TLDR: my boyfriend knew about my past r*pe, on a night we were drinking he asked if had enjoyed it. I was already thinking of leaving, and I am disturbed by this and wondering how to go about it.

My bf and I have been together for 11.5mo, and we have had our ups and downs. I do love him, and he has genuinely made changes after conversations we have had about other issues. However, throughout our relationship he has repeatedly pushed at my boundaries and sometimes just plain disregarded them. I've never had the balls to plainly address that issue with him.

About 1.5mo ago he started an argument with me over text literally right after I buried my grandma. He had been at my apartment taking care of my cat and told me he would be there for me when I got home, but instead he left before i got home bc of the argument. I told him to leave the key. He later called and apologized and I forgave him but it still left me questioning our relationship.

The next time he came over I told him we should break up, we aren't compatible, I don't see a future for us. He cried and begged me to give him another chance, and I gave in because I was already grieving and it felt like too much to lose him as well. I do really regret this and wish I would have held strong. Since then he has been acting over the top perfect because I think he is afraid I will break up with him.

Now to the issue at hand. For context: I have told him before about how I was r*ped 3 years ago. We were drinking a few nights ago and we got pretty drunk, and somehow the topic came up. Then out of the blue he asked me if I had enjoyed it when I was r*ped.

I was shocked and I asked him to clarify what he was asking, and he confirmed his question. I got upset and started crying and then he started apologizing. The next day I didn't know what to say so I just acted fine. I did bring up once how fucked up it was to ask that and he seemed ashamed. Still I played it cool until he left the following day.

I'm honestly disgusted that he asked this, and combined with all the other times he has disregarded my boundaries, I am seriously questioning whether I can trust him and I don't want to have sex with him.

I do love him and I will miss him but I know we aren't meant to be together and I need to end things. I know he will be shocked and upset because I acted normal after he asked the offensive question. How can I best go about breaking up with him, considering he has a key to my place and he had such an extreme reaction last time I asked? Is breaking up over the phone okay, considering I would still have to get my key back and give him his stuff?

We have a 5 month old and complains that all I do is nag. Today he said that he has to asks permission to do his hobbies as if I were his mom. I feel like it’s a tale as old time. I wouldn’t have to complain if he did what he’s supposed to. I’ve tried everything : making a schedule, dividing tasks fairly, talking to him, not talking to him and letting things pile up, etc.

Today I had to do my midterms while taking care of the baby, doing the laundry, heating up a meal. He got up at 12pm and took a nap from 3-5:30 and then went to play 5 with his friends at 7:30. He said he was tired from his 14 hour work day yesterday.

I’m also tired ? Hello? He also said graduate school is my hobby?

I think he doesn’t understand we will be tired while the baby is small.

I will definitely tell her, but I have no idea how to do it.

My fiancée and I had a discussion around a few months ago, approximately March, about the possibility of having kids. She said “I’m not too sure let’s keep our options open for now, but I think we should wait and see” and I am in agreement with her. But around April/March, one of my cousins found out he terrible sperm and can only conceive via IVF and even then it may be a long shot. He told me, and him and his wife are working through their options.

This kinda scared me, and I decided to get myself tested too just in case. I am not sure why, but I was expecting normal results, and didn’t tell my fiancée not out of malice but I thought I would tell her after it was over. But the results were showing azoospermia and they had to see if it was obstructive or non-obstructive. The 2 weeks it took for the results to arrive I did not even think about it. But then I thought I would see it through to the end. I booked another follow up a month later, and they determined there was no obstruction and I needed to do another follow up.

I put it off and I did it a few weeks ago. They did a bunch of tests. Results came back a couple weeks ago, and I have a mosaic genetic condition that makes me functionally infertile. Some procedures are still available for me(micro-TESE I believe it’s called) and the urologist and other fertility specialists are telling me theres still a chance albeit low.

I have been processing this by myself. It’s been a terrible shock. One thing I am sure is I don’t want to tell anyone except her and my best friend(don’t wanna tell my parents either, this would depress them I am an only child and the last of my bloodline). This is terrible. I also wasn’t too set on kids, but the idea that it may not even be possible if we wanted that option has been gut wrenching. I joined a couple of support groups online, and saw stories of people who were left over this. That just scared me more. But I do need to tell her and give her the option. I left a couple days ago and told her I was on a trip with my boys, but I just went to another town and I’m staying in a random inn, just to take some time to myself and process it. I have cried a bit here freely and had some time to myself to let some stuff out of my system. I have my best friend covering for me(I may tell him too). I told him I need him to lie to her if she calls, and he agreed but made me promise it wasn’t because I was planning on doing something bad or have an affair and I told him no and that I will tell him later. He’s known me forever, like over 16 years, so he’s also worried but agreed when I explained I need time off.

