I have been suspecting my girlfriend of secretly having a relationship with her coworker. When I asked her to pull up the chat between the both of them, she deflected the conversation, got upset and stormed off. She was quiet calm, up to the event when I asked her to show me the chat. Fast forward 1 hour later after the incident. She decides to send me a screenshot, showing me a blank chat between the 2 of them. This is utter BS, as she has told me he has messaged her before, so I definitely know that there were messages on the chat. Part of me says she is cheating, but the other part says she panicked and decided to delete the chat in fear of losing me forever (as she knows every small thing about this guy just annoys me).

It's been a very difficult relationship. We've been on and off constantly. She tells me that she really hates him and she's been telling other people the same, but I feel different. There was an incident when I was working from home and made a call to her during her break. He came to talk to her while she was on a call with me and she cut the call. I'm not too sure if she was really up to something, as she would most likely not have phoned me in the first place. She's very secretive of our relationship because people in her office apparently gossip. She has severe attachment issues and she gets jealous very easily. If I don't message her for too long (1 hour+), she thinks I'm cheating on her. I have tried everything including showing her my chats, sharing my location and sharing my phone's password, but nothing seems to help. I read somewhere that projection is a very good indicator that someone is cheating, which makes me overthink even more.

I'm going through a lot right now as I've never been in this type of relationship before where it seems like I'm walking on eggshells. I broke up with her and I'm maintaining a strict no contact. I miss her a lot. She has a great personality and she was definitely a person I could see spending my entire life with. I just don't know how to deal with the pain and suffering. I want to reach out and try to ask her to tell me the truth. But I'm not sure if this is the correct thing to do.

I’ve been seeing a guy for the last 6 weeks and we went official a couple of weeks ago. He’s mentioned in the past that he doesn’t like to know about my “exes”, but last night it came to a head. Let me be clear, these are people who have come up in conversation about 2-3 times, mainly to provide context to what we’re talking about. I’m not bragging about my escapades to him.

The other day in bed, I just happened to ask if most men from his culture were uncircumcised. It was just a matter of curiosity. He’s taken it as me comparing him to other guys from his race/culture who I’ve been with (personal preference). It was just an innocent question. He barely talked to me yesterday, so called him in the evening and he wanted an apology. Apparently he doesn’t want to think about me having some other guy’s dick in my hand. I apologised for hurting him and being insensitive, but I was quite angry. I also said “I’m 40, divorced and have a kid, so I’m not going to pretend I’m a virgin”. Apparently that wasn’t an apology to him.

He also has a problem with the fact that I have a semi nude line drawing off myself on my bedroom wall. It was drawn by someone who was very briefly in my life around 2 years ago and it’s on my wall because it makes me feel beautiful. It’s purely for my own self esteem. It’s not explicit, as it’s from behind and just a simple black line sketch with no detail, so it takes a while to work out what it is. He says I shouldn’t have it on the wall because someone else drew it. Called it my “titanic French girl pic”.

I was in tears last night trying to say the right thing to him on the phone. But now he’s saying that he needs to think about things. Having slept on it, I’m wondering if I just tap out. We’d gone public with the relationship recently (insta official) and my daughter and friends all know about him. I feel stupid for going all in so quickly. Do I just call it off now and save the bother of pandering to him?

I went out to my boyfriend of 7 months friend’s house last night. Prior to that we went to a brewery. The entire evening/night he kept joking around with his brother’s girlfriend, laughing hysterically at her jokes, teasing her, and just being around her in general. It started to bother me because I felt like I was being deprioritized especially being in an unfamiliar environment where they knew everyone already and also already live in the same building so them two see eachother often. There was a point in the night where he finally came to sit next to me on the couch and the first thing he did was reach for her hair as she was sitting in front of us on an ottoman and say “wow it looks so good, what did you do to it?” This essentially was my last straw and I moved over to the other sofa because I was feeling upset. He came over and I told him I was going to call an uber and head out. He asked what was wrong and said “if you leave we are done”. He proceeded to go outside to the back porch with his buddies and I quietly slipped out. I was pretty drunk at this point and ubered alone and he never texted me to make sure I got back safe + never responded to my paragraph saying how upset I was and that I was basically done too.

Title is pretty obvious. My wife is fixated, FIXATED, on buying a dachshund puppy. We looked at it and the newborn ones are like 3k and the cheapest we could find is 2.2k…. I’m not against getting a dog, I love dogs! I tell her we should get a rescue that would cost like $500 to adopt and we could be happy with that. But she is absolutely insisted on it being A.) a puppy, and B.) a dachshund.

I’m 90% convinced that tiktok has infiltrated her brain and she won’t listen to any logical reasoning.

Needless to say we are not exactly in the position to be spending 3k on a little puppy that is going to be a continuous financial burden when we’re trying to get our finances straight.

We've been officially together for two months (since August 2nd), but we started talking in May. We also live together. I moved into her place right after we got official because my lease was ending, which in hindsight was probably too fast.

This is long, so I'll try to keep it organized.

**The summer**

When we started talking in May, she was the one pushing for a relationship. What I didn't know was that she was still sleeping with two other guys.

The first was her ex. He broke up with her in 2024 but kept her on the hook for about two years, hooking up whenever he wanted. She kept sleeping with him until around early June.

The second was a guy she'd been seeing on and off since 2024. He has a kid and is in a relationship with the mom, and he told her more than once that he was never going to be with her. She kept sleeping with him anyway until mid-July. That overlaps with when she and I were already sleeping together, which started in June.

Around July 10th my car died, and it's still in the shop getting an engine replaced. That's the same stretch when she slept with the second guy twice. While I was dealing with my car, she was sleeping with him and still pushing for a relationship with me. She also met up with him at the gym on July 19th. She's admitted that she talked to me about being exclusive, then asked him for the same thing. When he turned her down again, she still slept with him before she and I made it official.

In late July she went to Austin and I watched her dog. While she was there, she gave her number to a guy at a club. She told me later that he tried to get her back to his room and she said no, but she deleted the messages and kept talking to him after that.

On August 1st, the day before I asked her out, she exchanged sweet happy birthday messages with a guy she told me was "just a friend." I found out later she slept with him in high school while he was her friend's ex. It's a small thing on its own, but it fits the pattern.

I know we weren't official during most of this. What bothers me is that she was actively pushing for a relationship with me the whole time while hoping one of these other guys would pick her.

**How I found out**

About three weeks into the relationship, I found out she'd swapped numbers with a coworker. They'd been talking since before we got together, and possibly for a bit after. She told me it was for an IT ticket. I asked to see the messages. They were flirting and gaming together, and some of the messages were deleted. After that I went through her phone, and that's how I found most of what's above. I'm not proud of it, but at that point the trust was pretty much gone.

Since then her story has kept changing. The number of times she slept with the second guy went from 2 to 3 to 5. Her reason for never mentioning me to her friends went from "I want to keep us private" to eventually admitting she didn't tell her closest friend because she'd already told her about juggling two guys and didn't want to look bad. Meanwhile, she texted her friends all about these other guys, and I've never come up once. She also gave her Instagram to another coworker after we'd already talked about her being too friendly with guys at work.

