Apology to a friend for stealing from him

TDLR: Ex texted a bestfriend behind my back ending of last year ruining the friendship. Broke up with her, during that time I rekindled with someone else while occasionally texting my ex still not back together. Felt like I missed the warmth of my ex and dropped the new girl going back to my ex fully beginning of this year. Missed the support and love from my ex that I never truly got. Girl told me ex about our dirty laundry, causing trust issues in the whole relationship. Tried fixing them by removing girls, sharing location, etc. I felt scared my ex is gonna get revenge and started being distant at the end which pushed her away as well. We broke up beginning of May this year. I thought we would get back together as always, found out she’s been adding guys she removed a long time ago. I got upset and texted her ugly nasty shit, and texted her dad saying his daughter is a “sl*t” etc. I thought by doing this I’d move on quicker, he told me to leave them alone. I understand I fucked up if I had received a message like this from my daughter ex I’d be fuming too. I want to apologize to the parents for the lack of character I had but feel like it’s too late to backtrack on the stupid shit I said. Am I being selfish by sending a text?
Hello all, This is gonna be long. I really appreciate anyone who takes time to read and help with some words. I have no therapist or friends this seems like the best option.
I have never posted on here but seriously feel torn up. I know that I have been in the wrong in all this but I truly was dealing with a weed addiction till I finally sobered up and realized how fucked I am. This relationship has been a rollercoaster, but something I didn’t want to get off. She showed me many first things and it was my longest relationship of three years. She cared for me when I had no job, to every job, skinny fat, etc and I did the same with her struggles. To make a long story short back in August of 2023 I found my ex texting one of my bestfriends that worked with her at the time(I had quit that spot and found another job). No lust or crazy texts just work laughing but I confronted her about it it was jealousy and she said it was nothing.
After a few weeks come September I kept feeling this jealousy boil over. If she had texted anybody else I wouldn’t have said much but I felt like cause it was MY friend she should have brought up the convo they had even if it was light and funny. I was pestering her about him, she then decided to text him behind my back saying I’m being jealous. They text back and forth and he’s calling me a kid and disrespecting me even though he’s known me for longer, and she was laughing sending him laughing emojis and stuff. He then texted me asking me to fight because somehow she told him I threatened him. I got pissed she ruined a friendship and told her I’m done blocked her on everything. From September to December 2023 I was all alone focused on work and meeting new people. In December I rekindled with a girl I knew no feelings just stupid lust. While talking to the new girl, my ex sends me a heartfelt email since I had blocked her on everything, saying she’s sorry and understands I don’t want to hear from her but wishes me the best. I softened up and began texting her here and there, but still was talking to the new girl.
After a while in Jan/Feb 2024 I met with the girl I had rekindled with and we had done some things. However during this time I started seriously missing my ex and the way I felt comfortable around her. So I was talking to my ex again fully and wanted to make it work again. The problem came when my ex wanted to visit me since she’s long distance. She flew all the way to me and everything was good, till that new girl decided she wasn’t getting my attention anymore and texted my ex lying to her telling her I was begging for her etc. My ex broke down and asked why and I childishly said because of what she had done by texting my bestfriend and that we weren’t together. She cried in my arms and I balled with her cause I truly didn’t want to hurt this girl like this. I offered her to leave me and understood I fucked up. But to my surprise she wanted to stay and asked to fix our trust. I tried my hardest to fix it, I gave her my social passwords, she had my location, everything she wanted she got, even removed all girl friends to gain trust and she removed guys. However after some time around March 2024 I felt like all that I did wasn’t building up that trust again, and I began having flashbacks to trauma where I got left and cheated on within a week. I felt like my ex got back with me to seek revenge. So I started pushing her away scared.
During April she came again to visit me and booked a flight without asking me to pay or anything and genuinely asked to spend every minute of the day with me. I should have taken her coming to see me without me asking as her sign of true love but I ignored it.
Beginning of May 2024 came and our problems began. I started seeing her go out with friends to bars, even to houses I didn’t know and she would take a little longer to respond. I began thinking something is up due to my trauma and started being distant with her. She kept asking me to stop doing this, and cried a few times but I was truly scared of behind hurt and thought by being distant I’m protecting myself. She told me this once and it’s stuck with me “you’re gonna regret doing this”. After that convo she became cold with me too to the point where I didn’t even know who she was anymore. Our final convo was May10. We argued on the phone, and she blamed me for everything, I brought my ex bestfriend and her and how they hurt me she said she had already apologized and I said I did too for cheating but I knew what I did hurt more. She told me to leave her tf alone that I haven’t been the man she needs saying she’s seen better guys treat gfs better etc. That she wants time alone that she wouldn’t go around like I did with girls fucking randoms guys. I blocked her but I genuinely thought we would breakup and get back together as always.
However a week passed and I heard nothing. For some reason I felt like I deserved an apology cause during our arguments I was being more respectful and it felt like she kept saying stuff on purpose to hurt me. I saw she had logged onto my socials and I locked her out and logged out of her accounts cause I felt like it was better. However I was still stalking her Instagram following number and began seeing it go up fast. I started getting guys being suggested to me that follow her and I noticed it was all guys she used to work with and removed for “trust”. I felt broken cause it felt like she did what my first ex with the trauma did , just move on within a week. I felt sad, but the sadness turned to anger. I thought by burning bridges I could move on quicker. And I began blowing her up with calls to no answer, so I switched to texting and said some of the most heinous shit I’ve said to anyone. I then texted her mom telling her her daughter got a new type being childish but nothing too disrespectful to the mom. I texted the dad however and called his daughter names, which he got back at me with a threat and called me childish and that he’s happy his daughter isn’t with someone like me and to lose their numbers. I said lmao cool being even more childish.
I genuinely felt bad the same day I texted the parents this. I felt like bringing them into childish arguments and saying what I said made me look like a true child which I try not to be fast in situations but I was impatient and dumb. I felt like I was the one being stubborn in the relationship and pushed her away, then got upset when she did walk away I just didn’t appreciate her at the end and it hurts my soul I’ve felt this heaviness on my chest ever since like I lost the person for me. I know blaming it on the weed is childish but I feel like it game me that I don’t give a F feeling till it bit me in the ass. I spoke to my only friend and my parents who didn’t even accept the relationship at first due to culture, but they told me I had fucked up and told me with time they will heal, and that in time I can send a message to the parents if I wanted to to get my conscious clear and be able to move on with a better image.
Is it smart to reach back out to the parents to show respect as an adult or just let them be? I know this was a lot but it’s on my heart and brain everyday since. A part of me says apologize in the hopes of getting this girl back one day which I know is selfish, the bigger part of me just hates the image I left of myself cause I have never left a relationship in this manner

Hello all -- first time poster here. Sorry for the really long post, I guess part of this is therapeutic for me just to write out.
I've really been struggling recently, as my wife has come to absolutely despise by 67 year old mother, and I'm not sure if there's anything that can fix it.
A little bit of my history. I've always been very close with my family. I grew up in a south Asian household (although I always felt we integrated nicely with a lot of American culture -- both me and my sibling have lived in a large US city our entire lives and consider ourselves American both in culture as well as nationality). However, as in many Asian cultures, respect for elders is extremely important. I always had a parent-child relationship with my parents (meaning that they were in charge, and not interested in being my friend, but rather my mentors and provided invaluable guidance over the years). Both of my parents sacrificed a lot for me and mysibling, but especially my mom who chose to forgo advancing her own career, and to work part time in order to raise my sibling and I. I've always had a good relationship with my mom, although we've had our share of fights over the years (we're both pretty stubborn), but they typically last no more than a 3-5 days on average and then things are completely back to normal. I would say this happens an average of 1-2 times per year at most. I do feel very close with my mom (& my dad as well, but my wife doesn't seem to have any issues with my dad so I'm not focussing on that part). I do believe that much of the success I have achieved in life is directly attributable to the sacrifices my mom made as well as the time she spent raising and teaching me. I have always respected my parents, which is typical of Asian culture. By respect, I mean things like not talking back, valuing their opinions, and trying to make their life easier or happier in small ways (visiting them on weekends, going out to dinner together -- we live roughly 40 minutes apart).
A bit of my wife's history -- she grew up with her parents being divorced from a young age. Both of her parents are wonderful people who I really adore, but they were extremely lenient with her growing up (they were not on top of her with regards to schoolwork, she would talk back to them at times without getting in much trouble, she was able to sneak out of her house as a teen, etc.). These are by no means egregious offenses, and I suspect many kids do the same at that age. However, there was a clear difference in her relationship with her parents -- there was no real enforcement of rules or punishment for breaking rules. Through my lens, it seems that this has manifested as a lack of respect for her own parents, as well as her elders. She mostly has a good relationship with both of her parents, but when she does disagree with them, she talks to them in ways I could never imagine speaking to my own parents (talks back, hangs up on them, etc.). She says that she needs to "put them in their place" at times, which I also find rude. Overall, I would say she grew up much less "family-oriented" than I did, for what it's worth.
My wife is also somewhat of a nomad (mostly not by choice). She moved a few times growing up (within the same state, but different areas), and then went out of state for college, only to leave after 1.5 years and finish at a local state school (in a different state) where her mother lived at the time. Because of this, she has very few close friends, and the ones that she does have are spread out all across the country on different coasts. This is in stark contrast to me. I've been lucky to maintain the same group of friends that I've had since we were 8 or 9 years old. On top of that, most of them have stayed in the same area that we grew up in (where my wife and I now live). I think the lack of a social circle has affected my wife since she moved to my city, but I'm not sure what solution there is for that since there is no city we could live in where she would have a group of close friends or family (her parents live in different states and split time between different states, her 3 closest friends live in 3 different states).
I've known my wife for 8 years and we've been married for 2.5. I love her. She is a great person; she is kind, compassionate, loving, and at her core truly does care deeply about others (though I feel that this does not always come across in the way she talks to her own parents). She's funny, adventurous, and up until recently, I was always happier around her. We were recently blessed with the birth of our son, who is now 11 months old. Our son is the best thing that has ever happened to us, but his arrival seems to have simultaneously strained our relationship in ways I did not anticipate. I knew that the sleep deprivation would be hard, and our lives would change drastically. What I did not envision was a deepening hatred that my wife has developed for my mom.
Prior to the birth of our son, my wife did not have much of an issue with my mom other than thinking she was "needy" for wanting to see myself and my sibling once a week, even if it was just for a dinner (again, we live roughly 40 minutes apart, and my parents are typically willing to drive to us, meet us at a restaurant, or have us over). My mom does tend to be picky with where we eat out (she doesn't eat most meat, and prefers vegetarian options), but that never really bothered me, though it seems to bother my wife that my mom is "getting her way", even though this was at most 1 meal in the week.
I know that my mom can certainly be stubborn and hard to deal with at times, but I know her very well, and I always felt that she was inclusive of my wife, and never did anything that warranted being strongly disliked. The one exception to this was during our son's baby shower. We had planned a large party with a lot of family and friends that my parents hosted (their house is large enough to accomodate a party of that size). During the baby shower, my mom helped arrange catering of food, ordering tables, chairs, tablecloths, and hiring a bartender (my parents also paid for all of this). My wife did not like my mom's taste with regards to tablecloths and chair decorations and she was irritated that my mom wanted to help and be involved in the planning (though to her credit, my wife did not outwardly show this discontent to my mom, though it was certainly made known to me). My wife handled the floral arrangements and other decorative pieces such as a backdrop, and spent a lot of time and effort getting them exactly how she wanted. I kind of sensed that my mom felt that she was being taken for granted and underappreciated by my wife (she did take care and pay for a lot), and my wife felt that my mom was being overbearing with planning, and also felt that my mom was purposefully spiteful (my wife claims that every other member of my family commented on how nice the floral arrangements were, but my mom never did). This culminated in a "fight" where my wife wanted a decorative piece in one part of the yard and my mom wanted it in another part. There was some exchange of words at the time, though I did not witness this. This left my mom feeling that my wife was "disrespectful" and left my wife hating my mom for not honoring her decision about where to place the decorative piece, since this was her baby shower. This led to a very upsetting experience for my wife and I as we really did not enjoy the baby shower at all (although this was not evident to our guests or other family members, as we were able to "fake it"). My wife was particularly upset after the baby shower when we drove home since she felt that it was supposed to be a special day for her, and my mom ruined it, which I mostly agreed with. To her credit, my mom did apologize to both my wife and me the following day, and told us that she had been under a lot of stress with many family members staying at their house, taking care of meals, sleeping arrangements, etc., and her stress got the better of her. I was willing to accept her apology and move on, but my wife has always held a grudge since that time, and feels that the apology wasn't genuine. Again, I've known my mom for a long time and she would rather not apologize at all than do so disingenuously. My wife however insists that she can read my mom better than me, since I'm biased. Nonetheless, we moved forward.
After the birth of our son, my parents and my wife's parents were overjoyed (he is all of their first grandchild). Again, we live near where I grew up so my parents are much closer to us than my wife's parents are. After the birth of our son, my wife's mom rented a place near us for 4 months to help with the baby and chores, etc. I never had any issue with this, even when she would come over multiple times a day, or even unannounced at times (this was not something that bothered me). My parents were (& are) also very eager to spend time with their grandchild, and initially were coming over every other day to see the baby, which then decreased to about twice a week, since he has been 3 months old. My wife has begun having major issues with my parents coming to see our son twice a week now. Perhaps what is most irritating to me is the fact that I anticipated this issue beforehand. I specifically asked my wife when our son was 1 or 2 months old "how often would you be okay with my parents coming to see him?", and her answer was "I would be so happy if it was just twice a week", (which she felt would be a huge improvement over the every other day they were initially coming when our son was a newborn). I assured her that twice a week was very reasonable and she said she'd be happy with that.
Fast forward to now -- my mom comes to visit twice a week for 3-4 hours and my wife says its too much. She says it's suffocating, that she shouldn't have to live her life around my mom seeing our son (which my wife does not, she always tells my mom which days to come, and they are different each week depending on what my wife wants to do), that she feels like she had a kid just for my mom to play with. Again, my mom is never insistent on what days or even times to see our son. She certainly appreciates seeing him regularly, and I always wanted my son to have a close relationship with his grandparents (both sides), as both myself and my wife did growing up. However, my wife's parents do not live near us (and don't come to visit that often). I think this plays a role in terms of her being irritated that my family sees him regularly, but I don't see any solution. Her family is financially able to visit us (very regularly) if they wanted to, but they don't make it a priority. Again, her parents are wonderful people, but they seem to be more interested in their own lives and relationships than they are in forging a deep connection with our son, their grandson (I'm not saying there is anything wrong with it, but it's the opposite of my family who really want to be close with their grandson, even if it's at the expense of time with their own friends).
I should also add that for the past 3 years my wife has not worked. This started prior to us getting married. She left her job because she hated it, and I am lucky to be in a position to financially support us on my own. However, she always told me she would (& wanted to) get a job in a field that she was more interested in, though she has never been able to articulate what that field would be (actually she was adamant that she would have a job before we got married). I tried to encourage her to find fields that appealed to her, even advised her to take risks with entrepreneurship, to see if she could make a career out of something she considers a hobby. I've paid for countless courses, certifications, etc. (90% of which she did not complete -- things like real estate certifications, social media certifications, photography lessons, camera lenses, etc.). Furthermore, I paid for her to see a therapist of her choosing for a few months hoping it would help her gain clarity with regards to what she wants to do career-wise (it did not). All in all, I've probably spent in the neighborhood of 7-8K on online courses, certifications, and she does not have anything to show for it. Once we got pregnant, we agreed that she would take on more of a domestic role (which is what she said she wanted as well, I did not force her into this -- and she was also not doing anything else for work anyway). The point I'm making here is not that I feel she needs to work, it is just that she gets to see our son all the time (it's not like she's going to work and handing our son off to my mom). Also, many times my wife will say "Oh why don't you come on Monday" when we see my mom (which my mom will then do). Then Monday rolls around and my wife is texting me at work all day constantly complaining about how my mom is interacting with our son (she doesn't watch him closely enough, or she doesn't put him in his crib to nap, or she feeds him when she's not supposed to, etc.), how long my mom is staying, how she feels trapped in the house when my mom is there, etc. She basically wants my mom to come over for no more than 2 hours and then leave (again we live about 40 minutes apart).
This issue she has with my mom seeing our son a couple of times a week for a few hours, has started to cause bigger and bigger fights between us. Part of me understands that my wife's lack of her own social circle of close friends, and not having family nearby is contributing to her unhappiness with our current situation. But the other part of me can't help but feel like I've done everything in my power to help, and it feels that she is just complaining about my mom because she's unhappy with where she is in life. I have tried helping her find a career that she would like, I have tried telling her she can remain a stay at home mom if she wants, I have tried getting her a therapist to help her work through her issues, I have tried encouraging her to join mom & baby classes to meet new friends (which she now attends, but hasn't made any real friends during them), I have offered to joint local couples meetups with her to meet new friends if that would make her more comfortable, I have encouraged her to invite the few local friends she does have over for dinner or even go out with them while I watch the baby, I have offered to move to a part of the city that is even further from my parents, and I've even offered to move cities altogether to be closer to her own family (although her family does not reside in just 1 city, they split time between a few). I've also told her to voice her issues to my mom and hash out whatever the issues are, but she says my mom will see it as disrespectful and "make things even more awkward" (which may in fact be true, but in that case I've told her we would just see my mom less, which is what she wants anyway...). Each time I suggest something, I feel that it is met with resistance or some excuse as to why it won't work (for instance when I suggest moving cities, she says no because I'll "use that against her" in the future if we fight). I'm just not sure where I can take it from here. I'm sure couples counseling has to be a part of the solution in some way, but I'm not sure what they are going to be able to offer that I haven't already tried.
I guess I'm just looking for advice. My guess is my wife wants me to just straight up tell my mom she can't come over twice a week anymore (but I could see my wife having a problem even if it was just once a week), for no good reason. My mom has no idea my wife despises her, and me just randomly telling my parents they can't come over anymore for no apparent reason would cause a rift between me & them. I love my parents and they're only getting older. They're not going to live forever, and I would feel awful if I told them they just can't come to see their grandson because my wife doesn't like my mom for no particularly legitimate reason.
Thanks in advance to whoever read through this, and for whatever advice you can provide.
TLDR - I feel like I've bent over backwards to make my wife happy but she still has a major issue with my mom that I don't know how to resolve.

