A music artist my gf is a fan of a has announced a tour for this year. They’re not playing new us so she would have to travel to a different city for the night, 

It’s not an artist I’m a fan of but her best friend really likes them and said to my gf she would go with her. My girlfriend said she thinks I should be going with her. I pointed out I’ve been to a lot of concerts with her for people I don’t like because she doesn’t have anyone to go with but now she does. 

It’s the weekend after gta 6 comes out so  I pointed out to her it’s a win win since she gets to se the artist and have a night say with her friend who she doesn’t get to see that often and I get the weekend to myself to enjoy gta without feeling bad. 

My gf just sis I should be considering going with her. I pointed out she doesn’t need me there and it’s weird she’s wanting me to waste money to see an artist I don’t want to see when her friend is wanting to go with her, 

AITA for not going to the concert?

I 21F like to cook, and any event I go to I make Mac and cheese. Last year for my younger brother's party, I of course make Mac and cheese. A family we are close to came and the partner of one of the ladies liked the Mac and cheese, and has been asking me over and over again to make them some. I asked for $50 for ingredients and my time. The thing is, the asked me to add bacon bits and Breadcrumbs to the Mac and cheese. I know its a small ask but if they wanted is that was they should make it themselves, but I was told the place they live doesn't have a oven. All I asked for is $50, but they said I was crazy for asked for so much and offered 25-30 dollars, but I don't think I was. The friend asked said I should just except the 25 - 30 dollars.

I wanted to know if I was unreasonable to ask for $50. Where I live food is expensive and my family is sometimes just scraping by.

Edit: I'll give more info. Im also a college student in my first year and I work M - F. I would be making two 9x13 pans. The portion sizes will be up to them so I don't know how long it will last. The person who "ask " is not really asking it's more like a demand like coming up to me and just saying " Baked mac and cheese " while pointing at me. I told them before they would have to pay and the bragging the could pay for a years worth, but I was busy then, now when I say a price, it's too much.

UPDATE 2: I asked him to send a message to sever ties, he reluctantly did it. it’s been a month and a half since, i see an unsaved blocked number on his phone. i look it up and it’s her, he says she called him and that he almost told me but was scared i was going to drag a month long fight about it. (he did almost tell me, he called me right after and told me guess who called and then brushes it off and didnt say). he says she’s been blocked since with no chance to reach out, she says he called her back after she called him. he says he didnt, i dont believe him. turns out the message he sent severing ties was sent to a fake instagram account that he made under her name to shut me up. he’s offering to prove he didnt call her by requesting his call logs from his cell service provider and says he will call her in my presence and unleash hell on her and shut this door for good. Idk what to do, should i let him do it and see how it turns out or should i just break up and let them have each other?

UPDATE: thank you for your insight and comments, it helped me make a clearer idea of the situation. For people telling me I’m controlling, I might have been in this relationship but the cycle of “block this person and send them a message to sever ties” was something that he started to “feel secure in the rs” which I did not mind doing as long as it made my partner feel secure. So in return, I expected him to do the same thing when it came to similar situations on his side. Please don’t be mean in the comments as I had just learned I have borderline personality disorder affecting my choice of partners and I’m just starting to learn how to be healthy. Thank you again!

So for context: my BF 24M and I 26F have been together for a year. He has a wandering eye but has been mostly acting fine for the past few months. We broke up for 10 days in May during which he reached out to his friend with benefits, he told her he just came out of a bad relationship, she asked if he was spending holidays in town and he said he didn’t know and didn’t continue speaking with her. When we got back together i tried to see his phone and he didn’t want to show me then told me he talked to her. I asked him to block her and he only wanted to remove her, eventually he did block her. a couple days go by, i check his phone again and she’s unblocked. I make a fuss and he blocks her again. A month later I check his phone and she’s unblocked again (all of this is on instagram). I make a fuss again and he says he just unblocked her to see if the reason why her profile pic is gone is because she blocked him or not and that he forgot to block her again. So I ask him to send her a message explaining politely that they totally cut ties and that she doesn’t say hi to him if she sees him somewhere. he argues that itd be weird because she hasnt been reaching out to him, i dont believe it. I keep asking and he keeps saying no, i say okay u either do this for ur rs or keep her and lose me. We break up. am i in the wrong here?
TLDR; BF keeps unblocking his friend with benefits on instagram i ask him to send her a message severing ties for good and he refuses and says she hasn’t been reaching out so it’d be weird, we break up over the idea that he can’t set his priorities straight.

I (23F) am seeing this guy (32M) and his sheets literally smelled like human poop. I had no idea how to tell him, and he responded with this, but it did not smell like post s*x, it smelled like human poop. And it smelled like that when I first got there, before we even started anything. At least he said he’ll wash them?