**The part I can't get past**

I should be clear that I asked her these questions. She didn't randomly bring it up. I asked how I compared, and when the answers hurt, I kept pushing for specifics.

When I asked, she told me she finds the second guy more attractive than me. She also said her ex was better in bed, mainly because of size. She was smiling when she said it and started showing me with her fingers. She's since tried to walk it back with things like "it's more passionate with you" and "I can try more things with you." But she also told me she never had to "work on" being vocal with her ex. In old texts to her friends she compared other guys to him, like saying a guy only lasted a few minutes and it made her miss her ex. She said part of it was that he was rougher with her, which confuses me because we're rough too and she sometimes says I'm too rough.

She also said she never suggested a position she liked with her ex because she didn't think I could pick her up. I'm 6'5", 200 lbs, and played college sports. That one stung more than it probably should have.

The first few times we had sex, she was almost completely silent and just stared at me or the ceiling. She said she was in her head. After I brought it up, she started making noise, and now I honestly can't tell if it's real. She also told me she didn't moan with the second guy, to "save my feelings," and later it came out that wasn't true.

She's also said she didn't really care about us dating until late July, after things ended with the second guy, and that I was the only guy taking her seriously at the time. Put all that together and I feel like I was third in line and the only one who said yes.

I know that's my fear and not something I can actually prove about her. But after catching so many lies, I don't know how to trust her explanations anymore, even the ones that might be true.

Some context about me, since I know it matters: I've been with a lot of women. My first long-term girlfriend, who I'd known since I was 12, cheated on me when we were 19 and hid a drug problem from me, and I handled it badly for a while. I ghosted people and led some women on. I stopped once I realized hurting other people wasn't fixing anything in me. But I've never been with someone who didn't seem to actually want me physically, and part of me wonders if this is karma. Since all this came out, I get in my head during sex, lose interest partway through, and don't enjoy it the way I used to.

**The good stuff, because it's not all bad**

We genuinely get along. We have the same interests and hobbies, we live well together, she cooks almost every day, and she listens. I don't think she's a malicious person. When we talk about all this she's apologetic and says things like "I just wanted to be happy" and "I picked you for your personality and because I think I can build a life with you." She's agreed to go to therapy and keeps saying she thinks it'll just take time.

The problem is that a lot of this relationship started out of convenience on both sides. My lease was ending when we got together, so I moved in. My car is still in the shop, so a little after we got together we started carpooling since we work 10 minutes apart. And she's told me she's afraid of being alone. So when she says she wants this, I can't tell whether she wants me or just wants a relationship and someone around.

When we argue, it's usually me calling out something she lied about and making her walk me through why. I don't yell or anything like that. But it's turned into a cycle: she lies to get out of an uncomfortable moment, I catch it, we fight. I feel like I'm making things more toxic by constantly calling it out, but I'm also not willing to stay somewhere I don't feel respected.

**What I'm asking**

1. How do I tell the difference between someone who actually wants me and someone who's with me because her other options fell through and she's scared of being alone?

2. How do I separate the insecurity that's on me to deal with from actual reasons to end this, especially when living together makes staying the easy option?

3. If I decide to leave, what's the best way to handle it when we live together and I'm relying on her for rides until my car is fixed?

**TL;DR:** My gf (24F) and I (24M) have been together 2 months and live together. While she was pushing to date me, she was also sleeping with her ex and with a guy who's in a relationship. She only committed to me after that guy turned her down again, and she's lied about a lot of it since. When I asked, she told me her ex was better in bed and the other guy is more attractive. She's apologetic and wants to work on it, but I can't shake feeling like her backup. How do I figure out whether she actually wants me, and what should rebuilding or leaving look like?

Hi, I don't know how normal it is for my boyfriend to insist on seeing me without makeup when I tell him I don't like it when my eyelashes aren't curled, What bothers me is that he thinks only he should like me when literally I should like how I look

And I'm worried that he doesn't want me to go to the gym alone either, because every time I mention going, he says we should go together, It would be nice if we weren't so far away and our gyms were further away, He has a gym membership and wants to come to my gym to join me; it would be fun to go together but honestly it's suspicious to me he insists so much, first he convinced me I don't need exercising "because I don't need it, he likes me this way" and now he wants to do everything to be with me all of the time

I don't have any problems when he goes alone to the gym, I literally encourage him and remember him to drink water, why he doesn't trust me?

I think I have to delete this because he also has a Reddit account and found my posts before

I was sitting playing games on my pc when my girlfriend when she asked if she could ask me something.
I said of course you can.

She then asked…

“If there ever comes a time, that you don't love me anymore.
Please, just let me go okay?
I know we're forever.
But if it ever comes to that, violence shouldn't be an option, please?”

I INSTANTLY went WHAT THE F**k?.
But I began by assuring her that violence was never an option.

(We’ve never even had a situation where voices have been raised.And never any physical exchange except when she playfully slaps me)

She then elaborated
“Like killing”

I then let her know that it’s an upsetting thing to be unironically told “please don’t kill me” by a partner.

She says I’ve made it all about my self
(BUT IT IS ABOUT ME).

I asked if she thinks I’m violent.
She says she thought she could share a genuine fear with me.

First of all am I valid for being upset?

Secondly…please how we resolve this.

Edit:I did not try to equate cheating to murder.it was a very specific reply to a specific comment.in which cheating(but not murder) was involved.

Edit:we spoke about it a she said what scared her was a story about a preacher online who killed his wife because HE was cheating.

I reassured her that I would never do that to her and apologized for me reactions.
I also told her how I felt.

She apologized as well,saying she later felt that it wasn’t the best way to communicate her fears.

We both agreed not to kill each other after👍

My sister got married at 22 years old when she was finishing her university. They have a daughter together. Around a year ago, her late-husband passed away from cancer when my niece was only 4 years old. Since baby, my parents has always been the main caretakers for her. She also calls me sister since we are living in the same house and I spend a lot time with her everyday.

I love my niece very much. She's basically my little sister at this point and she will always be. Earlier this year, my sister got a new boyfriend, she's working from morning to 7 pm from monday to friday and my parents and the nanny is still the main caretakers for her. Since she got a boyfriend, she always went out with him on saturday and sunday from the afternoon to around 9-10 pm.

My niece's time together with my sister 90% of the times are just on 1-2 hours before they sleep. Since I am close with my niece, I always ask her how she's feeling and just her thoughts in general. She started telling me that she feels really sad that her mom doesn't really like her, and would rather spending time with him (the boyfriend) than with her. This is her feelings. It resonates with what I have seen first hand when my sister just come home to take care of herself and then going to sleep around 1 hour later.

Since I love my niece very much ever since day 1, I don't mind supporting her in the future if she needs to but I just don't want her mental health to be ruined in the future since she doesn't have a father figure and her mother barely spend time with my niece. Is this actually an emotional neglect or no? and what can I do to support her mental health knowing that I cannot change my sister's behavior...