I had a huge crush on a childhood friend, with whom I'm not in touch with any more. I thought of him as my prince charming and I was his cinderella. Not only did I like him, but I loved his family too, and his house, and his neighborhood, and just all the fun things we did together as children. I also thought that he liked me back, because he indulged in things that I liked even if he didn't like them.
Next in 2007, I moved away to the opposite side of the globe. Even though I missed him so much, I didn't feel so bad any more because our parents were still in touch with each other. They even came to visit us and my dad visited them during his work trips. I was having a hard time adjusting the first few years of living in the new country, so as my coping mechanism I would think A LOT about my old friends, and especially him. I daydreamer about us getting back together, I would play the same games I played with him and games those games to my new friends too. I'd like to think that I was still having a crush on him then on not limerence, because all of this was happening when I was 6-9 years old.
Fast forward to 2013, I find out he and his family were moving away too, to a different state. I also find out from one of my old friends (who also used to like him) that he's not such a nice guy and he's super rude and arrogant, which is what led her to stop having a crush on him. At first I couldn't believe it, but then I told my mom about the crush I had on him and she also agreed with my friend that he was very rude. That's when I started to forget and him and thought 'okay now is my time to move on'. And I stopped thinking about him for a whole year.
A few years later, I found myself daydreaming about him and I once again. I think it's because of hitting puberty and hormones playing mind games and things like that. I had crushes on other boys at school too, but those were very brief and I'd like boys who remotely resembled this one, whether they had the same name or were from the same culture, etc. I think this was when the limerence really began, because I dismissed all the earlier statements of him being rude and arrogant and thought 'he must've changed now, for me!'
I found him on Instagram in 2018, and I started to follow him. I got so ecstatic when he followed me back, liked my posts, and viewed my stories, because by then it had been years since we even spoke to each other. And I would get excited to see his content, again daydreaming. Even when he posted a picture of himself with a girl, I wouldn't get jealous and instead I would think 'when he meets me again, he'll be mine'. Not once did I think about the possibility of him having a girlfriend, or that I may not be his type. I guess it was because that didn't sit well with my ego.
Fast forward to 2020, I moved back to this country where everyone else was. And his family hosted a zoom-reunion with all of us (me, him, and the rest of our childhood friends and their parents). By then we were all grown up in college or high school. But the very fact that I got to see him again, when I thought I wouldn't, was so exhilarating that I was squealing on the inside, but playing it very cool on the outside. I was so happy to see him and his family again, despite having lost touch, and despite not being very close to them any more. I actually that 'they came back into my life just for me!! He likes me back! His parents like me!! We're totally going to get married when we're a little older thanks to us waiting for each other!!'
Soon after that call I realized, on my own, that they were not back in my life, they don't have that kind of interest in me, and that my fantasies of him and I reuniting were not going to happen. It was indeed limerence, not love like I had thought. That's when I took my time to grieve, and I felt like such a fool to thinking that my childhood fairytale would come true with this boy. I even broke down to my mom about this and she said that if anything I actually dodged a bullet because she's seen what they're really like in real life. She also said that if a boy likes me he will seek me out, I shouldn't have to pursue him. But I just couldn't digest the fact that he wasn't into me and that he'll get married to some other girl and he'll never know how much I liked him.
Apologies for the really long story, but now that I know that this was limerence, I want to move on from him for real. I want to remember him well, and also be able to wish him well. But I also don't want to jeopardize my future relationship with the real guy in my life, and I'm trying to end this well before I meet him. Thanks for your advice and patience!

hey! okay so i don’t know if this is the right place to put this but i just need an outsiders take on this situation. it’s going to be a long one, so thank you in advance haha.
i’m (f22) from ontario but i go to school in a different province. i’ve been talking to this guy (m23) for a while. he’s from ontario too. we have been talking on and off since may 2023. we went on a few dates, and then we ended things in august when i moved back to my school province because neither of us wanted to do the distance thing. we’re both super busy - he’s a grad student, i’m a double major, and now we’re in separate provinces. he reached out to me at the end of august to say happy birthday. then we started talking again. i saw him when i went home for reading week. then he ghosted. i grieved that loss and started to move on, and then he came back again and apologized and explained his side (i don’t want to get into it to respect his privacy, but just know that it was a valid explanation). we started talking again and i saw him when i was home for christmas. after what was arguably the most romantic night of my life, he said that he thought we were better off as friends. i lost my cool (i’m usually very calm) and completely cut him off. i again grieved that living loss but thought about him every single day. but i’ll be damned if i was the one to reach out again first.
we were no contact from the end of december until he messaged me in mid february. i was so skeptical at first and took everything he said with a grain of salt. i told him off and he was very apologetic. we had a long conversation one night and i told him my side of things and told him what i needed from him, and vice versa. the conversation went really well - he was receptive of what i had to say and was very understanding of where i was coming from and i did my best to understand his view as well. we have different communication styles, and i don’t think i really realized that until that conversation. it provided a lot of clarity and i’m glad we talked through it all.
fast forward to last night. it’s been a couple of months since that big conversation. he messaged me a couple of days ago and asked to see me now that i’m back home for the summer. i was super hesitant but i still have all these feelings for him so i said sure. he said he was going to plan a date and not to worry about anything. again, skeptical, but holding out hope. so he shows up last night and i thought my heart would beat out of my chest (mind you, i haven’t seen him since december). he looked so handsome and my stomach was doing flips. he gave me a hug and i melted. it was really nice to see him. it was a lot later than planned when he showed up (he was stuck at a conference in the city) and he said “i had a plan to go out and watch the fireworks but on the drive here i realized it’s too late and that the fireworks were yesterday and i feel bad”. he was really apologetic and it was clear that he felt bad, but i understood. in all honesty, i also thought that the fireworks were last night haha. it was sweet though- i told him ONE time last year that i liked fireworks, and he wanted to surprise me.
anyways, we ended up just hanging out at my place and during our time together he was doing all of the things that i had said i needed from him. he led the conversation, he was engaged, he was excited, he was asking questions. every other time we have hung out, i’ve been the one to keep the conversation going. but this time i didn’t feel like i needed to, he was so actively involved. he danced with me (cheesy i know, but what can i say? i’m just a girl) and we just had a really good time. the man i saw last night was the man that i met on our first date and it made my heart oh so happy.
here’s the problem. like i said before, he’s a grad student. he was offered a fellowship in another country over the summer. he’ll be back and forth a little bit, but not much and i’m sure he’ll want to spend that time with his family. i’m only here until the last week of august and then i go back to my school province for my final year of uni. it’s an amazing opportunity for him and i’m really proud of him. i’m terrified to do long distance, especially because i don’t know if he’s 100% in it. but at the same time, since our conversation in the winter he has been making an effort to change and make things work, and i saw that perfectly clear last night. i am not blind to his red flags - the ghosting, the taking a while to reply, the lack of effort (before) when it came to planning dates. however he has shown me that he’s changing.
i really have feelings for him. but i’m scared that this is just going to end in flames like the other times. but at the same time, things feel different. after last night, i feel more secure. secure in what? i’m not too sure. maybe secure in myself- i know that i will be okay without him. he is not the stars. my life will go on. but also i think feel secure in him- the things he was saying, the future plans he was making, i felt at ease and trusted that it would happen. other times im wracked with anxiety and panic. but last night i felt calm and secure.
if you’ve made it this far in the post, i appreciate you and i hope that both sides of your pillow stay cold in the summer. anyways, people of reddit, do i give this one last shot?