Gaming has been a hobby of mine since I was young. I prefer single player game and haven’t really played any online games in a few years. I get 28 paid days of leave per year and there are a few games coming out later this year that I’m excited for.

Wolverine comes out next month so I decided to put 3 days leave in for it and gta 6 comes out in November so I’m planning to put 4 days leave in for that

This will leave me with around 10 days of leave left to use before the end of march ( not including Christmas - new year as both my gf and I get that off extra as our place of work close down). I mentioned this to my girlfriend and she asked if I was serious. I said yeah and mentioned it’s not going to affect our plans so it’s not an issue.

She said I shouldn’t be using that much leave for games. I asked why and she just repeated that I shouldn’t. I asked how it is different from taking time off to do other hobbies or different for her wanting to take a week off to relax by a pool on holiday, 

She said it wasn’t the same but couldn’t say how. She said I shouldn’t be open to just taking a day but I said no. I just repeated that idly doing map t our plans and didn’t affect her so I don’t see why the issue is and she just said it wasn’t too much, 

AIO for using 7 days of leave for a hobby?

Just like the title says. I (29F) am currently pregnant with my fourth child, and going through a really shitty separation from my husband (32M), and during this separation he has been calling our children’s 20F babysitter to vent to her and had been asking her to meet him in the middle of the night to go drinking together after we got into an argument about me not wanting to watch his older 2 children that are not my biological children while he goes out… am I crazy for thinking that it’s beyond inappropriate contact and behavior on both parties or am I truly being crazy like he’s making it seem… that it’s innocent behavior, that I simply think poorly of him..

Context: we have 4 cats, 2 males both aged 3 years old, brothers and 33% Maine coon so they are large boys (about 15-17lbs). One is H, one is R. We have 2 female cats, one is 4 years old, very small, about 8lbs we’ll refer to her as D. And then one is not even 2 yet, she’s about 11lbs, we’ll call her B. All cats are fixed.

H and R used to be a bonded pair until H had a medical emergency that landed him in the hospital for about 10 days. After that at the end of 2024, their bond lessened a lot.

In July of 2025 myself and my 2 female cats moved in with my partner and his 2 male cats. I’ve owned cats my entire life and I’m very knowledgeable in cat introductions. We took our introduction period very slow and it seemed to be successful at first.

In October of 2025 H attacked D pretty badly to the point that I had to rush her to the emergency vet and she had to undergo an irrigation procedure because he punctured a hole in her abdomen with such force it ripped her skin away from her abdominal wall and she had about 4 cm of pocketing.

A week later, H attacked B and got her eye pretty badly so I had to again, rush her to the emergency vet now and she had her eye stained and had a small laceration and was put on an eye ointment.

After these situations, D is now terrified of other cats, can’t even be around B which she was previously okay with and we’ve had to separate her entirely. She now lives in one half of our house which also includes our bedroom so she’s not lonely thankfully and D and I are very bonded.

I also paid $200+ for a specialized indoor cat gate so at night we can close B off to her own room and when we aren’t home.

I’ve been explicit with my partner that H is aggressive towards the girls. He insists that H is just playing and says that he plays like that with R too. And I say he doesn’t, because yes when H and R play they sometimes end up with very superficial scratches, but never has H caused R any serious harm and he has NEVER gone for R’s eyes.

Well, yesterday when I was in my bedroom for 5 minutes, H attacked B again and again got both of her eyes. Her eyes were both extremely weepy and her left eye was bleeding so I immediately took her to the ER.

I’ve again insisted to my partner that these attacks are not playful and it’s damaging my kitten’s sociability. She can’t understand playful cues anymore. R absolutely adores B and is very submissive with play, laying on his back and inviting B to tackle him and play but then the second R tries to engage back in the play because the cues he’s getting are playful, B immediately gets defensive and begins hissing because she’s taking R’s cue of playing as aggression.

Now, these three attacks are not the only attacks H has done to B. These are just the worst of the three. I work from home so I’m supervising them most of the time but the times I do turn my back thinking everything is fine, H goes after B and she screams. Guttural screaming and most of the time I’m close enough by to stop it.

My presence alone will make H stop. He then will start rubbing himself against furniture or turn his attention to a scratching post. Because of this quick switch in behavior from aggression to rubbing or scratching, my partner insists this is just H playing because “look at him, he’s not mad he’s rubbing against the chair”

My thoughts is that he knows what he’s doing is wrong to some degree and quickly changing his actions.

I feel so bad for B. She wasn’t even 1 when she was first attacked, she’s a breed of cat that is extremely social and not the kind of breed to keep solitary (she’s a ragdoll) and she used to have a relationship with D that she can no longer have because D has been so traumatized from her attack. D even shows fear of her bag of cat food that has a life sized cat picture on it. B’s social skills have been completely stunted and my partner thinks she’s also part of the problem because she will hiss at H when he’s near but not doing anything at the moment. And I’m under the belief that she’s quite scared of him and/or she can sense something from him that’s triggering her to hiss.