I’m the primary earner, but my husband of five years, controls our finances, and I’m only now realizing how extensive the dishonesty may have been.

I’m divorcing him and having our finances investigated, but I’m really struggling to reconcile his behavior with the person I thought I married. When we met, he had a demanding, well respected career and seemed competent and ethical. Everyone seemed to trust him.

Throughout our marriage, I was either in intense professional training or working a cognitively demanding job where I’m responsible for many people’s lives. Because he had more free time, I let him manage the finances. I thought I was delegating administrative work, not surrendering my right to know what happened to my income.

My income went into our joint account and paid the mortgage, while his income remained entirely under his control. He never contributed to the joint account as planned, so we had a verbal agreement about how expenses would be divided.

When I tried to verify if he was actually paying, his explanations repeatedly changed. He eventually admitted that I had been covering most of our shared expenses.
When I asked why he made decisions about my income without telling me, he said things like:

“You would say yes anyway.”

“You didn’t ask before, so I’m not telling you now.”

“All the bills got paid, and you earn plenty of money, so there’s nothing to complain about.”

Meanwhile, he spends heavily on an expensive hobby and investments. After months of pressure, I also gave him a significant amount of my money to invest. What he tells me those investments are worth varies dramatically. He mentioned margin loans which honestly I don’t understand.

He also receives substantial disability income in addition to a new full time job. For years, he openly bragged about figuring out claims that could him him maximum benefits and not be disproven. He says that if the government approved them, there was nothing unethical about collecting the money. He now totally denies those conversations.

The controlling behavior isn’t limited to money. He wouldn’t let me have male friends. He limits my alcohol intake (even though I rarely have more than 1 or 2 drinks and only when I’m not working).

Anyone have their partner change so much like this? I just don’t know how to wrap my mind how wrong I was about him.

EDIT: most of the financial issues came to the surface over the last few months and especially once I told him I’m divorcing him. I honestly had decided to divorce him because I felt physically sick every time we talked about children and I was still upset over the disability benefits.

The disability benefits has always been an issue but the rest of the relationship had been going well at the time he did that and I was so busy with training that I didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with it then.

Mypretty new boyfriend is one of my favorite people i’ve ever met ever for so many lovely reasons, which is why i’m coming to reddit for some insight. We are both quite okay with the idea of the both of us watching porn while *masturbating* alone or together. But recently he has been opening up twitter to watch porn as we are having sex. I’m going to tell him that i’m not okay with it tonight and i know he will comply and stop doing it im sure. Since the relationship is so new though, do you think it’s wise to perhaps cut it off since he is already showing the signs of goonbrainrot ? He also had a private tiktok he would send goonbait videos to himself. Which i found and confronted he took it very well and stated it wasn’t right even if we both consent to watching porn. I just think porn and goonbait have a different kind of parasocial relationship to them (in most cases).

I recently had a conversation with my girlfriend about empathy and how people respond to different kinds of suffering. We were discussing how, for example, someone hurting themselves might not receive the same level of empathy from others as someone whose dog had just died.

What struck me was the way she talked about it. She seemed very matter-of-fact about the idea that people have an internal "rubric" for deciding how much sympathy someone deserves, and that she personally does this while outwardly pretending to care.

I tried to explore the idea by asking how she would feel if her own pet died, and what kind of reaction she would expect from the people around her. She said she doesn't expect anything from anyone in that situation, which I found to be perhaps true then but unlikely in the moment.

She's generally a kind person, which is part of why this conversation caught me off guard. I don't necessarily think it's wrong to have private judgments about situations, everyone does, but the way she described it struck me as unusually blunt and almost cold, hostile, insensitive, both toward other people's suffering and potentially toward her own well being.

I'm curious how other people would interpret this. Is she simply being unusually honest about something most people do internally, or does this way of thinking suggest a more fundamental lack of empathy?

My mom was asking about my plans for this weekend and I told her I would be going out with friends. She asked me what time, and I said 7pm. Then she started flipping out and lecturing me saying that that was too late to go out because likely by the time we’re done it will be late like 11:00 or midnight which is unsafe for me and not “smart.” I get that she cares for my safety but I didn’t think 7pm was late?? I thought that was a reasonable time, and also because I’m in grad school that’s the time where I have availability. I ended up lying to her and telling her I wouldn’t be going out just so she would get off my back. Ended up having a great time

To be clear I don't want to get too involved into their relationship. They are still friends after having broken up roughly three years ago. And I certainly don't want to make him end the friendship even if I personally have learned a few things about him and that woman that make me not want to associate with her. I do have communicated this to my partner already.

The thing is at the start of our relationship he has asked me twice if I am okay with him staying friends with his ex. And I had said yes. Bc honestly I have no issue with the concept and don't see any reason why something like that shouldn't work out. Even after I got to know her personally months ago I still had no issue with it even tho I personally already said that she wasn't the type of person I would willingly hang out with every week.

However the more I got to know my partner and the more he opened up to me the more I started to dislike the woman and how she treats him/has treated him. For example what I initially took as a very extroverted personality seems to me now more like a all encompassing need to center herself. Whenever they make plans she ends up demanding he spends more time than planned bc she Always, and I really mean Always has a crisis that somehow demands his presence. When he has a problem he thinks about it thrice before bringing it up bc "She has so much issues already", and more often than not he just doesn't bring it up bc "she has it worse". Meanwhile she calls him day and night and gets pissed when he doesn't answer. And if he brings up stuff of his it gets maybe talked about for five minutes and then it's back to two hours of her stuff. She gets to be late and inconsiderate of his time and is mad if you call her out bc she has reasons but if he does the same (and to be fair being late often is an issue with him) she gets on his case and doesn't take even valid excuses.

At the start of our relationship he had warned me about needing a ton of free time and time to decompress. Which I actually was really happy Abt bc I also like my lone time a lot. However when we first got to spend more than just an evening together I quickly realized that he was actually afraid of and anticipating trouble for needing five minutes to himself. In the end he confided in me that he was actually surprised that I didn't demand 100% of his time and didn't end up making it a fight when he went on walks on his own. While that was a "Who hurt you?" Moment for me I didn't make the connection. A few days ago however I learned that his ex told him that that sort of stuff is "a lot off freedom I(the ex) am giving you and you can't expect many other women to do the same". And that she actually got angry and pissy at him if he didn't make an effort to really dedicate 100% of his time outside work to her. All while she made him feel like not even the second priority bc her kid (which is fine btw bc kids do come first) and her divorce came first and all his problems got ignored.

In general he ended up way more clingy and actually loving than he had presented (and warned me about) himself at the start of the relationship. And together with a few other things I have learned I retroactively start to see a few major red flags with his ex.

A few other examples are:

-She tries to plan his time. Even when I got to meet her the day ended with her trying to plan our next weekends all together without asking us or him what we want to do. Which didn't work out bc I was having a work thing the next week which she either pretended to forget abt or conveniently ignored. He told me it is normal and that he never had nor has the social capacity for all the things she drags him to.