I honestly don’t even know where to start, I apologize if the timeline is difficult to follow.
My (30F) husband (30M) is currently a nurse. Two years ago, my husband, let’s call him Wayne, enrolled in a one year, accelerated nursing program at a university in our city. This was a super intense program that basically shoved four years of nursing school into one year. (The program is designed for people who already have an undergrad degree and have completed pre-reqs for the program) Wayne quit his job so he could focus all of his energy on the nursing program and pass the NCLEX. I was fully supportive of this and basically told him whatever he needed to do to study and feel prepared, I was game. I think it is important to mention that Wayne and I have been together for 15 years now, we are high school sweethearts.
During the first week of his program, Wayne met two other students and became friends with them. I will call them Bonnie (27F) and Gail (28F). The three of them became fast friends and quickly made a habit of studying together every single day for almost a year. They would take turns going to each other’s houses for study sessions. The majority of the time the three would be at our house because it was somewhat in the middle between their houses and the university. Since I worked during the day, they could study all day if they wanted.
I also really liked Bonnie and Gail. Eventually, we all became friends and Bonnie’s boyfriend, Dan (27M), and Gail’s girlfriend, Tanis (28F) would come over for dinners. Before anyone asks, I had absolutely no issue with Wayne befriending women or spending time with them. Wayne and I are best friends and have a very secure relationship. I trust him completely. Not to mention, Bonnie and Gail were also in relationships, so it was no big deal. Eventually, Wayne and Bonnie even helped Gail work through some of her relationship drama and helped her break up with Tanis. The get-togethers became smaller after that, because Tanis was gone and Dan was working more and couldn’t come.
Fast forward to graduation, Wayne and Bonnie decided that they wanted to work in the Emergency Department and Gail was going to work in a less intense area. Both Wayne and Bonnie got a job at the same ER and their shifts would be similar so they would be co-workers. We all thought this was awesome because that particular ER is in a tough part of town and they see a lot of level one traumas. It’s great that Wayne and Bonnie can “debrief” after shifts and vent to each other. Gail was forced to go on night shift, which was the opposite schedule of Wayne and Bonnie. Over the past year, Wayne and Gail haven’t really spoken. Wayne rationalized that they both got really busy and just lost touch. Bonnie still spoke regularly with Gail.
Around this time, Dan proposed to Bonnie! This was a long time coming and we were all very happy for them. Bonnie said that Wayne and I were definitely invited and it was going to be so much fun! The happy couple eventually told us that the wedding would not be in town, but take place in a state far away. Easily twelve to thirteen hours drive or a flight away. While that would be a lot of money for us, we said that we would do our best to come. Bonnie asked Gail to be a bridesmaid and we were super pumped because it would be like a small reunion! At this time, I found out I was pregnant!! We had been trying for a while and we were so happy. It would work out great because our baby boy would be approximately nine months old at the time of the wedding. Old enough that we could leave him for a day or two with my parents to go to the wedding.
Fast forward to last week. On Tuesday, Bonnie hand delivered Wayne our invitation to their wedding. I was able to request off work and we’ve been slowly saving money to travel for the wedding. On Friday, Bonnie pulled Wayne aside after their shift. Bonnie said that her and Dan had a really bad fight because Bonnie invited Wayne and I to the wedding. Wayne was very confused, why would Dan be upset that we were invited? Bonnie then said:
Since Wayne, Bonnie, and Gail met in nursing school, Gail has been under the delusion that Wayne was in love with her. Apparently, Bonnie and Dan would talk with Gail almost EVERY DAY and tell Gail that there was nothing between her and Wayne. Gail would insist that Wayne was in love with her. Bonnie would tell Gail that she was in the room when such and such happened and there was nothing that happened. As time went on, Gail started to badmouth me to Bonnie and Dan. She would say that I was manipulative and I was mean to Wayne, etc. Gail started saying that she needed to break up with Tanis because Wayne and her were going to be together. Eventually, Gail thought that Wayne was going to leave me to be with her. Bonnie and Dan continued to tell Gail that she was crazy and nothing was happening. When Wayne told them that we were trying for a baby, Gail started a whole other delusion that Wayne and her were going to have kids.
According to Bonnie, during one of our dinners when it was just the four of us, I said something that Gail then passed on to Dan. This was around the time of a school shooting where an AR-15 was used. For context, I was a teacher in an urban school district for five years. During those five years, I was in five lockdowns, one of which had an armed intruder. While I am not anti-gun, I feel very strongly about school safety and gun restrictions. Dan enjoys guns and owns an AR-15. He is also very passionate about gun safety. Gail told Dan that I said something to the effect of “anyone who owns an AR-15 has those children’s blood on their hands”. I can say with 100% certainty that I never said that. I am sure because that is a super unhinged thing to say and it would never come to my mind to say that. If anything, I would have said that AR-15s shouldn’t be so readily available to citizens and there should be restrictions in place so these tragedies don’t happen.
Regardless, Gail told Dan that I allegedly said this. According to Bonnie, Gail talked to Dan without Bonnie present and she was unaware that this conversation had taken place. Dan was very angry and hurt by what Gail said and chose to internalize his anger towards me. Apparently, Dan decided he no longer wanted to see Wayne and I and lied about his work schedule so as to not attend dinners with us. It was not until a couple months after this, that Bonnie invited Dan to dinner at our house and he said, “why would I spend time with those people after what they said?”. Bonnie was confused and then Dan told her what Gail told him. Bonnie told Dan that those words were never spoken and Gail was lying. By this point, Dan had convinced himself that I had said those things and didn’t believe Gail would lie.
When they graduated from nursing school and started working, they stopped hanging out as much because of their schedules. Gail took this as Wayne “ghosting” her and “breaking up” with her. Gail continued to bad mouth me and Wayne.
When Dan found out that Bonnie had given us a wedding invitation, he was livid. He felt that Bonnie went behind his back to invite us even though “we hurt him”.
When Wayne reiterated this to me, I was shocked. We had been completely in the dark about this whole thing FOR TWO YEARS. Bonnie had been acting like nothing was wrong. After almost every shift, Wayne and Bonnie talk on the phone. Not once has she even mentioned anything about this. Gail is still in the wedding party despite this. Dan still hates us.
Bonnie wants Wayne and I to be at her wedding and says, “she can’t get married without her best friend [Wayne] there”.
Firstly, Bonnie has lied by omission for two years. Frankly, I don’t trust Bonnie anymore. I am skeptical that we have all of the information and there isn’t something more at play here.
Secondly, I am offended that Dan would think that I said those things. And I’m shocked he would blindly believe Gail, especially after her delusions about Wayne.
Thirdly, why would I want to go to a wedding where Gail is a bridesmaid? Who is to say she doesn’t start something and cause a scene? Also, why would I want to spend thousands of dollars to travel to a wedding where I am uncomfortable? AND I’m leaving my baby?
While Wayne is as confused as I am, he still wants to go to the wedding. He has trauma-bonded with Bonnie through work and values her as a friend. While I understand this, I can not get over this. Bonnie is trying to talk to Dan and convince him that we are good people and Gail twisted everything. Honestly, after being left in the dark for two years, I don’t want to have to convince anyone that we’re innocent in this. If anything, we should be getting an apology from all parties.
Wayne and I are currently still waiting to hear from Bonnie about her “talk” with Dan and Gail. As of right now, 5/21, Gail is still a bridesmaid and Dan still doesn’t want us at the wedding.
Am I wrong for feeling this way? What would you do?

What insight/advice can you give about navigating this situation? If you’ve been in a successful friend group like this, how did you do it? If you’ve been in either position, his, mine or hers, what’s your perspective?
I’m in a big friend group with about 8 people. We’ve all been really close friends, like chosen family, for about 7-8 years now. The group is a mix of guys and girls.
All of the girls, had a bf in the group. We all became friends because the guys were best friends. Most of the couples are no longer together, just me and my bf.
My boyfriend and one of the girls (the friend in question), hooked up before we met and didn’t talk much after until we all became friends. She also was in a relationship with one of the guys in the group, who’s my boyfriend’s cousin. He got with her knowing that they’d hooked up, he didn’t mind.
Back then (6yrs ago) she did things that disrespected my relationship. She apologized. And after him and I broke up, they got really close, but nothing ever happened between them, I believe that much.
My boyfriend and I recently got back together and I realized I’m still bothered and threatened by those things and because they text almost everyday, she goes to him for everything, like a gf would, they talk on the phone for hours, and he wanted to drive hours just to meet her family/hang with them and sleep over.
He’s been very honest about their friendship and me and her were also very close but she always seemed to be on his side. To him, he would do that with and for any of the friends in the group, not just her and he sees nothing wrong with his actions. He claims there are boundaries but he doesn’t try to change any of his actions. He only ever tells me nothing is going on, and that I’m wrong for feeling bothered about things that happened years ago especially because she’s my friend too. He thinks that because we’re all friends, because that was in the past, and because he’s honest with me that I shouldn’t/cant think these things, and that nothing is wrong with his actions. He claims he talks to everyone else in the group just as much.
He also has a history of cheating, never with her, and he has changed since then and no longer does that, I believe this so please don’t try to change my mind.
I understand he values friendships and I understand the wants to bond with them when possible, but because of the history and things that have happened and because I’ve expressed my concern, I’d like for him to lead and have our best interest but I don’t feel like he does because he doesn’t attempt to see my perspective or change any actions. He wants me to rid my mind of anything ever happening between them because now he feels nasty even talking to her.
Aside from this, the relationship is great, and the friendship between everyone has been through so many beautiful things and we’ve all shared many good memories and have done very nice things for each other.
TLDR: Boyfriend and girl best friend who are also best friends, are very close and because of past and some current actions, I feel threatened by their friendship. I understand his perspective but I don’t feel understood. Want insight/advice if you’ve been in his, mine, or her position.

Long post ahead so bear with me.
I’m 24F dating my 24M boyfriend for 4 years. Overall I’d say our relationship has been pretty good - no serious issues until now, all of our fights have been over his tendency to be moody or passive aggressive.
Some background information: I’m on the neurodivergent spectrum and suffer from depressive episodes, but I’m high functioning because I don’t want it to affect my professional life or anyone else but me. A side effect of that has been my tendency to isolate myself from everyone, which I’ve done for the majority of our relationship - sometimes I didn’t interact with anyone at all except for my family and my bf. I haven’t gone a single day in the last 6 years without any contact with him.
I realized that this wasn’t healthy so this year I decided to try and come out of my shell and build more friendships. It’s a bit hard but I’ve been working on it slowly, and one of my newfound friends was one of my bf’s friends, J (23M), as well - they had been friends for about a year at this point. We hit it off pretty well and as someone who’s really bad at friendships I enjoyed talking to J, but it was strictly platonic - nothing out of the ordinary, exactly like every friendship I have/have ever had. Please keep in mind I did not prioritize interactions I had with J or anyone else over ones I had with my bf.
While my bf initially really liked J, around the time we started becoming friends he started to sour on J until he eventually just started icing him because he didn’t like anything about him all of a sudden, and the only reason he could come up with was “J was annoying.” He also told me he found it “weird” that he chose to be friends with his friend’s gf (confused about that one because I met some of my closest friends through him/his circles). I reassure him that there’s nothing weird going on and my friendship with J is, once again, platonic. In all honesty, I also didn’t really think much of it because I didn’t find J to be annoying and my bf has had a pattern of disliking some of my friends for no apparent reason, even if he’d never talked to them. (My friends are all just goofy nerds so I never really got why.)
3 weeks ago my bf tells me he thinks J is trying to sleep with me but he has no evidence or thoughts to support this. I’m obviously shocked and once again reassure him that I’ve never picked up sleazy vibes from J and he’s never been inappropriate with me. I’ve had really creepy encounters before so I’m always hyperalert about these kinds of things and if I do get those vibes I shut them down immediately.
Onto the main clown show: last week my bf texts me angry that I’ve been lying to him and that I’ve been repeatedly gaslighting him into thinking my friendship with J was normal, but after a conversation with one of his other friends he’s convinced that he’s right and it’s inappropriate for J to be friends with me. Then he goes ahead and texts J to stop texting me and accuses him, amongst other things, of being a creep. To the surprise of absolutely no one, turns out this scenario that my bf created of J secretly trying to steal me away from him was completely false and J is both hurt and pissed about it. He tells him that he’s only ever thought of him as a good friend and he never had ill intentions towards me but he cannot in good conscience be ok with this and subsequently cuts both of us off.
For obvious reasons, I’m extremely pissed about this and we have a blowout fight over it, because turns out I don’t like anyone messing with my friendships like that and falsely accusing someone who’s done nothing wrong to you of being a creep is a shitty thing to do. He genuinely didn’t see anything wrong about what he did and “he did what he had to because he was desperate to get J out of my life and I left him no other choice.” He also told me that if he woke up to find out I did something to cause his friends to cut him off, he’d assume I had a good reason to do so and everything that happened with J was for the best. He screamed at me, accused me of being disrespectful and thinking of him as an insecure loser, called me a whole slew of hurtful things, that I’m disgusting and make him feel worthless and that he fucking hates me repeatedly. It overall just turned into a really ugly mess.
The next morning he was calmer and apologized for the hurtful things he said and that he didn’t mean any of it. He also admitted what he did was wrong, that he overreacted out of paranoia, and that he’s sorry he hurt J and ruined my friendship with him. He admitted that I was right, there wasn’t anything weird going on like he thought and he apologized for messing with my personal life.
The issue is I’m having a hard time processing all of this. First of all this couldn’t have happened at a worse time because I have a lot of personal issues going on that I’m incredibly stressed out about and he’s well aware of that. He’s also aware that I’ve always struggled with making friends, and now any urge I’ve had to do that is gone. I can’t get over him saying I make him feel worthless because I’ve dedicated so much and sacrificed so much to be with him and make him happy every way I could. I’ve never and still don’t prioritize anyone else over him. Having your boyfriend of nearly 5 years tell you he doesn’t trust you and despises you is also pretty fucking shitty because I’ve never done anything distrustful or been anywhere near as hurtful as he has been to me. His apologies sound hollow and lukewarm to me because at the end of the day, he got exactly what he wanted. And I’m left to suck it up and deal with it.
I don’t know what to do and I feel like I’m alone backed into a corner and I’m about to break with all the other things going on in my life. I’m sorry if this post isn’t very coherent but I’m a little tipsy right now. I just feel so violated and I’ve never felt more horrible or alone in my life than I do now and I’ve never not felt like that my entire life. I don’t know and can’t tell if I’m the one who messed up here and what I should do. Any advice, harsh or gentle is appreciated.
TLDR: bf incorrectly assumed mutual friend was trying to sleep with me and subsequently went nuclear on both me and friend. Am hurt and don’t know how or if I should resolve this.

