige walls, a few scattered pictures, the scent of camomile. Everything minimalist. There was a quaintness, a prettiness to the way everything seemed to be well kept and in a perfect place. From the cherry wood chairs we'd sit in to eat, to the cream-colored loveseat. I felt at home.
I spent the drive thinking of what I would talk to my dad about, but ultimately I wasn't sure what I'd say. I loved my dad, but I think growing up it was easy to see him as naive. After all, arguably the most important episodes of my childhood were completely unknown to him. In that way, I kind of loved him from a distance. Maybe losing my mom also played into that. Maybe I just had trust issues. And after what happened at the diner… Luckily there hadn't been any blinks since.
I stayed for a couple days and he showed me around some of the different coffee shops where he'd tutor kids or write some of his stories. I met some of his friends, mostly other retired or part-time teachers who were in a similar place in life. I was happy for him. Then, on Sunday, he made me my favorite meal growing up: homemade carbonara pasta with chicken and broccoli. The sauce had a few different cheeses, butter, olive oil, and a raw egg yolk. It was the perfect blend of creamy, savory, and sweet. After we ate, he cracked open a scrapbook of some old photos and other clippings he had put together.
We reminisced about the past and laughed whenever I'd cover up one of my awkward pictures. He brought up some stories from school that I had forgotten, naming some teachers that I hadn't thought about in years. Apparently I had started at the end, because as I moved to the other end of the book, I kept getting younger and younger. I flipped to the last pages and noticed a couple pictures of my mom that made my heart sink.
"She was beautiful, wasn't she?" said my dad.
"Mmm," I agreed.
I flipped to the last page and saw a collage of newspaper clippings. One of them was related to the accident. It was headlined: "Two Survive Head-On Collision". After a cursory glance at the text, I noticed something odd. It said, "Both the husband and child, a three year old girl, sustained life-threatening wounds. The husband was found unconscious on the scene. The girl was found twenty meters away from the vehicle, crying." I swallowed, trying to remember back to what happened that day. The feeling of crashing, of the world slowing down, then breaking, returned. And then there was a hand. My dad's hand. Or was it? If he was unconscious, who pulled me out of that wreck?
I looked up at my dad. He was smiling.
I shot up and started backing up slowly toward the door. "No, not you, too. What is this? What's happening? Who are you?"
My dad, or whatever was controlling him, laughed."Oh, Lauren, Lauren, Lauren. You know who we are." he purred as he stood up. He lifted his hands and the lights began to flicker then bend in a way which shouldn't have been possible. Dark figures began to propagate from the shadows along the walls. The pictures nailed there began to blink out of existence. I turned to run toward the door but the handle was gone. Glass shards materialized all around me and swarmed like locusts. Certain I was going to die, I dropped down on my knees and once again turned to prayer, this time asking God to directly intervene and save me.
Everything went quiet.
"Honey? Are you okay?"
I didn't trust his voice. I knew if I opened my eyes, I'd see that awful smile. He was just toying with me. "It's not you," I said in between muttered prayers. "I know it's not you."
"Honey," my dad said, closer. I felt his arms wrap around me. This was it, I was going to be suffocated. I waited for the inevitable crushing weight of my chest collapsing. I waited to break all over again.
"I would never hurt you, Lauren. I love you more than anything in the whole world."
I burst out in tears. "No, it's not you, I know it's not you. You don't exist!"
My dad's weight dissipated. I opened my eyes and saw that he was no longer there. "Dad?" I called aloud. "Dad? Where did you go?"
I checked all over the house, but there was no trace of him. There were still pictures of him all over the house, so I knew he hadn't blinked out of existence like everything else, but somehow he was missing.
***
I left the house and got a room at a hotel, where I am now. I'm sure at this point that whatever is happening to me is no longer random. Something out there is actively trying to hunt me. Maybe it has been my whole life, but only now it can see me—however weird that sounds. If that's right, then God has been on my side trying to protect me from this demon or monster or devil or whatever it is. Regardless, the methods I was using when I was younger are not going to cut it anymore. I already posted my story in several other small circles and have gotten one reply. A man who goes by the name "Trent" (apparently it's an alias). He said that he has some insight into my "condition" and can offer help if I want it. I'm planning on meeting with him tomorrow. I'm not sure if it's a good idea, but at this point I need answers. I can keep you updated with my progress if that interests you, and to anyone who knows anything about what's happening to me, please… I could really use your help.
***
I was just about to post this when Trent sent another message. This is what it says:
Trent: We can do the \*** at **** O'clock. Also, if what you're telling me is true, your mother may still be alive.*