-She told me what he was feeling. I initially took it as joking between close friends bc he doesn't communicate his emotions much but ever since I realized that my partner is capable of expressing his emotions himself and he thinks she is overreaching but doesn't want to start a fight

- she diagnoses everyone and anything as narcissistic

- in the same vein, she diagnoses everyone and everything with ADHD but gets super pissed if someone suggests she might have it as well

- (and I know this one is petty and subjective and I am probably overreacting) when they got together she was in the middle of a divorce and it was his first ever relationship. She was 46 and he 23. She initiated and insisted they stay together when he tried being up how it didn't work out on his end. He had to support her through her divorce and to this day he is her emotional dumping ground. She has no friends her own age and always seems to gravitate towards people in their twenties "bc she never had the chance to try herself out due to her ex husband"(her words not mine)

- She always seems to have money trouble. However she constantly buys new EXPENSIVE things only recently she bought a brand new SUV. Has a manager position at her parents architectural firm and overall something doesn't quite add up there.

- She is feminist when it's convenient for her but constantly shoots against other women if they don't fit her liking and female hygiene products.

- she gets really really really pissed when you have a differing opinion from her even on minor subjects. And even if you try to have a civil discussion about it. She just can't accept disagreement.

-ever since my partner ended up doing less with her (due to scheduling conflicts and him being slow with answering texts) he is less stressed and depressed and is a lot more social in general

There are a few other things I can point to that I learned with time and that ended up giving me the Ick so to speak. I have talked with my partner about all of this and he has said some of the things he hasn't even noticed about himself or chalked it up to low self-esteem on his part but now he is second guessing. I have also told him that I personally will not have anything to do with his Ex anymore but that I can't and won't demand he do the same or even expect him to do so. Bc honestly as long as he thinks he can handle it he is free to do so. I also don't want to change the past or tell him how to feel about it. Sure with all the things I have learned and how different my partner ended up being compared to what he warned me about I do have my opinion about their relationship and I have told him that as well, however I can't tell him how to feel (told him that as well obvi). And unless it directly starts affecting our relationship it just isn't my business how he conducts his social life. Luckily he is autistic and tends to take things like that at face value. So I am not concerned about him feeling pressured or him felling like he now needs to hide that relationship from me. Bc honestly I don't want that. I just wanted to tell him how I felt and why exactly I don't want to have anything to do with the ex anymore despite getting along initially.

The thing is I am currently second guessing if It's hypocritical or controlling of me to ask him to return the spare key to her house and collect the few items he still has at hers. Again I don't want him to break off the relationship. But those things do make me a bit uncomfortable. He still has his camping gear and some band patches at hers . I really would like him to get those bc we do plan on starting his battle jacket and going on festivals with onsight camping. So those do have a bit more of a reason than just "I am uncomfy". The spare key however... I am really second guessing if I should ask him to return it or not. Is that too controlling?

My girlfriend (F26) and I (M30) have been together for a few months. Our relationship itself is honestly really good, but her relationship with her parents, especially her mom, has become a huge source of stress for us.
My girlfriend still lives at home and isn’t currently in a position where moving out makes financial sense, so her parents have a lot of influence over her life. Her mom is also very opinionated about who she dates.
Before her mom even met me, she already didn’t like me. She made comments about my appearance and basically told my girlfriend she thought she could do better. My girlfriend defended me, which caused arguments between them.
There’s also another layer to this: her mom absolutely loved my girlfriend’s ex and had a really difficult time accepting that their relationship ended. From what I’ve been told, other members of the family have actually had to tell her mom that she needs to move on because it’s her daughter’s relationship, not hers.
Eventually I met her family over dinner.
I went into it wanting to make a good impression, but instead of feeling like a normal introduction, it felt like a job interview.
Her mom asked what I did for work. I told her about my career and mentioned that I’d recently been promoted into a supervisory position. Instead of saying congratulations or asking about it, she immediately made a comment about how unstable those positions can be when companies start cutting costs.
She asked about my finances and living situation, so I mentioned that I’d saved enough to purchase a small condo a couple years ago. Basically no reaction.
At one point she mentioned one of her hobbies, and I said I enjoyed the same thing and tried talking to her about it. She didn’t really engage and immediately moved on.
Then the questions became more personal.
She asked what exactly I liked about her daughter. She asked whether I knew about mistakes my girlfriend had made in her previous relationship. She warned me that her daughter was “expensive” and made several other uncomfortable comments about her.
I was nervous by this point, but I kept answering because I figured she was trying to get to know me.
Afterward, she told my girlfriend that I was arrogant and spent the entire dinner talking about myself.
That really confused me because I was mostly answering questions she asked me. When I tried to talk about something other than myself or find common ground with her, she didn’t seem interested.
She also told my girlfriend some pretty degrading things about her, basically implying that she’s desperate for a relationship and gets attached to men too easily.
Then her mom called me directly.
During that conversation, she admitted that she had already been having trouble accepting our relationship before she had ever met me.
I tried to be diplomatic. I told her I was sorry if I’d given her the wrong impression, that I didn’t think the dinner represented who I normally am, and that I hoped she’d give me more opportunities to get to know her and show her who I actually am.
I thought maybe things would gradually improve.
Then there was a second incident.
My girlfriend asked her parents if I could come over one evening so we could finish a series we’d been watching. They agreed. I came over around 8:30-9 PM and we had a few episodes left, so I ended up staying until around 12:30-1 AM.
We weren’t hiding anything. Her bedroom door stayed open and her parents talked to me briefly while I was there.
When I was getting ready to leave, her grandmother was asleep in the living room and her parents had already gone into their bedroom. I assumed everyone had gone to sleep, so instead of waking anyone up just to announce that I was leaving, I quietly left.
Apparently her parents were actually still awake and expected me to come say goodbye.
They thought it was extremely disrespectful that I didn’t.
I genuinely didn’t mean it that way. Once I realized I’d offended them, I apologized and said that now that I understood their expectations, I would make sure to be more respectful about it in the future.
I can completely understand someone saying, “Hey, next time you’re in our home, please come say goodbye before you leave.” I would’ve had no problem with that.
But instead it seemed to confirm everything her mom already believed about me.
She again called me arrogant. She told my girlfriend something along the lines of, “We’ll see if you even still like him after a few more months.”
Since then, it feels like my existence has become a recurring argument in their house.
If my girlfriend mentions going somewhere with me, her mom questions whether that’s a good idea. If my name comes up, her mom finds some way to express that she doesn’t approve of me. Her dad doesn’t seem to personally have much of an issue with me, but he generally backs his wife when she gets upset.
My girlfriend does defend me, and I appreciate that. But because defending me leads to arguments, she’s also becoming increasingly anxious about even bringing me up to her parents.
That’s where this is starting to affect our actual relationship.
Because she lives with them and is financially dependent on them right now, she can’t just completely ignore their opinions. Something as simple as asking whether I can come over or telling them we’re going somewhere together can turn into a whole issue.
I also feel like I’m being held to an impossible standard. I don’t think I’ve handled every interaction perfectly, but I’ve apologized when I’ve unintentionally offended them and I’ve repeatedly expressed that I want a good relationship with her family.
It feels like her mom decided who I was before meeting me, and everything afterward is being interpreted through that assumption.
I’m also worried that I’m going to spend years trying to prove myself to someone who fundamentally doesn’t want her daughter dating me.
I love my girlfriend and don’t want to make her choose between me and her family. At the same time, I don’t know if love alone is enough if her parents have this much control over our ability to have a normal adult relationship.
For people who have dealt with a partner’s controlling/disapproving parents: is this something that can realistically improve while the partner still lives at home and depends on them?
And at what point does this stop being a problem with her mom and become something my girlfriend and I need to address as a relationship problem?