I honestly don’t even know where to start, I apologize if the timeline is difficult to follow.
My (30F) husband (30M) is currently a nurse. Two years ago, my husband, let’s call him Wayne, enrolled in a one year, accelerated nursing program at a university in our city. This was a super intense program that basically shoved four years of nursing school into one year. (The program is designed for people who already have an undergrad degree and have completed pre-reqs for the program) Wayne quit his job so he could focus all of his energy on the nursing program and pass the NCLEX. I was fully supportive of this and basically told him whatever he needed to do to study and feel prepared, I was game. I think it is important to mention that Wayne and I have been together for 15 years now, we are high school sweethearts.
During the first week of his program, Wayne met two other students and became friends with them. I will call them Bonnie (27F) and Gail (28F). The three of them became fast friends and quickly made a habit of studying together every single day for almost a year. They would take turns going to each other’s houses for study sessions. The majority of the time the three would be at our house because it was somewhat in the middle between their houses and the university. Since I worked during the day, they could study all day if they wanted.
I also really liked Bonnie and Gail. Eventually, we all became friends and Bonnie’s boyfriend, Dan (27M), and Gail’s girlfriend, Tanis (28F) would come over for dinners. Before anyone asks, I had absolutely no issue with Wayne befriending women or spending time with them. Wayne and I are best friends and have a very secure relationship. I trust him completely. Not to mention, Bonnie and Gail were also in relationships, so it was no big deal. Eventually, Wayne and Bonnie even helped Gail work through some of her relationship drama and helped her break up with Tanis. The get-togethers became smaller after that, because Tanis was gone and Dan was working more and couldn’t come.
Fast forward to graduation, Wayne and Bonnie decided that they wanted to work in the Emergency Department and Gail was going to work in a less intense area. Both Wayne and Bonnie got a job at the same ER and their shifts would be similar so they would be co-workers. We all thought this was awesome because that particular ER is in a tough part of town and they see a lot of level one traumas. It’s great that Wayne and Bonnie can “debrief” after shifts and vent to each other. Gail was forced to go on night shift, which was the opposite schedule of Wayne and Bonnie. Over the past year, Wayne and Gail haven’t really spoken. Wayne rationalized that they both got really busy and just lost touch. Bonnie still spoke regularly with Gail.
Around this time, Dan proposed to Bonnie! This was a long time coming and we were all very happy for them. Bonnie said that Wayne and I were definitely invited and it was going to be so much fun! The happy couple eventually told us that the wedding would not be in town, but take place in a state far away. Easily twelve to thirteen hours drive or a flight away. While that would be a lot of money for us, we said that we would do our best to come. Bonnie asked Gail to be a bridesmaid and we were super pumped because it would be like a small reunion! At this time, I found out I was pregnant!! We had been trying for a while and we were so happy. It would work out great because our baby boy would be approximately nine months old at the time of the wedding. Old enough that we could leave him for a day or two with my parents to go to the wedding.
Fast forward to last week. On Tuesday, Bonnie hand delivered Wayne our invitation to their wedding. I was able to request off work and we’ve been slowly saving money to travel for the wedding. On Friday, Bonnie pulled Wayne aside after their shift. Bonnie said that her and Dan had a really bad fight because Bonnie invited Wayne and I to the wedding. Wayne was very confused, why would Dan be upset that we were invited? Bonnie then said:
Since Wayne, Bonnie, and Gail met in nursing school, Gail has been under the delusion that Wayne was in love with her. Apparently, Bonnie and Dan would talk with Gail almost EVERY DAY and tell Gail that there was nothing between her and Wayne. Gail would insist that Wayne was in love with her. Bonnie would tell Gail that she was in the room when such and such happened and there was nothing that happened. As time went on, Gail started to badmouth me to Bonnie and Dan. She would say that I was manipulative and I was mean to Wayne, etc. Gail started saying that she needed to break up with Tanis because Wayne and her were going to be together. Eventually, Gail thought that Wayne was going to leave me to be with her. Bonnie and Dan continued to tell Gail that she was crazy and nothing was happening. When Wayne told them that we were trying for a baby, Gail started a whole other delusion that Wayne and her were going to have kids.
According to Bonnie, during one of our dinners when it was just the four of us, I said something that Gail then passed on to Dan. This was around the time of a school shooting where an AR-15 was used. For context, I was a teacher in an urban school district for five years. During those five years, I was in five lockdowns, one of which had an armed intruder. While I am not anti-gun, I feel very strongly about school safety and gun restrictions. Dan enjoys guns and owns an AR-15. He is also very passionate about gun safety. Gail told Dan that I said something to the effect of “anyone who owns an AR-15 has those children’s blood on their hands”. I can say with 100% certainty that I never said that. I am sure because that is a super unhinged thing to say and it would never come to my mind to say that. If anything, I would have said that AR-15s shouldn’t be so readily available to citizens and there should be restrictions in place so these tragedies don’t happen.
Regardless, Gail told Dan that I allegedly said this. According to Bonnie, Gail talked to Dan without Bonnie present and she was unaware that this conversation had taken place. Dan was very angry and hurt by what Gail said and chose to internalize his anger towards me. Apparently, Dan decided he no longer wanted to see Wayne and I and lied about his work schedule so as to not attend dinners with us. It was not until a couple months after this, that Bonnie invited Dan to dinner at our house and he said, “why would I spend time with those people after what they said?”. Bonnie was confused and then Dan told her what Gail told him. Bonnie told Dan that those words were never spoken and Gail was lying. By this point, Dan had convinced himself that I had said those things and didn’t believe Gail would lie.
When they graduated from nursing school and started working, they stopped hanging out as much because of their schedules. Gail took this as Wayne “ghosting” her and “breaking up” with her. Gail continued to bad mouth me and Wayne.
When Dan found out that Bonnie had given us a wedding invitation, he was livid. He felt that Bonnie went behind his back to invite us even though “we hurt him”.
When Wayne reiterated this to me, I was shocked. We had been completely in the dark about this whole thing FOR TWO YEARS. Bonnie had been acting like nothing was wrong. After almost every shift, Wayne and Bonnie talk on the phone. Not once has she even mentioned anything about this. Gail is still in the wedding party despite this. Dan still hates us.
Bonnie wants Wayne and I to be at her wedding and says, “she can’t get married without her best friend [Wayne] there”.
Firstly, Bonnie has lied by omission for two years. Frankly, I don’t trust Bonnie anymore. I am skeptical that we have all of the information and there isn’t something more at play here.
Secondly, I am offended that Dan would think that I said those things. And I’m shocked he would blindly believe Gail, especially after her delusions about Wayne.
Thirdly, why would I want to go to a wedding where Gail is a bridesmaid? Who is to say she doesn’t start something and cause a scene? Also, why would I want to spend thousands of dollars to travel to a wedding where I am uncomfortable? AND I’m leaving my baby?
While Wayne is as confused as I am, he still wants to go to the wedding. He has trauma-bonded with Bonnie through work and values her as a friend. While I understand this, I can not get over this. Bonnie is trying to talk to Dan and convince him that we are good people and Gail twisted everything. Honestly, after being left in the dark for two years, I don’t want to have to convince anyone that we’re innocent in this. If anything, we should be getting an apology from all parties.
Wayne and I are currently still waiting to hear from Bonnie about her “talk” with Dan and Gail. As of right now, 5/21, Gail is still a bridesmaid and Dan still doesn’t want us at the wedding.
Am I wrong for feeling this way? What would you do?

I, (25f), had a baby 9 weeks ago. It was an incredibly traumatic birth and I almost died. When she was seven weeks old I asked my sister if I could come to her house so she could meet my baby. It’s a 3 1/2 hour drive and I said I would make that drive so I could see her and my grandparents as well if she felt okay with that and she said of course. She invited my brother as well. I texted my grandfather and asked him/my grandma to come down as well. Now this is where it gets a little crazy. My mother and father were horribly abusive to all of us. My father and mother divorced the summer before I went to college after he tried to kill her by hunting her through the woods. My mother decided that after that she would go back to doing tons of drugs and fucking my 17 year old friends. She partied and fucked around and lost every job for doing drugs. She dropped my 12 year old sister off and claimed she had Covid in March of 2020 right when it became a thing and didn’t pick her back up. She only decided she cared when I filed to get custody of her. She signed away her rights and as a thank you for not making it difficult I didn’t file for child support from her. I continue to not request child support because she is getting her life together and I didn’t want to add extra weight to that in this shit economy. I was 21 at the time and still in college and living with my fiance. We took custody of my sister and have been raising her ever since. Literally through inpatient hospitalizations, tons of bad situations, and trying to get my life together in my 20’s I had a teenager to take care of. It hasn’t been easy at all but at 23 I managed to, by some miracle, buy a house and put her into one of the best schools in the state. I am broke af every month, half my check goes to my mortgages, and I’m a teacher so like…… it’s actually hard to pay these bills but I work my ass off so it gets done. In my childhood my mother wasn’t a mother to me. I was the oldest 🫣 so I raised my siblings and protected them from getting hit. I took a lot of blows for them. My mother also threw a party at her house when I was underage, got me trashed, and called my boyfriend to come down so he could rape me. Gave him the condom and helped him CARRY ME to bed. suffice to say, I was in weekly therapy for like 3 1/2 years.
So naturally, when I planned this meeting I didn’t invite either of my parents as I don’t speak to them. My grandparents think I’m an asshole for not letting my mother back into my life because she got clean via court order. They went behind my back and invited her. My sister didn’t tell me. I walked into her house and walked right back out. They cornered me in the driveway while I was trying to put my baby in the car to yell at me. They said I’m tearing their family apart, trying to leave my mother out to hurt her, and that I need to forgive and forget the “silly little things that happened in my childhood”. That I am evil for brainwashing my sister into disliking my mother as well. I left and sobbed for probably a third of that drive. I already feel like an outcast in my own family and this made me feel like I can never see them again.
No one has messaged me about this since or apologized in any way and I haven’t contacted them. Am I the asshole? Should I try to tolerate her for the rest of my family? Or do I stand my ground and cut ties? I know my mother has gotten clean and I’ve worked through a lot of what happened to me but I feel like all that aside I still just don’t like her. She’s always stuck in this high schooler mentality of “guess who fought who” and “omg so and so is sleeping with so and so’s ex”. And I’m out here talking about insurance and mortgages. Idk I just feel like I’m talking to one of the kids I teach when I talk to her. I have to stop her from oversharing ya know? Idk I’m lost. I just feel like my mother did what she always does and made my newborns moment all about herself. And I did not care for it one bit. Am I the asshole?

While doing my case rankings the other day I noted that 2-2 could probably work as a final case if it was rewritten and expanded a bit. So I thought it would be a fun exercise to take cases and keep their premise while reducing/expending their scope so they could work at different point in the game. Since I already mentioned it, I'll switch 2-2 and 2-4.
2-2: Turnabout Ceremony
Pretty much the same basic premise, except that Adrian is caught red-handed by Lotta while she's framing Matt, and she gets arrested instead, with no kidnapping plot as a result. De Killer is also replaced by another hitman who's more grounded and less of a Batman super villain. The hitman, actually a hotel bellboy for several years with some ties to the mafia, had his own grudge against Juan Corrida, and was paid by Matt to do the deed.
Adrian as a defendant is very uncooperative, and the first day of trial goes pretty badly. While there's no evidence directly tying her to Juan's murder, the mountain of evidence she tampered with the crime scene makes her very suspicious, and she almost gets given a guilty verdict before Phoenix manages to convince her to tell the truth. Adrian explains that she knew Matt must have done the murder and framed him. However, she refuses to explain why she was so sure it was Matt or why he would kill Juan. Franziska laughs at the notion, as Matt has a rock solid alibi, but nonetheless the trial is extended one more day.
Day two of investigations goes similarly to the game, with of course less stress due to no kidnapped Maya. Phoenix uncovers evidence of a hired hitman, as well as the cameras placed by Matt. Confronting Adrian with the new evidence, she reveals everything. At the trial, the hitman is called to testify (in person this time), and Phoenix proves that he was the one who killed Juan. He confesses, but like in the game, claims Adrian was his client, not Matt. Phoenix disproves that as well, and shows him the cameras placed by Matt, revealing he was intending to blackmail him. Outraged, the hitman turns on Matt and ominously claims that his mafia friends will pay him a visit soon. Scared for his life, Matt confesses and turns himself in to the police.
Oh and maybe there could be some contrivance so that Pearl is the assistant instead of Maya, both so my version of 2-4 makes sense timeline-wise and so Phoenix can use the magatama.
2-4: The Turnabout from Beyond
Same basic premise of Dr. Grey bringing Phoenix to Kurain village so Maya will do a seance. However, instead of saying he wants to make Mimi write a confession, he claims he only wants to talk to her. Additionally, Maya seems noticeably reluctant when interacting with Grey, and it's clear she's only doing this as an excuse to see Phoenix again. He gets murdered, and Morgan chases them out, but when Phoenix and Lotta come back, they find Morgan unconscious and severely wounded, with Maya unconscious next to her. After that there are several notable differences. First, Mimi was the one that brought the gun, not Grey, and she deliberately used it, going against the plan she and Morgan devised. While the two were alone after chasing Phoenix and Lotta out, Morgan begins berating Mimi for not going with the plan. Mimi, not saying a word, hits Morgan hard on the side of the head, giving her brain damage and fleeing the scene. She sticks around the rest of the case like usual, but actually disguises herself as a random tourist college student instead of Ini, and is generally better at concealing her true persona. There's also one or two original residents of Kurain village, including Ruby, a disabled woman and distant cousin of Maya that used to babysit her, and who she has a close relationship with.
The first day of trial goes similarly to the game, however without the evidence of Dr. Grey firing the shot from the ground, Phoenix has a lot harder time casting doubt on Maya being the person in the photo. Towards the end of the trial, the prosecution (could be Miles or Franziska) drops a bombshell: Dr. Grey actually had ties to Kurain, being raised in the village and being the doctor of choice when Kurain natives needed surgery. After an accident, he is the one that operated on Ruby, however a botched operation led to long term complications. Grey, being a huge asshole, never apologized for this or appear remorseful in the slightest. The prosecution argues that Maya developed a grudge against Grey after this incident, and that while she was possessed by Mimi when the shooting happened, Maya was the one that brought the gun, knowing the possibility of such a shooting happening, and giving her a convenient opportunity to take revenge on Grey without technically dirtying her own hands. Phoenix is able to prove by the skin of his teeth that Maya could not have brought the gun with her, buying another day of trial. On the second day of investigations, Phoenix starts suspecting that the college student is Ini in disguise. When confronting her, her true colors briefly slip, insulting Phoenix and smugly stating he doesn't understand anything. Talking with Ruby, Maya, and the Miney parents, we get a big plot twist ; Ini and Mimi are also Kurain natives, and were childhood friends with Maya. Ini was a channelling prodigy from a very young age. One day, while the three were playing in the cemetery, Maya dared Ini to channel a spirit from one of the graves at random. Against Mimi's protests, Ini complied, but the channelled spirit was from a violent and delusional man. He was thankfully exorcised before any of the girls could be hurt, but it left Maya and Mimi traumatized, with Ini swearing off channelling forever. Shortly after, DL-6 happened, and Misty Fey got exiled. The Miney parents, who were in Misty's camp and feared Morgan's newfound influence, left the village as well. Phoenix suspects that this incident is related to "Ini's" motive, but isn't sure how, as both Maya, Ruby, and the parents claim that Ini held no hard feelings towards Maya before and after she left.
In day 2 of the trial, Morgan is unable to testify, still being in the hospital and barely coherent from the blow Mimi gave her. The first half of the trial is spent "proving" the mystery college student is Ini, with testimony from Ruby providing evidence. Mimi "admits" it, but scoffs, saying that she has no grudge against either Maya or Grey, and thus no possible motive. The second half happens much the same, with Phoenix proving that she is actually Mimi. Still denying it, Mimi claims that while this would give her a motive for killing Grey, it still doesn't explain her wanting to frame Maya. Recalling the conversation with her parents, Phoenix presents a theory. Initially, the Miney mom, despite having no spiritual talent, was still second in line for title of Master of Kurain due to her close friendship with Misty and Ini's channelling talents. However, when Ini swore of channelling, that title went to Morgan. Thus Mimi blames Maya for her family's exile from Kurain. Their exile only became more cemented when Morgan gave birth to Pearl, who was also a prodigy from a young age. While Ini took the move well, Mimi hated living in the big city, and had trouble making friends and focusing on her studies. Depressed and unable to find a job after finishing her studies, her parents begged Dr. Grey to hire her, which he did reluctantly. Mimi hated her job, but still put effort into it to not disappoint her parents... and then the malpractice happened, and then the car accident. Mimi, whose resentment of Maya had been simmerring for years, now hated her. Seeing her appear in the news several times as the assistant of a high profile lawyer didn't help matters. When Dr. Grey approached "Ini" with the intent to channel Mimi, she saw the perfect opportunity to get revenge on him, Maya, and Morgan in one fell swoop.
Maya, horrified, calls out Mimi on her toxic attitude, saying that she never stopped missing her and Ini, and that they could have simply talked out their differences, with Mimi having had plenty of opportunities to visit her at the Wright and Co. law offices. At this, Mimi begins breaking down and tearfully confessing everything, both cursing Maya and apologizing to her in equal measure, before turning herself in. Morgan is also arrested. After the trial, Phoenix, Maya, and Mia muse about how none of this would have happened were it not for Kurain's traditions. Mia also drops a cryptic comment that this wasn't the first time something like that happened in Kurain, setting up Trials and Tribulations.
Wew, well that was longer than expected, while writing 2-4 I got really into it and ended up adding a lot of extra details. What do you think? I would love to see you own take on case swaps.

