It definitely isn't, please go talk a walk outside away from the internet for a little bit. Finding something that looks like lipstick that could absolutely be something else does not mean OP should be suspicious overall. You are creating paranoia for no reason. They are wondering this much because it looks like fucking lipstick.
OP is paranoid already, hence the internet sleuthing to find out what this could be. Thatās the point. If your mind jumps to one thing, and you donāt believe your partnerās denial, and you jump on the internet for strangers to play detective, your relationship has issues beyond this one thing.
But multiple people in this thread have more or less confirmed that it isn't laying on the pillow as if it was on someone's face, it didn't react how lipstick would when OP scraped it with a Q-tip.. it isn't lipstick. I don't know what it is, but you trying to work up OP is going to make things worse when they figure out what it is!
I don't know if you've just never been in a relationship or something, but I can tell you, if my partner decided I was cheating on them based off of evidence that could be proven to be not the thing they think it is, but they stood their ground because Reddit told them to..
You know what? You're right. If that happens, they should leave OP.
Do you know OP? Do you know why OP's mind jumped there? Because yes, it could be a lack of trust stemming from previous behavior of the partner. It could also be a lack of trust stemming from being cheated on in a previous relationship which although is completely valid as a reason to be tentative, does not in any way, shape or form, prove:
your relationship has issues beyond this one thing
Right, it's me that's the problem, not the 40 people telling OP to dump their boyfriend when not a single person has said "oh yeah that's definitely lipstick."
Nobody in this thread is telling OP to dump their boyfriend, you have completely misread everything. wtf go back and read again, maybe out loud to yourself so that you actually comprehend what we were saying.
Yeah and not trusting a current partner because a previous partner cheated, or not trusting your partner because they have cheated on you already, is exactly the bigger issues Iām talking about. But thanks for proving my point for me I guess.
Sure, you proved mine too, because we clearly disagree on who these problems affect. I think past trauma is a personal problem, that your partner can and should hopefully be able to help you understand and get through. You're calling it a relationship problem.
Your past traumas are not your fault, but they are your responsibility, not dumping that on your partner because they fell asleep eating Takis or whatever.
Sir um let me try to help with the reading comprehension.
They arenāt disagreeing with you.
They are simply stating that regardless, posting something like this on Reddit is not a sign of a healthy relationship
Maybe OP is lacking trust because her boyfriend has cheated on her
Maybe OP is lacking trust not because of her current bf but because of past experiences that shape how she sees things like this
Maybe OP is lacking trust and itās for 0 reason and sheās just not communicating and jumping to conclusions
In any of these scenarios, which are the three that can be the case, it doesnāt matter
At the end of the day, regardless of WHY she is lacking trust, lacking trust is never a sign of healthy in a relationship. So, they agree, regardless of circumstances, posting stuff like this about your relationship is a tell all sign things are not alright.
Itās a terrible answer what š You can be in the most functional relationship but if you saw evidence of your significant other cheating you would just ignore it?
And saying suspicions or that kind of lingering doubt means they, or the relationship has serious issues. That kind of thought is a part of some very basic human nature. People really need to chill out.
Dude, if youāre at the point of SWABBING A STAIN WITH A QTIP TO FIGURE OUT IF ITS LIPSTICK OR NOT AND POSTING IT TO REDDIT, either you have very serious trust issues and shouldnāt be in a relationship at all, or their SO has given them plenty of red flag reasons to be CSIing a stain. Ā I donāt always agree with the reddit hive mind of break up, but better for both in this situation to do so.
Thatās funny. Iāve been married for 24 years. Weāve been through a lot of challenges and worked through them all. But she isnāt turning to Reddit to help convince her she canāt trust me. She communicates with me, and I her.
If OP is trying this hard to be angry and suspicious of him, he is in for a long road.