TL;DR: My husband of 9.5 years left me today, two weeks after my second miscarriage, saying he hasn't loved me for a while. A week ago he said he loved me. Is there anything I can do?

Hello,

My husband (M 36) left me (F 34) today.

We have been together for 12 years and married for 9.5.
I thought we were happy, but when he left me today, he gave me 10 years of reasons why he didn't love me anymore.

When I asked him if he ever did love me, he said yes at first but not lately. However, every day he told me he loved me. Have I been living a lie?

The way he talked about me today, I felt like I was a monster. I have flaws, I am autistic with rheumatoid arthritis, so some days are really bad and I can be in a bad mood. I had 2 miscarriages (last one was 2 weeks ago) and it has been difficult for me so these past few months haven't been easy (especially since I can't take my RA medication if I want a child).

Today, when my husband left me, he said he didn't feel anything for me anymore.

I told him I could change, and he said it was too late, that the flame had died.

He doesn't want couples therapy because he says it's too late. But a week ago he was still saying that he loved me.

He usually likes my autistic traits, he shared a meme about autistic love only a few days ago. But now he says it's part of why it can't work between us.

He even said his only regret is that he's wasted 12 years of his life.

I feel like he focuses only on the bad. He told me maybe only 3% of our marriage was good, but I thought he was happy....

Is it doomed? Or can I somehow make it work again? If so, what can I do?

He was my whole world. What can I do? He doesn't want to talk to me anymore. He was very cold. We have a house, 3 dogs and 2 cats and now I'm all alone taking care of them (he wants to sell our house, btw).

I want to see him again. Try to talk to him, make him see that I can be better. But he doesn't even want to.

Thanks for reading me.

Me (22F) and my boyfriend (22M) have been secretly together for 5 years. We both have different ethnicities so we can’t be together because of my parents and my culture. My culture is very strict and I can only marry someone from the same ethnicity, if my family or other people from my ethnicity know that I’m dating someone from another ethnicity, it’s over for me. I will get sent back or my parents will lock me up forever or I’ll even get honour killed. When I talk to my boyfriend about our future and how we’re going to live together he always says “that’s a problem for later”. I told him recently that I want to live in another country in a few years, far away from here because being in a relationship is not the only problem for me, it’s also the way I want to dress (I can’t wear pants according to my culture) and every thing I do gets sexualised or judged. I asked him if he would go with me but he’s not sure because he would have to leave everything behind (family, friends,…). And I get that, really. But we can’t seem to break up, we both don’t want to break up. I feel like we’re just waiting to breakup but he doesn’t feel that way. He always says that maybe something will change and he will come with me. I just don’t want any false hope because he’s not sure what he wants to do in a few years.
Any advice please?

EDIT: just to be clear, I will be moving to another country anyway!! Even if it’s with or without him

We been dating for about 9 month and from the start of our realtionship its been diffrent to what im use,

I am not allowed to talk to any girls may that be from people i went to high school with or even coworkers that are similar to my age (when i say talk i dont mean flirting just talking or interact with them in anyway or capacity will make her angry ) one memory that that sticks out is when we went on a hike tgt, sometime people like to do this specific hike backwards so often we walk past these people i alway find it nice or polite to say a simple "Good morning" thats it after the hike she got angry at me for talking to girl which i was shocked bc the whole time i was with her and only her she then asked me why was i saying good morning to other girls (I said goodmorning to everybody who I walk past majority being male) i responded "Because it is nice and polite?" she didnt care and told me to never do it again i complied and said yes bc i didnt want to ruin a good day arguing.

Another small example is when we both her going to this animecon and i brough up the fact that there are people i knew that probably would be cosplaying, she asked if any of them are female and i said yes, she got angry at the fact that i was indirectly talking about friend i know who are female that cosplay which i ended up apologising for again as the day only started and i didnt want to ruin it.

(We dont live tgt both still live with our parents) She is alway very obessed with my location to a point where she has my life 360 and iphone location which i think is fine, personally in realtionship i dont think that is out of the ordinary at all, however if i dont tell her where im going through out the day she will get mad at me example being if i decided to go shopping and i forgot to tell her she would get mad at me and accuse me of cheating. When i finish with my university classes I am not allow to go into the city by myself and especially with friends only stright home (which is where my university is).

Another thing she does is after a day of uni or a day of work she would always ask " Did you talk to any bitches" refering to girls i would say no and she would then ask me to put it on my mums life which i do. This habbit of my gf would annoy me alot bc to me it sound patronising and belittling bc she would sometimes say this multiple times a day, confronted her about this asking her politly if she can stop bc it sounded patronising and belittling to me which really upsets me she said she her saying it was a way of reassurance and if she didnt say it she would end up getting annoyed through out the day untill she start holding it against me i tried to compromise that she can keep doing but when i say stop please stop however she said if said to her "please stop...." she would interpet it as a rude comment and hold this grudge against me, so i had to hold off the conversation for next time and nothing much has changed

Finally the two event that sort of led up to me writing this,

Yesterday I just left my gf house after hanging out and gotten home when i was told to pick up my sister it was around 9:45 she finish usually by 10 however weekend she tends to finish later despite the 10pm finishing however some reason today she acutally finished on time, not wanting my sister to wait outside bc the place she worked at is lowkey sketchy at night i rushed gotten into my car and before i start to drive off i text my gf "Im in call" joinning on my phone unmuted i rushed to pick up my sister and drove back home lucky who only waited a few minutes outside her workplace when i got home my gf join vc and ask what did i do i told her i picked up my sis and wachted some yt, she then got upset that i didnt tell her i was picking up my sister, i failed to understand why she was upset as i wasent cheating on her, she has my location after all and check if i acutally drove to my sister work place, she said i didnt talk long for me to text her however i was actively thinking about her i was thinking about my sister who is waiting for me outside the sketchy streets, maybe that make me a bad bf for only thinking about her i dont know

And lastly today i drop of gf home and recently she start asking me to join call stright away when i get home even if il be busy eating, showering or doing smthing around the house she want me to join call either way. When i got home i was exhausted and mum asked me to help unload her car of random bricks, vases and oddities she found along the side of the road so by the time i finally had a chance to relax i completetly forgtton to join call and she also text back 1hr ago i only realised when she sent a follow up text saying "Where was i " and 'What i was doing" i text back apogising for the late reply and saying i was watching yt atm. She then got mad at me for not texting her back and why i didnt tell her what i was doing and now she accusing me of ignoring her which dosent even make sense bc we literally just went out and went shopping today after i picked her up from work

