Me [38 M] with my GF [35 F] 8 months, difficult dating (dating single mother), trauma

Hello all, I (38, male) would love to get some feedback about my situation at the moment, I am not sure if leaving the relationship is my best option. I am dating the mother of an almost four year old girl. She has her over every other weekend. The relationship with her ex is very dramatic and a source of constant pain. He lives next door still. He got something like a postnatal depression after their daughter was born and my GF had to raise her basically on her own for the first two years until she decided to seperate from him after fourteen years of relationship.

When I got to know her eight months ago she said that she has a respectful relationship with him. Over time it became very clear that he is very disrespectful actually and their realtionship a disaster. I got to know her daughter after three months and it was rocky at the beginning, but she accepted me at one point and became a very beautiful experience for me. I was keen also getting to know her before I had made a conscious decision being open dating women with children already. This is my first time with that. Our relationship started very slow and I was okay being patient at the beginning, but I was not sure (they seperated only 6 months before we met) if she was ready for something new actually, as I felt she would keep me at distance all the time and I had really fallen for her. I asked her if she is ready and said she thinks so, but then later after a few months admitted that she hasn't been for the first three months and now thinks she accepted me as her new partner.

Despite the growing relationtionship with her daughter I feel I am going in loops with her. I know that she has been victim to violence as a child and me I was not having the best childhood either but did a lot of therapy to work on communication, boundaries, openness about needs and feelings, vulnerability and those are the things I desperately miss in the relationship, which make an adult relationship rich for me. I also feel that she still holds me at a distance, doesn't really open up to me and I crave more physical closeness than she is giving.

When I start talking about my needs she kind of dismisses it by either saying that I am too negative and should focus on what I actually have or reacts hurt and withdraws refusing to talk to me which let to some really traumatic weekends, where I would try to be after her and talk to her, while she would only get angrier and louder. I feel open communication in a calm matter basically never happens or only after two days of intense conflicts.

I feel tired and worn out, I feel it would be hard to break up, basically with two people, but sometimes I think it would be the best option, then holding on for some hope. I think the relationship to her daughter should be based on a solid relationship between us and not the other way round. In the end I feel I need to compromise a lot and don't get what I would need in a relationship really.

Has someone been in a smiliar situation? Did you resolve it or is this relationship doomed?

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tl;dr: Fresh relationship with problems from the start, trauma, ex involved, dating a single mother

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My wife (25f) and I (26m) have let family issues come between us

I’m posting this to hopefully get some clarity on the situations so I can do better.

My wife and I have been married for 2 years. We live in my home town where my family lives and she’s from a city an hour drive away. During the first year of marriage my wife and family did not get on well. My parents tried to get too involved in our marriage and tried to control things. One problem was that we spent the weekdays working and every weekend would go see my wife’s family. Others include making backwards requests, ignoring my wife, saying I do more for her than she does for me and that she has taken me away from my family and don't enough time with them.

I have been setting continues boundaries on issues that come up and might come up and have supported my wife. I have said that this is my partner, they need to respect her and that any decisions will be made between my wife and I. If they feel a certain way they can speak to me directly without upsetting my partner. I’m not a argumentative person and have done these talks quietly when the tension is low. It has taken my parents some time to understand that I don't need them to make decisions for me, all I need is their support. I have been trying to get the two to get along by getting them involved in functions, pointing out the positives and highlighting complements from each side. More importantly for me, I have been trying to make my wife feel better by listening, treating her, spending time with the people who she enjoys company with etc.

About a year ago however, there was a destructive argument between my family and my wife and her family. Everyone involved turned hysterical and extremely upsetting things were said in the heat of the moment. This included my wife slandering my family and banning them from our home, saying she is standing up for herself. At the time, I supported this, not having any contact with my family weeks and spending the time at home with my wife, doing all the things she enjoys.

I have grown up with the mentality that people argue, especially families, but at the end of the day we are able to let bygones be bygones and get together during important events. After a few weeks of silence my family and I started speaking again. We discussed what happened and I repeated my initial stance to let us live how we choose to live. They have since not been involved in any matter between my wife and I.

I understood it would take my wife longer to move past this and therefore for a year I have been going to see my family alone every one or two weeks. My wife and I both work from home so we spend the majority of time together. I have been going with her to to everything she has planned with family, friends, such as Birthdays, dinners etc and have been missing out on my own plans to not let her down. Over the course of this period I have been feeling down/upset/frustrated that when I ask her to accompany me with any sort of event that involves my family she denies, or gets hysterical as to how I can ask that of her. We've have been continuously arguing over this, and I eventually just stopped asking her.