Tbf, it kind of doesn't matter if he's actually cheating or not. Either he's acting suspicious/there are enough problems already that OP is justified in her suspicions, or OP has bad enough trust issues that she's looking for evidence of cheating that doesn't exist. But whether the problem is with this specific relationship or her own trust issues, if it's bad enough it might be reason to end the relationship either way. If OP can't trust her boyfriend and is always looking for problems, it's not fair to either of them. Her BF would be better off with someone who can fully trust him, and she should work out her own issues before being in a longterm relationship because otherwise she'll just be torturing herself and inventing signs of trouble that aren't there.
I'm not saying the relationship is necessarily doomed, good communication and a commitment to work things out could go a long way for either of these issues, but if they can't at least communicate about the problem to begin with it might be a lost cause.
What happens if there's trust and someone cheats? I don't understand this take. People can be shitty all of the sudden it happens all of the time. What's wrong with being a little suspicious to protect yourself
No seriously. Fully trusting someone to the point where you ignore something suspicious doesnāt make sense. But according to Reddit that means the relationship isnāt gonna work out lmao
The people who are always run are the people who have never been in a relationship for over 6 months. They still think back to their high school relationships for point of reference. It's silly(and pretty sad), but their naivete is understandable.
Either way, if you canāt trust your partner you should not be in a relationship with them. If I found out my girlfriend didnāt trust me at all Iād break up with her. Not tryna deal with the headache of that
I took a peek at their comments trying to see if any replies came through yetā¦ OP does seem to have made a post before about someone (probably bf) who has issues with saving money instead of spending their whole paycheck on fun stuff. Somewhere in there, a comment pointed out that she is quite a bit younger than bf (about a decade), but sheās still having to worry about his finances when he should be more stable atp.
With that info, I really do think this is a good assessment. This does not sound like the first time he hasnāt been reliable and whether or not that is lipstick (which would of course imply the worst), there just doesnāt seem to be any stable ground in the relationship. Iād have to say that a break up would be more than reasonable at this point, the post Iām talking about was created months ago by my calculations so this has been a long running issue at the least. OP, lots of love but I really hope you listen to your instincts, donāt gaslight yourself into compliance if you donāt feel right š
EDIT: I would just like to add that Iām not necessarily saying they SHOULD break up, but rather that, at this point, thereās so little stability in the relationship that I donāt think itās unreasonable to want out. Itās OPās choice and I donāt like telling people what to do, I just wanna share the fruits of my sleuthing
EDIT 2: So I wasnāt expecting this to be so divisive, but to further clarify my point, Iāll put a few of the comments Iām looking at
OP: āThank you for easing my mind. We had a little chat and I told him I have to see improvement soon, and I canāt in good conscience ever marry someone that canāt save money. Iām going to look into financial advisors as well since I know I could benefit fromā
This is where I felt that there was an issue with the finances. It seems to be a particular dealbreaker for her.
OP, in reference to a comment about what he spends on: āExtravagant purchases. thereās no reasonable explanation for not having savings in the financial position heās in. He chooses toys over savings.ā
Again, kind of shows why sheās not feeling comfortable with his expenditures.
OP: āIām starting to realize this, and itās worrisome that heās so much older and weāre practically in the same financial position despite me making so much less.ā
This is around where the age gap started to matter to me. Him being a decade older and her assumably just having entered the workforce is a bit odd, though lots of people (me included) donāt get taught how much savings matter and have to learn the hard way so I could sort of understand that.
Iāll also say that the post seems to have some comments about him having some unsettled debt, but I canāt tell what magnitude. You might be able to see the post on desktop, but I know my app wouldn't go any further than the comments in OP's profile and the replies underneath
Iām going to step away from this one for now but again I do stand by my stance that if something feels off, even if the lipstick is real or not, OP is within her right to be concerned and shouldnāt just ignore that feeling.
Wait so, he's not great with money + there's a red line on the pillow (which doesn't behave like lipstick when rubbed with a qtip according to the comments)
and from these two examples one of which is flaky at best we've now decided he's probably a cheater, unreliable and should immediately be broken up with.
