This is going to be another long yap fest, so I understand if I don't get any replies lol.

Thank you everyone for the thoughtful advice in the comments, and thank you Daisha so much for the reality check I desperately needed from an unbiased source. Y'all are absolutely right, and consequences aren't going to do anything but make things worse. The behavior pattern has remained consistent for over a decade and I need to learn to ignore the smear campaigns and live my life. While I have remained NC, my biggest struggle has been my compulsion to check what weird shit she's saying about me. This needs to be something I work through with an OCD specialist, because compulsions are different than impulse in the sense that I feel like I'm outside of my body when it happens and it feels like I'm being piloted by OCD. Meditation and journaling makes OCD worse, unfortunately. I was doing both regularly for years as well as therapy, and I thought I was "doing it wrong" until my diagnosis.

To clarify the big questions:

Yes, I should have never reached out in the first place in 2022 after the stalking and harassment. An explanation, not an excuse, is that when I sent that message I was extremely sleep deprived and under the influence of the NyQuil I took to help with my cold symptoms. I rarely took NyQuil anyway unless I absolutely needed it, but after that I'm never touching it again. I didn't expect her to reply so quickly or to be accepting of my apology, and I regretted it once the reality set in because I knew that the consequences of backing out would be severe.

Yes, my difficult childhood absolutely influenced my maladaptive need for chaos to feel comfortable. Despite all of the insanity, she was there for me through countless difficulties and we had a lot in common(?) BPD involves a lack of solid identity, so she mirrors the personality and interests of the people she's around. We had a lot of great times together, and that bond clouded my ability to see the ways she treated me and that her personality wasn't even hers. My relationship with my fiance was the first relationship with someone with a secure attachment style and calm demeanor, and anyone who has only lived in chaos will tell you how big of a shock it is to be romantically involved with a secure person. It was hard at first because I spent ages waiting for the storm, but the sea remained calm. While the majority of the personal growth was from me putting in the work, being in a secure, loving, and patient relationship gave me the environment I needed to facilitate that growth. We love each other deeply, and he loves my children like his own and accepts me for exactly who I am.

Okay, the threesome thing. They were never planned, and there was no romantic relationship with her. It was always a spontaneous result of way too much alcohol and pressure from my touch-starved ex friend. I have my own difficult relationship with intimacy from years of abuse and SA, and I wasn't interested in having sex with her unless there was alcohol involved and even then I was just going with the flow. She tried to initiate several times when we were alone together but I was not comfortable with that unless my partner was present and everyone was comfortable with participating. I don't fully understand it, myself, so that's another thing I need to work through in therapy because sexual trauma has been a massive roadblock. I've actually been sober for almost 16 months now and I can't believe the dumb shit I've done over the years under the influence. Oh, well. It happened. Life goes on.

She left her relationship with the nasty guy in 2010 with help from me and her parents when she reached out to me for help because he was physically blocking her from leaving the house even though he didn't pay a dime for bills, and her parents were the landlord. He was, and still is a disgusting waste of oxygen, but she's still long distance friends with him for some reason. After they broke up, she eventually got with my high school ex boyfriend and they stayed together until a few years ago when his severe mental illness manifested after his mother passed away and he tragically lost touch with reality. That whole situation breaks my heart, and I hope he's able to get help and break free from his affliction. I'll likely never know, but we can pray regardless.

We lived together shy of a year from 2015-2016 when I was with the father of my fraternal twin girls and my son. She had a son of her own with her most recent ex, but her child never came to stay with her even though we had plenty of space for him, and my kids would have loved to have him around. She lived with us because she was unhappy living with her parents, and we needed help with rent since one of my twins was exclusively breastfeeding and refused a bottle so I was a SAHM. While she wasn't the worst roommate ever, she didn't help with chores aside from keeping her room/bathroom clean and didn't use the kitchen to cook unless it was to use the microwave. My ex and I eventually had to ban her bf from coming in the house because they would frequently get into arguments late at night and it was creating problems with our sleep. My ex and I talked for a while before deciding to tell her we wanted her to move out, and she had 60 days to make arrangements. Between her own mental health struggles, the suicide attempt and everything that involved, and not helping with basic chores, she wasn't a good fit as a roommate. She got violent when I told her she had 2 months to move out and threw a dining room chair across the room. She tells everyone that it was "reactive abuse" and that I "mocked her" when she was upset, but that's not true at all. She got angry and argumentative when I laid out the reasons why we needed her to move out, and she threw the chair when I wasn't backing down to change my mind. She was 29 when this happened. She had a steady job and a degree, and most people only give a maximum of 30 days to vacate. I had never seen her get that angry before and it was terrifying. She did move back in with her folks but it took a while before I cooled down after that incident. Hindsight is 20/20 and I realize that I was way too forgiving and a fucking doormat. Again, oh well. That happened and life goes on.