When I was three years old I was in a really bad car accident. I didn't know it at the time, but that singular event would come to define everything about my life moving forward. What I remember about the accident is mostly a collage of backdated comments I was able to reel out of my father in the following years. He was driving me and my mom in his old '91 Chevy Tahoe through the twisting backroads of Southern Illinois, weaving his way through the gnarled branches of oak trees which interlocked into a braided ceiling overhead. A fog had rolled in, giving the impression that we were driving through a cloudy tube. Everything was simultaneously bright and opaque. I didn't mind though, as I was in the back seat working on a coloring book. My mom was in the front, talking with my dad or turning around to entertain my completed pictures.
Although I was of the age where my memory was just beginning to mature, I still recall two things very clearly from the accident. First was the sensation of breaking. I remember feeling the way a plate must feel to be dropped: weightless at first, then suddenly meeting a much larger, more solid object—the air popped like a firecracker, and the entirety of my body shattered into hundreds of fractals. And then I remember a hand. It was my dad's hand pulling me from the wreck.
I ended up hospitalized for weeks after the crash. My mom was less lucky. The impact had killed her instantly.
As I've alluded to, I was young, and at the time I didn't fully understand the implications of what had happened. I knew something was missing, but it was like a word on the tip of my tongue, or the forgotten vanilla in a cherished cake recipe—coloring my experience, but not the whole of it. Not like my dad. For him, it was the whole fucking cake. He had somehow made it out with only a few scratches. I'm sure he had a really bad case of survivor's guilt, and frankly, looking back, I wouldn't have blamed him if he slumped into despair and spent his days drinking away his sorrow. But he wasn't that type of man. He got help. It took him years before he was able to recall anything that happened that morning, and most of it is still repressed, but he shared with me what he could. Or at least that's what I had thought.
My dad was a Middle School teacher since before I was born, and he kept his job until very recently. As a result, we didn't have much by way of resources. I grew up on Disney Channel and TV dinners for the most part, but I didn't mind. When I became of school age, his job actually made caring for me pretty convenient. Since our Elementary and Middle schools were connected, he was able to drive me there and back each day.
It was around third or fourth grade that I realized I was different. I didn't understand the other children or even the adults most of the time. They would say things then immediately change their mind, or they would talk about something and in the next breath forget its existence entirely. I remember one day at lunch, I had just gotten my tray of hot food and sat down with some friends. One of the kids, Alex, was talking about a stuffed bird he had won for getting first place in Mr. Curtis's pop-up math competition. We were all admiring its blue wings and white belly and sharp black beak and beady eyes. I left mid-conversation to get a chocolate milk. When I came back, I asked to see the bird again, and Alex said "what bird?" I was perplexed. "The bird—the bluejay you were just showing us." I remember all of the other kids looking at me like I was crazy. I figured they were all playing a trick on me, so I got up and went over to Alex's seat and crouched down, looking under the table, then I sprung up and tried to open his lunchbox. "What are you doing!?" he yelled. I felt so confused and embarrassed that I ran to the bathroom to cry.
And then there was another time a group of kids were laughing about a joke one of the girls, Taylor, had made about our homeroom teacher's face looking like a seal. I knew it was mean, but at the time I just wanted to fit in so I played along, but when I made a comment about her resemblance to the semi-aquatic animal, they all looked at me confused. "What are you talking about? We never said that…"
These misattributions kept happening, and it led to me being ostracized from most of the little childish cliques that popped up. I developed a quasi-standoffish temperament which I used as a shield against a chaotic world that I didn't understand. My dad eventually had me tested for ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder), but I passed the test. He asked if I wanted to move to a different town with different schoolmates, thinking that perhaps I was getting bullied, but I told him it was fine. Somewhere deep down I felt like no matter where I went, this problem would follow me.
You may think that I was simply coping with the absence of my mom, and while I'm sure that her absence has left certain holes in my life, kindly, no, that wasn't what was happening. You see, at first I didn't notice the instances of what I'll call "blinking". I simply thought that I was misremembering things: objects, words, events. They were all little things anyway. A bird, a joke, my pencil box. It wasn't until sixth grade that I realized the magnitude of the phenomenon.
I was in my dad's 6th grade Social Studies class and we had just been assigned our "Ancient Civilizations" project which involved creating a diorama of our chosen civilization and presenting its features to the class. My friend at the time, Claire, had taken my first choice of Ancient Rome (which we had a heated argument about at lunch), so I was left with Ancient Egypt. At the time, all I pictured for Egypt was a plate of sand. However, my dad and I went through some illustrated history books and pictures on the internet and he really built up the project for me.
Over the course of a couple months, he helped me shape three pyramids out of small wooden planks and a bunch of tan clay. We placed them in the center of a giant square shoebox lid which served as the container for the diorama. Then he bought some small wooden mannequin puppets and we dressed them up in cloth clothes (mostly kilts and tunics) and colored their eyes, mouths, and hair. We added a few obelisks and some small box-huts which were collected into a little village around the Nile. Finally, we added a light glaze of glue where we felt would be necessary and then covered the whole project with golden glitter.
As we worked on each part of the diorama, my dad helped me understand what we were adding and why it was important to Ancient Egypt. I loved the way he talked about history. He spun everything into a miraculous story. To this day, I don't think I've ever had a teacher who came close to his level of charisma and creativity. As a result, I became really proud of my diorama. I memorized all the little details and rehearsed my speech in front of the mirror for hours leading up to the last couple weeks of class. And then, two days before I was supposed to give my presentation, everything fell apart.
First, I need to apologize for deceiving you about an aspect of my story. I thought it might help you to understand what I was going through at the time. What I'm about to tell you is going to sound insane. I get that. But please hear me out. The truth is that I was never assigned to present on Ancient Egypt; everything else about Clair taking my first pick and dad helping me with the whole project and my excitement leading up to the presentation was all true, but it wasn't a project on Ancient Egypt, it was a project on Ancient Sidovan, which was a civilization located on the eighth continent called "Catalan" (the same name as the spoken language, but unrelated) which was due West of Australia in the Indian Ocean.
I know this sounds incredible, and if you want to believe it's all in my head, I get that, but I remember clearly all sorts of facts about it: the Malagasy, the same people who populated Madagascar, were the first peoples to discover Catalan and settle it. However, about five hundred years later, Indian ships would arrive and create the civilization known as Sidovan. A pidgin language formed between the indigenous population and new arriving Indians called "Hiesa" (pronounced: Hai-E-suh or Hai-ʔ-suh). Catalan had a warm climate with plenty of natural resources, but Sidovan had a dense enough population to require agricultural production. They grew rice, grain, sugarcane, vegetables, and even tobacco.
I remembered all of these facts and more. My diorama reflected the main features of the Sidovan civilization. And then two days before my presentation, I woke up and my diorama was entirely different. The hilly grasslands were traded out for sandy dunes. The Hindu statues and stone palaces became clay pyramids and large spear-like pillars. And everything was covered with the ickiest yellow glitter I had ever seen. Tears stung my eyes as I trampled over to my dad's room and banged on his door. "Dad! What did you do!?" I yelled.
"Honey?" He responded, rushing over to the base of the stairs. "What's wrong?"
"The diorama. It's ruined!"
"It's what?" he asked and ran up the stairs, leading me to my room. He looked over it for a few seconds, checking to see if everything was intact, then said, "I don't see it, honey. Where is it ruined?"
I was completely dumb-struck. What did he mean he didn't see it? "All of it!" I shouted. "The whole thing is wrong. Where's the grass and the stone buildings and the lady with the four arms and the elephants? Where is my project!?"
My dad looked at me in silence. "Lauren, baby, what civilization do you think you were working on?"
"Ancient Sidovan, of course! We've been working on this for months now! Dad, please tell me you remember."
He knelt down and put his hands on my shoulders. "Honey, your project was on Ancient Egypt. There is no Ancient Sidovan."
"Y-you're lying." I protested. "Books, you have books. On your bookshelf."
He took me into his study and showed me all of his books. None of them were on Ancient Sidovan. He even turned on his computer and typed in the name of the civilization, but all that came up was a near match "Sidon". I remember feeling the sudden urge to puke. My entire body felt like it was pumping battery acid instead of blood. "I—I don't," I started but suddenly my head felt very light, and I fainted.
When I woke up, I was in the hospital. I had lost consciousness for over half an hour, enough time for my dad to call 9-1-1 and have the ambulance transport me to the nearest ER. They ran all sorts of tests on me, but they all came back fine. After a couple hours of IV fluids and monitoring, they released me with my dad.
I ended up skipping the rest of school that week. My dad didn't make me present my diorama. In fact, he never brought the subject up again. Part of me was glad. I just wanted to forget the whole thing ever happened. But another part of me couldn't move past what was clearly the most absurd thing to ever happen to me. About a week after the incident, I tried to broach the subject, but when I asked my dad about it, he didn't seem to remember our conversation at all. He said I had fallen ill and that's why I needed to go to the ER and miss class. I felt like I was going crazy. If I was older, I probably would have voluntarily checked myself into a psychiatric ward. But I was young and helpless and alone, and I decided that if I just ignored the changes well enough, I could still get along. This proved difficult though, as the blinking would only exacerbate in the coming months.
Up until the time of the project, I hadn't been able to directly observe the phenomenon. It was always in retrospect that things disappeared. It was during the summer after sixth grade that this changed. I still remember the first time it happened. I had just gotten out of the shower and was drying my hair in front of the mirror. After it was dried, I threw on my clothes then went to tie my hair up in a ponytail, but as I went to set the elastic tie, I felt its weight dissipate in my hand. I gasped and held my hand out. The circular black band was gone.
Fast forward to seventh grade and the blinking had spiraled out of control. Reflecting back on it, most people would probably have assumed I was drinking psilocybin-infused water, as the delusions were somewhat consistent with psychedelic phenomena: except these distortions were real (at least they felt that way to me).
I'd wake up and grab the box of Special K but end up eating Cheerios. The McDonalds logo would look yellow and red one day, but purple and black the next. I'd be watching a show, and then a different show, and then a different one. It was as if the entire universe was a Christmas tree with millions of lights, and the lights kept shifting hues randomly, faster and faster, and I was the only one who could see their changing colors. I remember one night my dad made spaghetti for dinner and we went out onto the porch to eat it. While we were sitting, I saw our neighbor's house, a two story townhome, blink and become a single story bungalow. I gasped, and my dad asked what was wrong, but when I tried to explain he just gave me a strange look. For him, no matter what changed, the world was "always that way". While for me, it didn't have "a way".
The situation peaked when Clair, that friend I mentioned before, disappeared. I texted her (my dad had bought me a BlackBerry at the beginning of summer break) but didn't get a response. When I asked her other friends if they knew where she was, I got the usual "what are you talking about?" look. I knew right away what had happened, even though I didn't want to believe it. I went to the teacher and asked if there was a Clair in our class. She said "no". I broke down in front of everyone. I couldn't take it anymore. I ran out of school. The lady at the front desk tried to stop me, but I just barrelled past her. I kept running until I got to a big park across the street and bawled my eyes out until the police arrived and escorted me home. When they tried asking me what was wrong, I didn't say anything. There was literally nothing I could say that they would understand.
That night I prayed to God for the first time. My dad wasn't a religious man. He went to Catholic church with my mom when she was alive, but after she died he never went back. Still, I knew how to pray, even if I never did it. I copied some of the people I saw praying in movies and interlocked my fingers and knelt down on my bed, stuffing my head into a pillow. "Dear God," I said, "Please, please, please help me." I told Him about my struggles and asked Him to make them stop. I spent an hour saying the same things over and over again. And when I was finished, my little body was so tired, I fell right to sleep.
I knew something was different the second I opened my eyelids. I didn't only feel relieved, but I felt… embraced. I felt like someone was watching over me. I felt like I wasn't alone. I moved through my day with cautious apprehension. I didn't want to get my hopes up only to be let down. But to my surprise, the blinking had stopped. At least I couldn't remember any of the inconsistencies, and to me, that was a win. I began to pray regularly, and the more I did, the more I could feel the sense that someone was looking out for me. It was like I was getting a big hug from some cosmic force that loved me and wanted me to be happy.
I made it a habit to pray regularly. I asked my dad if he could take me to a church, and he agreed to take me to St. Mark's, the same church that he and my mom used to attend. Over time, I realized that the actual church services weren't as important to me as the praying. For whatever reason, there was something about praying that was like a glue for my brain, holding the entire universe together. As I got older, I considered that maybe it wasn't that the changes were no longer happening, but that I simply didn't see them anymore. In other words, maybe I was just becoming like everyone else. Either way, I didn't mind.
In my teenage years, I got into mindfulness meditation. I thought that I'd want to go into religious studies and become a theologian, so I started to learn about Eastern traditions in addition to Christianity. I joined a bunch of different school clubs to meet kids of different faiths: Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam. I tried to find a common thread which linked them all and would explain what happened to me as a child. The metaphors of Heaven and Hell, Good and Evil, the Taoist Yin and Yang—duality. Every religion seemed to speak about a way of being that would lead to a better place. In some cases that better place was a physical future existence, and in others it was merely being in contact with the perfection of nature or the present. Metaphorically, the teachings could explain what I had gone through in a kind of loose way, but there were no explicit statements about my condition.
***
I want to fast forward to why I've decided to write about this now. To give you an idea of where I'm at, I'm now 25 and working on finishing my MA in Computational Linguistics. I know that's a bit of a switch from what I was thinking when I was a teenager, but I really only interested in religion because of the value praying afforded me as a child. I didn't actually have much interest in the subject, itself. After my first year of college, I changed to an English major, which ultimately led to me taking a linguistics class and enjoying it so much that I switched tracks in my Junior year. Considering the state of the world, I thought minoring in Computer Science might help me financially in the future, so I ended up charting a path which I figured might lead to something like developing translation software.
Anyway, everything was going fine until a few weeks ago. I was out at an all-night diner with a few of my friends from the program. There was Jeremy, Martin, Bella, Jordan, and Macy. We had been working on a group project together involving modeling construction grammars by generating primitive 3D structures using C# and running the code through a game engine (it's a bit weird, but essentially we were trying to create a multidimensional model for language using a similar but more advanced concept than other LLMs), and just had a breakthrough. It was 2AM though and not a brain cell existed between the six of us, so instead we focused on a different problem: Macy's ongoing breakup with her semi-long distance trucker boyfriend. We tried to explain why Mike wasn't going to work out as we ordered a round of milkshakes and waited for the lone overnight kitchen worker to scoop out three balls of ice cream from the Deans carton for each of us, blend it, then have the server deliver the vintage diner glasses on a plastic tray.
I dug into my thick strawberry shake with a spoon. It was delicious. I kept eating but focused back on the conversation. I remember feeling something odd about one of the scoops, but I was so entrenched in Macy's story that I didn't notice the metal shard in my ice cream until I felt it against my lip. "P-tuh" I spat out the shard and ice cream all in one motion, then covered my mouth which I was sure was bleeding. The silver blade was probably as large as my thumb, and it had two jagged edges, as if it was fastened for the purpose of causing damage. "What the fuck!" I yelled.
Everyone at the table turned to see what was the matter. "Hey, Lauren, you okay?"
I spoke through a covered mouth, using my free hand to point at the table. "That was in my—"
But it was gone.
"In your… shake? Was something in your shake?" asked Jeremy.
I froze. In that moment, the stories of my childhood that I had only remembered as faint nightmares came back in a wave of crushing terror. How could I have been so stupid to think they would simply vanish forever? No, this isn't the same thing, I thought. But deep down, I knew it was. I drew my hand away from my lips and saw that it was dry—no blood. When I looked back up, all of the blood in my veins went cold. My friends were… smiling at me. Their lips were elastic like taffy, stretching to reveal their teeth. I could feel them radiating malevolence, as if the only thing holding them back from picking up their utensils and stabbing me to death was some thinly veiled force field. The moment lasted for what felt like half a minute, then Jordan said two words which made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
"Found you"
The words ricocheted in my now adrenaline powered skull. But just as he spoke them, the world blinked and my friends were back. Bella reached out and grabbed my hand. I pulled away, but when I saw her concerned expression, I relented.
"Sorry, guys, I think I'm going to have to call it." I said.
"You sure, L?" asked Jordan. "You look like you just saw a ghost."
"Yeah, thanks, but I just…" I stumbled for a lie, but when one wouldn't come, Martin stood up and said he'd walk me out to my car.
"Thanks," I said as I got into my little 2015 Jetta. "It's just been a long day."
"No problem, Lauren. You know, if there's ever anything—"
"I know," I said but didn't mean. Some things just couldn't be shared.
I drove for about five minutes before stopping at a gas station. I pulled in and parked near the back. Then I interlocked my fingers and prayed for half an hour. I apologized for not taking my praying seriously and asked to once again be granted peace. Unlike my younger years, I also drifted into other avenues of thought. I imagined my mom. I pictured the whole arc of my life, all of the little decisions that led me to where I was. I cried for a long time. I felt like that little girl again reaching out for help. I still felt so lost, so out of control; there were so many things missing, and I was so confused.
I decided then to take a trip back home and visit my dad who was now working as a private tutor. He made enough prepping affluent students for the ACT and SAT that he could spend his free time pursuing his real passions: reading and writing. When I arrived at his doorstep that weekend, he greeted me with open arms. "How are you, kiddo? It's been, what? A year or so?"
It was actually more like two years, but I didn't tell him. I just smiled and nodded.
"Well, come in."
The house was almost exactly how I remembered it. Linoleum floors, beige walls, a few scattered pictures, the scent of camomile. Everything minimalist. There was a quaintness, a prettiness to the way everything seemed to be well kept and in a perfect place. From the cherry wood chairs we'd sit in to eat, to the cream-colored loveseat. I felt at home.
I spent the drive thinking of what I would talk to my dad about, but ultimately I wasn't sure what I'd say. I loved my dad, but I think growing up it was easy to see him as naive. After all, arguably the most important episodes of my childhood were completely unknown to him. In that way, I kind of loved him from a distance. Maybe losing my mom also played into that. Maybe I just had trust issues. And after what happened at the diner… Luckily there hadn't been any blinks since.
I stayed for a couple days and he showed me around some of the different coffee shops where he'd tutor kids or write some of his stories. I met some of his friends, mostly other retired or part-time teachers who were in a similar place in life. I was happy for him. Then, on Sunday, he made me my favorite meal growing up: homemade carbonara pasta with chicken and broccoli. The sauce had a few different cheeses, butter, olive oil, and a raw egg yolk. It was the perfect blend of creamy, savory, and sweet. After we ate, he cracked open a scrapbook of some old photos and other clippings he had put together.
We reminisced about the past and laughed whenever I'd cover up one of my awkward pictures. He brought up some stories from school that I had forgotten, naming some teachers that I hadn't thought about in years. Apparently I had started at the end, because as I moved to the other end of the book, I kept getting younger and younger. I flipped to the last pages and noticed a couple pictures of my mom that made my heart sink.
"She was beautiful, wasn't she?" said my dad.
"Mmm," I agreed.
I flipped to the last page and saw a collage of newspaper clippings. One of them was related to the accident. It was headlined: "Two Survive Head-On Collision". After a cursory glance at the text, I noticed something odd. It said, "Both the husband and child, a three year old girl, sustained life-threatening wounds. The husband was found unconscious on the scene. The girl was found twenty meters away from the vehicle, crying." I swallowed, trying to remember back to what happened that day. The feeling of crashing, of the world slowing down, then breaking, returned. And then there was a hand. My dad's hand. Or was it? If he was unconscious, who pulled me out of that wreck?
I looked up at my dad. He was smiling.
I shot up and started backing up slowly toward the door. "No, not you, too. What is this? What's happening? Who are you?"
My dad, or whatever was controlling him, laughed."Oh, Lauren, Lauren, Lauren. You know who we are." he purred as he stood up. He lifted his hands and the lights began to flicker then bend in a way which shouldn't have been possible. Dark figures began to propagate from the shadows along the walls. The pictures nailed there began to blink out of existence. I turned to run toward the door but the handle was gone. Glass shards materialized all around me and swarmed like locusts. Certain I was going to die, I dropped down on my knees and once again turned to prayer, this time asking God to directly intervene and save me.
Everything went quiet.
"Honey? Are you okay?"
I didn't trust his voice. I knew if I opened my eyes, I'd see that awful smile. He was just toying with me. "It's not you," I said in between muttered prayers. "I know it's not you."
"Honey," my dad said, closer. I felt his arms wrap around me. This was it, I was going to be suffocated. I waited for the inevitable crushing weight of my chest collapsing. I waited to break all over again.
"I would never hurt you, Lauren. I love you more than anything in the whole world."
I burst out in tears. "No, it's not you, I know it's not you. You don't exist!"
My dad's weight dissipated. I opened my eyes and saw that he was no longer there. "Dad?" I called aloud. "Dad? Where did you go?"
I checked all over the house, but there was no trace of him. There were still pictures of him all over the house, so I knew he hadn't blinked out of existence like everything else, but somehow he was missing.
***
I left the house and got a room at a hotel, where I am now. I'm sure at this point that whatever is happening to me is no longer random. Something out there is actively trying to hunt me. Maybe it has been my whole life, but only now it can see me—however weird that sounds. If that's right, then God has been on my side trying to protect me from this demon or monster or devil or whatever it is. Regardless, the methods I was using when I was younger are not going to cut it anymore. I already posted my story in several other small circles and have gotten one reply. A man who goes by the name "Trent" (apparently it's an alias). He said that he has some insight into my "condition" and can offer help if I want it. I'm planning on meeting with him tomorrow. I'm not sure if it's a good idea, but at this point I need answers. I can keep you updated with my progress if that interests you, and to anyone who knows anything about what's happening to me, please… I could really use your help.
***
I was just about to post this when Trent sent another message. This is what it says:
Trent: We can do the \*** at **** O'clock. Also, if what you're telling me is true, your mother may still be alive.*