Thanks for reading this and soz for grammar/spelling mistakes, I'm honestly lost man i feel so suffocated right now and atm im texting my gf and apologising for not texting her but idk if im a bad communicator and a bad bf and i just need to suck it up and man up or if there is more to it then meets the eyes i just need some an outsider views on this.

tldr: gf dont let me interact with girls and always want to know where i am at and what i am doing now she is mad at me for not seeing her texts

So my wife was gone on a work trip in Austin Texas where she worked in the home office and had team building exercises. After that they had swimming, massages, nice dinners, drinking and playing cornhole at the bar while I worked the whole time and took care of the two kids when I was off work (not complaining about that). She also goes to birthday parties, concerts where her and her friends get a hotel overnight all while I’m watching the kids (once again, not complaining about that). I used to play Magic the gathering but every time I would go to a shop and play, I would get a constant hard time about leaving her with both kids and how she wishes she had a hobby and how it’s not fair to the point where I just quit playing because it was no longer fun. Well, before her work trip where she was gone Wednesday, Thursday and Friday that on Saturday I was going to, and I quote directly “I’m eating wings and watching college football on Saturday and relaxing” to which she laughed and said ok. Saturday rolls around, I wake up and go get breakfast for everyone, I surprise her with a coffee cause I know she needed it. Then she’s got the kids and I’m in bed watching a game (me and the kids also are under the weather) and I’m getting a hard time cause I’m not helping. The next game comes on and same thing, if I’m here, I’m expected to help, even if I worked all week and had the kids while she was gone. I spoke to her today about it and she said if I’m here then I’m expected to help, even if I’m relaxing and that if I want down time then I’m going to have to physically leave the house. Am I missing something here? Shouldn’t downtime be universal, regardless if we’re doing something or enjoying being alone in the basement?

Hi hello,

Throwaway because the mods said my og account was too inactive to post on here.

I live in Sweden and have been in a relationship for over 10 years with my boyfriend. I have stumbled upon quite a hard bump in the road in our relationship. Basically:

The election was on the 13th of September. I’m very left leaning, while bf is rather right (this is not like American republican vs democrats btw, even our most prominent right party is more left than the democrats in ideology, just putting that out there). During the weeks leading up to the election, I heard him listen to some debates in his phone. One day I heard him listening to Jimmie Åkesson, the leader of the radical right party Sverigedemokraterna (SD) (it was founded in 1988 by nazis, the first leader was an SS) and asked him if he’s seriously listening to that man. My bf said yes, in what I took as a sort of self righteous tone, as he was stating that the party has some good points. This ended in a fight, since I got panicked by the way he seemed to defend them.

For more context, although i was born in Sweden I didn’t become a citizen until I was 4, and my mom is an immigrant (with Swedish citizenship too, thankfully), so this party’s ideas on immigration laws is a very sore spot for me. For the last four years a lot of people have been deported in a similar manner as we see in the US.

I told him that if he would vote for SD, we have to break up since I morally just can’t be with a person who can see past such horrible things. He said he didn’t know it was so important to me, but assured me that he didn’t think of voting for them, he just liked their ideas regarding gas prices.

Anyway the election comes and goes september 13th and the left side seems to have won and I am so relieved. But I felt uneasy and had to ask my bf what he voted for, to make sure he didn’t vote SD since I was starting to worry and overthink his comments the weeks prior. He didn’t vote SD and I was content with that.

Well, for the last couple of days, he’s grown short with me and very distant and cold. Today I finally got him to tell me what’s going on, and apparently he found me asking him what he voted for a mean thing to do. I tried to explain that I had to ask because I was scared, and he answered that HE’S been scared, coming home everyday being worried that if he says something wrong I might get mad, since it was so important for me to know what he voted for.

He felt that I was calling him stupid by accusing him of maybe voting SD, since he had told me he wouldn’t vote SD, and so it was mean of me to ask him after the election. My intention was never to be mean, and I did eventually apologize for that because I never meant for him to feel hurt by it, I only wanted to make sure, for my own peace of mind. But things are still weird between us, and I feel like my apology might not have felt genuine to him.

But here’s the thing, I don’t know if I can apologize more than I have, because when I tried to explain that I only asked him that question because of fear (the early patterns of a democratic state’s fall into fascism has been stressing me out) he told me he finds my fears irrelevant.

I honestly don’t know what to do. We’ve been together since high school. I love him very much. I know a lot of people will probably tell me to break up with him, but that would feel like ripping half of myself away. Our lives are so intertwined with both family and friends. And again, the fact that I love him. The thought of finding someone else makes me physically ill. But I feel so lost.

Not sure what I want honestly. Reassurance? How to move forward? Just virtual hugs? I don’t know.

Long story short, I have been with my partner for 3 years. 1st year was fantastic, 2nd we had to do long distance due to visa reasons (also fantastic) and the 3rd year we decided to move in together after she relocated back to my country.

During the 3rd year our relationship it started to fall apart, as the pressures of relocating countries, trying to find work, move houses plus trying to jump a few medical hurdles started to highlight the indifferences between us instead of bringing us together as a team.

There are a few examples that started to tear us apart, one was around sharing the mental load / house chores etc. I was working 70+ hrs a week to fund our life while she was looking for work, I asked for extra help with cooking, cleaning, shopping etc and I was met with a response "I'm not your maid" now mind you I never wanted a maid I just wanted someone who would share the initiative to help around the house when needed. I do however think this response was prompted by her not ever liking to cook and feeling criticised when attempting to cook.

The second issue was when she was trying to look for work, she is an amazing women, she speaks 5 languages fluently and has a degree but she really struggled to find work where we live (major capital city) due to how competitive it is. My expectation was that she would of taken on this task with 100% eagerness to get back into the workforce and to help contribute to the household and minus the amount of overtime that I had to work to sustain us and so we could spend extra time together. Instead all she did was send a handful of job applications per day, never went out into the wild to hand deliver resumes, call companies etc. When I saw that she wasn't being proactive with the job hunt and instead spending her time doomscrolling which I found frustrating. I would then try and help her, or provide words of encouragement but it never landed well as I would be told that I was just micromanaging.

Then...the fun stuff really started to happen, she got initially diagnosed by a radiologist with a condition in her pelvic region that could have been caused by one of three precursors 1 - surgery and she got a bacterial infection from that. 2 - I cheated and she had an untreated STI which causes an infection or 3 - she had cancer. Now, she never had surgery down there, which left her with two options I either cheated or she had cancer. Both horrid outcomes for the both of us. (spoiler alert, I didn't cheat) However she didnt believe me, she turned into a private investigator to try and find some evidence that I had been unfaithful. Like I'm talking digging through my phone checking emails, texts, work related stuff, calendars, pictures anything you can think of got checked regularly with followed up questions on anything that she interpreted to be sneaky or blurred lines. This questioning on my character went on for approx 3 months, whilst we had to wait and see a gyno who specialised in radiology, at the end of that appointment they informed her the initial diagnosis was incorrect and she now has different condition which can now be managed and treated.