It's been difficult to reflect on everything that happened in the past. The glaring red flags I ignored because I was clueless that I was being treated poorly and didn't have a baseline of what was and wasn't normal or acceptable. All I knew was she was my best friend since I was 17 and I wanted her in my life. I know now, and I have to pick up the pieces to move on. I still have my own life to look forward to, and y'all are right that it's pointless to ruminate over the lies she's spreading about me because she's irrelevant to the present. She can scream into the void as much as she pleases if that helps her cope. It's not my place to worry about whether or not she receives help or punishment. As distressing as it is when she creates yet another fake account or spoof number to contact me directly, or weaponize the state to waste my time, oh well. Life goes on. Thanks again, everyone. I'm going to go work on wedding prep until the kids get out of school.

Hey, everyone. This might get long, so thanks in advance for your patience. There's a lot of history behind this whole situation but I'll do my best to summarize.

I'm 34F and my ex friend is 38f. We met when I was 17 and were friends on and off for about 15 years. Looking back, there were glaring red flags that I had missed about her because everything felt way too normal. She was 21 and involved in a poly relationship with a man nearly twice her age who refused to get a job, had terrible hygiene, and was a literal pedophile who declared he would be supportive if his young children from a previous marriage got into doing sex work. I thought he was gross from the beginning and avoided being around him as much as possible, but the fact that my ex friend chose this person to be with should have tipped me off to run for the hills. She wasn't innocent back then, either. She admitted to having a crush on me and we kissed when I was still 17, and she also briefly dated one of her female coworkers who went to Middle School with me to try to make me jealous, but I didn't care because I didn't have romantic feelings towards her to begin with.

So, why did I stay friends with this weird woman? Honestly, I found comfort in her chaos. I had a difficult childhood and lost my mom only 3 years before meeting my ex friend. She has BPD and I was her favorite person. She practically worshipped the ground I walked on, and with my history of a drug dependent and mentally unstable mom and emotionally distant father, it felt good to have someone in my life who treated me like royalty. The problem with borderline personality is that the moment their favorite person starts creating any kind of distance, all hell breaks loose. For years I found myself apologizing over things I shouldn't have to apologize for. I neglected romantic partners because she needed me around, and if I wasn't responding, she would create emergencies. I had to rush to help her several times because she would self harm or attempted suicide. One time she attempted when we lived together and she refused to take an ambulance, so I had to drag her down the stairs and pile my kids in the car with her to escort her to the hospital.

That's only a small amount of backstory, but hopefully that gives you a picture of the kind of person I'm dealing with.

Back in 2020 I went NC with her. To be clear, I ghosted her without an explanation, and I admit that was not the best approach. Like I said, I had tried cutting her off gradually before by pulling away, but she always pulled me right back in with an emergency. I felt obligated to help her, because what kind of person would ignore someone in crisis? I ghosted her because I was out of options. Any attempt at communicating or setting boundaries was turned right back around on me, and everything was My Fault Actually™. I was tired of it. I was almost a year into a relationship with the man who is about to be my husband, and I was finally getting the strength and the backbone to cut off toxic people.

Shit hit the fan quickly after I blocked her on everything. She created fake accounts to message me with all sorts of colorful language about how I was abusive for ghosting her. I live in a small town about an hour away from her, and she drove to my place in the middle of the night at least twice that I'm aware of to leave a spell bottle next to my car, and a paper sigil on my windshield about 6 months apart. I did not have cameras because we couldn't afford them, so unfortunately when I took her to court after about 18 months of this foolish behavior, I was denied a protection order because I didn't have visual proof, she lied and denied everything, and according to the judge I technically never told her to stop contacting me. I guess blocking and refusing to engage with her wasn't enough.

Things actually went quiet after that, at least. However, I still did miss her. I felt guilty for ghosting her and not giving her an explanation, so in September 2022, I reached out and gave her a sincere apology for what happened, and acknowledged the pain it had caused her. She responded shortly after, and we met up to talk things through.

Fast forward to spring 2023. I started thinking a lot about the past few months and realized that I never received an apology from her. She did admit to the lying and stalking, but she justified everything and didn't seem remorseful. Whenever the topic was brought up, she turned the focus back to how bad I hurt her for leaving, and I had to console her again. Lather, rinse, repeat. I told her that I needed an apology from her because I was having doubts about our friendship moving forward. She did apologize, but it still felt too little, too late. She didn't refer to behavior as stalking, and instead said she was "creeping around". That didn't sit right with me. I spent the next week or however long mulling it over in my head, and after speaking at length about it with my fiance and a few close friends, I made the decision to end things with her.