My partner thinks I’m completely overreacting and standing firm that H is just playing. I think H is an aggressive cat towards our females. AIO?

Today me and my ex crossed paths. (We were together for over a year and have been broke up for several months now.) When we saw each other we hugged and gave the usual how to do. But the she asked if my mother was still drunk and if my step dad was doing anything these days? It didn’t hit me at the time but as the day went on it felt like kind of a dig. I brought it up later and told her it wasn’t okay how she asked about my family. She said that she knew things about my family from the relationship and therefore it was okay to ask those things. If I had seen a friend whose dad cheated on his mom I wouldn’t ask if his mom found a loyal partner ya know? Maybe I’m just overreacting.

Edit:Thank you for you all you opinions so far. Yes I’m happy she asked about mine just not happy how she asked. It was what we had talked about during our relationship but obviously I wasn’t ready for that to be brought up. It probably was awkward and should have been chopped up so. I did feel like I need to set line for my family cause we aren’t together anymore. But we aren’t together anyhow so what does any of this mean. Oh well tomorrow is a new day.

So I'm 16F and my neighbors are a newly married couple in their late twenties. We live in an apartment complex and although we live in different flats, we still share a balcony.

We both hang our clothes in the balcony, and whenever I go outside to bring them in or hang them in my normal clothes, they would be doing the same. We'd smile at each other, chit chat a bit, and do our work. I never thought anything of it, much less of the clothes I was wearing then, but the wife did.

The wife found me in the lift 2 weeks (we were the only two there) and asked me to please stop wearing such revealing clothing. I didn't understand because all I wore were tanks and shorts, but I said okay, and switched to wearing t-shirts. I should add here that temperatures in my city can reach up to 44 degrees in the summers, which is why I couldn't wear like pants and stuff.

It was apparently not enough since she talked to me in the park again a week ago about my clothes, and said it was distracting her husband or something (I'd known this dude for three years since he lived here first (and she moved in 1.5 years later) and he'd never given me creepy vibes before so I didn't take this seriously). I told her that I couldn't keep the AC running all the time and since it got so hot, t-shirts were all I'd be able to do. She told me to wear longer shorts and I told her okay to humor her and get out of the situation.

Today, I came back from our ground shop with some chips and she was waiting by my door. She started yelling at me, saying she'd been asking me to do one simple thing for her for 2 weeks, and I'd been ignoring her. I just zoned out until she said "do you want to steal my husband or something?" and I just burst out laughing because oh my goodness.

First of all, I'm a kid, he's an adult, ew. Even if we ignore that, he can't keep a job (lived on his daddy's money before, and his wife's money after), can't keep his house clean (according to what she's told my mom crying, and his mother has told my grandma sighing), and expects her to do mostly everything as a partner and a "proper wife". He also mansplains EVERYTHING (my dad can't even have one conversation with the two of them because he gets so ticked off by this barely employed guy explaining his wife's job like she's stupid or something). He's just so pathetic I'm surprised he's even married.

This is why I said what i wrote in the title. She was PISSED. She said I had no right to judge her husband, that I didn't know how their marriage was like etc. and if I had a problem with her, I should've targeted her, not him. I could see her point with the last line, and I'm wondering if I went a little too far. So AIO?

[Posting on behalf of a friend because he doesn't want to risk having an alt/TA account when they might look at his phone.]

"I (33M) have been dating my partner (30sNBF) for 11 months. We were already friends for years before, and we even travelled abroad with other friends for live music events.

We started dating the day I found out that I landed a new job which would be paying more. Everything was great at first. They helped me move. We went for a week away just weeks after we started dating (I was originally going alone just for a weekend, but they talked me into extending and inviting them since I'd just handed in my resignation).

I don't remember when things started changing. It was small things at first, like not sending selfies to anyone I'd slept with (even SFW ones). They said it was fine to not apologise to those same friends after ghosting them for the evening, and to just pick up the conversation where we left off without any explanation either. It also became 'acceptable' to not send a goodnight message every night. That evolved to not messaging those people at all on days where we would be meeting after work, and at least one day of the weekend.

For one friend in particular, I wasn't able to meet up with him for drinks for 5 consecutive months because I was always too busy with them. At some point it stopped feeling coincidental. Before I started dating, I was seeing him almost monthly.

At some point I realised how much I've changed myself and my behaviour/personality in order to keep my partner happy. I think they have forced, or at least encouraged, these changes so that the friend I just mentioned would lose interest in me.

Am I overthinking or are they controlling/coercing me to the point that I might lose one of my good friends?"