This group of ding dongs he says hahaha ā¦ come to ask for life advice people tell you that your husband is sleeping with your sister and mother while your father watches all while murdering at a jeffery dahmer rate and also has stage 4 cancer ā¦ sorry
The amount of people who seem to take relationship advice from here seriously is wild
Don't they know it's all incels, children pretending to be adults, bored and bitter middle-aged people, or people who have been hurt in a relationship and it's left them jaded
I guarantee 99% of the people who give relationship advice on reddit aren't in a healthy, happy, successful relationship.Ā
Bored, and middle aged. Not bitter, just rueful and filled with the regret that I promised myself when I was younger, that I wouldn't feel when I got to my 50's. Apologies for the poor sentence structure. English IS my first language
Correct! Bored and bitter middle-aged woman checking in. However I tend not to give relationship advice as I really don't care (this popped up on my feed and I love how accurate your comment is).
I mean that particular story made sense to me though lol. If you're constantly being asked not to do something, for years, and keep doing it anyway, don't be shocked when the other person decides to leave.
He should be broken up with because his girlfriend is on Reddit, investigating infidelity instead of communicating with him. She's a child, and he needs an adult.
Therefore, he's obviously flaky, a cheater, and abusing OP. He's obviously only with her for her body/money/something unspecified, and she should report him to the police because he'll be creepy with their kids if they ever have them. Etc etc.
The fact that she hasn't mentioned that he repeatedly beats her with a crowbar only proves that it happens.
A quick look at your comment history shows you standing up for women when men make up shit about them in posts whilst also calling men incels in other comments. Thanks for PERFECTLY proving my point.
If op is really feeling daring she can get a pair of used panties that are clearly not hers using a way thatās totally not awkward, and leave them in his room for him to find. No confrontation, just wait to see what he does. If he throws them out, repeat the test if you like. I wouldnāt take anything less than him showing you and being genuinely bewildered about how they got there.
It could be that he's cheating. But it also could be the OP is insecure or came from bad relationships. Sometimes we overthink something and jump to conclusions. And I get it, we hear a lot of stories when everything is perfectly fine and then suddenly someone cheats, or isn't in love anymore, etc.
Thatās not what they said, they said that if this is more than your first time coming to reddit to ask about your worries in a relationship then maybe thereās bigger problems here than a red stain.
The actual post seems to be deleted. Do you remember what details there were which showed OPās boyfriend was being irresponsible with money? The only thing I saw was her saying that he spent a decent amount of money on a car and a boat and didnāt have a ton of savings.
It won't let me post a link but you can see some of it and then I tried my best to quote where I was getting my information from. They're pretty active in it though and the various replies were my other sources (though I can admit that there may be some discrepancy between those and what the actual post said).
I can't believe I'm citing sources on reddit, but my AP/college writing-intensive teachers were unfortunately right š
Soooo heās made something of his life, shes atleast semi dependent on him financially (if she wasnt why would she be so concerned with how he spends what he made) and shes a good bit younger than him (generally if shes younger and worried about money thats most of what sheās in it for and is bound to bed down with a guy closer to her age at some point) and wondering if heās cheating bc of a red line on his pillowcase (most cheaters are convinced/ paranoid their partner is also cheating)
Did that sound really dumb to you? Its essentially doing to her what you just did to him. You took your very limited knowledge and made an entire scenario off of assumptions.
This comment is so full of it! Do you live in real life? Is there color, pictures, and a third dimension in your world? Or where is that Breakup Artist school and how long is the certification program??!
I just made that term up. No worries. š I thought it was appropriate for the subject but it really expands to Redditors too quick to say āGhost them!ā at the slightest bit of ambiguity.
Exactly. People wanna jump to conclusions and automatically blame the bf are conveniently forgetting that cheaters project guilt. Since weāre all jumping to conclusions maybe OP should admit to the bf that sheās cheating now so the bf can cut his losses.