I'm very worried for my stepsister. My dad remarried a while back and his new wife's daughter came to live with them about 5 or 6 years ago. She's pretty shy and her English isn't brilliant but she gets by. She studied for her masters while living with them and landed a graduate job. She still lives with them and for the most part, she hasn't really left the house in a few years.
So when she starts the grad role, the first guy who had the balls to approach her quickly became her boyfriend. Now they're engaged, although the date hasn't been set, and she's always voicing her doubts.
Straight up: I don't like the boyfriend. I think he's a bit braggy and controlling and he sets off my -Senses, but I'm trying not to let that cloud my judgement.
Anyway, stepsis has been living with dad and her mum and I think she's miserable and isolated, I don't blame her. She's in her late twenties and she doesn't have any life. Also, and I have said this is weird, she doesn't even have a key to the front door. Her mum says it's because she loses things but still, a bit nuts.
Anyway, the happy couple have been on the lookout for a house to buy together. After a lot of searching they've found one that they can just about afford and stepsis keeps saying how much she loves the house. Then she let's slip that darling boyfriend has been making promises about saving but has actually saved dick-all, and has had her pony up the cash. He's so secretive - he has seen all my stepsisters bank statements and knows exactly how much money she has but he has kept all his savings docs private. He lied to her about the terms of the mortgage cashback arrangement but when he was questioned about it he made up some BS. Finally, and this is the bit that really gets me: he says he wants them to keep their accounts separate and he'll pay the mortgage from his account and she can take care of the bills.
I'm not trying to paint him as some sort of controlling monster. I'm sure he's not all bad but honestly, best case scenario I think he's too immature to get into an adult relationship. She has zero self esteem and thinks that the only way she'll have any sort of a life is to shack up with this dude. I'm scared for her and I feel totally helpless. My dad has tried to talk to her, he says she told him one morning that she's found the perfect house but she's not sure she's found the perfect man and honestly I feel like screaming at my dad... I get it, falling for a house is buying into a dream and it can be hard to look at the pitfalls but Christ, I'm worried sick about her.

I'm 18 and 5'3", which is the height I've been since middle school. I'm not gonna get any taller. This is what my genes has to offer; this is the best it's gonna get. From here on out I'll only get shorter due to age. I seriously cannot fucking do this anymore. I graduate high school in four weeks, and I've been told it only gets harder after graduation... by people way taller than me. I can't even imagine how hard it would be for me.
I've never been in any kind of relationship either. I've never even had so much as a hug from someone who wasn't my family member. I barely have any friends either. The only people I have to talk to are my parents and my therapist. Both of which have done fuck all for me. I especially hate talking to my parents about my height; every time it just ends in frustration because I refuse to accept the blue pilled cope shit that they try to shove down my throat. Yesterday my step dad was telling me that I'm overreacting and that his cousin is a 5'2" multi-millionare gigachad who has a beautiful wife and didn't let his height define him and blah blah blah (my step-dad is 6'3"). I asked my step-dad if he'd be as confident as he is now if he was my height, he said absolutely because height doesn't matter.
I fucking hate this shit, I hate being lied to by my own fucking family. I find it especially funny when my mother tries to tell me that girls don't care about height, because not only is her husband above six feet, but her ex boyfriend was 6'4". The only reason why I didn't end up tall is because my mom was forced to marry and have a have a kid with a 5'7" man. If it'd been her choice, she absolutely would have had a kid with someone who could be in the NBA. Oh yeah, and I almost forgot to mention that my mom and dad are second cousins; just another reason why I want to kill myself. If I didn't have family that cared about me, I would've already done it. And if I'm being honest, I kinda wish I didn't have family that cared about me because then I could take my life guilt free, knowing that I didn't cause anyone any pain.

Apologies ahead for what might be a bit of a rambly post, but I had a thought about box office that generally and I guess I wanted some feed back on weather or not I'm right or not.
So there's been a lot of analysis in the past few weeks about the merit of theatrically released original mid-budget movies, the kinds of movies that Hollywood "Doesn't make anymore". I want to center this idea around "Challengers" specifically as it's box office has felt like a rorschach test for it's box office, some people say that's it numbers are impressive for what it is, some people are saying that it's doing poorly considering it's nowhere near completing the 2.5x rule of thumb for it's box office considering it's 55 mil budget. Currently the movie is at 69.2 million (nice) and will probably get no where it's needed 137.5 million. Objectively, in many ways it's a flop. However a couple of things

1. It's by far the most successful erotic tennis drama of all time, not sure if there are literally any other movies in that sub-genre but it's still an achievement.
2. And much more importantly, Challengers domestic and international number have been solid and okay for a drama, combined with the fact that it's generated a ton of buzz on social media, this leads to one conclusion; Challengers is going to make a killing on streaming.

Challengers is going to be insanely big on VOD, and rentals, and it's going to get an insane amount of viewership when it comes to Prime Video, it might even be Amazon's biggest movie on there (though I'm not sure how much that would mean, I honestly can't name what movie might actually be Amazon's biggest release)
All of this is to say is that Challengers is probably going to make it's money back or at least break even by the time it's done. Which like, on it's own, who cares ? Plenty of movies make their money back later. Well it got me thinking about that oft quoted Matt Damon quote, when he was on Hot Ones, and was talking about why the types of movies Hollywood makes has changes
"Well what happened was the DVD was a huge part of out business, of our revenue stream, and technology has just made that obsolete. So the movies we used to make, you could afford to not make all of your money when it played in the theatre because you had the DVD coming behind the release and six months later you would get a whole 'nother chunk, it be like opening the movie again almost. And when that went away it changed the type of movies we would make."
Why is this important, because, I would argue that Challengers is the exact type of movie Damon is talking about here. Challengers won't make it money back in theatres, theatrically it's a flop, but it's not a failure because theoretically that can be okay because it will make it money back down the line in Streaming/VOD.
Is this cope, possibly, I haven't seen Challengers, and am not invested in it's particular success but I'd like to see more movies like this succeed so in that way I am. My point in this is simply a desire to see more mid-budget films like Challengers in theatres and that maybe we just might be roping back around to how things were in the 80's and 90's when you sometimes you didn't have to make all of your money in theatres to make your money, and if true Hollywood could look at a movie like Challengers and decided that make more movies like it, not less.
Now I now there are couple of major caveats to my argument one being the smaller pie in general. Challengers is making significantly less, especially when you adjust for inflation, than adult dramas in the 80's and 90's made, AND worse still VOD and streaming probably isn't as profitable as DVD's and VHS's were, some of that is information not disclosed to the public so we don't know for sure, for sure, but we can surmise. So this isn't an everything is actually fine post. Hollywood still has a lot, like A LOT to do if wants to get back to where it was in the past if that's even possible
All I am is suggesting is an alternative way to look at things, and that this way of looking at the state of the box office, could mean that we end up with more unique and interesting theatrical releases and not less.
TL;DR - Hollywood might be going full circle back to the days of DVD's and VHS's with streaming now and this could still lead to more mid-budget theatrical releases like Challengers.
Addendum - A couple of other first though, A) Is VOD different from when Damon was talking about it ? That video was only from 2 years ago, but I believe Damon was talking about the general transition from DVD to Netflix in the early 2000's to 2010's. These were messy transitional years from Hollywood with a massive emphasize on simply subscribing to streaming services. PVOD is faster now as well as streaming hits like Saltburn proving to be MASSIVE for these services though it's impossible to tell just how much money a movie like that generated for Amazon since no one subscribes to a service like that for one movie, I have a feeling that Amazon and Netflix would rather have massive hits like that than not. This leads to my second important point
B) Challengers had to be in theatres to achieve whatever success it might have. While plenty of streaming exclusive movies do well, a lot of the MASSIVE streaming hits tend to be theatrical releases. Challengers couldn't have just gone to VOD or Netflix and been a hit, it's only the combination of a buzzy moderately successful theatrical release and then VOD/ streaming that any of this works. Okay bye now !