I have been here since Thursday, and will be back tomorrow early in the morning, and head to work after stopping by home real quick.

How do I go about telling her? And why I kept it all a secret? And how I lied about going with friends? I am not sure what to do.

I keep thinking “what if she leaves me?” but part of me is hopeful she won’t since we have been through the thick and thin together. But it’s not like I can stop her. She deserves to know and have the agency to make that choice. But I saw the other dudes online who thought their partner was their ride or die, but this was a dealbreaker. I am willing to try anything, including donors, if we do decide to have kids. How do I communicate all this?

My fiancé (38m) came home drunk from golf. I was already a bit upset because he promised me he’d stop drinking so much. He passed out on the couch and something urged me (31f) to check his phone. I saw that an hour earlier he messaged an instagram model with 1m followers “I’m sure your inbox is ridiculous but I’m hoping to get a reply. I like what I see ;) how is your evening going?” The worst part was (I scoured his whole phone) he actually asked chat gpt to help him come up with the message. Re promoting it to make it more “confident” to “humanize” it. So there was a lot of effort going into this message. I’ve never felt more icked out in my life. So pathetic. I won’t lie I threw a pillow at him to wake him up and raged hard. He already knew this was a boundary I’d consider cheating. We’ve been engaged 4 months and we’re literally house hunting yesterday. I’ve never been so angry in my life. I feel like he destroyed us. I kept asking him why he would do this and he literally kept denying it lol. Just saying “what are you talking about?” Over and over as i held the message up in his face. Or that he just could not remember. I’m like “oh did men in black waltz through here?” I feel so betrayed. He messaged her with effort and intent. Is it still considered cheating if the woman is so out of reach?

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 when I’m free. 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

Edit: I moved a few months ago for grad school so I don’t live with my mom. She was hoping to visit me on the day in question, hence part of the reason why I told her my plans

My gf and I were together for almost 5 years and were talking about getting married. On the night I was going to propose she got drunk and started saying mean things about me out of nowhere when we were having a good time. I did not propose, but I told her about it later and how much her actions hurt me.

A month after that I had hip surgery and she had promised to take care of me but didnt. In total she made 4 meals for me and refused to split the grocery bill with me when I asked if we could buy some TV dinners and microwave burritos for me to heat up myself. I lost 15 pounds in the first 3 weeks and 30 pounds total.

One day I came home from physical therapy and found her making a big brunch for herself but she didn’t offer or make any for me. I got upset and we got into an argument about it. I said I didn’t want to fight and asked to talk about it later after we had both cooled down.

That night she stood her ground and said how I’m “always picking fights for no reason”. I told her it was mind boggling that I was in pain, hungry, asking for her help but she was refusing to help me and worse - she was being mean about it.

She spent the night sleeping in the guest bedroom. The next morning I was gettin myself a cup of coffee and spilled it, dropped my crutches, and almost fell. That’s when I lost it. I yelled, “ I want you gone! I’m supposed to have your help but I don’t! If you’re not going to be my partner then just leave already!” She came out of the bedroom and said “Oh, what? You dropped your crutch and I suppose you’re going to blame that on me too?” And crossed her arms and gave me a mean look. Thats when I said something I completely regret…

“If this is how you take care of someone, then you’d make a real shit mother wouldn’t you? But you come from a shit family so it makes sense why you can’t care for anyone. It’s starting to make a lot of sense why your last bf dropped you off at a hotel with all your stuff and abandoned you.” I was in pain, I was starving, I was till hurt from the night of the proposal, and she was not being a good partner to me. Still, I know that’s no excuse for the mean things I said. I was just at my wit’s end and lost my cool.

Thats when I started finding the alcohol hidden around the house. She had been drinking in secrecy and it all started making sense - why she couldn’t take care of me and why she was being mean. All of the sudden I wasn’t mad at her, but felt bad for her. I confronted her about her drinking and she admitted that she thinks she has a problem with substances.