AITA for cutting my brother off after he chose the mother of his child over his family? A little back story. I, 30F, have been taking care of my brother, 31M, off and on for the past 7 years. I have let him live with me and my husband every time we have gotten a new place and paid him to babysit my child. We have never asked him to help pay bills or pay rent.
About 4 years ago we moved into a new house and after 2 years of living in the new house my brother got a new girlfriend while he was living with us and ended up getting her pregnant. He ended up moving out and living with his GF and his GFs brother. They had a falling out with his GFs family. My brother had multiple cars and an RV on our property. We offered them to stay on the property in the RV and have them pay rent. From the moment they had moved into the RV his GF would just talking bad about her brother and his wife saying that they kept her stuff and wouldn't return it and called her sister in law a bad mother. I had called her out and told her that I would take her over to her brothers house to get the rest of her stuff because I was friends with her brother and his wife. She would automatically come up with excuses as to why she can't go over there or that they won't let her and they are never home.
I noticed that my brothers GF loved to play the victim and blow everything out of proportion. Everything was always everyone else's fault and never her fault. She twisted every story she had in her favor and made the other person look bad. I even recorded her conversation one time and sent it to her sister in law cause it was the last straw for me I take full accountability for everything I did and the messages relayed back and forth but do not apologize for it. I tried to be nice to her and like her. I even let her move onto my property and made dinner for her and her kids every night while my husband and brother worked night shifts. She never did the dishes or helped clean up. After she had her baby her and my brother moved into my parents house.
After a couple of months they got their own place. I took in her dog because she wasn't a service animal and we agreed that I would be the one to keep her. They had left a lot of their belongings on my property. Her and her sister in law ended up talking and sorting their issues out but in the process I'm the one who got blamed for all the shit that my brothers GF had said about her sister in law. I told her sister in law that she could tell her I told her things but she went as far as telling her everything that was said. I was not the only person that told her what was said or what was going around I'm just the only person that was blamed for all of it. My brothers GF ended up yelling at me for it and saying that everything was my fault and the reason everyone, including her mom, was mad at her was because of me. I never once lied about anything I told the truth when I was asked what she was saying. My brothers GF ended up cutting me off and I did the same because I was over all the drama that she brought everywhere she went. I still had contact with my brother.
One night I had gotten a call from my brother that him and his GF had a huge fight and he needed helping getting all of his stuff out of the apartment. I packed up my kids and took them with me to help him pack up all of his stuff from her house. When I arrived my mom was there talking to the GF on the couch trying to calm her down cause she was crying and freaking out. At the time she was babysitting someone else's kid and that kid was crying. She was just ignoring him and having a little self pitty party on the couch with my mom. I ended up picking up that baby and comforting him and then handing him to the GF to help my brother finish packing. My brother had asked me to get garbage bags under the sink to pack his stuff in. As we were packing I had to get more bags but when I went to get more there was none. The Gf had taken them and hidden them. When we finally finished the Gf started freaking out and yelling at my brother and then yelled at me. I flipped out and tried to fight her but was pulled out by my brothers friend, not my best move but she was just yelling at me and getting closer to me. The GF ended up posting on Facebook about what happened accusing me of stealing her makeup and clothes, I have my own makeup and gave her half the stuff she has and we aren't the same size in clothes, and leaving the door wide open for her kids to freeze. Her kids were upstairs in their room no where near the door that we kept closed unless we were taking stuff out of the house.
Fast forward and she is claiming I'm keeping all her stuff from her including the items she left on my property from when they moved in and keeping her dog from her. I told him that she isn't getting the dog back cause she surrendered the dog to us and she is more than welcome to come and get her stuff of my property and we don't want her stuff on our property, it's been a year and it's still on my property. She even called the cops on my parents for because they wouldn't give her her stuff out of their storage container right before the cops showed up she was screaming and yelling at my parents and as soon as a cop showed up she just started crying and saying they won't let her get her stuff. My parents told her that she could have her stuff back when they get back the phone that my parents gave her cause she broke hers. They were still paying on the phone and asked that she return it so that they wouldn't get charged she never did and ran the phone bill up to 1500.
My brother decided to fix things with her and asked us to give the dog back again. At first we refused but in the end we decided to give her back to be the bigger person my husband ASKED in return, we never forced her to do it and we were already planning on giving the dog back. that his GF publicly apologize to my family about what she said about us. She ended up posting on Facebook again apologizing. That is when we told my brother we want nothing to do with them. We were over all the drama and the blame game. She tried to tarnish our reputation and lie about the kind of people we were. Now my brother is saying that we screwed him over and we owe his GF an apology for "making" her publicly apologize on Facebook just to get her dog back. We still have her stuff on our property and the RV and one of my brothers cars. My brother chose her over everyone in his life who has tried to help him. He only ever contacts my parents when he wants or need something.
So AITA for cutting him off after all the drama and his GF trying to make us out to be bad people? Sorry for the long post. I can clarify or answer questions if needed. It's kind of all over the place.

Long post ahead so bear with me.
I’m 24F dating my 24M boyfriend for 4 years. Overall I’d say our relationship has been pretty good - no serious issues until now, all of our fights have been over his tendency to be moody or passive aggressive.
Some background information: I’m on the neurodivergent spectrum and suffer from depressive episodes, but I’m high functioning because I don’t want it to affect my professional life or anyone else but me. A side effect of that has been my tendency to isolate myself from everyone, which I’ve done for the majority of our relationship - sometimes I didn’t interact with anyone at all except for my family and my bf. I haven’t gone a single day in the last 6 years without any contact with him.
I realized that this wasn’t healthy so this year I decided to try and come out of my shell and build more friendships. It’s a bit hard but I’ve been working on it slowly, and one of my newfound friends was one of my bf’s friends, J (23M), as well - they had been friends for about a year at this point. We hit it off pretty well and as someone who’s really bad at friendships I enjoyed talking to J, but it was strictly platonic - nothing out of the ordinary, exactly like every friendship I have/have ever had. Please keep in mind I did not prioritize interactions I had with J or anyone else over ones I had with my bf.
While my bf initially really liked J, around the time we started becoming friends he started to sour on J until he eventually just started icing him because he didn’t like anything about him all of a sudden, and the only reason he could come up with was “J was annoying.” He also told me he found it “weird” that he chose to be friends with his friend’s gf (confused about that one because I met some of my closest friends through him/his circles). I reassure him that there’s nothing weird going on and my friendship with J is, once again, platonic. In all honesty, I also didn’t really think much of it because I didn’t find J to be annoying and my bf has had a pattern of disliking some of my friends for no apparent reason, even if he’d never talked to them. (My friends are all just goofy nerds so I never really got why.)
3 weeks ago my bf tells me he thinks J is trying to sleep with me but he has no evidence or thoughts to support this. I’m obviously shocked and once again reassure him that I’ve never picked up sleazy vibes from J and he’s never been inappropriate with me. I’ve had really creepy encounters before so I’m always hyperalert about these kinds of things and if I do get those vibes I shut them down immediately.
Onto the main clown show: last week my bf texts me angry that I’ve been lying to him and that I’ve been repeatedly gaslighting him into thinking my friendship with J was normal, but after a conversation with one of his other friends he’s convinced that he’s right and it’s inappropriate for J to be friends with me. Then he goes ahead and texts J to stop texting me and accuses him, amongst other things, of being a creep. To the surprise of absolutely no one, turns out this scenario that my bf created of J secretly trying to steal me away from him was completely false and J is both hurt and pissed about it. He tells him that he’s only ever thought of him as a good friend and he never had ill intentions towards me but he cannot in good conscience be ok with this and subsequently cuts both of us off.
For obvious reasons, I’m extremely pissed about this and we have a blowout fight over it, because turns out I don’t like anyone messing with my friendships like that and falsely accusing someone who’s done nothing wrong to you of being a creep is a shitty thing to do. He genuinely didn’t see anything wrong about what he did and “he did what he had to because he was desperate to get J out of my life and I left him no other choice.” He also told me that if he woke up to find out I did something to cause his friends to cut him off, he’d assume I had a good reason to do so and everything that happened with J was for the best. He screamed at me, accused me of being disrespectful and thinking of him as an insecure loser, called me a whole slew of hurtful things, that I’m disgusting and make him feel worthless and that he fucking hates me repeatedly. It overall just turned into a really ugly mess.
The next morning he was calmer and apologized for the hurtful things he said and that he didn’t mean any of it. He also admitted what he did was wrong, that he overreacted out of paranoia, and that he’s sorry he hurt J and ruined my friendship with him. He admitted that I was right, there wasn’t anything weird going on like he thought and he apologized for messing with my personal life.
The issue is I’m having a hard time processing all of this. First of all this couldn’t have happened at a worse time because I have a lot of personal issues going on that I’m incredibly stressed out about and he’s well aware of that. He’s also aware that I’ve always struggled with making friends, and now any urge I’ve had to do that is gone. I can’t get over him saying I make him feel worthless because I’ve dedicated so much and sacrificed so much to be with him and make him happy every way I could. I’ve never and still don’t prioritize anyone else over him. Having your boyfriend of nearly 5 years tell you he doesn’t trust you and despises you is also pretty fucking shitty because I’ve never done anything distrustful or been anywhere near as hurtful as he has been to me. His apologies sound hollow and lukewarm to me because at the end of the day, he got exactly what he wanted. And I’m left to suck it up and deal with it.
I don’t know what to do and I feel like I’m alone backed into a corner and I’m about to break with all the other things going on in my life. I’m sorry if this post isn’t very coherent but I’m a little tipsy right now. I just feel so violated and I’ve never felt more horrible or alone in my life than I do now and I’ve never not felt like that my entire life. I don’t know and can’t tell if I’m the one who messed up here and what I should do. Any advice, harsh or gentle is appreciated.
TLDR: bf incorrectly assumed mutual friend was trying to sleep with me and subsequently went nuclear on both me and friend. Am hurt and don’t know how or if I should resolve this.

Alright, so… I (18F) kinda made this reddit account just to get some feedback about this situation, since I’m too ashamed to ask my parents. The girl in question is 16, and is probably one of the most annoying people I’ve ever met…
(TLDR: This girl I was pretending to be friends with in High School obsessively fantasized about murdering someone for an entire semester, is overbearing as a person, interrogates people on a daily basis and is nosy, injects herself into drama that isn’t her own, throws temper tantrums when she doesn’t get her way, constantly touches people and makes unwarranted comments about girl’s bodies, asked me to draw CP for her, and MADE FUN OF HER SUICIDAL BROTHER. And I wrote a hate-letter telling her that all of this stuff is a problem, but now I feel bad about it because I think she might actually have mental issues. It’s a really wild ride and a long story, so if you choose to read it, you should expect to be here for a while. And it’s High School drama, so I’ll try to discard the boring details.)
There’s this girl, who… I’ll call her Storm. You’ll find out why. Storm quickly became the most annoying person in one of my classes. Any time she talked, she didn’t have anything interesting to say, but just kept going on and on and on endlessly. It was annoying, but we just kinda played along to be nice.

Well… Around a month into school, Storme started opening up and became comfortable talking about personal topics. She told us this story about how one of her other friends (I’ll call her Katie) “betrayed” her the previous year, and then went on to talk about how much she hated Katie and didn’t care if she lived or died. (Honestly, Katie’s offense was miniscule. At most, she replaced Storm with someone else as her best friend. You know… Regular High School drama that wasn’t that deep.) 

Then Storme started saying ludicrous stuff like “I hope she falls into a volcano”, or “I hope she gets eaten by sharks falling from the sky. Like Sharknado.”. But like… She kept saying it constantly, out loud in class. She ranted about how she wanted Katie to get kidnapped by the Mafia, be flown up to the moon, and be dropped into a black hole to become “Katie-spaghetti”. It was honestly really funny at first, so me and a few other people in the class joined in a little bit and added our own stupid, childlike scenarios. (Katie has a reputation for being… A slut. That’s why it was funny at first.)
But then after this schtick got old, Storm just kept going and going and going… She ranted about Katie until it physically hurt to hear her talk anymore. Instead of adjusting herself like a normal person, she just kept yapping until everyone rolled their eyes every time she opened her mouth, because we knew she would just keep going on and on about all of the stupid ways she wanted Katie to die. Even the damn teacher told her to stop doing that, but she never listened and the teacher eventually just gave up.
Katie then gradually started to get more morbid with the things she was saying, to the point where I genuinely considered calling the cops and getting this girl some grippy socks. She talked until she became red-faced, started tweaking, and laughed in a neurotic, nervous angry way while she started wringing out her trembling hands. She genuinely looked and sounded unhinged, and what didn’t help was that she started saying stuff like “There aren’t metal detectors in this school, right?”, and “I wish I wasn’t such a good person, because if I wasn’t, I’d be acting on my impulse to cave her skull in the next time I see her. One of these days I’m going to snap and then just do it..” …Yeah, so I was genuinely considering getting the police involved in this because of those two sentences. Thankfully Katie is safe and sound to this day and Storm never acted on these “impulses”. I’m so glad it worked out that I didn’t have to call the cops, but I was seriously worried for a minute…
She continued to talk about Katie, but mostly to me. She talked about this topic endlessly, her words getting increasingly violent until Christmas break. Yeah… 5 months. She ranted about the ways she wanted Katie to die for 5 whole months. Months. But then when she was done ranting, she finally shut up.
She wrote a note to Katie after Christmas break explaining “You hurt me really badly, but I’m a Christian so I forgive you and I hope you the best”... As if she didn’t rant about her for 5 months straight. Make it make sense. But enough about that. Here’s where my fuck ups began.
I gave her my number and we started saying we were friends, even though I never liked her. I started sending her some art (I'm an artist), and she started asking me some questions about it. She asked if I had ever drawn p0rn in my life. Of course, I said no because I didn't.
And then my worst nightmare: “Have you ever drawn p0rn of them?” …Of course I didn’t, because that would be CP… Plus I’ve never thought of those characters as being “sexual”... They’re literally 14 and 15 years old.
Then basically, she made an indirect “suggestion” for me to draw them together. I said fuck no. Hell fucking no. She tried to convince me to draw them “aged up”, but again I refused. She put me off from drawing those characters ever again. I haven’t drawn them since and I don’t take my sketchbook to school anymore because I don’t want her to see my drawings and be reminded of that BS.
But enough about that… Storm is a church-going girl, and so she has a few church-going friends. (This also makes everything I’ve said before all the more ironic.).
I’ve heard many stories about how Storm interrogates other people, too. If she sees a guy/girl’s name pop up on the screen of someone she knows, she’ll pester them until they give her one of two answers: either “I’ll tell you later”, or the actual answer. She’s done that to me too, in front of everyone in class.
The thing that upsets me about this is that she claims to be “nosy”, but thinks it’s a positive attribute rather than an annoying one. She brags about being “nosy” sometimes.
And the sexual assault… Since we were in a sports medicine class, our projects involved a lot of hands-on things. That didn’t bother me by itself, but with Storm, it was a nightmare. This girl, in the process of strapping an ice bag to my thigh, called my thighs “small”, and said that I have a “beautiful body”. We also did shoulder stretching stuff the next week, and I happened to fall under her care while she stared into my eyes and made weird faces at me, all the while she made sound effects and made the process much more uncomfortable than it needed to be.
One week, we ended up as partners again and she ended up wrapping my shoulder. This shoulder-wrap wasn’t an issue for me, but having her as a partner made it an issue. As expected, she made sound effects, but this time she stated the obvious as if it was new information that nobody would have ever suspected: “Wow, this is squishing your boobies huh?”... Emphasis on the word “boobies”. Jesus Fucking Christ, it was already awkward as hell before she even brought that up, why would she say something like that?? I didn’t even realize that until she brought it up.