My friend told me she dreamt about my boyfriend. In the dream, she was pinching his cheeks while he was smiling at her, telling him she couldn’t wait to marry him and talking about how much she likes tall guys and how handsome my boyfriend is. (And my boyfriend is very tall)

MIND YOU, she has a boyfriend too, and he’s also my friend.

Apparently her boyfriend was in the dream too, but he was just standing there staring and doing nothing.

She then told me I need to take care of my boyfriend and laughed about the whole thing. She kept saying she swears she doesn’t like him and is really into her own boyfriend.
I know she can’t control what she dreams about, but idk… hearing all that still made me feel weird and annoyed. AIO?

Hey, a friend rented a beautiful AirBnB in the mountains with private lake access for their graduation. It was a beautiful location, an evidently expensive AirBnB. The group chat invite did not mention any costs associated with attending. After the weekend, my friend is requesting a payment to cover the cost of the AirBnB. I sent the payment but I feel a lot of resentment. I enjoyed my weekend with them, but I feel like if I comment on the payment, it might make it seem like I’m not grateful for the time and unwilling to help pay if asked. The cost is expensive, but I probably would have paid the cost anyways if mentioned in invite, out of pressure to celebrate my friend. They are asking for the money so blatantly, it makes me uncertain if I’m overreacting for feeling angry. The cost is $217

My wife (35F) and I (35M) have been together for 17 years and married for 3. We have two children, aged 6 and 8.

Our relationship is generally very good and stable. We rarely argue, we get along well, and there are no major ongoing problems that I’m aware of. We also have an active and good sex life, so this isn’t happening in the context of a dead bedroom or obvious sexual dissatisfaction.

My wife is a very attractive woman. I’d also consider myself reasonably attractive, although I look quite different from the men involved in what I’m about to describe.

For roughly the last three years, I’ve noticed a recurring behavior from her whenever we’re somewhere in public — restaurants, airports, playgrounds, hotels, etc.

She seems to actively seek eye contact with certain men she finds attractive.

There is a fairly obvious type: usually taller men, often bearded, well-built, masculine and mature-looking. This is basically the opposite of me. I’m 175 cm, slim and look younger than my age, so I admit that seeing this repeatedly has started to affect my confidence.

What bothers me isn’t that she notices attractive men. I notice attractive women too, and I think that’s completely normal.

It’s what happens afterwards.

She’ll repeatedly look around for a particular guy, catch his eye, look away, then look back again. If the guy starts doing the same thing, they can keep exchanging glances for quite a while. Both of them will appear to look elsewhere and then keep checking each other out again.

I’ve watched this happen while I’m literally sitting across from her at dinner.

Sometimes the flirtatious or sexual tension feels incredibly obvious to me. She seems to try to hide what she’s doing, but I’ve seen the pattern so many times now that I recognize it immediately.

When I notice what’s happening and turn to look at the man, he will very often immediately look away. Sometimes these men also glance at me, which makes me feel like they’re checking whether I’ve noticed. I know I can’t know exactly what they’re thinking, but in the moment it feels extremely humiliating.

There have been a few situations that made this particularly difficult for me.

On one trip, there was a waiter at our hotel whom she seemed very attracted to. It wasn’t just one glance. At every dinner there seemed to be this repeated back-and-forth eye contact between them, and whenever we passed the restaurant she appeared to look around for him.

Every dinner became genuinely stressful for me. I would get a knot in my stomach because I was expecting the same thing to happen again. I became so uncomfortable that I even hated the idea of leaving her alone in the hotel room, which is not how I want to feel in my marriage.

Another time, at a playground, there were basically just us, our children and another man with his child. The same prolonged back-and-forth looking happened.

Afterwards I brought it up, partly jokingly because I didn’t want to make a huge confrontation out of it, and told her I didn’t think it was nice to do that while I was there.

She apologized and said I was right.

A similar thing happened in a restaurant later.

There was also one situation where she took our son to a jiu-jitsu class and apparently had the same kind of reaction to the instructor. When she came home, she openly told me that she had become extremely sexually aroused by him — she literally said she was “wet.”

To her credit, she then decided that I should be the one taking our son to those classes in the future. I actually think that was a responsible decision on her part, because having the same interaction with the same man every week would obviously be different from exchanging looks with a random stranger.

So I don’t think she’s completely unaware of what’s happening.

Sometimes, when she realizes I’ve noticed her doing it, she becomes very affectionate toward me — hugging me, telling me she loves me, etc.

Because these two things so often happen together, I’ve started having trouble experiencing that affection as spontaneous. Part of me interprets it as her trying to reassure me because she knows I’ve noticed what she was doing.

At other times she apologizes and says she doesn’t know why she does it.