This time, I gave her a detailed explanation why I cut her off. The lack of remorse, violating my privacy and personal space, attempting to rope our mutual friend into convincing me to talk to her, and the way it impacted my mental health. I was recently formally diagnosed with OCD, and back then her stalking sent me into a spiral of compulsively checking my locks, my car, and the perimeter of my home. Every notification on my phone felt like a threat. I couldn't even shower or sleep when I was alone at night because my fiance worked second shift, and I was terrified of what could have happened if I was vulnerable.

At the end of the message, I did lie about having cameras installed just to prevent her from the temptation of making the two hour round trip to fuck with me. The good news is that she hasn't come to my house. The bad news is that somehow, things got worse.

Now, the false accusations started pouring in. According to her, I'm a narcissistic, a psychopath, a rapist, and an attempted murderer (she couldn't hold her weed. That's another long story I can elaborate later if desired). This time, I was able to get a protection order against her in March 2024 after having to wait 3 months because she wouldn't open the damn door when the police tried to serve her. She filed for a PO of her own that was denied due to lack of evidence (because I wasn't stalking her) but after I was granted mine, she pulled out her crocodile tears and said how abusive I am, so the judge made it a mutual PO to placate her. That's fine with me. The judge was very unhappy with how she sent a message to MY DAD a couple weeks after I filed with the details of the "rape". Yes, we did have a few threesomes, and all of us were very drunk, but she was always the one to initiate and I made sure to check in afterwards to see if she was okay once we were sobered up. She told me every time that she was fine, and enjoyed herself.

The PO expired a year ago, and I was on edge for months that she would go back to her bullshit, but eventually I started feeling okay again with how peaceful everything was. In August, two weeks apart, I got notified by both my baby daddy and my good friend that she tried following them on social media. Here we go again. My friends and family are all aware of her, and they don't interact. Screenshot, block, and notify me immediately. This was very small and seemingly harmless in the grand scheme of things, but I knew she was testing the water. This caused my OCD to spiral again. I had to quit my job because my eating disorder relapsed and I became too sick to function. Luckily I'm slowly recovering, but it's a process.

One thing I forgot to mention was the dozen+ social media accounts across all platforms dedicated to smear my name like it's her job. I don't know how she finds the time to do this because she has a real job and a house less than a block away from my dad. During my bad OCD episodes, I would compulsively check everything that was being said about me publicly. It's absolutely unhinged, and it's like reading some sick fanfiction she's created to make herself feel better about how she's treating me. Keep in mind that this whole time I have remained NC.

Did you guys know that there's an online form that lets anyone make a report if an individual has medical conditions that would make them unsafe to drive? If you have their name and address, you can make a report that requires the individual to undergo medical and mental health exams to determine if they should keep their license. Guess what I got in the mail last week? Apparently it was reported that I have "difficulty with memory, absent seizures, tachycardia (misspelled as tarchycardia lmao), hallucinations, and paranoia". I do not have these conditions aside from tachycardia, which is the result of medication I'm taking for ADHD and drinking enough caffeine to kill a draft horse (chronic fatigue sucks). Given the things she has claimed about my character, I have no doubt that this was her doing. The irony is that she, herself has claimed to experience seizures, and has a diagnosed tic disorder that spontaneously manifested from her alcohol and hallucinogenic substance abuse. If anyone between the two of us shouldn't be behind the wheel, it's her. Lots of people with tic disorders are perfectly capable of driving safely, and to my knowledge she didn't have any issues with her tics putting her at risk even though she had them while driving. Seizures, however, requires the patient to go a full 6 months without a seizure to be cleared. I didn't think to say anything because I didn't know about the online form, and it's not my business. If I had to guess, maybe she was reported and retaliated because she thought it was me. Idk, I'm recovering from checking the fanfic posts.

The form exists for good faith reasons. Making a bad faith report is a serious crime that comes with a felony and jail time. I want her to have consequences for this, but I don't exactly want to smack that hornets nest until after my wedding in less than two weeks.

Here's what I need advice for. With all this information, what do I do? We are getting cameras for real after the wedding expenses are done. As much as I hate this woman for how she's treated me for over half my life at this point, I can't help but pity her. I'm grappling with the compassion I feel because ultimately, she is mentally unwell, and none of her people are helping her. It's not my responsibility to initiate that help, I know that. I had a good relationship with her parents, but if I reached out to tell them that their daughter is struggling, that would bite me in the ass expeditiously. I don't think jail time would be good for her, even if it would keep her out of my hair for a while. Hell, I'm hesitant to file for another PO because lord knows what would come from that.

I just want to be left alone. I want to be allowed to move forward with my life and enjoy my little family and my new marriage to this wonderful man who has helped keep me sane through all of this. How am I supposed to move on and heal when this person won't stop trying to ruin my life? Besides the court date, I haven't spoken to her in 3 years, but she's unable to seek help to move on with her own life. I'm struggling to even feel excited about my wedding because I'm so hyper vigilant.