In fear of being subjected to her uncomfortable BS again and feeling violated, I texted her and told her that she’s been making me feel uncomfortable, and to please stop being so…. Weird. I get it’s an awkward thing to wrap up your classmate’s thigh, but that’s a moment to keep comments to yourself. Her response? “I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY-” Just… Stop it. I didn’t introduce the topic as a big deal and told her not to worry about it, but she kept apologizing for it nonstop. Just endlessly, like everything else. Even when I tried to change the subject to something else, she just kept apologizing for it practically until she went to bed. (She has a bedtime at 9:30… At 16 years old.) All of this stuff contributed to my overall hatred toward her. I don’t like her at all, and it’s a wonder I didn’t explode and insult her entire personality and deplorable behavior to her face (Meg Griffin style). Things are just so awkward and awful whenever she opens her mouth, and it just doesn't ever stop. But because of all of this, when it came time for my Senior prom, I decided to secretly invite one of my friends from that class as a plus one, and NOT Storm. I was worried that if I told her that to her face, I would all of a sudden be the new “Katie” in her conversations, because the infraction Katie did was so miniscule that it seemed to be less like a “betrayal” than what I did. (In hindsight, it was probably the other way around.) So… I just kept the whole thing to myself and so did the friend I took to prom (I’ll call her Beyonce. Because… She loves Beyonce.). If this wasn’t bad enough, strap in because not even three weeks ago, Beyonce was doing her usual schtick of making fun of random things. She once made fun of cool whip and the entire state of Texas at the same time and somehow made it make perfect sense. She should really have a comedy show, I swear. But this time, Beyonce was making fun of the name “Gage”, saying “Why would anyone name their kid after a 12-gage shotgun?” and “People named Gage seem untrustworthy. I wouldn’t want to be near one in a zombie apocalypse, because he’d just feed me to those fuckers.”. Funny stuff. Storm then said “My brother’s name is Gage”, and in order to preserve the flow of the conversation (and also to tick her off a little, I’m ngl), Beyonce asked her: “Is your brother untrustworthy?” And then without a single millisecond wasted, she said, in a Disney Channel comedy fashion: “Welll… We can’t trust him with his own life, sooo…”.. And then she laughed as if it was funny. Like.. Rib-stitches type of laughing. ….So then the others (understandably) went quiet, which left only me and her. Then my idiot ass decided to say what I was thinking at that moment: “You don’t seem to be taking it seriously. That’s your brother, but you don’t sound sympathetic at all.” I felt bad for that statement, so I apologized for it over text when I got home from school. Quickly, we erupted into an argument, (with me holding back), and she ended up saying “What does it matter to you? He’s not your brother. If Beyonce said that about her brother, you’d laugh. But when I do, it’s bad.”. Beyonce’s brother is 8 years old…. So no, that would be even worse. …So then I had to explain to her how human decency works, and how making fun of your s*icidal siblings isn’t funny whatsoever and how that joke could be considered to be in very poor taste, even for people who like dark humor. When me, Beyonce or Mark made “suicide” jokes, it was about OURSELVES and it was usually in a statement like “I don’t want to take a test next period, I’m gonna kms.”... …Storm ended up getting so mad that we weren’t having a conversation anymore; we were just throwing shit around. I told her that if she was being livestreamed at that moment, she’d be bashed on the whole internet for a week or so and be called “evil” for that joke. In hindsight I shouldn’t have said that, but my goal was to tell her how people perceive those jokes. I ended the conversation and the next day, I apologized to her again. I retracted my statements and told her that I was sorry for talking out of line. She accepted the apology, and things went back to “normal”. She forgot about it, but I didn’t. …So here are the reasons why I feel bad, before I delve into the contents of the “hate letter” I wrote to her. Here’s a list of my crimes: 

• I pretended to be her friend for an entire school year.
• I hid the fact that I was going to prom with Beyonce from her, and then lied to her face repeatedly whenever she asked if I went to prom or not.
• I got into business that wasn’t my own and criticized her.
• I wrote a hate-letter to her that I directed her to read at home on the last day of school.

…Here’s why I feel bad: Storm doesn’t seem to be emotionally intelligent and is unable to control her mouth whenever she feels strong emotions. All she wants is to be listened to and understood, but nobody can and nobody truly wants to. She feigns confidence and goes overboard with compliments in the hopes of catching the attention of people who want to be friends with her. She’s not used to change and is very naive, to the point where (just yesterday) she quit her job at a fast food restaurant after only the first day of working there. For the longest time she didn’t have access to the internet, so she doesn’t really have a means to connect with other people through sharing videos or memes or whatever.

…I feel like a bad person because I knowingly, intentionally played into all of this just for the pathetic reason of making her shut up in class. It’s despicable what I did, and I’m beating myself up for it every day. I was just originally going to leave the school, block her and never talk to her ever again in my life, but when she made that joke about her brother, I decided (stupidly) to take it upon myself to be the bearer of bad news. I gave her a letter. Within the “hate letter”, it isn’t actually hate, per se. It’s more like… A report on the behavior she needs to fix, as well as an admission to my lies over the course of this whole year. I told her the awful truth. I told her about everything I mentioned in this post and tried to keep it “professional”, though I did end up going as far as to say “you have all of the attributes of an obnoxious piece of stale bread”........... And what’s worse is… I told her to read it on the last day of school, and my reasoning is pathetic at best. I told her to read it on the last day of school because I didn’t want her to burden the class with her nonstop ranting about me, since she, Mark and Beyonce are sophomores and I’m the only senior in the “friend group”, which means that I left the school an entire week earlier than them. I’ve been intentionally delaying her pain and still talking to her over text acting like things are “normal” so that she doesn’t read it early, knowing damn well that on that last day of school, my words are going to hurt her so badly that she might not be able to recover for a while. In the letter, I told her that by the time she reads it, I would have already blocked her because I don’t want any more conversation with her due to me feeling so bad and having nothing more to say. If the plan goes right, she’ll read it on May 23rd, and on that day I will block her. I feel awful for all of this. I feel like a monster for this. It’s painful knowing that I’m going to cause her pain and that I planned when it’s going to happen, but at the same time I feel like she deserves it. But at the same time, I know damn well that it wasn’t my place to do that. I should have left everything alone. Nobody I can talk to irl would even hear me out; they’d just stop at the words “hate letter”, which means my only option is to seek advice from people on Reddit. Do my motives for doing things make sense? Am I actually a bad person for this? Am I the asshole? Does she deserve what she’s getting? 

Edit 1: I removed some asterisks (they're annoying). Edit 2: I attempted to shorten it or say things in simple terms. I also fixed spacing and stuff. Sorry.

This is really hard for me to talk about because I struggle to understand & accept it and I don’t talk to anyone irl about it which sometimes sucks & makes me feel alone. So I’m gonna try this & see if anyone has anything useful to tell me bc I could really use any advice or support right now that I can get. This might be a long story so I’m sorry in advance.
I’m 22f and I’ve lived with my bf (24) for 3 years. We do everything together and in my opinion we’re very close and alike but in his opinion the love that we have/the love he gets from me is not enough bc about a year & a half into living together, we went thru some money struggles & his loss of a close family member which really affected him and he hasn’t really been completely the same since. But even before that loss, about a year & a half into our relationship, he decided to tell me that he’s decided he’s poly. Which I don’t agree with and I’ve made it clear. And I know the normal thing to do in that situation is go okay, well you need to leave him because you both aren’t on the same page with what you want in your relationship. I just want him to choose me and put me first like i do to him, he means everything to me. He is actually the only family i really have which is why it’s extremely hard for me to leave him. but i can feel him slowly slipping away from me. And i have tried to end things before kind of a lot of times, but we never end up following thru with it bc he apologizes, lies & says he’ll choose me over “being poly” , delete all the dating apps, stop liking naked pictures, or whatever the case may be at the time. Or he has said in the past he would go crazy & they would have to put him in a mental hospital if we broke up, bc he can’t handle another loss after his close family member passed. So obviously i feel guilty. I always just hoped in the back of my mind that one day he would wake up from this bullshit and stop with the “poly” phase and be loyal. But it’s not happening. & he always gets back on the dating apps or whatever else he does and acts like i’m in the wrong for not letting him “be who he is” which is “poly”.
In my opinion it’s one thing if he had made this great revelation BEFORE we started dating but it just makes me feel tricked that he didn’t mention it ever once UNTIL we had been living together for like a year already. Bc if he told me that when I met him I never would’ve dated him and I never would’ve fallen in love with him and moved in with him.
I look at his phone about once every 3-6 months & every time i do i find something new & bad. He always turns it on me saying i’m in the wrong for going thru it but I really wish I didn’t have to do that but if i didn’t i would never find out anything. Bc he claims he doesn’t want to waste my time with telling me about someone who’s just playing with him (like something that’s not serious) bc he hasn’t found any girl willing to go fuck off and be poly with him (i don’t think any girl like that actually exists.) despite his ongoing search for a new girlfriend (or “connection”). but yet i feel lied to bc when i look at his instagram he acts single & he dms so many random girls LUSTFULLY. And it’s so embarrassing. On top of that girls rarely reply to him bc no one wants a random man lusting in their dms. I had no idea this was the type of person he was or i wouldn’t be with him. And when i ask him about it he lies or covers it up saying he’s not like that and he isn’t lustful & that being poly isn’t about sex it’s about forming a connection with multiple people. Well if it wasn’t about sex then he wouldn’t be lusting after random girls in their dms. And btw instagram has been an issue in the past due to me finding out he hearted a pic of a girl he knew, basically a nude or a bikini pic. And the way that situation went was that he said omg i’ll delete my whole instagram and i’m done with it since this is a problem. But i told him no stop saying that shit you know you don’t mean it and you’ll be back on it in 3 days. He’s like no i mean it and yeah then in three days he was back on it. This happened a few times with other apps like tinder and every time i’m like please just save it bc we both know you saying you’re permanently off these apps isn’t true.
I don’t even have instagram anymore ever since i saw the bikini pic bc i just didn’t want to spend my energy anymore feeling like i wasn’t as pretty as the girls he follows or interacts with, so i actually followed thru and deactivated my whole account & haven’t been on it since. (at least a year) other than that i don’t use SM other than reddit & lurking on twitter sometimes & watching tiktoks. I’m not a SM girlie it not that I’m not pretty ( not trying to sound narcissistic) but i’m not an ugly girl i just really prefer privacy and don’t like posting myself online. But seemingly my bfs type is SM wh-res and i’m truly not judging the girls, I’m judging my bf.
This morning i looked at his instagram and found some extremely NSFW dms from him to a few random girls & found message conversations with a girl that’s poly that’s out of our state that he talks to often & opens up to her about things he doesn’t open up to me about, and gives her the nicest compliments that he never gives me, says she’s the prettiest girl he’s seen, sympathies w her over her personal struggles w life & relationships, calls the girl his soulmate & says they share a brain, complains about me not accepting him being poly & going thru his phone and being “threatened” by her & has shared some personal details about my life that i don’t share with people even my close friends. and much more. however he still spins it on me being in the wrong for not accepting him and going thru his phone. he never takes accountability for what he does & always lies about it not being as bad as it is and that i’m reading into things. the problem is i don’t believe what he does is poly i believe it to be CHEATING. I believe it is possible to have an honest poly relationship (not that i want one) but what he does is not honest. he has betrayed me, even tho he has never slept with anyone else while we have been in our relationship, and he has only gone on one date in person with someone else throughout our entire relationship (that date ended up going nowhere). (not that he even takes ME out on dates & if he does make a plan to go to the movies or a basketball game he always ends up inviting our friends along everytime.)
He still treats me with love and care & does a lot of things for me , he supported us when we went through our financial struggles after i got in a car accident & couldn’t work, he is always here for me but doesn’t really let me be there for him. I owe him a lot of rent money from the time that i couldn’t work & he paid rent by himself. He doesn’t hold my debt over my head but he mentioned it to the girl on instagram . which made me feel betrayed.
I told him off about what i found in his phone & took pics of the evidence which ive never done before & sent it to him and i want to know if i’m overreacting to his betrayal or if i’m in the wrong for expecting loyalty from my 3 yr relationship. /:
TL;DR my bf is emotionally cheating on me with instagram girls and out of state poly girl.
thanks for reading

I (f19) and my ex boyfriend (m19) dated for about 2 years. Throughout our whole relationship there was always some issues, like all relationships have, but as time went on there would be times when everything was amazing, and then there would be periods on time when it seemed like everything I did upset him and I was always doing something wrong. He always had a lot of trust issues with me, even though I never gave him any reason to not trust me, he just was never able to fully trust that I wasn’t cheating on him, wasn’t looking for another guy, wasn’t thinking about how much hotter other men were, things like that. Anytime I went to work he asked about every conversation I had with another male and what every little thing we talked about was. He basically could be the only male in my life or he thought something fishy was going on. He would always get mad at me for the smallest things especially near the end. What lead me to break up with him was that I felt like I never made him happy, every day, multiple times a day there was always something that I did that would make him upset. I just felt like I was always making the wrong decisions. He also didn’t let me fully be who I was because he wasn’t accepting of the things I like and wanted to do. It was hard being myself when he didn’t like who I was so much. I was also made guilty for everything that happened. I started hanging out with a group a friends and he made me feel guilty that I liked spending time with them, and that I liked having friends. If there were times I wasn’t in THE MOOD to do something he would get sad and turn away and make me feel guilty that I didn’t want to. Whenever I would try to voice my concerns about our relationship he would turn it on me and make me feel like the bad guy, or would get defensive and get mad at me that I felt a certain way. I was sick of feeling like a terrible person all the time for reasons I should not have, so I broke it off and he started realizing that things he was doing weren’t that good. For a bit it seemed like he could change and get better.
A little bit before I broke up with him, I met this guy from the group of friends I would hangout with, he kind of popped up out of no where and was treating me better than my own boyfriend, he liked me for who I was, he showed me what being accepted felt like, what not getting upset for silly things felt like, it was just a whole new world and it was a little relieving to have around. After we broke up I made some decisions that weren’t my best decisions. My ex boyfriend and I were saying that we could work on us again after we have been alone for a bit and he works on himself. I ended up cuddling with this guy and kissed him once. My ex would ask me if I had done anything with said friend and I was so scared that I lied and I said no. I ended up lying a lot and I regret every single one. I’m not perfect and I’m going to make mistakes and I am certainly not proud of how I handled that situation. Recently my ex went through my phone without me knowing and saw that some things were going on with my friend and he got very upset with me. Which I totally understand I lied and said nothing was happening. He hates me so much he keeps telling me how terrible of a person I am and “fuck you” and just keeps rubbing it in that I hurt him. I know I did he doesn’t need to keep putting salt in the wound. I e apologized which I know isn’t going to make it better, but I’m learning from all of this and I really am going to be alone and work on myself for a while. I’ve never felt worse about myself, I’ve gotten low points in my life but I have never been this low. It doesn’t make it easier when I keep getting told how awful I am and all the shitty things I did.
My ex is telling me that in order for him to not block me I have to cut this friend out of my life for good. It was weird feeling so accepted and loved by someone, it was weird not fighting and getting “in trouble” over small things. It was weird feeling like I actually made someone happy to be around me. I was just getting all confused when a guy came in and was being better than my own boyfriend was. I feel so stuck because with this friend it feels so much more freeing and he’s said he will always cheer me on no matter what, and that he likes me for me and he doesn’t expect me to change for anyone. He’s always going to stay by my side and always makes me feel good about myself. But then there’s my first love, I love him so much and I would love to see things work out between us but the cycle of things I was put in with him were not healthy for me. It was a very manipulative relationship and I would have to cut my friend out which might result in me losing all of my friends.