Her drinking didnt stop. She just got better about hiding it. I kept finding the empty containers around the house. And she would hide them in the bottom of the trash can and take out the trash while I wasn’t looking.

After 6 months I got a call from family saying that my gf was acting like I didn’t exist on social media. I also caught her lying about hanging out with friends when she told me she was out thrifting. When I confronted her about these things she told me she didn’t want to re-sign the lease and said she didn’t think we should be dating anymore. She said that she does think she would be a bad mother. She said that she is too messed up and has too much work to do on herself and by the time she is ready to have kids it will be too late. She told me that I will find someone who can give me children, but that it is not going to be her. She said she doesn’t feel the same way about our relationship after the things I said about her and her family.

So I moved into my own apartment and she moved into her own apartment too. That was 4 months ago. She told me she will always love me. She said she misses me. We had breakfast the other day and it was really nice. I asked her if we can hang out again but she has just ignored me.

Today is exactly one year since the botched proposal. I am heartbroken and wake up every morning and cry for about an hour because I miss my best friend.

My question is: Have any of you been in a similar position and what did you do about it? I don’t want to give up on the person I love. The person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. We obviously still have feelings for each other. I just wish she would believe in herself like I believe in her. I wish she would forgive me for the horrible things I said to her. I wish she could put down the alcohol and be there for me in the way that I need her to.

To clarify, I’m married with a kid. I was engaged at 19 and married to someone from back home at 23. My husband and I both care for and respect each other but we agree that there’s a lot of ways that he and I both got screwed over which includes cultural differences, him not being able to land a career related job here, which means we’re just surviving financially etc. I have a decent job but cost of living and having a kid is expensive. We also had to live with my parents for a few years, when he first came here
Anyways, my parents totally switched up when it came to my younger sister. I guess she was more outspoken than I was. So basically, she got more time than I did to decide what to do with her life. She worked hard and got a good paying job and now she spends her time enjoying the money she makes and has high standards for the guy she marries. As she should. I got my first full time job while married and living with my parents…so I was just saving to get out. Anyways, now my sister and mom tell me about the guys she’s considering and how they should be this and that and make this much etc. and I just get so infuriated especially when my mom says things. It’s like where were all these standards when it was my time? Why was I married off so young to someone who would be new to this country and when I wasn’t even settled in my career? They want her to make an informed decision and not rush into things at 26 but for me 19 was panic mode??
Don’t get me wrong I love this for my sister and I want her to find a wonderful guy who loves and deserves her. But I’m just finding it harder and harder to listen to her talk about it. I feel so guilty because we tell each other about everything so I know she wants to tell me about everything with her potential guys too. It also makes me feel like I’m being ungrateful for my husband and kid who I love. But I’m not, I’m just upset about the different standards my parents had for us. How do I get rid of this feeling so I don’t mess things up with my sister?

I am engaged to a wonderful man. We were supposed to get married in May, but his mother was diagnosed with stage 4 terminal cancer four days before it was going to happen. We postponed our wedding. He wants to get married after she dies, saying that he didn’t want to make any big life changes while he’s going through this with his mother.

Today, we talked about my move to his city. We’re going to move into his house together. He still doesn’t want to get married. We’ve talked about it a few times as I’ve tried to understand his way of thinking, but it upsets him whenever I bring it up. I’m anxious and feel insecure in our relationship sometimes, and talking things out helps calm my nervous system.

When I asked him today why merging our families together into one house felt okay to him but getting legally married wasn’t, it wasn’t with the intention of changing his mind. I truly wanted to understand why the two events felt different to him.

Instead, it upset him. He said he messed up his first marriage, and his ex-wife manipulated him into excluding his family, and he really needs this marriage to go well. He wants me to trust him. He also said he can’t keep going back and forth with me on this because it sends him spiraling. I didn’t want to upset him; I just wanted to understand better. This was the first time he told me what his first wife did. I still don’t understand why it’s tied to his mother’s death, but I’m not going to ask.

Now he isn’t responding to me, so I’m giving him space.

He wants me to move in January, but I told him I can’t do it without marriage first. I’m selling my house, leaving my job, and moving myself, my kids, my animals, and all my belongings across the country. That’s an enormous amount of security to give up without being married.