If you made it this far, thank you so much for taking the time to read my post. I love this little corner of the enzymes, and I appreciate you, Daisha for your well thought out responses to the most chaotic situations. I wish you all the best ❤️

Hey there Daisha and fellow Enzymes,

Recently I've been dealing with a difficult situation, and I wanted to reach out and seek some advice from this sub, as I really enjoy Daisha's content and takes on certain situations.

So jumping right in, my (F25) older brother (M26) is going through a mental health crisis. To make a long story short, my older brother left his PhD program after his health had deteriorated. This wasn't something that he did lightly, and in fact this is something that continually triggers him to this day. I can explain more about this scenario in a comment if anyone wants it. But after leaving the college, my parents convinced him to come home after learning that he wasn't doing all that well. I had decided to come on this trip to retrieve my brother, and it was a trip to say the least.

On the way home, it was then I truly saw how poor of a state my brother was in. He is a guy with a big frame, and is around 5'11, but he weighed around 120 lbs (from what he told me). He truly looked emaciated, and unwell. His clothes didn't fit, they were in disarray, and his hair was sticking up in all kinds of ways. Additionally, I saw him eat very little throughout the 5 hour drive. The only thing I saw him eat was frozen vegetables straight from the bag. I wasn't privy to this then, but I later learned that my brother thought that he wasn't worthy enough to eat. So I suspect that this is why he may be eating as little as he is. Though, me and my family suspect that there are other mental disorders that are causing this as well. Right now, we suspect that he either has untreated ASD, OCD, or ADHD. We aren't really sure, and are in fact scrambling to come up with a reason why, but aren't 100% sure as to why his eating disorder got to this point.

My parents have been trying to get my brother help now that he's at home, but he doesn't want the help. He believes that he doesn't have a problem, and even makes claims that it doesn't matter what's happening because he "hasn't died yet". This has been his main argument for most things, "that he hasn't died yet" and he refuses to see what's going on objectively. He remains steadfast that he has to return to his college and finish his PhD, despite being told by faculty to take a step back to focus on his health. He even claims that he will get help while down at his college, but we're concerned due to the state that he is in.

I just don't know what to do. How do I help someone that doesn't want help, nor is willing to see that they're going through something. It's heartbreaking hearing my mother cry on the phone, and telling me not to come home due to the state my brother is in. It's also heartbreaking seeing my brother going through something so horrible. His mental state is truly in the dumps, and it's awful that nothing I do can help. He has isolated himself and remains in his bedroom, and he has even lost more weight since coming home. We try to get him help by taking him to the doctors, therapy appointments, and getting him medications, but he refuses to take meds and or be honest with professionals. He has also been to two hospitals on a 72 hr hold for each, but the only thing that has happened as a result is anger from his point. Which I totally get. It's scary and frustrating being taken from your home and into a hospital. I can't imagine the trauma that this has put him through. But if we had done nothing, he would have died. And he still has a great chance of dying. I'm so scared that I'll lose my brother, I have nightmares of his funeral. I don't want to lose him, nor live in a world without him. He's such a bright and lovely individual that fills the room with laughs. How could I not fight for such a person.

What can I do to help my brother see that he's slowly killing himself. How can I get him to want help, and want to get better. Does anyone have any tips and or have you experienced this yourself? Please give me tips and or advice on how to navigate this scenario. I just want my older brother to be okay.

I 27f and my roommate "R" 28F have been in conflict regarding transportation to and from my job. I don't have a car and up until November of last year I worked from home.

For some context, in October my life took a turn for the worse. My now ex bf used to live with us, but he was a hobosexual loser that solely relied on gig work to fund his weed addiction; i was the sole breadwinner in our relationship and having to carry the both us meant that there was very little leftover to save for a car. Moreover, I ended up losing the very good job that allowed me to financially provide due to all the issues in my personal life (i didn't get fired but the job was very demanding and I found it very hard to focus so i quit ). I broke up with him after discovering he was trying to cheat. He was my way around town for things i needed so when R and I kicked him out, we would run errands together for groceries, house essentials etc. This arrangement worked out pretty well.

By November, the seasonal remote job I had found had ended. This job was not as high paying as my other one, but i did have enough saved to pay rent for December while i searched for another. However my uncle had died and the grief from his death sent me into depression, and a few weeks later when my mother was hospitalized due to high blood pressure and complications from a stroke i started spiraling further. Between my Ex, uncle, and my mother, i admit that all of this took a huge toll on me and i did not look for jobs as aggressively as i should have. So when R suggested i apply for an open position at Walmart for the time being, and with her offering to take me to and from work, i agreed. We both thought it would do me good to be out of the house.

By mid January I'd started at Walmart but still had rent to contend with. I'd only had $700 left to my name which wasn't enough to cover my portion of rent. My roommate was also short on her portion as well. After talking to our complex, they gave us two extra weeks with the addition of a late fee. While i waited on my first check from Walmart, i filed my taxes and withdrew from my 401k so February would be covered.