Crosspost from Vent subreddit so if you see it twice I'm sorry but I wanna make sure all of Gen Z is aware of this and also, sorry if you don't care about American politics because you don't live here but at the same time, the stuff proposed could have Internetational consequences so it might be worth at least looking at.
Have you guys seen Project 2025?? I just need to vent about how we DO NOT pay enough attention to what is happening behind the scenes in politics. We just don't. So for the love of everything, please research and inform yourself about what Project 2025 is because it can and should heavily impact your vote for president at the end of this year.
Imma be blunt so nobody has to wonder where I lean. I lean democrat, but I love seeing moderate politics in action and we have seen some of that with Biden and I know it's upset many Democrats but moderate is compromise and compromise is healthy!! I'm so done with playing extremes! Let's calm down! Let's compromise! Let's be peaceful! We're all Americans and we should want what is best for ALL OF US together as a country.
These extremes we are playing with are dangerous. Like, looking at Project 2025 there's stuff they want to prioritize like centralizing things around stable families and combating the porn industry to defund and end sexual exploitation and attack human trafficking. That is GREAT. I LOVE THOSE IDEAS!
However, even with how much I love those ideas, they're taking it WAY TO FAR. It's incredibly extreme. We can stabilize families without annihilating terms that help people understand themselves and their sexuality. We can demolish the porn industry and recognize that porn is addictive without further victimizing the people impacted by porn by suddenly outlawing and banning it and metaphorically pulling the rug out from underneath people's feet. I mean, people work for a living in the porn industry and addicts will either experience severe withdrawal or find themselves on the wrong side of the law because they can't stop themselves from looking at something that is suddenly illegal.
What I'm getting at, is I like some of the things they want to do! I just look at this group that's organized itself into what is now called Project 2025 and I terrifies me! They want to make drastic and extreme changes very rapidly, things that society is not capable of withstanding, and even the governmental and legislative changes they want make push us more towards autocracy and away from democracy and being a republic. I can't stress this enough, this next election has the potential to bring about EXTREME, permanent, chaotic, or reforming change. This could be good or it could be VERY VERY BAD.
I'm not here to tell you how to vote or what to do, I'm just here to show you that this is a thing. I want everyone to know there's organizations that are pre-meditating to gain power and control and bring gigantic change to the government and society at large. Sure, we say this every election, but this is different. I'm 27 and I haven't had decades of voting under my belt but I've never seen or heard of anything like this Project 2025 and my parents and grandparents have never spoken to me about seeing anything like this either. The fact that there's a gigantic slew of politicians organizing themselves to basically overrun government offices and implement immediate, drastic change is something we as Americans should consider carefully! If you want these changes and you believe they can pull it off, then vote that way! But I urge you to consider how much dysfunction and choas they can cause in a short amount of time if they defund the DOJ, dismantle the FBI and DHS, completely turn away from the climate crisis, eliminate the department of commerce, and look at ending things like the department of Education, the Federal Communications Division, and the Federal Trade Commission.
They're also talking about getting rid of all abortions, even medically necessary ones, country wide. They want to ban contraceptives. They want to, and I quote from Project 2025s own mandate "delete the use of terms like sexual orientation, gender identity, gender, inclusion, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, abortion, reproductive health, and reproduction rights"
All I'm asking is for us all to pay attention, to see what this is, and see if you WANT to support this or not. You WON'T find this plan on Trump's website or as an official part of his campaign but even Project 2025 itself admits they believe Trump will win the presidency and then they and Trump will be able to accomplish all of Project 2025s goals.
Again, I'm not telling you what to prioritize or how to vote, but I want you to know a vote for Trump is a vote for Project 2025 as well. If that's what you want, then vote Trump in. If not, vote for someone else. And, for those of you who find that you too, like me, genuinely agree with some of what they want to do, consider the big picture, NOT just the part you agree with. Also consider how this impacts your friends and families. No gender equality and no reproductive rights greatly impacts ALL women. Think about your daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers. They may not ever want an abortion or a hysterectomy or birth control but what if something happens to their health and they suddenly NEED one of those things to save their life or improve their quality of life? If you have any friends or family that are trans or identify as anything other than heterosexual, they are trying to DELETE their identifiers. They're trying to ERASE entire parts of people.
To end my vent, again, I'm not telling you what to do, I'm just telling you to be aware. Don't think "Oh we always say the other party is going to destroy American, it doesn't really matter as it always works out fine anyways" because Project 2025 is the evidence that CHANGE WILL HAPPEN. I can't foresee if it will destroy us or not, but I can say that trying to do THIS MUCH DRASTIC CHANGE will alter our country permanently.
If ever there was a time to take an election seriously, NOW IS THE TIME! VOTE YOUR CONCIENCE!! Don't vote by party lines, don't vote with your wallet, don't vote based upon who you hear about more... Do your do diligence and vote carefully and with purpose!
To wrap this up, here's some sources for people to read for themselves:
This is from project 2025s website and if you find the "read the mandate" button under the picture of their book it goes in depth on what they want to do and why.
https://www.project2025.org/policy/
Scrutinize me for using Wikipedia all you want but it's a good way to get a brief summary that discusses concerns and narratives as seen by the people pushing this agenda and the people worried about if this agenda is seen to fruition.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
Please feel free to add other sources in the comments. Feel free to discuss as well, but don't turn this into Trump vs Biden or Democrats vs Republicans. This is meant to put a spotlight on Project 2025 and whether or not it's goals would be good for us! For our country! That's it!

Have you guys seen Project 2025?? This is about U.S. politics by the way, and my vent is that we DO NOT pay enough attention to what is happening behind the scenes in politics. We just don't. So for the love of everything, please research and inform yourself about what Project 2025 is because it can and should heavily impact your vote for president at the end of this year.
Imma be blunt so nobody has to wonder where I lean. I lean democrat, but I love seeing moderate politics in action and we have seen some of that with Biden and I know it's upset many Democrats but moderate is compromise and compromise is healthy!! I'm so done with playing extremes! Let's calm down! Let's compromise! Let's be peaceful! We're all Americans and we should want what is best for ALL OF US together as a country.
These extremes we are playing with are dangerous. Like, looking at Project 2025 there's stuff they want to prioritize like centralizing things around stable families and combating the porn industry to defund and end sexual exploitation and attack human trafficking. That is GREAT. I LOVE THOSE IDEAS!
However, even with how much I love those ideas, they're taking it WAY TO FAR. It's incredibly extreme. We can stabilize families without annihilating terms that help people understand themselves and their sexuality. We can demolish the porn industry and recognize that porn is addictive without further victimizing the people impacted by porn by suddenly outlawing and banning it and metaphorically pulling the rug out from underneath people's feet. I mean, people work for a living in the porn industry and addicts will either experience severe withdrawal or find themselves on the wrong side of the law because they can't stop themselves from looking at something that is suddenly illegal.
What I'm getting at, is I like some of the things they want to do! I just look at this group that's organized itself into what is now called Project 2025 and I terrifies me! They want to make drastic and extreme changes very rapidly, things that society is not capable of withstanding, and even the governmental and legislative changes they want make push us more towards autocracy and away from democracy and being a republic. I can't stress this enough, this next election has the potential to bring about EXTREME, permanent, chaotic, or reforming change. This could be good or it could be VERY VERY BAD.
I'm not here to tell you how to vote or what to do, I'm just here to show you that this is a thing. I want everyone to know there's organizations that are pre-meditating to gain power and control and bring gigantic change to the government and society at large. Sure, we say this every election, but this is different. I'm 27 and I haven't had decades of voting under my belt but I've never seen or heard of anything like this Project 2025 and my parents and grandparents have never spoken to me about seeing anything like this either. The fact that there's a gigantic slew of politicians organizing themselves to basically overrun government offices and implement immediate, drastic change is something we as Americans should consider carefully! If you want these changes and you believe they can pull it off, then vote that way! But I urge you to consider how much dysfunction and choas they can cause in a short amount of time if they defund the DOJ, dismantle the FBI and DHS, completely turn away from the climate crisis, eliminate the department of commerce, and look at ending things like the department of Education, the Federal Communications Division, and the Federal Trade Commission.
They're also talking about getting rid of all abortions, even medically necessary ones, country wide. They want to ban contraceptives. They want to, and I quote from Project 2025s own mandate "delete the use of terms like sexual orientation, gender identity, gender, inclusion, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, abortion, reproductive health, and reproduction rights"
All I'm asking is for us all to pay attention, to see what this is, and see if you WANT to support this or not. You WON'T find this plan on Trump's website or as an official part of his campaign but even Project 2025 itself admits they believe Trump will win the presidency and then they and Trump will be able to accomplish all of Project 2025s goals.
Again, I'm not telling you what to prioritize or how to vote, but I want you to know a vote for Trump is a vote for Project 2025 as well. If that's what you want, then vote Trump in. If not, vote for someone else. And, for those of you who find that you too, like me, genuinely agree with some of what they want to do, consider the big picture, NOT just the part you agree with. Also consider how this impacts your friends and families. No gender equality and no reproductive rights greatly impacts ALL women. Think about your daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers. They may not ever want an abortion or a hysterectomy or birth control but what if something happens to their health and they suddenly NEED one of those things to save their life or improve their quality of life? If you have any friends or family that are trans or identify as anything other than heterosexual, they are trying to DELETE their identifiers. They're trying to ERASE entire parts of people.
To end my vent, again, I'm not telling you what to do, I'm just telling you to be aware. Don't think "Oh we always say the other party is going to destroy American, it doesn't really matter as it always works out fine anyways" because Project 2025 is the evidence that CHANGE WILL HAPPEN. I can't foresee if it will destroy us or not, but I can say that trying to do THIS MUCH DRASTIC CHANGE will alter our country permanently.
If ever there was a time to take an election seriously, NOW IS THE TIME! VOTE YOUR CONCIENCE!! Don't vote by part lines, don't vote with your wallet, don't vote based upon who you hear about more... Do your do diligence and vote carefully and with purpose!
To wrap this up, here's some sources for people to read for themselves:
This is from project 2025s website and if you find the "read the mandate" button under the picture of their book it goes in depth on what they want to do and why.
https://www.project2025.org/policy/
Scrutinize me for using Wikipedia all you want but it's a good way to get a brief summary that discusses concerns and narratives as seen by the people pushing this agenda and the people worried about if this agenda is seen to fruition.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
Please feel free to add other sources in the comments. Feel free to discuss as well, but don't turn this into Trump vs Biden or Democrats vs Republicans. This is meant to put a spotlight on Project 2025 and whether or not it's goals would be good for us! For our country! That's it!
Also, I'm editing for typos as I've found a couple but nothing else has been altered and I cross posted this to GenZ because I'm GenZ and we commonly discuss politics there.