I’m bummed this likely means I won’t be moving in January since we can’t predict when someone will die. Now my stomach is in knots because I’ve upset him and don’t want him mad at me when I truly just wanted to understand his way of thinking. I feel we’ve reached the point where we can’t talk about it anymore, and I’ll simply have to wait for him to bring it up in the future.

I don’t want to minimize myself or my needs, but I also don’t want him upset or mad at me when I need to talk about something. Is there a better way to approach things in the future so that my questions, understanding, and needs are taken care of without upsetting him or making him shut down?

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.

My husband and I have been together for six years and married for 4. I don’t have a wedding ring. This past year I’ve been hinting repeatedly that I’d still really like a wedding ring(we eloped).

He keeps saying he needs a car first. We’ve been saving to get him a car but unfortunately I was in a really bad accident in July and we had to buy me a new car pulling from our emergency fund. We’re still negative in our emergency fund and don’t have funds to get him a car yet.

Our house is ancient and needs a lot of repair and maintenance. We just made a list of all of the tasks that need done before the end of the year, how long they’d take, when we’d do them.

I go to start on the first task and realize I’m literally not strong enough. I’m still injured from my accident and am in physical therapy a couple types a week and I just didn’t have the brute strength. He took over and did it.

I apologized to him when he was done saying sorry because the whole list probably looks like a “honey-do” list as I physically can’t do most things on the list. As far as recovery is tracking I probably won’t be able to help for a while and I guess I didn’t realize that until today. I still keep up with at home chores, I just can’t do anything overhead or that needs a lot of strength or keeps me on my feet for a long time.

Anyways he said it’s okay he’ll do every chore on the list on time as long as he gets to go on “the boys trip” in January. - a trip that we’d already established he wasn’t going on since we’re saving for his car. Anyway I replied aren’t we saving for your car? And he looked visibly upset so I asked how much the boys trip would cost and he said we’d talk about later.

We haven’t talked about it yet but I’m upset that he made it like that ”I’ll do the tasks IF”

And how he wants a boys trip as a reward when I can’t help because I’m injured and I still don’t have a wedding ring.

I know it’s a lot of hard work he’ll have to do on the house and honestly it’s very upsetting to me that l cant do things right now. I’m a runner who can’t run at the moment so things are already hard. But I don’t think a three day trip that’ll probably be $2k should determine whether or not our home maintenance gets done.

I don’t want to be accusatory and I’m not sure how to discuss this. Obviously he’ll be carrying more of the weight of our household tasks.

Edit: I did phrase my post wrong. We are not in debt. We have savings but we like to have three months emergency fund before we will spend on cars. Our savings are replenishing the fund now before they will start going towards car sinking.

These are also important home maintenance projects that will cause compounding issues if we do not do them. He made the list with me.

I already have an engagement ring from a local jeweler and the matching band is $1,300.

So many people thinking we are financially struggling.

Let me rephrase again. We are NOT financially struggling and are stable. We have savings. We have a monthly budget for home repair. Those costs NEVER end so all the saving in the world will never get rid of the need for home repair.

We have a three month emergency fund almost always and it’s low right now because we purchased my car. We aren’t going to save for his car(or a ring or a trip) until we have a fully funded emergency fund again. He’ll have a new car next spring. We could buy the car and the ring and the trip today but it would be stupid and it’s not how we manage our finances. A $1,300 ring is not as big of a deal as it seems. It’s less than one month’s savings.

My boyfriend and I have been together for over a year now and he lightly covered my face and torso with a blanket while in missionary during sex. After doing it he asked me if it was okay and I said yes thinking it would just be for a minute or two but the minutes went by and he then took some blanket off my torso and was only covered my face. I started getting skeptical and as I was about to come out from under, he finished. He could immediately sense that something was wrong and apologized and said he thought it was be a fun new thing for us.

I’m not sure why he would do this out of nowhere, but I am afraid he didn’t want to look at me due to thinking of another girl and using me, a weird kink, or feeling guilty if he may have cheated on me?

He said he wouldn’t do it again and if he does then he will make eye contact with me before he finishes.

He has been stressed out lately and I feel I have been the one initiating sex.

I’m not sure what to do.

What do you think?

My husband and I were high school sweethearts and had a genuinely good relationship before having our baby. He's a good guy, and he was amazing during my emergency C-section and our baby's neonatal stay. He supported me through one of the most difficult experiences of my life.