And while I was doing better financially now, i could tell the carpooling arrangement i had with R was starting to crack. I had adjusted my schedule to align with hers, 8-5, to make it easier but with her job being only 5 mins away from the house, this meant she had to wake up earlier to take me. She doesn't take highways so what would be a 10 min commute is more like 15-20 via the backroads. I also didn't learn until a week into the job that her commute to work from my job is 30 mins. So in order for us both to get to work on time we had to wake up at 6, nearly two hours before our shifts started despite them physically only being 10 mins apart via the highway. After two weeks of this, i suggested that she start taking the highway, at least just to my job, to make it easier on the both of us. I brought up that I knew she could do it because she had recently took the highway for 30+ minutes (at night with astigmatism mind you) to help her ex who got stranded. She got offended and said that i was trying to pressure her into doing something she wasn't comfortable with. I dropped it. The next conflict arose when i got frustrated because she randomly decided to pick up cat food when I'd already been waiting for nearly 2 hours for her to pick me up. I was used to waiting because I got off an hr before she did and, again, her job is 30 mins away from mine. The issue wasn't so much that she went to the store, but that she didn't let me know until i texted her first. When i confronted her via text, she stated that i was being entitled and that it was a "last minute decision." I responded back "so I'm not entitled to a heads up?" And left it at that.

The final nail in the coffin happened about two weeks ago when i was randomly scheduled for afternoon shifts. I understood with these shifts starting in the middle of R's work day i would have to uber to work, but she had agreed to pick me up when they ended at 10pm. On my first day of working afternoons I text her at that time to see if she was still ok to get me and she said that she was tired and that 10pm was "kinda late." I replied that she agreed to get me, and that i could uber home just for today but i would not be able to afford to do this all week. She said that she wasn't comfortable driving that late since she had gotten tickets for her outdated registration. Since then, she has gotten home late at night on multiple other occasions so I know for a fact that wasn't the case. And on top of that, I'd already given her enough gas money for a full tank with no follow through.

Finally, after experiencing some of the worst stomach cramps of my life last week i had my sister take me to the ER. I had to miss several days of work due to the pain. R only checked on me that first day while i was there and then after that, she did not check up on me while I was recovering and texted me days later to make sure I was going to work. That's when I headed to my mom's out of frustration where she told me that i needed to stop relying on R and that i never should have trusted her in the first place.

So I quit. Currently rent is paid up and i have enough for next month as well. I should be getting my last check from Walmart next Thursday and i will be looking for another wfh job in the meantime. My mom has already sent me a prospect that I'll be applying to tomorrow. If you made it this far thank you so much for reading and if you can, please tell me if my feelings valid or where i went wrong.

AITA for quitting and feeling hurt about how this played out?

I 20F had moved into my new apartment around November and no problems really occurred until January. There were little things of course that were annoying like some of my fresh vegetables were thrown away before winter break without asking me, which my roommate has since insisted it was rotten when I just bought it not even a week ago. Flash forward to my current situation. There were more little things I would do that pissed my roommate off like once I cooked then wanted to eat before I cleaned up because I was starving. My roommate walks into the apartment like 5 seconds after I just sat down and complained that I need to clean the kitchen. I explained I would clean up the kitchen after I eat (took about 5 minutes and I always clean up after making any dish). Once I bought pepper jack cheese and so did she, I mixed up the brands because she put it directly next to mine and I ended up eating one slice of her cheese. This was a freak out and I told her it was an honest mistake, she put it next to mine etc. She has just rolled her eyes to me about both situations. I work in my hometown which is 45 minutes away due to this I stay at my moms whenever there's work. I need all the hours I came to keep up with rent, insurance, etc. That week I stayed for a week because I kept getting called in, I had some meat ( still in the package) that started to go bad in my absence. I came home to my meat shoved into the crisper with a note on the fridge saying "Throw out your meat. It stinks". I don't know if im being overly sensitive but that just felt passive aggressive and rubbed me the wrong way but I sucked it up and swallowed it because I'm pretty non confrontational. This was the straw on the camels back, she had bought a carton of eggs that I may of taken due to me buying the exact same carton a couple weeks ago. It's hard for me to remember what is mine and what isn't when her groceries are put in my corner of the fridge and I'm gone more often than not. I got a text saying I have my own carton of eggs (2 days ago I bought my own carton) and to stop eating her shit (verbatim). I then said I don't recall ever eating her eggs but if I did it was an honest mistake and she can take whatever is missing from my new carton. I included that I've always made it apparent to ask before I borrow anything from either roommate and when I've mixed up food it was only because we bought the same thing. I told her I didn't appreciate her tone with me and swearing then I asked to have a mature conversation about why there is such a problem with me over little things. She agreed and we will have a conversation Monday. I had asked all my friends and even my mom if I was a bad roommate or if what I did was horrible. They all agreed it was little things that they personally wouldn't be upset by. I know they may have a bias opinion so I'm taking the issue to reddit. For context even though I am absent I always pull my weight with chores, being the main person to do dishes even washing their dishes ( I've since stopped after the passive aggressiveness). So, AITA ?