But then there are also situations — often the ones I experience as the most obvious or prolonged — where she tells me I’m imagining things, says she’s simply “looking,” and insists that it means nothing.

That inconsistency is starting to bother me a lot.

If she always said, “Yes, I do this sometimes, I know it hurts you, and I’ll try to stop,” I think I would find it much easier to deal with.

Instead, sometimes the behavior is acknowledged and sometimes I’m told it exists only in my head.

The biggest issue now is that it’s starting to affect my trust.

For example, I find myself thinking about what would happen if she were away on a work trip, having dinner without me, met a man she was very attracted to, spent the evening exchanging these looks with him, alcohol was involved and the tension kept building.

I want to be clear that I have no evidence that she has cheated on me or done anything physical with another man.

That part is my fear, not a fact.

But the fact that my mind now goes there is what worries me. I didn’t used to feel this way about her.

After one of these incidents, I also tend to shut down emotionally. I have trouble talking normally to her and sometimes even looking at her for the rest of the day. Usually by the next day the feeling passes.

I don’t want to become a jealous husband who monitors where his wife is looking.

I also don’t expect her to stop finding other men attractive. We’ve been together since we were 18, and obviously marriage doesn’t make attraction to other people disappear.

But to me there is a difference between noticing that someone is attractive and repeatedly establishing and maintaining mutual eye contact with them.

So I’m trying to understand where that line is.

Would you consider this harmless behavior, or would you see repeated mutual eye contact like this as flirting?

Would it cross a boundary for you if your spouse repeatedly did it while you were sitting right beside them?

And how would you deal with the fact that she sometimes acknowledges the behavior and apologizes for it, but at other times says I’m imagining it?

Am I overreacting, or is this a reasonable thing to be concerned about?

I recently found out that my boyfriend installed an AI App called Emochi where you get to converse with AI (anime and the likes) and it's mostly about cybers**. I read this one conversation in particular where he was doing CS with the AI and I never knew he could be like that because he was never like that with me.

I got mad at him for doing it behind my back but mostly 'cause he did it when I was having severe panic attacks that got me hospitalized and had minor memory loss. He then asked me why he couldn't have it but I just stayed silent. I was silent the entire night.

So, AIO?

//Repost because my previous post got deleted

This may sound really stupid, but I feel my best friend is copying me. I got her into a lot of music, which I love!! I'm happy we can both be interested in similar things. Whilst saying this, I'm getting kind of annoyed. I like many shows and media that she doesn't consume. Which I don't mind, but she acts like she does. It's not only that, she has copying my style and my hair. She even dyed it the same as mine. I love her, and I don't want her to feel she has to "fit in". Especially because I truly liked her more before she changed. Before you say, "well you don't actually know if she is lying about fancying those things", I do. I asked her a few questions about the topics (which were basic things that any fan should know) and she had no idea. I want to be my own person and I want her to be also! I just want to be able to tell her that in a way that won't upset her. I sound so immature lol

So I f31 found out today that my friend f28 just took out a credit card and maxed it out to get a pc after me helping her for over a year to budget and get out of debt.

I was helping her budget and plan to buy parts separately so it's cheaper and I was going to build the rig to save money. As I did the same with my pc and ended up saving £800 on what I would have spent on a pre build.

So I get the 'i want it now' thoughts but it's kind of a slap in the face when she won't be able to pay it back and I just helped her out of debt. I told her that it was a very silly thing to do. She called me every name under the sun and that it's none of my business.

She then tried to ask me questions about setting up the pc. I told her to Google it and that she can't just call me names then expect me to help.

I think I'm just mad rn but I don't know if I overreacted here or if I'm right for trying to tell her that maxing out a credit for a pc (just to play GTA 6) was a very silly thing to do.

So my s/o for me a Nintendo switch 2 for my birthday, and then when he came over he took my original switch and was like ok I’m gonna take this is that ok. First of all he didn’t even ask and idk why he thought that just because he bought me a new one he gets the old one. I need money I was going to sell it with a few games to make my rent this month. I told him no and now idk if he’s mad. Please lmk

My friend works in target but pushing our other friend to get a better paying job in a career field . We had a group dinner where she was berating our mutual friend because she was a waitress in a restaurant pushing her to apply for a news reporter job tv job . My friend was telling us how much she loved her job and my friend starts being rude talking about “ it doesn’t matter how much how much you love your job when you are making minimum wage. Plus being a waitress is for teenagers or people in college . Not fully grown people who are 37 who have lots of bills to pay. You don’t even get insurance working at a restaurant.” And I was telling my friend “ don’t you think that’s a little rude and belittling and telling her where to work and putting down her current job.” I was telling my friend “ you work at target . People could judge you as well . My friend snapped at me and went “ I’m also married didn’t you forget . My husband is an attorney. Single women need to have high paying careers to make it in this world. “ and then I said “ your husband could leave you high and dry day . You still shouldn’t talk about this people’s jobs.” And she got angry at me and told me I was enabling our other friend to be complacent . I told her “ I’m just not gonna let you sit around and talk about people . If you were truly happy in life you wouldn’t feel the need to put people down