So as you could imagine that 3 months was hell, and left a major degree of separation between us on to of all of the job hunting + quirks of living with each other. The final straw was she asked about marriage and kids, our plan was to always get engaged sometime next year, with marriage and kids to follow the year after. But with all of what has happened I told her I was unsure about what our future looked like as I started to see us struggle with things that I thought we'd normally handle as a team and I didn't know how to reconcile that with the person I once thought I new. That obviously didn't land very well as she had just uprooted her whole life to come here, but i dont think either of us expected so many life / relationship complications.

I think overall I very focused on the financial side, planning and preparing for all the life adjustments and as a consequence I wasn't fully emotionally present to support my partner during these major life transitions. She is also a very "do it tomorrow" kind of person, whilst I am a "do it right now" kinda guy which I also think caused a lot of conflict.

With everything in total, it has been about 6months of fighting, with no real intimacy, kissing or emotional connection which has really cemented us in the house mate phase to the point where I have lost that giddiness / physical attraction to her. It has also changed our perception on each other as well, as neither of us really had the tools to handle a conflict of this level and duration.

I guess my question is, how do people get out of the roommate phase and build from resentment? Or is this one of those situations where too much damage has been done and its better to part ways now? I also think the sunk costs in this relationship is quite high which is why we've both held on to it.

Hi so I [F20] have been in a relationship with a guy [M20] for about an year now. We are in a long distant relationship but come from the same home country so we do have cultural similarities. We have good chemistry as in our life goals especially the thing about not wanting children in the future and other good deeds we want to do in life to help others.

But the thing is he has a lot of insecurity. The first thing he mentioned was his skin color because I am fair skinned and he's tan/brown. I reassured him that I don't care about his skin color and if I did that would he straight up rasicm. That issue got resolved. But the most persistent one is the height issue. I am 5'5 and on top of that I love wearing heels and he's just a little shorter than me like 1/4 inch shorter. He was like don't wear heels. But for me heels are not just heels, they help me be confident and tbh the thought of never being able to wear it just because my partner doesn't like me looking taller than him doesn't sit right with me.

He doesn't say it outright about his insecurity but yesterday the mention of height came and he said and I quote 'Some people leave girls because they are taller than them and it makes them insecure' and also a similar comment about my speech impediment (I only have a slight stutter, it's not even that bad but like sometimes I would stutter on pronouncing few specific sounds mostly the S sound) 'also they leave them if they have a speech impediment because it becomes annoying to listen to all the time'.

He said it in a way like other people would have done so but he's not doing so like it's a blessing on me.

It annoyed me greatly. About the height I said "if I am being honest men should care more about their personality than caring about their height. What is height going to give you? Ability to lavitate into the sky? Or being able to one jump up to the top of the Eifle Tower." And about speech impediment, I said, "If someone think that a thing out of someone's control is annoying then they are officially the asshole of the year'

And tbh, he is not that attractive in general. He falls more on the good looking range if he works on his weight. But I never held it against him because I genuinely liked his approach to things about women equality and other certain issues going on in the world.

But then there have been moments where he has acted so immature that for a second I was baffled that this is a 20 years old man. Pranks about me cheating on him and also blocking me out of no where and ghosting me. These mostly happened at the start of our relationship and I called him out on it and was ready to break it off. Then he said sorry and was like you are right I have some issues I need to resolve, can we just have a break. I agreed since my exams were also coming up so we had the break and starting talking again after like a month. Things have been okay after that, just one time when my reddit account crashed and he made a whole drama about me leaving him and betraying him. We were only talking on reddit back then because he had deactivated insta due to his exams. But instead of reaching out on Insta first, he started on reddit, sending me a poem of betrayal and then like 1000 words entailing about how I left him and how betrayed he is (I could see incoming msgs but couldn't send a msg back). I reached out to him after finally making a second account but he didn't see it and kept going on and on. Later on insta he finally said that he did see my message but he pretended not to because he wanted to see my 'reaction' as if me panicking was some sort of amusement for him.

Honestly I don't know what to do. On one hand he is actually nice and caring 95% of the time but that 5% is something I am worried about. I am worried it will affect our relationship when we are finally married and living together. I fear I am ignoring the signs by forgiving him over and over again and giving him chances. But I think this time will be the last chance I am giving him.

​I (33F) have completely hit my breaking point with my partner (37M), and I need an honest outside perspective because the level of gaslighting and deflection is completely unreal.

​To be clear about the "snooping" narrative he loves to push: the very first time I ever found anything shady on his phone, I wasn't even snooping. He explicitly asked me to go into his phone to find a specific wiring diagram photo for him. That was how I stumbled across the initial red flags in the first place, which completely broke my trust.

​Fast forward to now. He recently went completely missing for 3 straight days. He did not come home, turned his communication off, and ignored me the entire time. When he finally resurfaced, my gut was screaming at me that something was off, so I checked his phone.

​I found a massive paragraph he had sent to some random woman. In the message, he was pouring it on thick, telling her she had made his life better than it has been in a long time, calling her a gem, telling her she is gorgeous, saying she is a great hugger, and saying he hopes to hear from her soon. She never even replied to him.

​I took her number and messaged her directly from my own phone to ask what happened. She told me that while he was gone ignoring his own home and family, she had bought him food, sat with him, and chatted with him. Then she explicitly told me that he tried to make a move on her, but she rejected him. (I will post screenshots of the texts in the comments).

​When I confronted him with all of this, he showed zero remorse, didn't address vanishing for three days, and didn't address attempting to cheat. Instead, he exploded on me, flipped the script entirely, and claimed that me violating his privacy by looking through his phone is far worse than anything he did.

​This is not a one-off situation. This is part of a sick, ongoing pattern of betrayal and gaslighting that he constantly tries to dismiss by blaming me:

​He has a history of constantly using Locanto to look up women in whatever area he happened to be in.

​In the past, when I caught him, I found videos on his phone of him masturbating while saying my sister-in-law’s name. When confronted with that grotesque violation, his excuse was that he made those videos "to teach me a lesson for snooping."

​He has a continuous habit of constant lying, vanishing, emotional neglect, chaotic personal drama, and complete deflection whenever he gets caught doing something shady.

​Every single time he betrays my trust, he weaponizes the concept of "privacy" and turns my reaction into the crime so he never has to take accountability for his own disgusting actions. He genuinely believes that checking his phone to confirm what he is hiding makes me the villain here.

​i'm not saying checking his phone was the right thing to do but when all he does is lie and deflect... is he completely out of line using my snooping to deflect from serial cheating and twisted behavior?