I'm venting but also seeking advice. Is it relatively normal for husbands to feel like they're generally the partner showing desire, seeking closeness with their wives, and having to "work for it" versus feeling desired back?
My wife and I have been together for nearly 20 years. In our first year together as 18 year olds, she was very sexually adventurous, seemed to desire me, we had a lot of fun. And then it started to plummet slowly over the years. I know this seems to be a common story and somewhat normal for a lot of people.
I've always had a very high libido and romantic/sexual desire for her. She's seemed to have a very low libido and interest in me that way. Over the years I felt like I often initiated sex, and she often turned me down, and she did say that she had low libido and wondered if it was her depression meds, stress, birth control, always different things. I started initiating much less and just accepting that is how it is between us, but I love her and desire her and want to be with her regardless. I got used to sex once a week being good, and often times once a month being common.
Over the years I gained weight, and she's gone up and down in weight. I think part of me wasn't that worried about my weight and how I looked because I felt like she didn't care anyway since she didn't seem all that sexually interested in me. I just masturbated and watched porn or old photos/videos she had made with me. I was content with this, as much as one could be.
We went on to have kids and were generally very happy. Overall we've had a very good, loving relationship and marriage. We've never separated or had to spend a night away from each other or anything like that.
In the past year, I ended up learning a lot of things about my wife (I won't get into how). I learned that my wife had cheated on me with her high school ex boyfriend in the first months we were dating (when we were 18). I learned that she had questioned our marriage a few years ago before we had kids, and she struggled with not feeling attracted to me at times, likely due to my weight gain (although I'm not sure if all of it was due to that). I learned that she still dwelled occasionally on her high school ex from 20 years ago who had cheated on her, and she would have sexual and romantic dreams about him and still felt hurt about their breakup, still hoped he felt bad about it and thought of her, even though this was all ancient history. I learned that she was "infatuated" with a work colleague a couple years ago, but never did anything inappropriate.
This all sent me in a cycle of depression, and reconciliation with her, where we had many conversations and talked through it all over months. I lost a lot of weight and now look and feel better than I have in 15 years. She insists that she loves only me, is attracted to me, but she had struggles and wasn't prioritizing the right things in life and vows to to better and love me better.
This is where I'm having trouble. I feel like we're on such different wavelengths and she doesn't put in much effort toward the things I ask.
When we were reconciling, she said one thing that would help her feel closer is having scheduled date nights, and she suggested we take turns leading them. I don't enjoy scheduling things as much, but wanted to do it for her. When we started the date nights, I took it seriously and tried to plan special, romantic things for her, tried to surprise her, wrote her a love letter, etc. Then when it was her turn to plan a date night, she didn't plan anything and said, "I was thinking we could play a board game together." This disappointed me the first time, but I didn't say anything, but then it continued. I put in effort, planned things, tried to be romantic, and she seemed to forget about them or come up with an idea at the last minute. So I stopped putting in effort, too, and then surprise, the date nights stopped.
I put care into my appearance all the time and try to look good for her. I keep my beard trimmed and shaved, cut my own hair, try to wear clothes she likes, and even started trimming my pubes because I like it and thought she might as well. She rarely acts like she notices the things I do, and she doesn't seem to really care much.
On the flip side, she gained quite a bit of weight from the birth of our children and hasn't lost much yet after quite a bit of time. I know from experience how hard that is and for women especially. But the part that bothers me is how she seems to not really worry at all about her appearance for me or looking good for me. She knows which clothes I like on her, how I really like her hair, how I like her pubic hair, whatever, and she doesn't do it. To her, it's because she doesn't have the time or is so busy. She'll fart near me or blow her nose really loud next to me constantly. I'll try to nicely hint that I don't like it, but she'll do it anyway.
The other day, my wife walked by me naked and made some flirtatious comment to me "hey, you didn't even try to sneak a peek." She'll do that occasionally, but then won't want to have sex or anything, it's just a comment. But it made me sad because I realized that over our 20 years together, she very rarely if ever looks at me sexually when I'm naked after a shower, she very rarely has come up to grab by butt or act like she wants me, but I've always done those things to her over the years. She'll on rare occasion make a comment about wanting to do something romantic or sexual, and then later when the time comes, she says nothing about it and acts like she completely forgot she ever said that.
I'm feeling less attracted to her overall, and for the first time maybe ever, I'm not really wanting to have sex with her as much. I've never been with any other woman in my life (she was with others before me), and I don't really want to be, but I do want to feel desired and like someone is really attracted to me and cares. I want to feel romantic and adventurous and not like an old man even though I'm still young.

i ruined my life with my own hands
(sorry for any grammaspelling mistakes in advance, i'm not native english speaker.)
i have only this month's rent in my bank account and nothing more, i'm jobless because my visa expired and i need a job to renew my visa (immigrant stuff), my landlord says she'll raise the rent, and noboy hires me. i'm not even trying to get a big job like i'm looking for minimum wage jobs but even though i have experience i haven't even gottan one call back. i hid my situation from my parents for a long time, when i finally opened myself up today hoping for at least a little bit of financial support they told me "what can we do?".
my boyfriend has tried his best to support me but the whole situation overwhelms him. i might break up with him soon even though it hurts because he'd definately be happier with a woman who has better living conditions. i seriously think about ending it all but i don't know who'd take care of my cat.

This is a long one so buckle in. When i was 16 my 22 year old cousin drove 14 hours to steal my boyfriend. They ended up having a son together within that year. The heartbreak I felt was extreme and I never fully recovered. For the last 17 years I was forced into repressing my emotions towards the whole situation. My family never gave me the ability or allowed me the respect to mourn the life I imagined. I was never allowed to be sad or upset, instead for 17 years I was simply told "get over it". My family never once cared to hear me out, or respected me enough to let me feel, or cared enough to understand my betrayal and anguish.

 I am now 32 and the family drama never ended. My Aunt (cousin's Mother) lives rent free at my Grandmas house with the understanding she is to "take care of her" but doesn't. A few years ago my grandma mentioned how she couldn't see out of her right eye, my aunts response was to wait it out. It wasn't until my own mother took my grandma into a doctor that we learned how bad it was, and it caused my grandma to lose her sight in that eye. When she was more mobile and active my mother and I would take her to breakfast or lunch to get her out of the house. This poor woman acted like she was starved. She would eat so much so fast. The times my mom or my uncle would go over, the house would be a mess and the food in the fridge would be old and gross. 

My mother years ago sold her house and moved from Texas to Washington to become power of attorney and saved my grandparents house. My grandpa passed a few years ago and shit went south, fast. My grandma got Alzheimer's disease and slowly forgot things. My family became greedy.

 One day my family went behind my mother's back to change gma's POA. They have proceeded to use my grandmas money, take over and ruin her house, one of my uncles has claimed her land, truck and trailer as his own, all while shes still alive I don't get to see her often now as shes not very mobile, and I am not welcomed at her house. 

This past weekend we believe my gma had a stroke. She was taken to the hospital where she spent a few days and the test came back well enough for her to go home Monday.

 I am worried about her. I don't believe my "family" is taking care of her. We thought her wrist was broken, we are not too sure about it currently but my aunt, whose job is to take care of her had no answers and or plans to get it looked at. Today I called adult welfare on them. I will hear back from someone in 24 hours. I am nervous and scared. Im already the black sheep and thats fine, but I know I just opened an entire new can of worms. 

At one point my cousin, who i struggle to hold a relationship with for obvious reasons told me "if your mom wants to hear about Grandma you better shut the F up because I did the right thing" So, am I the asshole for calling CPS on my family to protect my grandma?

This post has the potential to be a bit long, so please bear with me...
A question I often ask myself is "are there financial planners for people like me who don't have a ton of money and often barely make ends meet?" So now, I guess I'm asking this sub. I don't know where to turn at this point in my life, which has been riddled with terrible financial decisions, bad luck, and family health issues.
About me: 39, male, USA. I work full-time for a health care company in Pennsylvania, making right around $88K yearly before taxes and deductions. My wife is unable to work due to a variety of health issues (both mental and physical), but does have a small Etsy shop that brings in an average of $300 on a good month. We have an unusually large family by today's standards -- 7 children ranging from 6 years old (twins) to 17. This is the part where people usually look at me like I have three heads, understandably so. Before my wife's health issues, she was a paramedic and in nursing school. So the plan was to eventually have two incomes once the kids were a bit older, but life didn't turn out that way. And before anyone asks, yes, we are done with having kids. I love them all more than life itself and would never imagine a world without them, but I am smart enough now to know that it would not have been this hard with fewer kids.
It's been very hard (nay, impossible) to get by on one income and a large family, even with some help from relatives along the way. But through it all, we have barely made it work, although I have shot my credit to hell and back in the process. My score hovers around 550 to 570 most of the time, but plummets pretty fast if I miss a payment on something.
Right now, high interest debt is my main issue. I have a variety of low-limit credit cards all maxed out (probably $5k total) a personal loan from OneMain Financial ($400 payment), an auto loan from Carvana/BridgeCrest ($508 payment, worst mistake of my life honestly but was in a desperate situation at the time), and student loans I've had to either defer or flat out stop paying. Other high expenses are groceries, obviously, but I do get $600 in SNAP benefits each month, car insurance at $250 per month because my wife has gotten into a few accidents the last 5 years, and of course rent, which is $1,900 since we need a 5-bedroom house for our large family. We used to own our home but were forced to sell in 2022 due to a variety of issues and our dire need to find a larger place to live for our growing kids.
Suffice to say, most months we either barely make ends meet, or don't at all. I sometimes have to rely on cash advance apps like MoneyLion and Earnin just to make it to the next payday. I have pretty much nothing in savings except for a very small "retirement" account, which is in quotes because I contribute 1% to it just to get my company match. I drained it a few years ago during an emergency that is too long of a story to tell here.
Everyone that I have talked to has said the same essential thing -- to look for a higher-paying job. While this is true, it's more complicated than that in reality. My current job (which I have been at for 1.5 years) affords me the flexibility to work from home most days, and understands that I need to care for my wife (who has substantial mental health issues) and kids and not be "on" 100% of the time. That is often more valuable than a higher salary, but I do know that I am capable and skilled enough in my field to eventually take a shot at a higher paying job.
So. What the heck do I do? Is there someone I can talk to about all this, who can give me real, practical advice? Would a credit union be able to help me with my high-interest debt yet terrible credit score/profile? Ideally, I would love to be able to consolidate all my debt into something more manageable. Is that even a possibility with my credit being bad? I get mail offers all the time saying I am "pre-selected" or pre-approved for a consolidation loan from some random company. I think these are all debt relief companies or possibly a scam, right? I am also severely underwater with our current vehicle as mentioned above. I owe probably 8k more than what it's worth right now, and the van is pretty much a lemon with how many problems it has.
Thank you for reading all this. I am a fairly positive person (I have to be, with the kids and taking care of my wife) but this feels pretty hopeless to me right now. I just wish I could hand over everything to someone who can manage my finances for me, and do the heavy lifting to get things under control. Sigh.

I'm sorry if I don't explain everything properly in advance, but I'll do my best. Please don't judge me, I'm sensitive and avoid bad comments.
My parents are religious and I grew up in southeast Europe, in a country whose larger population is Muslim.
My parents did their best to raise me and my siblings. My father wanted me to cover up when I was about to start high school, and that's when I became more religious. With those years, I watched my peers having fun, going out and I, on the contrary, wanted to be just calm and none of these things that teenager's did interested me. I'd just fantasize about haram stuff sometimes
At one point, I was very extreme in my believes where going out of the house felt wrong. I began to weaken and somehow withdrew from religion. I stopped praying. I found my first friend group and had a boyfriend who wasn't religious. Then the corona happened. I fell into a deep depression because I felt lost and sinful. Even though I started praying and broke up. I felt in the prayer that I was sinful and everthing hurt. I'm not sure will anyone understand but I felt "not forgiven" if O can say so. Since then, I've felt like my life had no meaning.
I wanted to take off the hijab before college, but my parents were against it, and I felt bad about disappointing them. Since then, my desire has been to move out and start my life. At least in my case, it's not that easy. I set myself a goal of finishing college, saving money and moving out when I found a job. I avoided making friends and going out, traveling because it was stupid for me to play a person I wasn't. Also I have mental health issues that I never had the courage to admit. This year, something broke in me and I wanted to try something crazy. I met a guy online, we agreed to go out. We were both lonely and I suggested fwb because mentally I don't consider myself ready for more. We went out a couple of times and then slept together. The guy was careful with me and we were both looking to be nice to each other but you know how it feels when you don't know somone.
This was the first time I took off the hijab and went out somewhere without it, the first time kiss, first dinner out and for me everything was dreamy and I felt the feeling of being "alive". I was so happy but sad at the same tlme.
We fell in love with another. I was honest with him and my story. He was also honest with me and we kind of connected even though we're different in some ways. He was there for me when I got UTI after our first time, he was there when I needed somone to talk to because I couldn't tell anyone what happened. He wss there when I needed to go to a gyno. He was there when I had panic attacks... Even tho he couldn't feel what I was going through, he didn't say anything hurtful.
After this, the really of life slapped me hard and from feeling numb I felt happy, scared, sad, worried, lost... I know losing my virginity was something that made me question myself. I would cry a lot about falling in love, about losing my virginity, about being such a disgusting person for wearing hijab but doing this, for the thought of my parents being disappointed, for the thought of judgment if others knew.. Everthing felt out of touch and line. Every day I would wake up broken. There were points where I wanted to brake up but than I would start to cry, points where I thought it's time to move out now or points where I wanted to sleep forever.
I made dua and prayed once. I felt numb while praying and not really a connection. I'm now lost in my mind, heart, soul because I'm not sure if anything makes sanse anymore. I need help.