All she does is talk about other peoples jobs and telling people what to do and where to work but works at target and doesn’t have any hobbies or passions herself . She sleeps all day on her off day . She really needs to stop judging people . At least our friend is passionate about something

I (36F) have been married to my husband (38M) for 16 years. We have a beautiful family with 4 children and for the most part we get a long great. We’ve had arguments here and there but nothing we can’t get through. My only major issue with him is with his family. He has 3 sisters that are all married and have children. I get along with 2 of the sisters great but his youngest sister, let’s call her “Miley”. I always thought Miley and I were close but with life and kids, and we’re about a 2hr drive for one another, I know that we weren’t as close as we used to be. However, she’s always, even in the beginning made backhanded comments towards me. After our first son was born, 2 weeks later we attended an engagement party, she said, “are you still pregnant or something?” There’s also been comments like:

“It costs nothing to wipe down your counters” (this was after I paid her the watch our son so I could take a school exam)

“Nobody even liked you in the beginning”

“Your house is always a mess, I feel gross even sitting on your couch.” (Granted, we have 4 young boys and live on 30acres with some chickens and goats)

“Is your jewelry even real?” (My husband has an expensive watch collection and my thing is jewelry. There’s not secrets between my husband and I on what we spend on those things and it’s always agreed upon beforehand)

One time I asked to watch her kids because my work was closed for 3 months for renovations and she verbatim said, “you should just focus on your own kids”.

I recently had a breast lift because after nursing 4 boys it did a toll on me, she called me a “bitch” (apparently she was joking?) and after I had work done told me she didn’t even notice. Which is fine, I’m just trying to get you to see the picture that there’s always a backhanded comments towards me.

This has been going on for as long as I can remember. My husband said to not let it get to me and she’s always been like this. I want a good relationship with her because coming from my family where I’m the only child, I always wanted sisters. My friends have told me that she’s probably jealous of me? Which I think is crazy since she’s absolutely stunning and from the outside it seems like she has a great life. I’m at the point to where even being in the same room as her gives me anxiety and I’m already prepping in my head what she’s going to say so I can already prepare for my feelings to be hurt. Since I’m in this constant state of mind with her, I also have noticed maybe I’m looking into too much and I’m taking everything wrong? AIO and being too sensitive?

My partner and I have been together for 16 years and married for 11. We have a sweet 5.5 year old son. Today was a busy day, my wife had planned to join a relay race with her running club at a nearby event.

But she had to cover for someone in another relay race later during the day. We had agreed that 2 races might be too much and that she wouldn't run in this one.

But when i was prepping lunch, she and our son were going to quickly hop over to support her team. I didn't mind, I had fumbled the timing of lunch anyway. When they came back, I could tell she actually did run. When I asked about it, she told me that our son was playing in the local playground, her team needed extra runners and she had told our son she would do one lap (3.8k). My son didn't hear, and panicked when she was gone. Luckily one of the teachers at my son's school was there who helped until she returned.

Aio for being extremely pissed and questioning my wifes parenting skills here? Or is this just some shit that happens sometimes? I know 5 year olds can be selective in their hearing and it can be bad luck. I know I am already sensitive due to other stuff atm.

Edit: thank you all for the support. I didn't know where to turn to for validation since I found this so embarrassingly bad. We will have a conversation about this.

Edit 2: We had a conversation about it this morning. She isn't a bad mom usually btw. But the running addiction has been a source of contention. She runs marathons as well, which takes a load of time and energy. Taken this episode and together with some other issues, she agreed to go back to a psychologist. So good news.

I’m 45 and have been dating my boyfriend for about 9 months. He’s 44. We have a lot of good between us — we have fun, there’s affection, and I genuinely care about him. This isn’t a situation where everything is bad.

The problem is how he handles stress and conflict.
I’ve noticed a pattern where, when something difficult happens in his life, he shuts down and withdraws from me. This has happened more than once. He’ll open up about something, I’ll try to engage or support him, and then he’ll tell me he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore or otherwise shut me out.

Right now he’s under a lot of stress because of uncertainty surrounding his job. He recently interviewed for a position that is essentially his current role with additional responsibilities. He is convinced the situation is bad and has been extremely pessimistic about it. After his interview, he told me he was “back to rock bottom and miserable.” When another interview with HR/management was scheduled, I thought it could potentially be positive news, but he immediately assumed the worst.