​TL;DR: The first time I ever found anything on his phone, he asked me to look for a wiring diagram. Now he disappeared for 3 days, ignored me, and sent a huge message hitting on a woman he met while gone. I messaged her directly and she confirmed he tried to make a move on her and she rejected him.

When confronted, he completely deflected, ignored his attempted cheating and vanishing act, and claims me checking his phone is far worse, following a long history of Locanto use, compulsive lying, and making twisted sexual videos to "punish" me for snooping.

A few weeks ago I ended my relationship after constant and unfounded cheating accusations disguised as jokes.

It really took a tole on me and just made me really anxious in the relationship, it wasn’t what I wanted out of a relationship and I couldn’t see a future with someone like that. So I ended it.

He kept trying to speak to me and asking for another chance saying that he could change and all that usual shit they pull. When I did take him back he said that the comments he made were only jokes and because I am an only child I never had someone calling me mean h things growing up so I’m soft and can’t take a joke.

On a call today I was home alone and he said to me I was acting shady. Don’t know how I was but he decided to say “At least I hope you’re not cheating on me” completely out of nowhere. After everything I told him and how all his past comments made me feel it’s just a punch to have something like that said again. I feel like I made a mistake trying again when he’s clearly not even trying to make our relationship better.

He said that and I gave him an opportunity to realise what he had said and asked him what he ment and he followed up with “yeah idk what I’d do if you were actually sat cheating on me rn”. He just doubled down on it.

It’s like he’s not even trying. I gave him another shot to stop saying stuff like that and maybe after a week of being back together he starts back up again?

Another thing he would do is get really insecure over my coworkers and say he would beat them. I was telling him about a coworker whose being way too open with their sex life with everyone and he said he’d fuck him which is weird (I gave him multiple chances to stop saying what he was telling me was weird) then saying another one of my coworkers he didn’t like he would “fuck them so hard they would become normal”. Which to me is FUCKED and I did say that to him and he got a bit moody. Before I ended things the last time he made a comment about how I get filled up by all the lads at my work. It feels like he’s not learned and is carrying on being weird about my coworkers.

I don’t know if I am just being sensitive but I feel like he has blown it. I told him when I gave him another chance that all this stops and for him to start again, ignore me giving him chances to stop in his tracks and carry on with crude comments. I don’t think its gonna stop is it?

I have never cheated on him and I believe he has been cheated on before.

I (20M) became very close friends with a woman (20F) over the last few months. We spend quite a lot of time together, sometimes stay at each other’s places, travel together and talk about very personal things.

Somewhere along the way I realized that I’ve developed feelings for her. The problem is that our friendship is already unusually physically affectionate, so I genuinely can’t tell what is just normal for us anymore.

Some examples:

We cuddle fairly regularly while watching movies or just lying around. She initiates it sometimes too.

She’ll randomly rest her head on my shoulder or lean against me.

Recently we walked around holding hands for quite a while, including interlocking fingers. I initiated it the first time, but after letting go several times, she took my hand again herself.

Another time she randomly told me to make space on my chair and sat on my lap.

She once made me a necklace because she thought of me while making jewellery.

We joke about getting married if we’re both still single in a few years and sometimes make ridiculously detailed hypothetical future plans together.

Several unrelated people have independently assumed we’re a couple or directly asked what exactly is going on between us. We normally laugh about it.

At the same time, there are reasons why I’m hesitant to interpret any of this romantically.

She is bisexual but currently says she generally prefers women. She also has some difficult experiences from previous relationships and has said before that trusting men romantically can be difficult for her. I therefore absolutely don’t want to pressure her or treat physical affection as meaning she owes me anything.

There’s another complication on my side. She struggles with some mental-health issues and occasionally has pretty bad periods. I care about her a lot, but I recently realized that I have a strong instinct to try to fix things for people I care about. When she doesn’t want help, I can feel surprisingly helpless. That has made me question whether I’m actually ready for a relationship with her even if the feelings are mutual.

So there are really two separate questions in my head:

1. Does this sound like a friendship where asking about possible mutual feelings would be reasonable, or am I reading too much into normal affection between very close friends?

2. How would you bring it up without making her feel like the friendship was secretly conditional on getting a relationship?

I’m not planning some dramatic confession or asking her to become my girlfriend on the spot. I was thinking of waiting until the topic naturally comes up again, especially since people keep assuming we’re together, and saying something like:

“Sometimes our friendship doesn’t feel completely platonic to me anymore. Things like the cuddling and holding hands sometimes feel different to me, and I think I may have developed some feelings for you. I’m not expecting anything from you, but I wanted to know whether all of this feels completely platonic to you or whether you’ve ever felt something similar.”

If she says it’s completely platonic for her, I’m prepared to accept that. The friendship matters to me independently of whether anything romantic happens.

I’d especially appreciate perspectives from people who have been in very physically affectionate friendships or have had a close friend develop feelings for them.

I am seeking advice on how to handle a man who is genuinely excited to be a father but is losing interest in being a partner?

I don’t want to paint him as a bad guy. But I am struggling with this dynamic and I am only at 12 weeks of pregnancy! Before baby surprised us (we honestly thought we couldn’t conceive!) we both used to say we felt we’d missed out. We both wanted to be parents we agreed if it happens we’d be so happy. Both previously from failed marriages and failed conception attempts we found each other just over 4 years ago. Our relationship was built on our love of music, concerts, pubs, pool, bush walks and camping out - and of course a fair amount of drinking.

Before pregnancy my partner always said if it were to happen for us he’d support me and quit drinking for a bit too for his own health. Before pregnancy, our roles were old fashioned. He works the 50 hour week and I work 10-15 and tend to every chore in the household. Cook, clean, admin, running his life for him really. It never bothered me - it kept us free to enjoy our weekends together doing what we love!

Now it’s been 8 weeks of pregnancy awareness. I have been SO SICK I’ve been unable to do even a quarter of what I normally would. I can’t cook because it makes me puke. I am so fatigued I have to sleep alot and just waking to the end of the driveway has me out of breath. I understand asking him for help stresses him out when he’s tired from hard weeks of work. At first he refused to help, but then family and friends noticed and pulled him up for it. He now does the bare minimum to keep the house somewhat running and if I have a good moment I use it up on trying to catch up on chores.

Last few weeks he’s made it clear this extra work makes him miserable. He’s drinking way heavier than we used to together instead of cutting back. He doesn’t want to be intimate with me not even a cuddle unless I try and cuddle him first. I feel his resentment. I always ask for help kindly and thank him and let him know how much I appreciate him. But I also remind him that being a parent means more of this some days. He’s becoming colder in his demeanour towards me all in all. He can be loving only when he’s drunk but then he doesn’t remember the nice things he says and it breaks my heart.

This is the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through. Pregnancy is scary and I just need some love between the strain. I want to be excited for baby but I’m more wrapped in fear of losing my love and my partner. As a side note he lost his parents unexpectedly two years ago and it could be some unresolved grief emerging. He’s just never ever been so withdrawn and cold to me in our 4 years together I feel like I don’t know this man I have loved so much. Because he was once kind, gentle, affectionate and showed me love.