I (23F) have been dating 25M for 9 months now. I am so scared I am going to sabotage this relationship because of my insecurities. I am just comparing myself endlessly with his ex and his ex-FWB, and even random girls.
It’s almost like I want to make myself feel anxious and insecure. I used to frequently view his ex and ex-FWBs’ social media, basically just to compare myself to them, now I do it less and less to try to intentionally stop doing it, like the scale down method as you do with obsessions. Regardless, the stuff that I found still comes to bother my sometimes randomly in my head.
For example he has liked his ex-FWB posts on IG, not even recently, but whilst we were dating. All lightly dressed - bikinis, very small crop tops, etc - posted last summer (when we had been dating for 2-4 months) he had liked. Even back in October last year he liked a picture of her that was very provocative, her with an angle from above, tongue out, angle tilting down into her tanktop with her nipple piercings fully visible through her shirt. We had dated for 5 months at that point. The fact that he was liking provocative pictures of a woman he used to have sex with makes me uncomfortable, although he hasn’t liked any of the most recent pictures she has posted - I question if it’s because of the weather being colder and her putting on more, and I worry over just the hypothetical of him starting to like them again in the summer when she whips out the bikinis and minimal clothing.
I also looked at his ex's IG profile, who is on a completely other level, no provocative pictures, but very beautiful and very clever, she is getting a double PHD and winning multiple awards, and starting her own business and doing tons of charity work. It’s just this perfect person and then he moved on to….me….
Recently I’ve also come to the realization that in the group chat with his friends my boyfriend added me to, you can look back at messages from before you were a part of it. Not sure my boyfriend knows about this detail, since he's always been in it. Regardless, I've scrolled far back to see a lot of messages about his ex-FWB and his ex girlfriend there as well, that just contribute to my anxiety. It’s important to note that this was from before him and I were dating. So, it shouldn’t matter, but it’s destroying what’s left of my confidence seeing what he’s said. I know I am the problem.
I saw some messages about his ex-FWB, from my boyfriend bragging to the all-boys group chat about how his ex-FWB sent him nudes, sharing them with them (she had given him consent to do so) when she first started expressing interest before they got involved, saying how hot she was and that it was rare to find a girl as kinky as her. I know they did multiple things together in the bedroom, and it bothers me enormously knowing exactly what they did and even seeing some pictures of it that he took while they were having sex, and sharing them in the gc (again, with permission, he's not an asshole). We are into some BDSM stuff, and I know from comparison that he used the same equipment on me that he did to her, which just makes me feel dirty and terrible.
Every time we do something intimate of that nature I can't help but wonder if he's thinking about her, or if he is thinking that she was better in bed, was more attractive, was more confident and more seductive, etc... Given she has an extremely large sexual history and my boyfriend only just took my virginity, I just can't help but assume those things are true. I am way more timid in bed because of my insecurities, and it feels like he wishes I was more like her, he tries to guide me into being more of a dirty-talker but these thoughts stop me.
I also saw this message: “I asked *ex-fwb* if she wanted to fuck again but she’s ignoring me lol” coming from after 8 days of us meeting, after he sent a “Met a really cute girl today, I think she likes me” etc. message about me, and 8 days before we became girlfriend/boyfriend. This hurts me because well, we knew each other at that point, I would even say we had had our first date at that point, and he had previously, before I saw these messages, told me that having sex with her that one time just made him sure that sex as just a means to get off wasn’t for him, that it was the emotional intimacy that made it important to him in the first place, he said he didn’t even enjoy it, wasn’t even attracted to her body type, etc…. yet he wanted to do it again?
These past messages include him also gushing about his ex, at the time they were dating but also a while afterwards. Saying how he loves how extremely outgoing and sociable she is, intelligent, and that she can converse with pretty much anyone and find a topic. He is much the same. That made me extremely insecure, because I am the complete opposite of that. I am very quiet and subdued, I like to observe more than anything and talking to strangers makes me nervous.
Even talking to his family I struggle with because I am so shy, I am constantly wondering in my head if he wishes I was more like her, his family does, or just that I was her in general. This was also brought on from early suspicions I've had about him not being over her, because some things he's said, that's then made my anxiety spiral even worse (while we were dating in the beginning he'd go on rants about what went wrong in their relationship, how he could've fixed it, he at one point told me that she was the "right person, wrong time" which he has since reassured me about not meaning, but still, etc).
I looked at all those previous group chat messages out of curiosity at first not wanting or even thinking about finding anything about his exes to make me insecure, now it's become a weird obsession where I have saved screenshots of the stuff that he's said about these women in a folder on my phone, and I visit that folder a bit more frequent than I'd like to admit. I don't know why I do it, it's like I want to hurt my feelings and make me feel insecure. There's also positive stuff in there that I've seen and saved to my folder as well, about me, how beautiful I am and supportive of him, but it just gets a bit overshadowed.
I also get jealous of girls we see when out and about. He’s told me he’s very attracted to girls with pale skin, blue eyes and dark hair - which I have, but every time him and I are out and we spot another girl with those features - worst of all if I think of her to be more attractive than me - I get so down, I can shut down and go all mopey and even though I try to pretend I am okay he notices, gets nervous and asks what happened, he thinks I got some negatives news on my phone or something. It just absolutely sucks. I have all these thoughts in my head about how he probably wishes I looked more like her, he would’ve gone up and flirted with her if I wasn’t here, etc. He’s also said he thinks girls in chokers is very hot, in a sexual way, and I wonder every time we see one wearing one if he is having sexual thoughts about her.
Once he scrolled past a random girl on his IG explore page with me next to him and said “damn, she’s cute” and went to her profile, scrolled it for 5 seconds, clicked on some images, then exited. Then it’s like he remembered I was there and he said “Not as cute as you, of course” but it didn’t feel genuine. That made me feel like shit. It’s not like he does that a lot, he’s done that once this one time, but it still sticks with me.
I genuinely don’t find other guys attractive anymore, it doesn’t even register to me anymore if a man I’m looking at or talking to is attractive or not, it’s like I’ve turned that side of my thoughts off. Which is why it hurts me even more he hasn’t seemed to do that.
This is me being insecure. I am aware of that, fully. I want to fix it. I am in queue for therapy, but with my country's’ psychiatric care being what it is, I can’t expect it to happen anytime soon. My friend waited for 2 years, and that is around the predicted time for anyone who isn’t willing to go the private route - which I don’t have money to do. So I’m doing my best with what I can do. I really don’t want to destroy this relationship, truly, he could be the love of my life. I’ve never *seeked* a relationship for this reason, I knew I needed to work more on my confidence and self-worth in fear of me. But I met him very randomly and unexpected, and just fell straight in love with him, immediately clicked and everything, in a way I can’t recall ever having done before.
I haven't fully made him aware of the extent of my insecurities, but sometimes I'll bring stuff up, like "hey, do you think we're too different being introverted and extroverted respectively?" and he will go on to reassure me a ton. Every time I give into my thoughts and ask him questions or express concerns he always is so loving, supportive and reassuring that he loves me for how I am, he's called me more attractive, trustworthy, more compatible, etc, that any girl he had a relationship with before, so it's not as if he is trying to make me insecure or anything. This is all in my head, but unfortunately being aware of that doesn't make it easier to get it out.
TL;DR: I'm struggling with insecurities in my relationship with my boyfriend of 9 months. I find myself comparing myself to his exes and feeling inadequate. I've discovered past messages about his ex-FWB and ex-girlfriend that exacerbate my anxiety, before we were dating and I obsessively dwell on them. His past interactions about his ex-FWB, calling her hot to his friends, seeing nudes that he has sent him and pictures he took of her while they were having sex. (All this from a groupchat, I haven't gone through his phone, more info above) Also about his ex, about how he thinks she's so amazing for being sociable and outgoing and I am the completely opposite. I worry that he still harbors feelings for her and wishes I were more like her. I also feel jealous of other girls and constantly fear he finds them more attractive. I feel jealous and uncomfortable with the fact that he has liked his ex-FWB provocative IG pics last summer while we had been dating for 2-4 months and one in October that was very provocative. I worry he will start liking her pictures again this summer when she starts to wear less clothing again, despite them seemingly not having been in contact since she ghosted him. I'm aware of my insecurities and seeking therapy, but it's not readily available. My boyfriend is supportive, but I fear my insecurities may damage our relationship.