I 21F found out that my boyfriend 22M of 4 years has been messaging another girl behind my back and I have no idea what to do.
Our relationship started off really rocky, we were both immature and there were trust issues from the start. We dated for 3 months then broke up, got back together for another month then broke up again. 3 months later we talked and he wanted me back, I made it so clear that if he were to break my trust again it would be over. Well the last 3 years have been amazing…I love him with my whole entire soul, I have horrible anxiety and he’s so good with helping me through it. We moved in together 9 months ago and also got a dog. I truly thought I was going to marry him.
Well back in December I looked through his phone and found 2 girls on his snap that he had been messaging. One he met through a video game the other he had slept with while we were broken up. I didn’t find anything to make me think he was talking to them in a “cheating” sort of way so I asked him to stop talking to them, he told me he was so sorry for breaking that trust and it would never happen again. Well yesterday I had a dream he was cheating on me, so I looked through his phone (I know not a great reason but I just had a gut feeling) well I found messages between a girl he plays video games with, she was sending him nudes and he called her baby and princess. I woke him up and told him I knew and he blocked her and apologized. We talked for a while and he basically told me he doesn’t feel loved by me anymore and that he was filling in the gaps, he says the other day when I told him he looked good was the first time I’ve said it in a year. I can admit I am not super physically affectionate, and he’s right I don’t always treat him like I love him. He said he knows that it’s not an excuse but that’s the answer to my question “why”. Well it’s been back and fourth now, sometimes all he does is try and make it up to me and others he doesn’t seem to care about us anymore. I honestly don’t know if it’s worth staying and trying to work this out. I don’t know if I can ever build the trust back and I don’t want to be in a relationship with someone who does this to me, but on the other hand I honestly feel like he’s my soulmate, he gets me, I love his family and idk if I’ll ever find someone that I love as much as him. My anxiety has been through the roof and I’m scared to be alone.
The girl lives in a different country and he’s blocked her on everything but all it takes is for him to just press a button. I am at a complete loss and feel like I have no one to talk to, my parents and friends finally really love him after our rough start and I don’t want them to know because I don’t know what decision I am going to make. I have told my best friend and she hates him again, and he’s upset I told her.
Has anyone stayed with a partner that cheated? Does it get easier? What do I do?

This is really hard for me to talk about because I struggle to understand & accept it and I don’t talk to anyone irl about it which sometimes sucks & makes me feel alone. So I’m gonna try this & see if anyone has anything useful to tell me bc I could really use any advice or support right now that I can get. This might be a long story so I’m sorry in advance.
I’m 22f and I’ve lived with my bf (24) for 3 years. We do everything together and in my opinion we’re very close and alike but in his opinion the love that we have/the love he gets from me is not enough bc about a year & a half into living together, we went thru some money struggles & his loss of a close family member which really affected him and he hasn’t really been completely the same since. But even before that loss, about a year & a half into our relationship, he decided to tell me that he’s decided he’s poly. Which I don’t agree with and I’ve made it clear. And I know the normal thing to do in that situation is go okay, well you need to leave him because you both aren’t on the same page with what you want in your relationship. I just want him to choose me and put me first like i do to him, he means everything to me. He is actually the only family i really have which is why it’s extremely hard for me to leave him. but i can feel him slowly slipping away from me. And i have tried to end things before kind of a lot of times, but we never end up following thru with it bc he apologizes, lies & says he’ll choose me over “being poly” , delete all the dating apps, stop liking naked pictures, or whatever the case may be at the time. Or he has said in the past he would go crazy & they would have to put him in a mental hospital if we broke up, bc he can’t handle another loss after his close family member passed. So obviously i feel guilty. I always just hoped in the back of my mind that one day he would wake up from this bullshit and stop with the “poly” phase and be loyal. But it’s not happening. & he always gets back on the dating apps or whatever else he does and acts like i’m in the wrong for not letting him “be who he is” which is “poly”.
In my opinion it’s one thing if he had made this great revelation BEFORE we started dating but it just makes me feel tricked that he didn’t mention it ever once UNTIL we had been living together for like a year already. Bc if he told me that when I met him I never would’ve dated him and I never would’ve fallen in love with him and moved in with him.
I look at his phone about once every 3-6 months & every time i do i find something new & bad. He always turns it on me saying i’m in the wrong for going thru it but I really wish I didn’t have to do that but if i didn’t i would never find out anything. Bc he claims he doesn’t want to waste my time with telling me about someone who’s just playing with him (like something that’s not serious) bc he hasn’t found any girl willing to go fuck off and be poly with him (i don’t think any girl like that actually exists.) despite his ongoing search for a new girlfriend (or “connection”). but yet i feel lied to bc when i look at his instagram he acts single & he dms so many random girls LUSTFULLY. And it’s so embarrassing. On top of that girls rarely reply to him bc no one wants a random man lusting in their dms. I had no idea this was the type of person he was or i wouldn’t be with him. And when i ask him about it he lies or covers it up saying he’s not like that and he isn’t lustful & that being poly isn’t about sex it’s about forming a connection with multiple people. Well if it wasn’t about sex then he wouldn’t be lusting after random girls in their dms. And btw instagram has been an issue in the past due to me finding out he hearted a pic of a girl he knew, basically a nude or a bikini pic. And the way that situation went was that he said omg i’ll delete my whole instagram and i’m done with it since this is a problem. But i told him no stop saying that shit you know you don’t mean it and you’ll be back on it in 3 days. He’s like no i mean it and yeah then in three days he was back on it. This happened a few times with other apps like tinder and every time i’m like please just save it bc we both know you saying you’re permanently off these apps isn’t true.
I don’t even have instagram anymore ever since i saw the bikini pic bc i just didn’t want to spend my energy anymore feeling like i wasn’t as pretty as the girls he follows or interacts with, so i actually followed thru and deactivated my whole account & haven’t been on it since. (at least a year) other than that i don’t use SM other than reddit & lurking on twitter sometimes & watching tiktoks. I’m not a SM girlie it not that I’m not pretty ( not trying to sound narcissistic) but i’m not an ugly girl i just really prefer privacy and don’t like posting myself online. But seemingly my bfs type is SM wh-res and i’m truly not judging the girls, I’m judging my bf.
This morning i looked at his instagram and found some extremely NSFW dms from him to a few random girls & found message conversations with a girl that’s poly that’s out of our state that he talks to often & opens up to her about things he doesn’t open up to me about, and gives her the nicest compliments that he never gives me, says she’s the prettiest girl he’s seen, sympathies w her over her personal struggles w life & relationships, calls the girl his soulmate & says they share a brain, complains about me not accepting him being poly & going thru his phone and being “threatened” by her & has shared some personal details about my life that i don’t share with people even my close friends. and much more. however he still spins it on me being in the wrong for not accepting him and going thru his phone. he never takes accountability for what he does & always lies about it not being as bad as it is and that i’m reading into things. the problem is i don’t believe what he does is poly i believe it to be CHEATING. I believe it is possible to have an honest poly relationship (not that i want one) but what he does is not honest. he has betrayed me, even tho he has never slept with anyone else while we have been in our relationship, and he has only gone on one date in person with someone else throughout our entire relationship (that date ended up going nowhere). (not that he even takes ME out on dates & if he does make a plan to go to the movies or a basketball game he always ends up inviting our friends along everytime.)
He still treats me with love and care & does a lot of things for me , he supported us when we went through our financial struggles after i got in a car accident & couldn’t work, he is always here for me but doesn’t really let me be there for him. I owe him a lot of rent money from the time that i couldn’t work & he paid rent by himself. He doesn’t hold my debt over my head but he mentioned it to the girl on instagram . which made me feel betrayed.
I told him off about what i found in his phone & took pics of the evidence which ive never done before & sent it to him and i want to know if i’m overreacting to his betrayal or if i’m in the wrong for expecting loyalty from my 3 yr relationship. /:
TL;DR my bf is emotionally cheating on me with instagram girls and out of state poly girl.
thanks for reading

Apologies for any grammatical errors or formatting errors as I’m not the best at it.
So I all started back around August in 2023 when all this happened. I wasn’t in the right mindset as there were a lot of things going on in my life with losing family members to finding out my mother had dementia to just not wanting to have any sort of outside life and be a homebody. Just out of the blue I feel I just disconnected myself from everything and everyone and was just going to work and nothing else. I stopped talking to my gf without any reasoning after we got into an argument that I can no longer remember what it was about but turned out to be the “trigger” for me to just give up. By this time we had already been together for 5 years and living together for 3 years as well. So it got hard for us as we were both stubborn and did not try to talk after this fight. As time progressed through the months we just stopped talking and did our own thing while still living together and avoiding each other as much as we could. We didn’t talk much other than bills that needed to be paid and purchasing food as well. We somewhat talked a month or so later and mentioned that we were just civilized roommates nothing more and this continued until February of this year. During that time she would go out with friends and dates from what we discussed when we got back together and I would just stay home collecting myself and slowly getting back together by playing COD with friends almost every night.
Once February came around after valentines I decided to talk to her to see what our future would be in terms of selling the house working it out or whatever the case may be. Strangely enough she asked me if I wanted to join her at the movies that day and of course me being the stubborn asshole I am told her no also because I had already made plans to go the the movies with a friend. So she still ended up getting ready and I asked her if she was still going to the movies. She said no that she was going to her mom’s house to see a movie with her niece. I get ready and head out and lo and behold I see her walking to the theatre with another guy. This make my heart drop and realize she lied to me about going to her moms. She notices me and waves me down like nothing and just tells me “oh I didn’t know you were coming to the movies. I’m just here with a friend too” so I tell her what about her moms and said oh no I wasn’t planning to go and ask if I wanted to meet him. Wanting to call her bluff I decide to say no and drive off. She continues to call me and Ignore her and go with my friend to eat instead. I’m definitely devastated by this considering I was going to talk to her about making up and seeing if we still had a future or not. I understand that we were not together during this time but seeing it actually hurt more than just knowing. The day comes to an end and we decide to talk that night. We talked about the 6 months that passed what we did(not in detail) and if we really wanted to work things out. We agree to work it out and move forward.
During this time it’s still fresh and I notice the guy is still texting her and possibly others she dated a month before. I bring it up to her to discuss it and I ask her to please let them know we are trying to work it out and not to think she is available. Time passes by for about 2-3 weeks after we talked. The guy is still messaging her and i bring it up again that it’s not right and that she should say something. So she finally decides to meet with him in person to let him know that she is trying to work it out with me and that she needs some space. Only I come to realize later this month(May) that she told him she needs time for herself and did not mention trying to work it out with me.(could this be a red flag?)
As time moves on we have little hiccups here and there and I start to feel this guy feeling that doesn’t sit right with me. Not sure if what it is but it makes me feel down and my mind starts to wonder. I can’t help to wonder that she is still messaging someone else and I begin to investigate. This is all happening in May and by this time we are good(or so we say but don’t feel it) and by this time I find out that her close friends which is two do not know about us working it out and a new close friend she made at work as well does not know about us. Which is fine I guess but it kinda bothers me because her new close friend has a friend that introduced her to him to see if they can hit it off. This triggers something for me and I ask her why hasn’t she mentioned that we are talking but her excuse is she’s afraid that she’s going to look stupid in front of her friends if I leave her again like I did 8 months ago..I understand where she is coming from but I we discussed earlier I tell her I am devoted to her and want to make this work because I love her. Maybe I am looking too much into this but I figured by now she would’ve mentioned something that we are trying to work it out and are back together again since February.
So a couple days ago I get that feeling again and try to push it away but I still have that gut feeling something isn’t right. This past Friday we decide to go to the movies and make plans. All of a sudden she decides not to go to a certain theatre and go to a different one instead. I figured oh nice we get to go to another one since they serve food there so it’s a bit fancier. Before we go we decide to have lunch and then go. During that time she decides to switch it again and say to go back to the original place. So I don’t mind and say yes so she goes to the app to get the tickets. I get up to get a refill and decide to watch over as she does and she brings to panic. She tells me she wants a refill too even though her cup is almost full. I tell her she doesn’t need one but insists that she does but I tell her no and play if off as I am leaving. As I turn back I notice she is messaging someone and then goes in to cancel a ticket the guy made for her. I knew about her going to another movie after ours with her friend and the group but didn’t know she was messaging him directly. I ignore it rather than bring it up for now as I do not want to start an argument or ruin the date we are having until tonight. The night continues and we go home and go to sleep. Meanwhile my mind is all over the place and I can’t stop thinking about it and why is she messaging him.
The next day we make plans to do our own thing and she has plans with her friend. My mind is racing as I start to think if she is actually going out with her or with this guy who I find out later she invited to the movies..the plan was to go to lunch while I work on some things at the house and then meet up to take the dog to the vet. She leaves and I begin to let my mind unravel and by this time I’m just trying to keep my sanity but I decide to do something stupid. I call the restaurant to see who she is with. Probably the lowest I’ve gone to creeper status..but my mind and my heart are just in so much pain thinking of that time I caught her with another guy. I find out it’s just both of them so I am relieved.
She comes back for lunch and I head over to pick up the dog to go to the vet only to find out the waitress told her I called the restaurant to see if she was there.(again my fault because I told her I had a surprise for her 🤦🏼‍♂️) she asks me if I called the place and I said yes. My thing is always about honesty and loyalty. I own up to what I did for the reason I did it and apologize. She tells me she got embarrassed because her friend who has been against me since day one just tells her that she should move on and not do anything with me. Which I understand but all my gf has told her is the negative things and not about us trying to fix it and her being caught doing things as well. Which is fine because any friend will obviously take their side.
By this time we stop talking and she stays at her mom’s house to cool off. I message her asking if we could talk but this time I want to let it all out. How I feel what I’ve seen, how this is emotionally, physically, and mentally draining me. We’ve had these talks before and even before we got back together as well. I have given her an out that is she does not want to be with me then we can break up and move on with our lives. We do still owe on the house but I have even told her we can sell it or I can just leave and my part of the house would be lost because I do not care for the money. I would just find an apartment and live my life and she can continue talking to the man or men and pursue what she wants with them. I’ve mentioned that I am willing to work it out because I know I still feel something for her and I want to spend my life with her if she is willing to as well. Multiple times has this conversation been brought up and in the end she says she loves me and wants to work it out.
She comes home changes I get her a drink and snacks and turn off the tv. I had already written down key points of what is bothering me and what I feel is hurting us and me. So I explain to her that i do not like how she has kept us a secret that we are trying to work things out with her friends. It’s been two months and they still believe she is single and having dates and this is something that even though they are probably against me on she should still be mentioning something. She tells me that she’s afraid to look like an idiot and will tell them later. Am I wrong on this?
Then I mention how I saw the messaging and sometimes in the middle of the night she gets a message from this guy. I know that her friend tried to hook them up even though she says she didn’t and also mentions that he is just a friend of the group. I tell her it’s not right because he doesn’t know either that’s she is with me and trying to make it work and how she was acting weird that day I saw the messages. She says there is nothing going on but I feel otherwise and I know I’m not wrong. I tell her again that if she is interested in him then we can break up and she can pursue it if she decides. I ask her who it is and she tells me the name and is the guy that they were trying to hook up together. The guy messages her every morning and I’m sure throughout the day as well. What I can’t wrap around my head is that why would she do this if she is commuting to me and yet is disrespecting me in this way even after I ask her if they are messaging and she says no. But yet I happen to see the messages between them and she still denies it. During our talk it goes back and forth and tears and coming down. So I ask her to show me her phone messages and she begins saying no and that she doesn’t want to when I easily offer my for her to go through as I have nothing to hide. She finally agrees to do it and I see a whole lot of messages but she only shows me photos that they share of her dog, nice and Katy Perry. Only showing me what she wants me to see even though they have messaged throughout the day. I also noticed that she had the messages on silent as well and her excuse is that so I don’t get mad if I see his name pop out. We go back and forth on this and I tell her if she is interested in him then to leave me and we can move on. I can’t explain it any more clearer that we cannot be together if she is having something with him. I tell her I want her loyal, trustworthy, and honest with me if we are going to make it work. She says she still wants to work it out since she says she loves me but is just afraid that she will get hurt. Which I understand but I am willing to make up for what I did and prepared to spend my life making up for what I did and being happy. Moving forward after everything we have a clean slate and see how this goes..I asked her if he messaged her yesterday and she says he did about Katy Perry and just random text. Come this morning she happen to leave her phone unlocked and I noticed he messaged her good morning and responded to her conversation they had as it seems that she deleted the text she sent him and he responded this morning. I’m so confused as she tells me she loves me and wants to be with me and shows me affection, support and everything else we discussed as if nothing is wrong but still messages this guy on the side while they are on silent. I also noticed she deleted the chat history and started fresh as well since Sunday. idk what to do anymore I am so torn right now…i wanted to spend my life with this girl and only to find out she is still doing this and also may be going on a trip with her friend and their group which includes this guy as well without me since she wants to be able to spend time with them separately which I’m fine with me as I have no problem with that other than the guy she’s been messaging will be there. What can I do..I feel like I have already been transparent about how I feel and what is expected but to see these messages and even when asking her absolutely it she says no makes me wonder wtf is going on…why not just leave me. I don’t want to be checking her phone when I get a chance as I feel that puts me just as guilty. Please help.
Should I just move on and start new? Or should I continue to be with her and see how it goes?