My wife expressed that it upsets her that I continue to see my family, and have put everything in the past. She says it shows the lack of support I have for her and that she feels disrespected and alone in her battle. I have assured her that I wont let history repeat itself and that I will be there if anything were to happen. There have been a few occasions where paths cross between my family and people haven't said hello back to my wife, and younger teen siblings being distant and awkward. I realise this is wrong but given the events, I have said that it will take time to rebuild the relationship and that we should keep on trying to be civil. During arguments about such things I don't condone their behaviour but do try and explain how they are feeling and the reason for their actions. My wife has slowly evolved into becoming hysterical during these arguments, screaming, swearing and breaking things. She tells me everything that is wrong with me and that I have done nothing for her, she says she hates this marriage. If my wife has raised an issue about anyone's behaviour, I confront them and explain that they need to be better if they want to make it work. I realise that I have to work on being able to assess my wife's feelings and take action immediately, but I have not been confrontational and it isn't how I like to handle things.

My wife and I have become distant as we have let this come between us. We are trying to just focus on us and are seeking counselling. I am prepared to distance from my family once more but I am unable to shake the burning feeling inside me that she is not giving me the support that I give to her.

Am I being delusional about things getting better between the families? Is my support for my wife insufficient and therefore not deserving of the compromise and the same support back?

tl;dr: My wife feels unsupported as I have continued to work on my relationship with my family. I am trying to meet her expectation by my desire to live a life according morals and wants is letting me down.

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My girlfriends intellect is ruining our relationship

TL;DR: My gf (22f) a third year at a state university seemingly lacks basic science, math, or literature and is on the verge of failing out. Not only that she has no motivation to improve herself or achieve any goals. She only says she wants to go to grad school but does nothing for it. She also claims to have no hobbies. All of this is really getting to me because I am head over heals in love with her and want a future with her. I am the exact opposite and I don’t know what to do, how do I approach this situation?

So I want to start of my saying I do not mean to sound condescending or be rude. I am in no way a genius or even “smart” but I feel like my gf is kind of dumb. It’s getting to the point that her intelligence is making me question our future.

My gf and I have been dating for about 6 months. I (22m) recently graduated with 2 bachelors degree and want to go to medical school, my gf (22f) on the other hand is still in school & on the verge of failing out. She says she wants to go to grad school but doesn’t understand how that is not realistic with her GPA. Knowing that she struggles in school I offer to help, which usually results in me doing it all for her. Overtime this cycle of me having to do her work after offering to help has gotten me frustrated. So I’ve been trying to not offer help or care about her school, but when I don’t offer to help she just doesn’t do the work leading to her failing. When I see that she isn’t going to do the assignment I end up doing it for her because I want her to do well in school and achieve her goals.

She struggles with even the most basic math like rounding, consistently making rounding mistakes. Not to mention she seems to have too ambition whatsoever. Like I mentioned before she says she wants to attend grad school but has taken no real steps that show she wants to. In fact we would have so many fights during the week leading up to her GRE, because I would beg her to study and she would say something along the lines of “don’t tell me what to do”. When she finally took the GRE she scored in the 2 percentile,and this score did not seem to bother her. She simply shook it off saying I’ll work harder, and then proceeded to get mad at me for asking her to take it more seriously and being disappointed in her score. She claimed that I was “not being supportive and making her feel stupid” because I asking her to take it seriously from now onwards.

To give some contexts on how I approach standardized exams: when I first took the MCAT I scored in the 15th percentile, disappointed I took the next 2 months to study almost 15 hours daily and scored in 100th percentile. So her disregard for her GRE was alarming.

In addition to struggling with math, things she does makes me wonder if she has any common sense. Like one time she called me crying because someone had convinced her that she had autism and needed treatment.

I also recognize that people have different areas where they can thrive in and there are different types of intelligences. But the issue here is that she seems to lack that as well, she has no hobbies, no activities she does, nor does she have any leadership abilities. I played football for a D1 school, meaning working out is a big part of my life; and she doesn’t even want to work out. All she really seems to be passionate about is her baby niece. She loves to take care of her and basically acts like her mother.

She is also extremely unmotivated, and does not seem to want to achieve anything.As someone who grew up in poverty, I’ve always worked to achieve something like going to college on a football scholarship or working to get into medical school. I just don’t get how someone can just not care? She may have a unmanaged mental health condition, but she has refused to see my psychiatrist(I have adhd) every time I’ve tried to mention it.

I love her a lot, she is the kindest most compassionate human being I have met. She is the woman I would want as the mother of our children, but the lack of motivation and obvious difference in intelligence is really getting to me. I am very worried about the future. I don’t want to break up with her because she is “dumb” but all of my attempts at motivating her have failed. What do I do?

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* This article was originally published here

Ex acted weird all night but then she became clingy when I had to leave and I’m now confused

My (20F) ex and I (21M) where together for a year. We broke up around March, tried to make it work and finally called it quits completely at the end of June.