But eight months into parenthood, I'm genuinely questioning whether I want to stay married.

I have chronic pain from endometriosis and adenomyosis. Some days I'm capable of doing everything; other days I'm barely functioning. I'm also a stay-at-home mum, and I feel like the mental and physical load of parenting largely falls on me.

We've talked about needing more support before, but he often gets defensive or annoyed. I don't feel like much has changed.

Today, I'd put our baby down for a nap and jumped in the shower. Someone knocked at the door asking for me, so my husband answered and then went straight back to gaming. Because they specifically wanted to speak to me, I ended up rushing to the door while I'd literally just gotten out of the shower.

My husband was annoyed because I'd spoken too loudly. Our baby started crying while he was gaming, and he told me to chill out. I went in to settle our baby myself, but I was overheating, my pain flared badly, and I eventually had to put our baby safely in his cot because I physically couldn't continue.

Fifteen minutes later, my husband came in to help, only to say he wasn't going to settle the baby because I was in the room. I could barely move. Eventually, I literally crawled out, and he closed the door.

I'm absolutely furious, but underneath that anger is sadness.

I think I'm grieving the relationship we had before kids. The friendship, the partnership and the feeling that we were a team. I'm grieving the experience of parenthood I thought we'd have, where we'd support each other rather than become another source of stress.

He's a good person, but I'm starting to question whether he's a good husband to me anymore.

I don't want to spend the rest of my marriage repeatedly explaining why I need support, especially when we've already had these conversations.

Some days, I genuinely want a divorce. That thought scares me because we have so much history and so many good memories.

For those who were genuinely happy before kids but struggled after becoming parents, does it get easier? Did you find your way back to each other, or did you eventually realise things weren't going to change?

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.

My boyfriend (26M) and I (28F) have been together for 3 years and 8 months. He is extremely family-oriented and very close to his family.

Recently, I had an issue with his brother’s girlfriend because of discriminatory and racist behavior toward me. I felt deliberately excluded and treated differently. It hurt me deeply, and because of that, I stopped attending their family gatherings.

This afternoon, my boyfriend explained to them why I had stopped coming and how her treatment of me had made me feel. She immediately gave a completely different version of events. For example, she completely ignored me when I said “Congratulations,” but told the family that she had thanked me and hugged me, which never happened.

Afterward, one of his family members called me to reproach me and say that I was the one who had pushed them away by stopping coming to their gatherings. Meanwhile, I feel that I am the victim in this situation. I experienced discriminatory, possibly racist. Instead, they prefer her version and are now blaming me for reacting to how I was treated.

What hurts me most is my boyfriend’s reaction. He completely sides with them. When I told him that she had lied, he didn’t believe me, didn’t support me, and said that I was “looking for problems.” He told me that if I don’t “solve the problem” with his brother’s girlfriend and still stop attending his family gatherings again, we should break up. Before this afternoon he was totally ok with it but then brainwashed completely.

From his perspective, his family is the most important thing. I love him, but I don’t know how to continue navigating our relationship when his family is such a huge part of his life and conflicts involving them affect our relationship this much.
I understand that it may also be difficult for him to feel caught in the middle.

For people who have dealt with a similar situation, what conversations or boundaries would you recommend in this situation? What did you do?

Writing this at 4AM as I am a bit lost.

We have been together for 3 years and i have to mention we only see each other on the weekend and i don’t always feel like having sex due to this being a reoccurring thing which in turn makes me feel pressured and that kind of takes the fun out of it.
We have sex usually 1/2 out of the 3 days we see each other but if i dont feel like doing it he always gets annoyed/ gives me the cold shoulder.

The night started out fine, my boyfriend made cocktails which i quite liked, and i asked for a second one. This seemed to be a mistake as i started to feel a bit queasy. My boyfriend already started to initiate having sex at that point and seemed to notice and told me to go freshen up a bit which i did. I got back and laid down as i didn’t feel good which i told him, he said it was fine and told me to go sleep.