I (23F) have been dating 25M for 9 months now. I am so scared I am going to sabotage this relationship because of my insecurities. I am just comparing myself endlessly with his ex and his ex-FWB, and even random girls.
It’s almost like I want to make myself feel anxious and insecure. I used to frequently view his ex and ex-FWBs’ social media, basically just to compare myself to them, now I do it less and less to try to intentionally stop doing it, like the scale down method as you do with obsessions. Regardless, the stuff that I found still comes to bother my sometimes randomly in my head.
For example he has liked his ex-FWB posts on IG, not even recently, but whilst we were dating. All lightly dressed - bikinis, very small crop tops, etc - posted last summer (when we had been dating for 2-4 months) he had liked. Even back in October last year he liked a picture of her that was very provocative, her with an angle from above, tongue out, angle tilting down into her tanktop with her nipple piercings fully visible through her shirt. We had dated for 5 months at that point. The fact that he was liking provocative pictures of a woman he used to have sex with makes me uncomfortable, although he hasn’t liked any of the most recent pictures she has posted - I question if it’s because of the weather being colder and her putting on more, and I worry over just the hypothetical of him starting to like them again in the summer when she whips out the bikinis and minimal clothing.
I also looked at his ex's IG profile, who is on a completely other level, no provocative pictures, but very beautiful and very clever, she is getting a double PHD and winning multiple awards, and starting her own business and doing tons of charity work. It’s just this perfect person and then he moved on to….me….
Recently I’ve also come to the realization that in the group chat with his friends my boyfriend added me to, you can look back at messages from before you were a part of it. Not sure my boyfriend knows about this detail, since he's always been in it. Regardless, I've scrolled far back to see a lot of messages about his ex-FWB and his ex girlfriend there as well, that just contribute to my anxiety. It’s important to note that this was from before him and I were dating. So, it shouldn’t matter, but it’s destroying what’s left of my confidence seeing what he’s said. I know I am the problem.
I saw some messages about his ex-FWB, from my boyfriend bragging to the all-boys group chat about how his ex-FWB sent him nudes, sharing them with them (she had given him consent to do so) when she first started expressing interest before they got involved, saying how hot she was and that it was rare to find a girl as kinky as her. I know they did multiple things together in the bedroom, and it bothers me enormously knowing exactly what they did and even seeing some pictures of it that he took while they were having sex, and sharing them in the gc (again, with permission, he's not an asshole). We are into some BDSM stuff, and I know from comparison that he used the same equipment on me that he did to her, which just makes me feel dirty and terrible.
Every time we do something intimate of that nature I can't help but wonder if he's thinking about her, or if she is thinking that she was better in bed, was more attractive, was more confident and more seductive, etc... Given she has an extremely large sexual history and my boyfriend only just took my virginity, I just can't help but assume those things are true. I am way more timid in bed because of my insecurities, and it feels like he wishes I was more like her, he tries to guide me into being more of a dirty-talker but these thoughts stop me.
I also saw this message: “I asked *ex-fwb* if she wanted to fuck again but she’s ignoring me lol” coming from after 4 days of us meeting, 8 days after he sent a “Met a really cute girl today, I think she likes me” etc. message about me, and 8 days before we became girlfriend/boyfriend. This hurts me because well, we knew each other at that point, I would even say we had had our first date at that point, and he had previously, before I saw these messages, told me that having sex with her that one time just made him sure that sex as just a means to get off wasn’t for him, that it was the emotional intimacy that made it important to him in the first place, he said he didn’t even enjoy it, wasn’t even attracted to her body type, etc…. yet he wanted to do it again?
These past messages include him also gushing about his ex, at the time they were dating but also a while afterwards. Saying how he loves how extremely outgoing and sociable she is, intelligent, and that she can converse with pretty much anyone and find a topic. He is much the same. That made me extremely insecure, because I am the complete opposite of that. I am very quiet and subdued, I like to observe more than anything and talking to strangers makes me nervous.
Even talking to his family I struggle with because I am so shy, I am constantly wondering in my head if he wishes I was more like her, his family does, or just that I was her in general. This was also brought on from early suspicions I've had about him not being over her, because some things he's said, that's then made my anxiety spiral even worse (while we were dating in the beginning he'd go on rants about what went wrong in their relationship, how he could've fixed it, he at one point told me that she was the "right person, wrong time" which he has since reassured me about not meaning, but still, etc).
I looked at all those previous group chat messages out of curiosity at first not wanting or even thinking about finding anything about his exes to make me insecure, now it's become a weird obsession where I have saved screenshots of the stuff that he's said about these women in a folder on my phone, and I visit that folder a bit more frequent than I'd like to admit. I don't know why I do it, it's like I want to hurt my feelings and make me feel insecure. There's also positive stuff in there that I've seen and saved to my folder as well, about me, how beautiful I am and supportive of him, but it just gets a bit overshadowed.
I also get jealous of girls we see when out and about. He’s told me he’s very attracted to girls with pale skin, blue eyes and dark hair - which I have, but every time him and I are out and we spot another girl with those features - worst of all if I think of her to be more attractive than me - I get so down, I can shut down and go all mopey and even though I try to pretend I am okay he notices, gets nervous and asks what happened, he thinks I got some negatives news on my phone or something. It just absolutely sucks. I have all these thoughts in my head about how he probably wishes I looked more like her, he would’ve gone up and flirted with her if I wasn’t here, etc. He’s also said he thinks girls in chokers is very hot, in a sexual way, and I wonder every time we see one wearing one if he is having sexual thoughts about her.
Once he scrolled past a random girl on his IG explore page with me next to him and said “damn, she’s cute” and went to her profile, scrolled it for 5 seconds, clicked on some images, then exited. Then it’s like he remembered I was there and he said “Not as cute as you, of course” but it didn’t feel genuine. That made me feel like shit. It’s not like he does that a lot, he’s done that once this one time, but it still sticks with me.
I genuinely don’t find other guys attractive anymore, it doesn’t even register to me anymore if a man I’m looking at or talking to is attractive or not, it’s like I’ve turned that side of my thoughts off. Which is why it hurts me even more he hasn’t seemed to do that.
This is me being insecure. I am aware of that, fully. I want to fix it. I am in queue for therapy, but with my country's’ psychiatric care being what it is, I can’t expect it to happen anytime soon. My friend waited for 2 years, and that is around the predicted time for anyone who isn’t willing to go the private route - which I don’t have money to do. So I’m doing my best with what I can do. I really don’t want to destroy this relationship, truly, he could be the love of my life. I’ve never *seeked* a relationship for this reason, I knew I needed to work more on my confidence and self-worth in fear of me. But I met him very randomly and unexpected, and just fell straight in love with him, immediately clicked and everything, in a way I can’t recall ever having done before.
I haven't fully made him aware of the extent of my insecurities, but sometimes I'll bring stuff up, like "hey, do you think we're too different being introverted and extroverted respectively?" and he will go on to reassure me a ton. Every time I give into my thoughts and ask him questions or express concerns he always is so loving, supportive and reassuring that he loves me for how I am, he's called me more attractive, trustworthy, more compatible, etc, that any girl he had a relationship with before, so it's not as if he is trying to make me insecure or anything. This is all in my head, but unfortunately being aware of that doesn't make it easier to get it out.
TL;DR: I'm struggling with insecurities in my relationship with my boyfriend of 9 months. I find myself comparing myself to his exes and feeling inadequate. I've discovered past messages about his ex-FWB and ex-girlfriend that exacerbate my anxiety, before we were dating and I obsessively dwell on them. His past interactions about his ex-FWB, calling her hot to his friends, seeing nudes that he has sent him and pictures he took of her while they were having sex. (All this from a groupchat, I haven't gone through his phone, more info above) Also about his ex, about how he thinks she's so amazing for being sociable and outgoing and I am the completely opposite. I worry that he still harbors feelings for her and wishes I were more like her. I also feel jealous of other girls and constantly fear he finds them more attractive. I feel jealous and uncomfortable with the fact that he has liked his ex-FWB provocative IG pics last summer while we had been dating for 2-4 months and one in October that was very provocative. I worry he will start liking her pictures again this summer when she starts to wear less clothing again, despite them seemingly not having been in contact since she ghosted him. I'm aware of my insecurities and seeking therapy, but it's not readily available. My boyfriend is supportive, but I fear my insecurities may damage our relationship.

Location: Colorado, USA
In August 2023 I agreed to be primary on a car loan for my boyfriend of 3 years because his car broke down and he needed a vehicle for work, and his credit wasn't good enough to qualify on his own.
On the vehicle purchasing paperwork it says we both own the car. I am the primary borrower, he is the co-borrower.
We have since broken up, and it was messy. I will provide context as I don't know if we would be considered common law in Colorado and whether that affects things. We were together for 4 years. He cheated on me, and she was his gf a week later. I had stopped working full time 6 months prior to help care for his son and 2 godchildren, who we had temp custody of. I wasn't able to move out right away and he seemed okay with me saving money for a few months to move out... until he wasn't. He became more verbally aggressive, blocked access to the internet so I couldn't work, cancelled my car insurance even though I was halfway into a 2 week driving test to qualify for new car insurance, cancelled my phone line. He threatened to evict me (he couldn't do this because it was his parents house) multiple times because he felt like I wasn't trying hard enough to find another job. I eventually was able to save up enough to move out.
Last month, he was arrested for domestic violence against his new gf, he tried to kill himself that same night. It turns out he was heavily abusing his ADHD medication and alcohol, as well as other drugs like cocaine and hiding it from everyone for over a year, at least. He admitted to me that he stole ADHD medication from me. I had medication go missing in 2022 and 2023 but I could not confirm it was him. I even messaged his therapist and she was unable to give him a UA because he was also on ADHD medication and so the drug test wouldn't prove he was taking my medication. I plan on filing a police report, but I want to get the car loan situation sorted out because I'm worried about retaliation on his end. The police told me I don't need to file the report right away and that I can wait.
I continue to get notifications when he is late with his payments. He also has an EZ Pass and if he doesn't make the payments on those, the letters get sent to me in my name because I am primary. I called EZ Pass and they said if it doesn't get paid then it could prevent car registration.
When I email him and ask him where he is at on requesting the loan be taken out of my name and put into his, he says he's working on it but won't give me any other information or any sort of timeline. My credit score went down 50 points with the vehicle loan. I was luckily able to move into a private residence that did not require me to do a credit check, but I might need to move again and I will likely struggle to find an apartment with my current credit score.
The last email I sent, I told him if we can't figure it out we can get a mediator but it would be at his expense. He hasn't responded.
The current loan is approximately $30k. Payments are around $600/mo.
Questions
Are there ways I can get off of the loan that do not require him to have good enough credit to qualify? (Edit: specifically wondering if the situation (him having stolen from me) changes whether or not I can get off the loan.)
Can I repo the car? What does that look like? I don't have the title or a key.
Does he have to be in agreement with my decisions?
I don't even know if I'm asking the right questions. I am lost in this situation but really need to buck up and get educated on what I can and can't do. He is someone who makes threats and I think what he did to me after we broke up would be considered emotional and financial abuse. I am definitely concerned about retaliation, and so I need to understand what am able to do so I can make the best decision.
Thank you so much in advance

Edit: talking about my issue here is a waste of time, everyone here is being agressive, I am aware that I'm not really a good guy, I'm actually very bad, but I am trying my best to fix my relationship with my wife and all I read here is toxic shit.
Had to create another throwaway cause reddit deleted my previous.
Here's the update which I would your input upon, below my update, there will be my initial post.
Update: Okay, so some of you all might know me from yesterday, some don't and if y'all are curious, then look up my post.
Anyway my intention is to rn is reconcile my wife, I talked to her today morning. We had a very long discussion today.
She cried on me, and ngl I kinda did as well but didnt show her.
I put forth some conditions in order to continue our marriage and forget about past.
I told her I do not trust her at all. My conditions were, 1) we both have access to each other's phone all the time. 2) we both tell each other where we are going. 3) she must listen to me, no matter what. 4) if I ask her to do something she must comply, otherwise I'll divorce her or abandon her.
I told her the only reason why I'm compromising is cause I love her and still think enough to not ruin her life.
And she agreed, never questioned, she was crying, and I would be lying if I said I wasn't feeling bad seeing her in such a way.
So AITA for putting forth such conditions, I'm goal is to fix the situation if I can, but I don't trust her at all.
So my initial post.
I (26m) got married to my wife (25f) 4 months ago, we from India so basically our parents got us married, our marriage was healthy, she is very good, beautiful and kind, takes care of me and basically does everything for me and my family.
So before our marriage when I met her a few times I asked her multiple times if she was in a relationship with someone before me, she said no everytime, so despite my reluctance, I married her without knowing her past or trying to dig in, cause my family pressured me into it.
But like a week ago, I sat her down and told her if she was with someone else before me, tell me the truth I will support her regardless, I just want to know the truth. (I just said it so that she would tell me the truth, kinda shitty ngl, but it was bothering me since I got married)
She told me that she was in relationship with her college boyfriend from past 6 years of her life, from college to before we got married, they were planning on marrying, but the guy backed down, which obviously I cannot accept at all.and she hugged me crying.
I let her cry and then she had a smile, but I was so pissed I told her let's divorce, her smile instantly faded, which I still am sad about, then she started venting and asked me to not do this, she said she didn't tell me cause I wouldn't be okay with it and only told me cause I said I would be okay with it, we went back and forth and then she started saying if something like this happened to my sister would I be okay with it, so I said my sister wouldn't do anything like this.
I told her if she don't divorce me I'll tell everyone (was just saying)
So now, only my siblings and cousins know they all told me if I go with the divorce it will practically ruin her and she isn't a bad person and forget about her mistake, truth be told our society is very ruthless to women who has sex before marriage and double goes for divorced, 99% of men will never marry a divorced woman.
I'm obviously and asshole for giving her false promises and treating her like this, but would I be one if I really file a divorce and tell everyone about her past??