We both agreed we wanted to stay friends and made plans to meet up ourselves to talk about everything.

We went out shopping together, it was causal enough that we could talk and we did talk. Half way through our trip I asked if she wanted to get food before heading home and she instead invited me over so we could order food.

We ended up at her house and we ordered some fast food and watched a movie. During the movie I ensured we had plenty of distance between us to which she changed by moving closer to me and cuddling into my side.

We spent the night talking some more and she asked me to stay the night and I did. When I agreed to stay the night she kissed me which surprised me. After this night we spoke some more but I never brought up the topic of the kiss.

A few days later I mentioned to her that I was bored and she invited me over again. I happily went over to hers as she mentioned us watching another movie and just chilling out.

However, when I went over this time she was completely different. This time I made the first move to put my arm around her and she declined so I put space between us and just focused on the movie the entire time.

I had told her before I came over that I had work the next day and wanted to be home by 1am at the latest. Midnight rolled around and our movie ended, I made a move to get up to call a taxi to which she decided she wanted to cuddle now. We lay together for about 15 minutes before I told her I had to head home and she looked disappointed.

I called my taxi and she showed me out and let her dog run about her garden while we waited. When my taxi finally arrived she pulled me in for a hug and when I pulled away she pulled me back in to kiss her. I was once again shocked and it was brief but when I pulled away she kissed me again.

TLDR - my ex and I are trying to be friends. She invited me over and cuddled with me the entire night and asked me to stay over and kissed me. The next time she invited me over she refused to cuddle but when I went to leave she wanted to cuddle and kissed me goodbye.

I am so confused

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GF’s(22f) dad pressed me(23m) of almost 3 years about future plans/money

Hi, everyone I am hoping you guys can give me some advice on this. I was helping out at my gf’s family owned business and her dad pulled up in front of me and asked me if I loved her. I said yea and he was like imma be straight up with you and basically said along the lines of what can you offer…as in cause I’m making too little and I don’t got a house or any assets. He said he wants her to be absolutely stress free in the future and have a good life. He also asked me what my future plans were but I really don’t know currently what I wanted to do. I just recently graduated college and had been trying to figure out what I wanted to do.

I’m planning to go back to school if I’m not making enough money in my current job to do better but I didn’t say it cause I was in a stressful situation and was absolutely blindsided. Mind you, while he was talking…my gf was standing right next to me and she did not say a word…

What should I have done in the situation, would it have been better if I just said imma work harder? I’m really lost right now…

Thank you for listening

TLDR: gf dad had a discussion with me about that I can’t offer anything for her as I was making too little and didn’t know what my future plans were.

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You’re not taking the dog! How pet custody battles turned nasty

You’ve divided up the crockery, the books, the albums – but how do you split your beloved pets? As more and more cases end up in court, animal lovers share tales of dog eat dog

All Emma wants is to see her baby. Not even half the time, or at weekends, or in the holidays. The odd walk in the park would do, or a day at the beach. Emma misses her. She thinks about her all the time. She wonders if Luna has forgotten about her and, if she has, whether that’s for the best. The thought of Luna thinking that Emma abandoned her breaks her heart.

The last time she saw Luna was in mid 2021. Emma, who is in her 30s and works in social care in the south-west of England, travelled to where her ex lives, to see her. “She was so happy and excited to see me,” Emma says. “It was lovely. But he wouldn’t let me see her by myself.” They spent an hour together and as they were saying goodbye, Emma told Luna how much she loved her. Afterwards, Emma sat in the car and cried.

Continue reading...

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I (f26) like to spoil my SO (m26) but I want to be spoiled too.

We have been dating a year or so and this relationship confuses me. On the one hand we have good physical chemistry and our emotional chemistry is decent but requires quite a bit of effort and work. Our world views are quite different sometimes and I'm not sure how well he gets me.

I love to spoil the person I'm with and I'm a hopeless romantic. In the beginning he would try and spoil me too and it just fizzled out in a couple of months once he "had" me. I hate that this happened and I know that that's how a lot of relationships go. But I disagree that this is how it should be. I know that on my part I put in a lot of effort into dates and little surprises and doing sweet things for him and it feels like he does not reciprocate. He would rather take a passive role on that front in our relationship.

I realize that communication is important here but a part of me dies when I have to ask to be made to feel special to him. I feel like in a relationship we should want to and make a consistent effort to make the other person feel good. I don't think that's something he thinks about or actively works on at all.

It feels very transactional when I have to consistently reiterate and remind him what I want. I wish he would take more of an effort to remember.

What should I do and where do I go from here? Is it ridiculous for me to expect more?

TL;DR : I feel a little neglected by my partner and wish he would spend a little more time on making an effort to spoil/ treat me with gifts/ dates/ surprises and sweet gestures. I hate having to ask repeatedly.

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