A few moments later i heard him signing really loudly like he was immensely annoyed, and a bit later i heard him hit himself 2 times (i wasn’t sure) and i asked him what was wrong, which he didn’t answer to so i let it go.
He then processed to sit up for a few minutes and got up and got out of the room to go downstairs and slammed the doors really aggressively which startled me.
He got back like 15/20 minutes later and started hitting himself again to which i asked him what was wrong again and if he was angry because we didn’t have sex, he then denied slamming the doors and being angry and started saying stuff like “im worthless, i don’t want to be here anymore”
I calmed him down and he apologised and started acting sweet again but honestly i was a bit scared with how he was acting.

Its Sunday and we didn’t have sex yesterday so thats probably the reason he feels sexually frustrated but the pressure of needing to want sex is killing it for me.
Im not sure how to fix this or how to handle this.

Maybe i’m overthinking this, but is he unknowingly manipulating me? He is so sweet otherwise but i don’t know what to do about this anymore

TLDR: boyfriend throws tantrums when I don’t want to have sex in a way that’s making me reconsider the relationship and i’m not sure if its my fault or if he need to get over himself

EDIT: i feel like i should mention that the sex we do have is good and he takes care of me in that regard.
I should also mention that i “initiate” /rile him up quite a bit but often dont feel like having sex after having done so, which in turn leaves him sexually frustrated. Hes also not a bad person that spikes my drinks as some of the comments seem to suggest, i appreciate the concern but thats not where its needed.

I 25F and 26M have been together for about 4 years. I wouldn’t say we are overly sexual. We go through periods where we have sex a few times a week and then others where we don’t have sex for multiple weeks. Sometimes bc of life events, stress, etc lit just gets busy as we know. When we do have sex if it’s like good and slow (have foreplay and don’t rush into it) I definitely give him head until he’s hard or pushes me off. Other than that I don’t really give him head from start to finish that often. If we do anything sexual it usually just ends with sex. He’s upset I don’t give him head until he finishes without having sex or expecting more. I personally feel like we don’t have a ton of time for that and we already don’t have sex a lot so why would I be giving random blowjobs is my reasoning. He says that’s stupid bc I could do it randomly on the couch watching a movie but 1) that seems off putting and weird to me like we are watching a movie enjoying it 2) I don’t want to just stop the movie, give head and then go back like nothing ever happened.

Guess my question is how often do you have sex a week and do you give random blowjobs to finish on top of that?

*he doesn’t go down on me bc Ive never finished from it, so he’s not returning the favor. The only sexual things done to me are right before sex or sex itself

I’m now wondering since he doesn’t go down on me if he can do other things that give me pleasure instead like unsolicited back massages, foot rubs, surprise dinners, etc

I am 36F and my fiancé is a 32M. We have a mostly great relationship, we are like best mates and laugh a lot and love each other very much. There is a big issue - we haven’t had sex in a bit over three years. My partner says he has no urge for it anymore and he has zero interest in doing anything sexual with me at all. We still kiss (no tongue) and hug and hold hands and cuddle on the couch, he will slap and grab my butt but take things no further.
He has said that he has gone through these dry spells with prior partners, so I think that brings me some comfort ? But I don’t know. I’ve asked him to see a counsellor (both individually and as a couple) and he hasn’t organised that (it’s been a few months since we had a big talk about this and how it’s affecting me. He has had some past issues with partners not treating him well sexually, and using it as a weapon to manipulate.
For the first year of our relationship the sex was great, and I know there’s the honeymoon phase, but surely it’s not “normal” for the sex to just stop completely. I get sex life changing with the relationship but to just stop? I am very sure he is not cheating - and trust him completely. I feel too young to be not having any sex. He assures me that he is sexually attracted to
Me and wants (in theory) to have sex with me - but he just doesn’t have the urge/need.
This is the longest dry spell I’ve ever had and it’s really hard not to take it personally.
Opening our relationship feels like an option I have through about - but really I don’t know if I could go through with it.
He expresses his love to me in many other ways, so I do feel loved, it’s just the physical act of sex i am missing.
Would appreciate any advice or suggestions.

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.

I recently moved in with my girlfriend earlier this year. We've been together 3 years. Her parents built a new house about 5 minutes away from the house we are now renting from them (they used to live here.) Unfortunately we didn't find a place equal distance from both of our jobs but the current house we rent was fairly cheap being a family deal. My commute is an hour and fifteen minutes. Hers is 25-30 min.