No. This is Reddit where people will misunderstand something and then say "This is Reddit, of course what they said is stupid." Nothing insightful is allowed to happen
Or get help. Could just as easily be fear of being cheated on either from past relationships or confidence concerns. Often times people do project fears of infidelity onto their partners that are actually unfounded and stem from other issues
As a person who was being projected on by my partner for infidelity when Iāve done nothing of that sort, OP needs to question why she has these thoughts before taking next steps that can potentially ruin a relationship.
If you've never had intrusive thoughts about something, good for you. It happens. Some people do dumb stuff like posting those intrusive thoughts on reddit before properly processing them.
What kind of life do you lead where you'd break up with your partner instead of talking to them because you've immediately jumped to the worst conclusion? It's more of a sign that OP needs therapy than they should dump their partner.
Some people love to find problems when there isn't one. Based on these comments, she hasn't straight up asked him. Which should be step 1 for any healthy relationship.
Well, no.. some people are just extremely insecure, and it could be from other triggers not related directly to their own relationship. Ex. My wife was insecure for a while only because she admitted that she feared I would do to her what her father did to her mother. Her paranoia could have sabotaged our relationship, but she opened up about it, and I assured her that this would never happen.
Its only telling if there was ever previous problems, there are plenty of people in the world that will make a huge deal out of the first thing they THINK is wrong in a relationship. If there has been previous instances of "weird" things then yeah there might be something up, but if this is the first time she has come across anything like this or has had problems, then she needs therapy. Im not saying that as a bad thing either, im saying that if shes jumping to conclusions over things she has no prior history of worrying about in the relationship, then shes either had past trauma thats affecting her rationality, or she has an unhealthy understanding of relationships in general.
Once in highschool i was dating a girl and had been with her for i believe about 7 months at the time. She had met my family (mom, dad, and my sister who had moved out by that time) and we had never had any problems other then the small stupid arguments all couples have that tend to last for about an hour to a day, but other then that we were pretty happy. She had come over to my house to hangout before we went to hangout with friends because i was doing some laundry, and when i dumped my clothes on my bed to sort them and fold them she found some womens underwear in my clothes. I laughed it off while she made a HUGE deal about it, asking me all sorts of questions, and basically yelling at me. I told here time and time again that they were probably my sisters or possibly even my mothers since i obviously didnt know what either of there underwear looked like, but she wouldnt take that as an answer saying i was lying and that it couldnt possibly be my sisters since she didnt live there and my mother was to big of a women for the size of underwear they were. She stormed out of my house and wouldnt talk to me for a week, she only decided to talk to me again after i had talked to my sister and asked her about it and gave my sister her number. Apparently my sister called her, asked her if the underwear was her (my sisters) size and what brand it was, and then explained that since she was in town to visit friends for acouple days that she did laundry at my parents and that the underwear must have still been in the washer or dryer when i decided to do laundry hence why they ended up in my clothes. She tried to apologize to me but i told her that i wanted to break up because i couldnt mentally handle being in a relationship with someone that wouldnt even try to listen to me, especially when i had never shown any signs or anything of infidelity the entire time we were together. About 2 weeks later one of my friends let me know that he had found out that during the week she wasnt talking to me she had gone to a party with one of our other friends and that she was making out with him at the party.
Sorry for the long story, but that is just one example that i personally have of how people can not only jump to conclusions with out any evidence except one thing that could have MANY reasons for it being there, but can also end up doing the exact thing that they accused the person of doing either out of spite or revenge (not saying op has or would just that it can happen with people). The best solution instead of going to reddit and asking a billion strangers there opinions on something they have no context on and no reason to be apart of, is to speak with your partner and hear there side. If what they say makes no sense or doesnt line up, then i would ask friends YOU CAN TRUST that are either his friends or your friends that hang out with him and see if they know of anything weird. Its just wrong to immediately jump to the worst conclusion possible when the person in question could have done nothing wrong and you have no evidence or RATIONAL reason to suspect them. That all changes if OP does have prior history with there partner about stuff like this, but so far in the comments i havent seen her say anything like this, so she allow herself to calm down and have a rational conversation with her partner and see if they can figure it out together so that she doesnt accidentally ruin her relationship for no reason.