I, 19, F live in India with my mother & sister. It's pretty much common to live with your parents in India, and especially for girls. My sister is 21. My parents had an arranged marriage, and since forever they've been fighting. He left us in December, 2021 (or I can honestly say that my mother asked him to go). We're a middle class family. Now when my father lived with us, my mother and him always used to have arguments, and my mother always brought that to us, told us everything since a very young age. My father was wrong in a lot of ways, but it wasn't as if my mother was a saint (from usually taunting him, to acting weird). When it all ended, it was because we were out of town, father was at home, he used to usually text us (I didn't have a phone, on mom's phone only) but my mother insisted on not replying. She didn't tell him when we were to return, and we returned very late, he slept at home, didn't open door, we were outside for 2-3 hours, scene created by mother. Now that he isn't there, my mother and sister fight very frequently. My sister wants to be on social media, and have a boyfriend (which all she has done hiddenly) now my mother gets mad at her for this (fights ranging from you're not my daughter, it's all your father's blood to go away, and beating her), and this happens every fu****g year. My sister has history of lying, deceit, stealing, once she bought a phone without telling or asking, she wasn't earning, she said she got that by saving money on travelling which my mother gave, now she lost a gold earring, which my mother says she must've sold. In all this everytime a fight happens, they drag me in the middle. I pretty much don't have any friends, no social life, and don't argue much with my mother. It's like she also says this, she also does this, and on very petty things I get scolded, my studies are also highly affected by all this, as my mother expects me to find things about my sister, talk and convince her. Once my sister's phone was picked by my mother, and sister refused to put the password in, I saw the phone in morning, and by some tech skills understood it has a dating app, I deleted that before giving phone to mom, and warned my sister regarding it, now on another app my sister wrote that I saved her, mom asked me, I said she's lying. I've saved my sister on several occasions, always trying to teach her the right thing, Right now both of them feel that I agree with the other, I try to remain on good terms with the other, and stop fights from happening by guiding them both. So both of them are like, you go talk to the other, you are cheating on me, I won't talk to you etc. Mother always ends up saying, you also want to do something like that? Am i bothering you also? Go live with your father, to me. Is it my fault to want them to calm down? Or am I wrong to save my sister?

Including the movies, I also watched Atlantis before SG-1 because the practical effects for the symbiotes freaked me out too much in ep1 so my bf had to gradually get me into it lol. Also apologies for the points being all over the place series-wise I'm going from freshest memories to weakest and I apologise if a lot of my complaints are dumb I do genuinely love the series.
The biggest point I wanted to make is searching through this sub I found a post from liek 4 years ago that resonated so hard with me, shoutout to the person wh osaid they wanted to climb Daniel like a tree, based.
Speaking of: the whole glasses on-glasses off Daniel was jarring, does his eyesight just get magically better and then not or are the glasses just to make scenes hotter? Also how many times does this man need to ascend? Jesus.
I gotta admit, it REALLY weirded me out, the whole symbiote thing at first, especially calling Teal'c symbiote at first "Junior" like.. maybe I'm a bit terminally online but the amount of horrific MPreg art I've had to see of other fandoms it really weirded me out. I'm glad Tretonin became a thing.
Also another thing that seemed to occur a lot was peoples wives getting stolen by other men, like probably the hardest thing for someone to go through, very rude, none of those good boys deserved to be cuckolded like that.
Mitchell grew on me, at first I think his writing was really weak but he became one of my favorites (i'd climb him like a tree too), I liked his demeanor and I wish he got to show more of him flying jets around. Vala was fun but I really don't know how they could just accept the apology of a woman who tried to steal a US space battleship and grope all over Daniel when he clearly wasn't into it. Little weird to write him into being into her later on but I guess I'm just happy he got to heal and have closure about his (ex?)-wife.
Tok'ra sucked. Hated them. All they ever did was screw over SG-1 and use them and they kept claiming they were homies. Nah they basically said 'fuck you you're untrustworthy even though you let us slurp up Carters dad and saved our asses including one of our queens' and the big fuck you of being completely absent during the Ori season.
I actually liked the Ori as a villain, I hated Adrea though she was just.. weird, why hot mommy leading a bunch of old magic dudes? Why didn't we use the anti-prior devices more? Why did SG-1 just actively get fucked at every turn? WHY DIDNT WE SHOOT ADREA WHEN THE BIG OLD DRAGON WAS COMING SHE WAS POWERLESS HELLO?
Also during the movies I got really excited about the Achilles being the boat even if it's... a boat. He's just my favorite mythology guy. I also cried every time Daniel got hurt or sad in the movies and wanted to give up, Michael Shanks is a awesome actor. Also I'm in the camp of liking Ark of Truth (dumb weapon but still) more than Continuum, maybe because Continuum ending meant no more fun space friends :(
EDIT EDIT EDIT: I JUST REMEMBERED PETE. WHO THE FUCK IS PETE. WHY IS HE SUDDENLY CARTERS BF. WHY IS HE SO WEIRD. WHY IS HE HERE. YUCK YUCK YUCK #SAYNOTOPETE im so glad she noped out of being with that fucking WEIRDO who we just decided to tel leverything about the stargate program to because he got in a shootout like?? no?? stop??
also the fraiser dying episode goes hard i loved it i missed her so much but i loved it the new doctor thats landry's daughter? fuck her rude bitch i bet she doesn't even give out lollipops she just calls you fat and to "lose weight, fatty" :(
Also shoutout to the naked space flower planet episode it was so good I loved how weird it was.
Extra Bonus thoughts: Rodney McKay is incredible and funny as hell in Atlantis and I hated how the kept being racist / fucking over the one Wraith literally giving their "we're gonna make you un-suckables now" treatment a try, and how the ending was just driving off in a convertible to some rad music? Okay that was kinda based
Extra Extra bonus, I just watched Universe first episode last night. A few takeaways other than how sad this shit is trying to be.

1. I don't even remember his name but are you seriously going to put the supposed (I think) self-insert protag in a fucking "YOU ARE HERE" shirt to really drive the point home? CAN I REALLY JUST PLAY VIDEOGAMES TO BECOME PART OF THE STARGATE TEAM? WHAT
2. That sex scene jumpscared me I literally covered my face until it was over
3. no eye candy so far character wise 0/10 except for our old homies showing up
4. i'm not gonna cry over a politician dying no matter how sad you try to paint it lol

ANYWAY thanks for listening to my incoherent ramblings of my thoughts of the Stargate shows as a new fan I love my space friends and I hope they are having an incredible space life THANKS heres a real reaction of me takin all the stargate content i can get i miss my space friends

Not an English speaker, so please tell me of any mistakes.
The thing is I have excellent relationships with both of my parents, but they're divorced, and I have to spend time with both of them equally as of now. I live with them every second week: a week at my mother's place and then a week at my father's, and then I repeat the process, - thankfully they live on the same street, so it's not a bother. The thing is, I am an adult, - there's no avoiding that with me being almost 21 already, - and I realize I'll have to move out one day, and this thought just ruins me. I know I'll do perfectly alone, I'm a resourceful little guy, but what's hard for me to get over is the fact that I'll leave my parents and I probably won't be seeing them much from that day on.
Now I should clarify on the specifics of our relations and the general situation. My parents got divorced nine years ago, and since then I've been living like that, - torn apart and settling somewhere in the middle in the end, - and while my mother has found a new husband, my father is left all alone in his home with me being literally the only friend to him. He's 60 and he's not really social, so he will pretty much live a lonely life of an old man, - unneeded and abandoned, which he's told me is terrifying to him. Yeah, my dad is scared of being left alone, and I understand him a tad bit too well.
Now, I hope it makes at least some sense, and I want to apologize if this text seems to be all confusing and unstructured, - I myself am trying to wrap my head around my feelings, - and I hope to get some external opinions on the topic, maybe even some suggestions to actually solve the problem. I do have an option to live not far from my parents, probably on the same street too, but it's not quite the same as actually living at one place where you can reach one another at any convenient time. A hug, a chat, even sitting in one room in silence means really much to me, and I do realize our time together is finite. I want to spend as much time with them as possible.
Again, sorry for this being quite a raw text. I simply need someone to hear me and tell me if my problem is real.

Firstly, apologies for not posting for soo long. Just to clarify, its all been the same - which is very good. I've had some really really cute interactions and I can't believe I havent written about it. But, there is no point in writing for hours about that haha. So I am just gonna write about what happened today!!
Soo for a bit of backstory (i could write about this for hours but imma be quick lmaoo) there were some rumours being spread about me at a boys school about me being a prostitute and some silly things - not true at all.
Our class today was so cute, I went in and he held the door open for me smiling. As i was sitting down I looked at him and he looked at me and smiled. We kept on making eye contact from across the classroom, it was adorable. When I put my hand up for help, his eyes instantly lit up aww.
Main thing is, after class - when most people had left - I went up to him and he was like "Are you okay (my name)?" whilst smiling. I was like "I am okay sir, do you mind if I talk to you?" he told me of course I can and he told me we should wait for the others to leave so we could talk privately. I asked him about his day and I was standing infront of him whilst he was telling me about how his exams went badly and stuff haha.
Anyways, when they left he just started looking deep into my eyes asking if everything was okay. I told him about how a boy I was friends with started rumours about me. When I said the word boy his whole expression changed, he like raised his eyebrow but in an annoyed way. It was like he was getting protective. And I didnt know how to say that they were saying I am a prostitute so I was like "sir I am not sure how to say it" and he was like "(my name) say whatever you feel comfortable telling me" it was so cute, and I was quite close to him whilst we were talking.
When I told him he looked really sad, he told me how sorry he was soo many times (like 10) saying that boys are disgusting and no one should be saying that stuff about me. Told me to not think about it or let it bother me. It was so cute, because he looked so concerned.
He even said "Thank you for talking to me (my name)" (not him thanking me haha) and I told him how much I appreciate him always listening to me and he said "I'll always listen to you (my name)" whilst looking into my eyes (he never looked away once) and he was smiling. Even when he was meant to be talking to other students he told them to go away because he was busy talking to me. Awww.
He then gave me lots of advice about what to do and how he wants it to stop and to prevent anyone from hurting me. It was so cute. Hes just so adorable. He cares so much and its the sweetest!
He also mentioned that he wants to still teach me next year haha, because I asked if I would still have him.
Lastly, he told me that i can ALWAYS talk to him and that I should come speak to him. He told me take care and have a nice day! In his adorable, sweet voice. He speaks so softly to me like his whole tone of voice changes. And I know he was watching me walk out from behind because when I couldnt open the door he told me to hold down haha.
Overall, he is just such an angel. I honestly dont know what I would do without him by my side. I especially love how he got so jealous when I mentioned the word boy haha. The way he truly cares and even ignored other students for me awwww. I appreciate him so much.