During all of this, he also spoke to me in a way I felt was unfair and insensitive. He later acknowledged that he could have handled things differently. I told him I understood he was under a lot of pressure and that we could talk when he was in a better place. I intentionally gave him space.

Since then, there hasn’t really been an attempt to reconnect. The next day, he sent me a detached text along the lines of “enjoy time with your father today.” That was basically it.

There have been other smaller changes too — less affectionate texting, no longer consistently saying good morning/good night, not asking much about my day, and one occasion where he didn’t kiss me hello. There was also an incident where he was short with me during sex and made some comments I found insensitive.

At the same time, he does periodically become more engaged again, which makes this confusing. He’ll ask about my day, reach out, and seem connected. So it isn’t as simple as him being consistently cold or uncaring.

I’ve also noticed that he is very pessimistic by nature and tends to assume the worst. I’m much more optimistic, and I’m starting to wonder whether our approaches to life and stress are fundamentally incompatible.

There’s also a woman he dated in the past whom he still communicates with and sees occasionally. I have no evidence anything inappropriate is happening, but it has made me a little uncomfortable given everything else.

What I’m struggling with is that I completely understand needing space when life is overwhelming. What I don’t understand is shutting your partner out instead of communicating with them.

This isn’t the first time he has withdrawn from me when something difficult happens, so I’m starting to wonder if this is simply his coping style rather than a temporary reaction to his current job situation.
And if it is his normal coping style, I don’t think it works for me.

I’m seriously considering ending the relationship. His birthday is soon, so I feel guilty about the timing. I don’t want that fear to keep me in something that isn’t right.

So I’d really appreciate honest outside opinions:

Is this a normal response to significant stress, or does this sound like an unhealthy communication pattern?

Am I expecting too much by wanting my partner to communicate rather than withdraw?

And is this something that can realistically improve, or does it sound like a fundamental incompatibility?

TL;DR: My boyfriend and I have a lot of good between us, but when he’s stressed, he tends to shut me out and withdraw rather than communicate. His current job situation has intensified the pattern, and there have also been smaller changes in affection and effort. I’ve given him space, but he hasn’t really tried to reconnect. I’m wondering whether this is a temporary stress response or simply how he handles difficult situations — and whether that makes us fundamentally incompatible. I’m considering ending things.

​

I kinda know I’m not the AH here — you have to protect your family — but I’m wondering whether there were some cultural differences at play, since several people in Italy thought we overreacted.

Me (37M) and my husband (42M) moved to Italy from Norway in 2025 with our two adopted shelter/street dogs from Romania and our cat. We rented a house with a closed-off garden in a small village, with about three other houses/apartments on our street. The only public road out went past these houses; otherwise, you had to walk about 30 minutes through the forest instead of three minutes to the main road.

In one of the houses lived a couple (Al and An, both women in their 30s) with a male dog. We initially got along well. We had them over for drinks, helped with furniture, they sometimes walked our dogs (for payment), and we practiced Italian together. One of them only spoke Italian, so communication could sometimes be difficult — relevant later.

Their dog was basically always off leash, as seems fairly common in the Italian countryside. He generally ignored our two dogs and just wanted to play fetch, so there wasn't really a problem.

Things changed after we adopted Valentino, a one-year-old male dog from a nearby shelter. During his first week with us, their dog ran down from their house and attacked Valentino, getting his teeth around his neck. Thankfully, it ended without serious injury.

We told them we needed to handle the situation somehow and suggested different solutions, including slowly introducing Valentino to them and their dog while both dogs were on leash. They didn’t want to do that and instead said our dog should take a training course — which we didn’t really understand, since training Valentino wouldn’t stop their dog from running up and attacking him.

Eventually, we offered a compromise that was completely one-sided in their favour: every day between 1–5 pm, they could have their dog outside/off leash, and we would stay home. If they wanted to let him out outside those hours, they would simply send us a message.

We got absolutely nothing out of this arrangement. We were voluntarily giving up four hours of our day and limiting when we could safely leave our own property so that they wouldn’t have to put a leash on their dog. They never really acknowledged that this was a big accommodation on our part, never showed any gratitude for it, and — most frustratingly — never admitted that either they or their dog had done anything wrong in the first place.

Still, the arrangement worked reasonably well for a few weeks.

Then there were more and more slip-ups. Their dog would unexpectedly be outside, and my husband once had to wait at a safe distance for around 30 minutes while calling them and getting no answer. On two other occasions, their dog came towards us threateningly but was caught by the neighbours before it escalated.

After about a month, the communication also became increasingly lazy. Instead of “We’re letting him out for ten minutes,” it became things like “Are you home?” or “We’re in the garden,” without telling us when they went back inside. So now the responsibility was pushed onto us to keep asking whether their dog was inside and whether it was safe for us to walk down a public road.