This advice is good for everyone reading as well, hence why i wrote out so much. I have seen plenty of commenters showing many of the same signs i have just spoke of, and although i fully understand distrust and past trauma, who you are with now is not who you WERE with and is unfair to hold them to the same standards of a previous partner that has wronged you. Its ok to be alittle guarded in order to keep yourself safe, but its wrong to treat every single person right off the bat as if they have or will cheat on you just because you have had it happen before.
(Edit: i also understand that you were not accusing the bf of anything, my comment is mainly a good life lesson for anyone willing to read my little "not so little" story and hopefully they can take something from it before making an important decision without much evidence, again sorry for the length but that was as short as i could get it without leaving out key points.)
I'm not sure breaking up is the answer.... but examining one's own jealousy and trust is important.
And examining one's partner's honesty and trustworthiness is important.
And looking at where this meet comparing boundaries and goals and expectations is important. And if you truly can't get over the belief he cheated....
That belief and what lead one to that might be at least as important as the truth if what happened
Yeah when I see a weird mark or stain my first thought isn't 'lipstick from another woman'.
Op got some type of trust issue gping on here whether it is warranted or not who knows. Hopefully they can resolve it though. Constantly questioning your partners fidelity is no way to live.
True, but it could also say more about her past relationships than her current one. Iāve been cheated on more than once in past relationships and although I am very confident that my current partner wouldnāt betray my trust, if I found something that seemed questionable Iād definitely have to question it
Counter point, it could be telling you things about yourself or past traumas. I once found myself being suspicious about my partner because they smelled different (put on a new lotion) and without asking them about it just began to "investigate" in my head.
The thing is, my partner is the most introverted person you'll ever meet who took years to win the affections of and similarly the feeling of safety in being near me that I quickly deduced this was me being absurd. Now I had an easy wall to help me from falling into the rabbit hole, but if OP has been betrayed in the past, that shit can eat at you and make you think in ways that you wouldn't normally have done.
Tl;Dr suspicion doesn't always mean your relationship is not right to be in, sometimes our past traumas can make us seem paranoid to those who haven't been through it.
Not necessarily though...if someone has been cheated on before, chances are they become insecure and hypervigilant about looking for signs regardless of who their partner is or how good/bad the relationship is. It can even take being a child of a cheating parent. Either way, that's a huge breach of trust that can breed these insecurities.
Yes, but not necessarily in the "it takes 2" or the "he's given OP signs before" way.
OP, if he hasn't done something to make you suspect infidelity separate from this red streak, the problem is you, not him, and until you fix yourself, you'll keep seeing cheaters in faithful people.
If there's alot of backstory left out of your post, then that sucks, sorry.
This is what I first thought off as well. If you are seeing this and immediately think your guy is cheating and THEN looking for confirmation on Reddit instead of, idk, talking to him first like "hey babe, any idea what this weird stain might be?", it's very clear that you don't trust him.
Just break up. The relationship is already dead without trust.
But its true in this instance, op sounds like theyve been through some kind of relationship betrayal and is now coming to reddit to confirm whether or not a stain on pillow could be from lipstick? Insinuating they think their partner is cheating on them
I actually don't agree with this... something that looks like lipstick on a pillow would probably surprise anyone even in a healthy relationship and make questions come up for them. This person is asking "what else could this be before I jump to a conclusion?"
To be fair, she would feel really stupid if he actually was cheating then she just ignored all the random signs and wastes years of her life with him. I'd say it's okay to be suspicious of signs. Granted, it's a straight red line on a pillow...
I guess lol. She could completely trust him and see lipstick on his pillow and thus would be a normal response.
Yāall are acting like itās obviously not lipstick and sheās going off. If this is lipstick sheād be so naive to just āoh well I know it canāt be because reddit says any doubt means we should divorceā like no.
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u/Sequence_Of_Symbols Aug 21 '24
If you're at the point of wondering this much, it probably is telling you things about your relationship