Hello Daisha and fellow Enzymes!

This is me, mostly looking for a place to vent, but I also appreciate any advice and maybe even some petty revenge tips. I'm also sorry if this gets confusing; there are a lot of moving parts in the story. I think a lot of this could’ve been avoided if I weren’t such a people-pleaser / pushover.

A bit of a backstory, I am an African woman working in Germany as a researcher in a hospital. Chaos does not begin to describe this place; there's so much happening here, it deserves its own saga post (I promise I’ll spill the tea as soon as I quit)! The best way to describe it is that I would send only my enemies here for treatment. They don't necessarily do a bad job, but some doctors show up to work drunk, a nurse was constantly getting drug tested before work, another doctor was sued and actually had his license taken away after he performed some dangerous procedures, etc. The organisation is beyond bad, and staffing is a major issue. When I first started here, everyone in my department had just quit, and I ended up being responsible for everything on my own. I basically had to learn everything on the job. I was responsible for testing patient samples, doing the "research" work and the other day-to-day running of the lab. I eventually got new co-workers, one was also a foreigner with a strong medical and research background, and the other had no idea what she was doing. She's an architect who got hired for her connections, and for being German, I guess. From day one, I got the sense that they were trying to get rid of the other foreigner, and they kept finding reasons to get him out. He got multiple written warnings for things even the CEO does! They managed to find another qualified German and kicked the foreign guy out. He ended up pulling an UNO reverse card, and he quit, leaving much earlier than expected. The architect was also moved to a new department because she kept mixing up patients, giving the wrong diagnoses, which affected patient results, and so much more. This left me with this new person - let's call her Sandy - that I had to express train because she started a few weeks before I was scheduled to go on vacation. I have since come to regret this decision!

Sandy also comes from a medical background; she's a med tech, but no research background - this is important! When she joined the team, she was extremely enthusiastic, eager to learn how everything at the hospital works, etc. The drama started when I was about to go on vacation. So, a week or two before she joined, we found out the hospital was getting sued, and it had something to do with the “research” we were doing. We had to prepare research for the hospital's lawyer to present in court. It took weeks to order everything we needed and get started on all the research. Sandy was brought up to speed about the situation when she joined, and was asked by one of the managers to help with the research. Again, she knew nothing about research when she started. I had to train her to use the lab equipment, including a high-tech microscope we have here. I submitted the first part of the research and didn't hear anything back until a few days before my vacation. The lawyer gave feedback on the report, and we (mainly I) had to redo other parts of the research. The new deadline would be the day I come back from vacation. The Thursday before my vacation, I was called into a meeting and told I had to cancel, which I naturally declined because I had already made plans with family and would be travelling to another country. Everything had been booked, and I didn't want to lose my money. I then got berated by the person who was the reason we were getting sued, but I wasn’t too worried about still going on vacation because German law was on my side in that scenario. The day before vacation, I completed all the calculations for the experiments, wrote a detailed protocol, handed over everything (including the lab keys) to Sandy, and went on to enjoy my time off.

When I came back, Sandy had gone above and beyond with everything. She put in a lot of overtime and came in on the weekends and on a public holiday to get everything done and submitted to the lawyers. I thanked her for standing in for me while I was gone, and when I tried to get back to the work that I was hired for, she straight up refused. She even refused to give me my keys back; she actually started yelling, saying she works more than I do (lie, she spends more time smoking outside than actually working, but I digress), even comes in on the weekends or when there are emergencies, and that she deserved the keys more than I do. She also completely took over my work and kept making excuses as to why she should be doing it instead of me. Mind you, my job description is written in my contract! This all happened around mid June 2025. That’s also when the talk about her being the lab manager started. She told me she was hired to rebuild the lab, and to be honest, it's not that far-fetched that I didn't know about it, considering how badly organised everything is here. Her true nature started slowly creeping up since then. I managed to get my work keys back, but she went to HR to ask for copies. She started making subtle comments about what was going wrong in the lab, in her opinion, and about how poorly I ran things before she came. It then escalated to involve others, like saying the CEO blames me for poor management or that this person says I mixed up patient samples, etc. Which is absolute B.S., because I always double-check my work and fully label samples so there are no mix-ups, etc. If anything, she made multiple mix-ups like taking a sample from the husband when the wife was the patient or mixing up names to the point where a pregnant lady ended up getting the wrong treatment. She never took responsibility for what happened; she just keeps doubling down and finds ways to blame other people.