Right off the bat I wasn't super pleased with the house, and her parents left a bunch of stuff here that still hasn't been touched 4 months later. I also wasn't pleased with the commute for me. My girlfriend lived with her parents before this and hadn't had a real job until this year when she graduated from nursing school. She was very adamant about renting this house and didn't seem to try very hard to help me find a place that I liked too. She also was very scared of moving away from her parents so them being 5 minutes away was helpful to her.

My girlfriend has two dogs (one small Yorkie, and one large Golden doodle.) To preface I really hate the golden doodle, it will follow me around, not leave me alone EVER and doesn't follow commands. The Yorkie is a bit more manageable but will pee/poop on everything if you don't take her out every two hours. Before we moved in I made it very clear that I didn't want to have to take care of her dog (Yorkie) while she was gone, and I did not want the golden doodle living with us. I backpack and am outdoors all the time and I love my freedom to disappear into nature without having to come back 5 hours later to let dogs out. My girlfriend seemed to agree at the time. She said she'd pay for a dog sitter and that the Golden Doodle would stay with her parents. Somehow when we ended up renting her parents old house all those plans changed without us talking. I got stuck with the dog (Yorkie) on the days that she worked. I had to take care of it and if I wanted to do something I had to ask her mom to come over and pee her or watch her for the day. Then slowly my girlfriend started bringing the golden doodle over from her parents house. She said she never agreed to not have her stay with us sometimes. I thought "okay her staying sometimes isn't a big deal." My girlfriend said that the Golden doodle would come over when she was home and would leave when she went to work.

Fast forward to this last month. Her parents now don't want to keep the golden doodle. I'm now stuck with the golden doodle all the time, even when my girlfriend is at work. I feel gaslit and trapped because she is now saying that she never said the golden doodle wouldn't stay with us and that hiring a dog sitter was the plan if we weren't so close to her parents. I come home from my 24 hour shifts and being up all night having to feed dogs, take them outside, pee them every two hours and unable to leave for extended periods of time. I feel guilty asking her mom to take care of them and I feel bad when I leave the Yorkie in her crate to go do something.

On top of all of this my girlfriend has stopped going to the gym, and has no hobbies. Me and my girlfriend used to go to the gym together all the time, it's always been like pulling teeth but recently it's become impossible to get her to go. She says she's too tired from her job. My girlfriend has never had any hobbies and I've always tried to get her into mine. Most of the time she's too unfit to enjoy them or just flat out dislikes them (which is fine.) She spends most of her free time on her phone or watching shows. She always wants me to take her out on dates but most of her ideas consist of spending money or just going out to eat and seeing a movie. All of our dates are pretty much doing things I don't really enjoy. Because of this I find it incredibly hard to plan things.

Our intimacy has also dwindled out it seems. We might have sex twice a month, most of the time it's around 1.5 times a month. She has initiated probably twice this whole year. I understand that people have different libidos, but I could do it everyday so there's a huge mismatch. Her not wanting to have sex with me makes me extremely sad. When I try to talk to her about it she always says shes not in the mood or tired or just had a low libito. I'm not sure if she finds me attractive anymore. This doesn't just pertain just to sex either. My love language is physical touch and she recently hasn't wanted to cuddle and pretty much never shows physical signs of affirmation without prompting, and even then she doesn't want to do it.

I guess I'm realizing that there's a couple more things too long to put in here. But these are the big ones bothering me. I have tried to talk to my girlfriend about all of these issues and it always ends in arguments and/or her going back on her word (and seemingly trying to gaslight me.)

We just moved in together, I obviously am going to do everything I can to make it work but I'm having serious doubts. I can't really imagine my life without her. She's the only woman I find attractive and I love her deeply. I enjoy her company and the good times are really good. It just seems like they're becoming fewer and fewer. On top of that I don't know if I could financially move out, the logistics of having to deal with that and work is overwhelming just thinking about it. On top of that we just signed a 6 month lease.

We're going to sit down at a restaurant to talk about the doodle on the 6th. Is there any advice y'all can give me? I know I'm young and I often miss things I should / can do to help situations on my part.

EDIT: I failed to mention that she seemed on board with leaving the dog at her parents because they have another dog that grew up with hers (she lived in the same house.) It was common to come up with her and her family that they couldn't separate the two. In my mind I wasn't "asking her to give up her pet"

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?

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?