I (20F) met this friend 7 years ago before I met my boyfriend(23) 3 years later. I was 13 when I met him and he was 18. He's a really nice, caring, and thoughtful person who was always there for me when I was in my most difficult times. We had a lot of fun times together and knew the things that make each other sad or happy... I confessed to him a year and a half later that I like him, he acknowledged that but said he only sees me as a younger sister which I accepted because we both knew that's inappropriate and simply wrong.
It was kind of awkward after that but we remained friends. He later had a girlfriend but broke up after a year. Then, I met my now boyfriend when I was 16, and he's like the best person I've ever known. I don't want to think of him as perfect because I know that he's just a human with imperfections and capable of making mistakes. However, I must admit that in all of those years we're together, I still think and long for my friend. My boyfriend and I rarely have arguments or problems yet I still go to my friend for comfort. We'd talk about each other's lives, how we're feeling, what we both want in the future, and find ourselves flirting sometimes. I felt very guilty, like a trash so I did what I thought was the right thing to do. I talked to him and said that I need to work on myself. I can see the sadness in his face but said it's all right and that he'll never forget me even if we don't see each other again anymore. That was around 6 months ago, the last time I saw him.

I'm scared that I'm completely losing myself or being emotionally manipulated in my relationship. (1 yr together, known each other for 10). My partner (29 M) supports me in my self care & work & hobbies & loves to boost me up, but he also frequently tells me things I've done wrong. I'd always rather he be honest about his feelings, but i feel like it's very frequent. Something comes up at least twice a month where he says he doesn't feel listened to or valued or "like a partner" in our relationship and things blow up. This has happened for 3 months now. Before this i dated someone for 4 years who was very reserved, so I got used to feeling very needy - therefore, I have a lot of empathy for needing love and affection and I try to make his needs met. I have tried really hard to fix previous tangible concerns like letting him know when I'll be away from my phone for a while or making changes to not be late to things. We have had some really good strides where I've been able to tell him my needs more or own up to my small failings. But the last 72 hours have been a nightmare even with my growth and progress. I'm sorry this post is lengthy but I'll try my best to explain the current situation:
Sunday my bf slept through his brother coming to visit on accident. He woke up and texted me and said he was spiraling a bit about feeling bad about it and would be okay but just needed a "5" to show him I was there. (this is supposed to be a call back to us saying I love you 5 ever in the past)
I didn't see his text for 30 minutes and then told him l was soo sorry I didn't see this sooner and that I was really sorry he slept through his alarm and missed that, but his body must have needed rest. He said it's okay, it's just my brother.
We spoke for 40 minutes about mothers day and other stuff and then he said "hey you never sent a 5" and I said "oh shoot, 5". It then was shared that it really upset him that I hadn't read and replied to that part of his text. It made him feel not listened to, he said, that I chose to reply how I wanted instead of doing what he asked for. I apologized and also said sorry I didn't say a 5 sooner and that I wish I had seen his text and sent a 5 right away. He got upset that I was apologizing for not texting him right away. He said apologizing for the thing he's not even upset about (not replying for 30 minutes) takes away his agency and takes away from him feeling heard.
He then explained it wasn't fully about the 5 - it was that it hurt that I didn't ask more about his feelings and just changed the topic after he said "it's okay". I think sometimes I forget people say "it's okay" to try to be strong when really they want to talk about their feelings. He emphasized he wished I had asked about his feelings and I said I definitely should have and need to be better about asking more follow up if he opens up and says he's spiraling.
I apologized a ton Sunday night and called him and cried to him on the phone about how much I cared and how much I didn't want to hurt him. He told me it was going to be okay and he even told me he felt loved and cared about. He showed appreciation when I took accountability and I said things like "I totally see how it made you feel not heard that I didnt do a small thing you asked for" and "I really should have followed up by asking more about your feelings or why you were spiraling".
Monday he got upset again once he woke up and said I was defensive yesterday and it hurt and that I talk at him and not with him (I did get defensive a bit by saying things like "I didn't know you weren't still okay and I took it at face value when you said you were okay" or saying "I told you I know I messed up and I shouldn't have ignored you opening up to me" when he brought up again how hurt he felt. But sometimes he repeated how hurt he was and how he wished I would hold myself accountable. So I would at times get defensive by saying "well I tried telling you that I'm sorry I ____"
I didn't know what to keep saying besides sorry and that I messed up. I tried keeping my answers brief after he said i was making things about myself (being emotional in my guilt) because i didnt want to risk monopolizing the conversation. Then he told me I really hurt him because he shared 2 paragraphs about how hurt he was and I gave a 10 word answer. I apologized multiple times for my 10 word answer. I said I only kept it short to keep the focus on him. He said it felt like I wasn't even trying. I tried asking what else he needs or what I could do to help and he told me I'm just Asking "out of self preservation". Then when I said I wish I knew what I could do to help he said "did you ask". Three different times when I said I wish I could make him feel better or things like I am trying to give thoughtful answers he would say "did you ask" and then I would say "ask what?" And get frustrated when he didn't give me a straight answer. When I got upset for not getting an answer to my question, he said I was making it about me again.
At some point he asked for examples of me asking accountability. I sent screenshots of when I said I messed up and hurt him and I should've done differently and he got upset and said "those are from yesterday and don't impact how I feel today". I tried taking accountability again today in multiple sentences. He seemed grateful that I did and was glad to hear me list the things I messed up and take the blame for. But then when I brought up something i was hoping we could still do (a surprise party for him) he got really upset and said I was only thinking about what I wanted (to see him and get him to the surpise) instead of what he wanted (to not go out). This led to him skipping his own surprise party yesterday. It was so embarrassing because I didn't know how to explain why he wouldn't come with me (I was supposed to be the one to bring him to the surprise) and his friend ended up making up that he got too wasted beforehand. Even since the party he has only said how his wishes feel ignored and he never wanted a surprise party (I guess a misfire but his friends really wanted to do the party so I went along). No apology for not even coming.
A chunk of yesterdays convo, word for word: M: "I felt so small when you gave me a 10 word response I felt like I didn't explain enough or wasn't good enough . And to not really have a response, it hurt me so bad."
F: "I'm sorry for hurting you so much and giving so small of a response. I'm really sorry for the things I did to make you feel small."
M: "thats not what I'm worried about or bothers me"
F: "What are you worried about or bothered by? You shared it Made you feel small when I sent a 10 word response, so I thought that was a part of the problem."
M: "Not really related and makes me feel worse about getting the love I need/want"
F: "i don't understand. You brought up how much hurt you and how low it made you feel, how is it not related?"
M: "Did you ask?"
F: "I'm asking now"
M: "I'm sorry, I didn't realize you being hurt negated everything I've felt?"
F: "What? Where did I say I'm hurt?"
M: "You're asking a question so you could feel good or secure but I dont feel I'm afforded the same"
A seperate convo chunk later that day:
M: i spend so much energy and get so little in return. When I reach out and ask for help everything gets focused on how you felt. When do I matter?
F: I'm sorry. I hope you can get to feel like you matter now. I have been trying to do what you need and put very little focus on myself and I'll keep trying
M: If you can't try or listen to what I'm saying or asking for just leave me alone and make this whole situation easier. I'm exhausted and tired from giving you grace and somehow things always focus back on you.
_--- Then In several texts asked him if he explain how things kept coming back to me and he said the focus just keeps coming back to me.because I won't take accountability. He is embarrassed and doesn't feel good enough. Because I don't show him support when he needs it and don't show i care in the ways he wants or needs the way he supports me when I'm low.
F; I'm sorry and I wish I had afforded you the same. I'm trying to give thoughtful answers, sorry if they have to be short because I'm at work. Can you explain how you feel like the focus has been coming back to me in today's convo.
M: did you ask?
F: ask what? How did I make the focus on me?
M: dude we aren't doing this again
F: dude I asked for clarification becuase I don't get your question
M: It's not about you. I don't think you're ready or capable of loving me the way I want or need. I feel like I've given you grace and afforded you the space to make or acknowledge mistakes. I can't keep begging to be heard and feel like I'm overreacting or misunderstood. It's fine to ask for clarification, but when you do it hijacks the conversation and we never revist what I said.
F: because I don't get an answer so it's hard to revisit the topic when I'm still confused
M: I'm sorry , I didn't realize that me spiraling or being in a bad place was only continued because you didn't get a response. This isn't about you.
I want to get him to couples therapy because I care about him SO much and he has a really big heart and a good soul. But once he feels hurt, it's like he's stuck being the victim and can't see how horribly irrational our conversations are going. I am not perfect at conflict either - I get defensive if he keeps talking about being hurt, and I end up crying a lot to him about how bad I feel for hurting, and sometimes he has to help me calm me down from my intense crying over the problem I caused, which is draining for him. But I think at least in this case he is really stuck in a victim complex where he isnt doing any wrong and I'm not doing much right to him. I genuinely feel like therapy could really help, and that the couples therapy would support my individual therapy working on defensiveness and emotional control. I want to support him, but I'm nervous to just outright ask for it. What do I do? How could I ease into the topic?
TL;DR: Although I have tried to be very patient and take accountability there are a lot of things I do that hurt my boyfriend. I have worked on improve some concrete things but our most recent conflict (detailed above) has me feeling anxious and lost because I try taking accountability throughout but he is still upset no matter what I say. I don't think he knows how to handle conflict and I'm not perfect at it either but i am very willing to name everything I do wrong and try to change it. I want to suggest couples therapy so he can see we can both do better. Not sure how.

I own a small house in a HCOL city. Most people who live here either have very high paying jobs or have multiple roommates. A one bedroom apartment is $2,800. I was lucky enough to buy my house over ten years ago and get a gift from my family to make it possible.
My ex is a teacher. We lived together for three years. She paid half the mortgage, her part was $800 a month, while she was here. During that time we discussed our future and made plans. We also got a rescue dog because she wanted one. I was willing to get one because I loved her at the time. It was always her dog though. It is very difficult to get housing that allows pets so she was overjoyed to be able to have a dog.
Seven months ago I found out she was cheating on me. With another teacher from her school. His wife found out and kicked him out. She asked if he could move in here which is how I found out. I said no. She said she paid rent and had rights. I asked her to show me a signed lease. She didn't have one obviously. I said I would let her sign a lease and let him move in. All it would require was first and last month rent. That would be about $8,000 for 2/3 of a house in my neighborhood. Plus she would start having to pay 2/3 of all utilities and her own groceries. In fact I asked her to sign a lease for market value.
Her boyfriend was still paying at his house for his wife and kids. My ex and him didn't have that kind of money. They ended up moving to a shit hole apartment with a very long commute.
I don't have time for a dog with my job. So I told her she needed to take him. She asked me to please take care of Haley until they found a place that accepts pets. And I did. For six months.
She started coming by less and less to see Haley. I had to take on more responsibility for her dog.
I got one of the neighbor kids to walk the dog for me. She also would dogs it for me when I went out of town. At her house with her parents' permission. The kid always loved the dog.
I told my ex that she needed to come get Haley. She refused. I asked my neighbor if they wanted to take her. They said yes. Haley is an excellent dog. She is well trained and very smart. If I was a dog person I would want a dog like her.
I gave my ex two weeks to arrange for something regarding Haley. She blocked me. That was more than a month ago.
The neighbor kid took the dog two weeks ago to see how she did in their house. Everything went great. Haley likes her more than she likes me. I gave Haley and all her stuff to the the neighbors. We went to the vet and had the chip transferred to them.
My ex called me to beg me to take care of Haley "just a little longer". She had not given me money for dog food or come by to see Haley in a month at this point. So I told her that I had rehomed Haley with someone responsible.
She is telling everyone that I'm an asshole for giving away her dog. I paid for Haley, I paid for all Haley's bills, I was registered with the city and the vet as Haley's owner. Haley was legally mine.
Haley is in a better place now. I see her in the park now and then.
I have no idea how my ex is doing now. After a bunch of our mutual friends said it wasn't my responsibility to take care of Haley she blocked a bunch of us.
I do hope she is okay. I hope she is happy with her new guy. I know it's hard to detect sarcasm in text so I will be clear that I am not being sarcastic. I loved my ex and I am still hurt by what she did. But I don't wish anything bad for her. People grow apart.