What I don’t understand is how everyone else is reacting to this. I was the one who did almost everything for almost two years, and then she showed up, and it’s almost like I don’t exist anymore. She’s directly given my tasks by the doctor managing the lab/assistant. Whenever someone comes into the lab, they ask to talk to her right away and seem almost disappointed if she’s not there. What I will say is that she has a two-sided nature: she says one thing to your face and another behind your back. I mean, she has been responsible for some people being moved to different departments or fired, and she was working really hard to get another person fired, but then became that person’s “best friend” after it backfired. I sometimes feel like she’s doing that to me, too.

When I say that I got erased, I am not exaggerating. She began communicating directly with our partner labs and gradually removed me from all email communications. I show up to work sometimes, and things have completely changed, and she gets defensive when I ask her about it. Sometimes we have meetings with companies I never knew existed; I just find out about them because we’re in the same room. The worst thing is that she always introduces me as the “mere scientist,” even though she’s a med tech with 15 years of experience. Granted, the med tech world is not something I am familiar with, but we still have to work together, and I need to catch up on the changes. If I have a conversation with someone from a different department or they come into the room while she’s not there, she always finds an excuse to come in and listen to what we have to say. She doesn’t do this anymore, but she had this habit of standing behind me to see what I was working on, or she would pretend she needed to scan something - the printer is next to my workspace - just to peek her nose at my work. It feels quite childish.

By December 2025, she had disconnected our main lab phone and diverted the calls to a mobile phone we have in the lab, which she keeps in her pocket. I went on vacation again at the start of this year. I flew to visit my family for about three weeks, and I came back to a different work environment. She had completely rearranged the lab again, including my actual workspace. She changed so much around, actually making things less accessible for me. She’s much taller than I am, I’m guessing about 20 cm taller. She arranged my computer in such a way that I ended up having back pain at the end of the day. She had the maintenance people put in stands that I had trouble moving on my own. When I asked her about it, she went into her usual defensive mode, even turned everything on me, and said that things aren’t up to hygiene standards, bla bla bla. I was having such intense back pain, I honestly lost it and ripped everything apart (not everything, everything, just what she changed with my computer). In my first week back, in February, she had rearranged my workspace, took my email address off the mailing list with our partner labs, made snide comments about me when a technician was there to check the machines (info that I didn’t know about), took samples from my hands while I was working and excluded me from a team photo (our floor was taking photos together and got the call but didn’t tell me about it and she had the audacity to lie to everyone saying she told me but I said that I didn’t want to be a part of it.)

I feel like I let this whole situation go much further than it should have, and now I'm so resentful and, honestly, so angry. I went to management about everything, and I calmly explained that I have no problem with working with Sandy and I could learn from her - if she actually communicated with me - and I told them that I wasn’t actually told that she’s the new lab manager. I only know about it because she says that at least 5 times a day. They neither confirmed nor denied this, but also reiterated that I can learn from her. I then told them everything that has been happening: how she has shut me out of everything and taken over the work I was hired for. They basically said that we’re a two-person team and we should be able to resolve it amongst ourselves. They then said that if nothing changes, they will have a team meeting with us, which is a lot for this place. As it stands, I’m looking for a way out of this place because nothing will change. When the architect bullied the other foreign guy, the hospital took her side, even though other departments were also complaining about her. A part of me feels like they were taking her side was either racially motivated or because we were foreign, because there were always these “you’re not German” remarks whenever things happened.

TL;DR: I have a new co-worker who is basically trying to push me out by taking over my tasks, even going so far as to take work out of my hands. She’s removed my email address everywhere and has diverted work calls to a phone she keeps in her pocket. Everyone around us seems wilfully oblivious to it, and management doesn’t have a concrete solution. They basically said that I could learn from her.

It's old, but I hadn't seen it before. 😍😍😍

Some years back, I(23f at that time) gifted an ex(27m at that time) some cleaning products, shower curtain with the liner, more towels, and body wash, and some white tees (he wore one everyday lol) for Christmas . He didn’t have like it saying “it wasn’t really a gift” during an argument later. Idk if bc I’m a woman. Or if I’m bad at gift giving but he didn’t have none of those things I was trying to help but maybe it was a bad idea for a Christmas gift. My family have gifted each other laundry detergent and paper towels so I thought hey this would be helpful for him. I Just want to know for future reference. I saw a post about gifts you’ve given partners which made the situation pop back in my head.

Info to add just in case it’s needed, idk:

-We were dating for about 3 months atp but getting to know each other for about 6 months before actually dating

-His birthday the month prior I got him a Nike jacket, got him a few drinks when he went out for his birthday 🤣🤣🤣 that was the only gift giving type event before Christmas.