Hello everyone I’ve been in my relationship for almost 9 years we get along great and we have a what I think a healthy relationship. We don’t fight, we sometimes have arguments but doesn’t last long. Recently i feel like I’m mentally exhausted. We been together for a long time and he has made no movement on the future. He’s been bouncing from job to job because he gets fired for being late because he can’t get up in the morning. We agreed to get a dog together (well he’s my dog as we don’t live together) but he agreed to help me when he is over. I have to tell him over and over again what to do with the puppy. He forgets everything. If his head wasn’t attached to his shoulders he would lose it. He literally forgot my birthday and I was just talking about the plan I made for MY birthday party. He never once surprised me or taken me out on a date or flowers unless I suggested it. He leaves his shoes around and I have to tell him 20 times a day to put them away and he laughs about it when I get frustrated. I feel like I’ve been putting in most of the effort in this relationship. I’ve talk to him about it multiple times but he just shuts down thinking he’s the worse person ever and it makes me feel bad so I push my feelings to the side. He doesn’t listen to my advice I give him and not saying I’m always right but when he doesn’t listen to me he makes everything else harder and I get the consequences from it. He’s a homebody and I feel like he wasn’t like that or at least this much when we first started dating. I have to beg him to go out and when he agrees he looks miserable and again it makes me feel bad. He spends all of his money on his family, now I’m not saying he can never spend money on them but they are all on their 20s and they count on him to pay for stuff as he’s the oldest. He can hardly put money aside for our future because he spends it all. I also do have a spending problem BUT I’ve saved a lot and know how to fit what I need/want into my budget. I just need help I don’t know how long I can be his mother for. We have such a good friendship going on. He makes me feel comfortable with all of my medical conditions and encouraged me to do a procedure for one my health issues that I was scared about. It’s hard because we don’t have a “bad” relationship at all he’s such a good guy. Do I end this or try to work on it after already talking to him about it multiple times? If anyone has advice please let me know. Thank you

TL;DR – My mom essentially only watches AI-generated substance-lacking videos on Facebook and I’m worried this will have cognitive effects on her as she gets older. How can I convince her that this media isn’t good for her?

Hello, I hope you’re well. I’m seeking advice on how to reach my mother in this situation and get her away from this media.

My mom is currently ‘addicted’ to watching short form AI-generated dramas on Facebook. Storylines are typically about the regular unoriginal soapy plot points such as cheating, arranged marriage, betrayal and the like.

I have asked her myself why she chooses to watch this content rather than literally anything else that’s human made and she claims that this is the way for her to escape reality and give her brain a break after her very demanding, high effort job. Which I understand that, but there’s content that actually has some form of substance that wouldn’t require her to ‘turn her brain on’ as well. She kind of just immediately became triggered after I said that and kept going on about how “she doesn’t try to force herself on others so why do I and my dad (who also opposes her watching this content) try to do it.”

I brought up to her that short form content in general is so far being shown to worsen people’s cognitive ability over time, something I thought would matter as my mom has always taken pride in her intelligence. I’ve also presented her with the facts about generative-AI that could appeal to one’s morality, like how majority of it is trained on people’s existing personal photos without their permission. That the media holds no benefit to her as it has no artistic value or substance or humanity and is empty content. Essentially, she doesn’t seem to care as she keeps watching it.

If my mom is on her phone at home, you can assume that this is the content she’s watching.

I should’ve seen the signs that this would happen with the advent of generative-AI because prior to this she was addicted to those shitty reading apps where you have to watch several ads just to get tokens to continue reading a story written by an amateur writer with a poor grip on English (NOT Wattpad). When I was informing her that instead of having to pollute her reading time with watching ads and an app that was definitely harvesting her data, that I could get real books by published authors for her for a cheap price or even for free, she couldn’t be bothered to find any book titles she wanted me to get for her. Which by the way is very concerning to me because my mom used to be a very avid reader and her and my dad always used to read books together by interesting legitimate authors.

Some other things – she is constantly watching it. If she’s doing anything in the house that’s what she’s doing; whether it’s laundry, cleaning up or researching something on her computer. I’m worried that this is a sign of her declining attention span or addiction to the content. Also, she’s always blasting it at full volume in her AirPods to the point that the audio leaks out of it, which I can already see the effects of that on her hearing right now.

Please, how can I reach my mommy and have her let go of this stuff? Any advice is appreciated. Thank you (ᐢᴖ ·̫ ᴖᐢ)