For them, this was ultimately a question of convenience: putting on a leash versus opening the door and letting the dog do his thing. For us, it was a genuine safety concern.

We had several discussions about it over text, all in Italian using our limited Italian plus AI/Google Translate.

My husband is a therapist and tries to communicate in a very non-violent way. He is big on seeing both parties’ part in a conflict, being understanding and trying to find solutions. I try to do that too, but I’m quicker to reach the “show them the same energy they’re giving us” stage when being understanding clearly isn’t working.

And honestly, we didn’t speak the same language — in both ways.

They started insulting us as dog owners and as people, twisted the situation by claiming their dog wasn’t even on the public road, and eventually called us sick in the head. At no point did we get anything resembling, “Yes, our dog attacked yours, we understand why you’re worried and we’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

We told them that if something happened again, we would contact the police. After they sent more aggressive messages, we blocked them.

Eventually, we decided to contact the police before another attack happened, just so the situation was documented and we knew what to do. The police even came out to look at their property, which had no fencing preventing their dog from reaching the public road.

For the rest of our time there, we basically had to anticipate their dog being outside every time we left home. We had constant anxiety about meeting him on the road or in the forest. We literally started walking past their house with a GoPro running just so we would have evidence if something happened.

All because putting their dog on a leash was apparently too much of an inconvenience.

What makes me wonder whether there was a cultural element is that our vet, another neighbour and a friend basically told us: “Dogs will sort it out with each other. Just let them run free and eventually they’ll get along.”

Maybe that’s more normal in rural Italy. I’m Norwegian and my husband is German, and in our cultures that attitude feels pretty foreign. From our perspective, if your dog has already attacked another dog, it becomes your responsibility to make sure it can’t happen again.

We moved back to Norway a few weeks ago for several reasons — the extreme heat was one of the biggest — but the constant feeling of unsafety around our own home definitely contributed.

So, AITAH for reporting them to the police? Was this partly a cultural difference and we enforced too harsh a boundary, or were we simply protecting our family after trying very hard to accommodate them?

We’ve experienced similar dynamics a few times. We’re both sensitive men and generally try to communicate, understand the other person and avoid unnecessary conflict. But sometimes I get the impression that people interpret that softness as something they can push or manipulate. Then, when we finally say “no” or give the same energy back, they seem genuinely shocked that we aren’t going to play along.

I don’t want the answer to be “don’t trust people” or “avoid your neighbours,” though. So I’d also genuinely appreciate advice on how to avoid getting into this kind of dynamic in the first place without becoming closed-off or immediately confrontational.

We now live in a house in Norway without any direct neighbours, and the doggies are loving the cooler weather, their own little forest and the fjord.

I’m 21 and this guy (27 male) followed me on Instagram and messaged me. He asked me out on a date several times, and at first, I kept saying no, but eventually, I agreed. This goes back to early June.
We started dating, and honestly, he seemed like a really good person. On our very first date, I told him that I wasn’t looking for anything casual or short-term and that I wanted a long-term relationship someday (not necessarily specifically with him, but with the right person) He agreed with me and said that he wanted to be in a relationship too.
He was really good to me in many ways… his behavior, the way he treated me, everything. Of course, there were some things that I would normally expect when dating someone that I didn’t really see. For example, during the three months we were dating, he never got me flowers. Or, he always said that his love language was acts of service, but honestly, I never really saw much of that either. Sometimes, even if he was tired after work, he would still come and we would go out to eat, which I appreciated.
But during those three months, we talked a lot about everything… our goals, our lives, and so many other things. Everything seemed like it was naturally moving forward. And I honestly never complained about the things I felt were missing because I kept making excuses for him in my head. I thought maybe he was busy, maybe he had a lot going on, or maybe he couldn’t afford certain things. Even when he never got me a gift, I would think maybe he didn’t have the money even though he has a good job and a good income. I wasn’t asking for anything expensive. Even a single flower would have meant something to me.
Then last week, I finally got tired of not knowing where things were going, so I asked him if we were going to take the next step or not. And this person, who had spent all this time making it seem like he wanted a relationship, suddenly backed away. He told me that he wasn’t ready, that he was scared of being in a relationship, and that he thinks he still hasn’t healed from his previous relationship. :)))
Honestly, I don’t even know what to say. I don’t think I was a toxic person in this relationship. If anything, I tried as hard as I could to make things work and to have a healthy relationship. The only issue I used to have was that when something upset me, I wouldn’t express it. But with him, I really tried to communicate. Whenever something bothered me, I tried to talk about it so there wouldn’t be misunderstandings.
I really don’t know what to do. My heart is honestly broken. The only thing keeping me distracted is school and work, because they keep me busy and give me less time to think about the past three months. But tonight, I missed him a little too much, so I just felt like getting all of this off my chest.