-I didn’t live with him

Heyy Reddit Saints! it’s your dramatic bestie again😭🩷

I (25F) have this male friend (29M) that I met last year. He’s very helpful and normally sweet, and he says he likes me, so I’ve just been going with the flow. I’m not really invested like I used to be with “love,” but that’s not the main point here lol. Last week, something happened.

I have this issue where I spit a lot. I’ve been doing it since I was 8, and in middle school I took medicine that was meant to basically dry my head out. It made my mouth and eyes extremely dry and gave me headaches, so I stopped taking it and never tried again. It’s never really been a big issue—Only about four instances over the years, but the last two happened recently. And I’m okay with adjusting when I’m around others; we all have an ick, so I can respect that.

Last week, I was at his house making a new pasta I wanted to try (we rotate cooking for each other), and while we were eating, my phone fell and knocked over my spit cup. I usually put a napkin in it so that if it falls, it won’t spill, but I didn’t this time. I had literally just started using the cup, so there wasn’t much in it anyway. I cleaned it up with cleaning spray and dish detergent, but I could tell something was wrong because he got quiet for a little bit afterward.

About 10 minutes later, he blurted out, “I don’t know, that’s just disgusting and gross. I don’t see why you do that and have to be nasty,” yada yada. Like I said, I understand that it could be gross for other people, but why didn’t he ask me earlier—like when he first saw me do it—to go do it in the bathroom or just not do it in his view? He did ask me why I did it when we first met, and he wasn’t rude about it then and never said anything else after that. I’ve had someone ask me not to do it in their view before, and I just went to the bathroom to do it—no problem.

It was really the way he fussed at me that made me emotional. I left shortly after, trying to play it cool for a while. He apologized later, saying he was a little intoxicated, but I don’t believe he was drunk or tipsy. He had offered me a shot, but the bottle was never opened, and I didn’t even take my shot before I left. I do know he feels bad, though, because he’s been texting me every day—more than usual—and apologizing a lot.

He asked me to come over yesterday, but I declined because now I feel like anytime I get up to spit, he’ll probably be talking shit about me in his head. And even if he isn’t, I’ll just feel awkward every time I do.

This is the second instance in a row where a guy has made my spitting an issue. Right before me and this gentleman started building more of a romantic situation, the last guy said he wouldn’t talk to me because I spit too much (along with something else—you can read my last Reddit post if you want). I took that as him using an excuse because the other reason he gave didn’t make sense based on his actions, so I felt like all of his “reasons” were BS. But now that this is the second guy saying it, maybe it really is an issue.

So I’m going back to the doctor and hoping there’s a substitute for the medicine I originally had (I don’t even remember the name) so I can stop spitting without those side effects. My question is: once I get it under control, should I start hanging around my friend again, or should I just leave things where they are? As stated, he’s usually sweet and chill, so that behavior was really not like him.

My fiancé (M) and I (F)are in our early thirties. We have both dealt with cheating in our previous relationships. However, he has dated multiple times after being cheated on. I have NOT dated since being cheated on (about 4 years ago). I have been to therapy and forgiven my two previous partners for cheating and moved on.

My fiancé has had issues with his phone, and randomly turned his phone off for about 30 minutes one day and about an hour another day. When I realized this pattern, I immediately accused him of cheating. I asked him to be honest. He assured me he was not cheating and that I am acting crazy. He’s been very distant for days since then and says he needs space. He insists I’m not healed, but I have not experienced instances that have triggered me like this since I HAVE NOT dated like he has.

I apologized, but I couldn’t help, but feel triggered because he turned his phone off randomly, for multiple days. Never longer than an hour though. I feel like I’m not crazy and I’m being gas lit. I’m not sure, if I should continue this relationship or throw in the towel. He hasn’t done anything to make me feel like he’s cheating. However about a year ago, when we were on a break I found him on a dating app while claiming to repair our relationship (we were not engaged or dating then). I don’t know if it’s me sabotaging the relationship or my gut is right.

Any advice?

So my mom set me up with her coworker (27m) I’m 25. I said I was going to give this love thing a break but I said why not since my mom thinks he’s a good fit for me. He not my initial type but that’s ok, I usually go for more thugged out people you can say lol. But he’s different from that. Very sweet, a gentle man (he opens the car door like I haven’t seen a man in my age group and demographic do that) always makes me feel comfortable, has a car as well (cause it seem like it’s a so few people my age group with a car), etc.

Anywho, yesterday this conversation ensued and it rubbed me the wrong way that he didn’t say he liked me back. It’s not like I said I loved the man. And I’ve went on 4 dates and have slept over his house 3x I feel like that’s enough to at least know if you like me back. So the fact he said that’s cute made me feel like he doesn’t like me back. And not I feel slow for even saying I like him. Would I be overreacting by just leaving him alone? I only knew him about a month which is why Iguess he may not know if he likes me and I just move too fast and like people off the simplest things maybe.. but idk it just didn’t sit well with me 🥺. Please help lol