Am I[28f] a bad person for cutting off my best friend[27f] for dating my ex[29m]

Earlier this year I had an opportunity of mine to see an ex at a bar he worked at, let’s call him Tom. Tom was a terrible partner but we had 8 years of on and off serious history and despite the fact a lot of it was bad he remains a very big part of my past. I had a lot of therapy following the breakup over the year after it stopped and have very much moved on in my life until he reached out.

Due to the nature of our relationship and how things ended I wasn’t comfortable seeing him alone at the bar he worked at and thought I’d run it by my best friend, let’s call her Louise. She offered to come with me and we would sit outside with our dogs and only really see him while he was serving so I could get whatever sort of closure I was looking for but so that I wouldn’t feel unsafe around him and I could use her as an excuse to leave. All in all everything was pleasant but after I left I had no intention of having contact again.

A few weeks later Louise causally mentions she was talking to Tom about a party she went to which completely blindsided me, I was curious as to why she had been talking to him as they had no reason to even be connected on social media and she made up an excuse about having some mutual friends. A few more weeks go by and it doesn’t get mentioned at all until all of a sudden it seems like every conversation Louise is bringing up Tom. At this stage I reiterate a TLDR version of the hell he put me through and advised that maybe he’s not someone she needs to maintain a friendship with and that it makes me uncomfortable hearing about him so much, but ultimately they’re both adults.

Apparently this wasn’t clear enough as a few weeks later she is still mentioning him and my old friend group and sharing stories to which I acknowledge yes I know all of these people they were in my life for years and hearing her talk about them and Tom made me very uncomfortable and that I wasn’t okay with her being friends with him or dating him. Louise says that she understands and that she will end it because I made it very clear that it would cost our friendship as I’m not okay with him being in my life even in the sidelines and she lets slip after much prodding that they were already sleeping together but that it would stop because she has too much respect for me to hurt me like that.

Louise starts dating her plan b and seems happy but in a conversation when we are hanging out I recommend she think about if she actually has feelings for him or if she’s just settling and using him as she seems very apathetic about their dates. After this I get a novel of a message from Louise after we had just finished hanging out. It outlined that despite my boundaries she wanted to continue to continue seeing Tom since she didn’t have real feelings for plan b but she hoped I could be happy for them. I tell her that our friendship is over because I don’t want Tom in my life and go scorched earth on social media.

The next day I get a message from h r saying she needs me in her life and she already misses me so much and that no matter if I let her back in or don’t she will get Tom out of her life because of the respect she has for me and our friendship.

I replied saying I needed to sleep on it and today I get a message saying she’s going to drop something off, and while I’m eating dinner she does. It’s a photo album of all of our adventures with our dogs and the last page says she wishes we can fill up with more memories. I take o a moment to process and send her a message thanking her for the book and asking how Tom took the friendship ending. She said she didn’t do it but she loves me so much and wants me back in her life despite dating Tom. I replied with no uncertain terms that the friendship is dead.

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Married(37m) in love with my boss(55f)

Okay, here we go... I(37m) have been working for my boss(55f) for 5 years. Very intelligent woman, married, beautiful, mother of 4 and in a wheelchair for 15 years. I haven't stopped thinking about her since the first day I started working with her, I've been living with my wife (36f) for 4 years, we have a son (2), we have a good relationship but I see "us" more and more as a routine, I know that it doesn't help my relationship to always have my boss on my mind, and this surprises me, I've had a healthy dose of relationships, casual sex, friends with benefits and even compared to my current relationship I've never been in love to this extent.

It is planned on January 2nd that I will go to work elsewhere within the organization, a promotion to use my new degree, I have been miserable, I will earn more salary, but I am sad that I will no longer see and talk to her every day, that she wont be confiding things in me, asking me for kisses and hugs when she is sad or when the spinal injury gives her even more pain than usual. I can only imagine myself with this perfectly imperfect woman and my son.

TL;DR - Married in love with a much older women that i can't take out of my minde and it's destroying my relationship.

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Is he hiding sth or am I just overreacting

This is a throaway account for abvious reasons My husband(32m) and I (29f) have been together for 6 years and married for 4 months. The first months of our relationship were rocky as he was very distant and cold and then like 3 months in the relationship things got better and here we are today. I have to also emphasise that we met through a datin app. Back in 2019 we were engaged at the time ( this is important to the story) he was about to show me sth on messenger and he was scrolling down to old conversations and i was sitting next to him and that's when I spot that he had numerous conversations with girls dating back to when we first started dating i asked him about that and he gave me consent to go through them. These are girls that he met through the dating app (before dating me) and to be honest the girls were so flirty but he stated that he now has a gf and is not interested anymore except from one girl that i will call amanda. There were no flirting with amanda but constant talking and I discoverd that they used to meet back in 2017. He said that she was just a friend and he said he told me about meeting her. I have no recollection of that and the first time i ever heared about this friend amanda was in 2019. But i moved past it. Fast foraward to 2 months ago i was on his whatsapp sending myself the honeymoon pictures he took. He is the one who asked me to do it myself he was busy doing sth else. When i opened whatsapp i spotted a conversation that dates back to 2018 with this amanda. To be honest i had sneak peack and there was nothing alarming but i felt big unease. They would talk about their lives, he would ask about her daily details like where she is studying now what are her future plans he would recommand movies... while she was always the one initiating the conversations he is always there to respond. Funny thing at that time we are already between 1 and 2 years ln the relationship and he never mentionned my existence.I brought this up and he said that they haven't talked since 2018 that she is nothing but a friend who he used to know since 2015 and that was it. Not very proud but i went through his conversations with his best friend only to find out that amanda was his crush for 1.5 years and he wanted to date her but she declined for some reasons. Remember our first 3 months of dating? While he was litteraly ignoring me he was venting to his Bff how she is not responding to his messages, how she is changing her profile photo and being active without responding how sometimes he thinks about blocking her to feel better and then he would say " but u know now i have a girlfriend" I confronted him about this and he said that yes he used to like her but since she friendzoned him she is nothing but a friend and he did not lie because he just considered her as a friend. He said that i'm the love of his life and that she means nothing and i'm digging up old stories with no meaning because they haven't talked for 4 years. I said what if she pops up again in his life and he said she won't. Well guess what? i discovered that she has sent him a follow request on insta 3 weeks prior to this conversation and while he did not accept her he did not deny her as well and he looked in my eyes and lied saying that she won't pop up when she already did. He defended himself by saying that he did not accept her so he blocked her from being in his life and that's why he said she won't pop up. He also said he was afraid of my reaction because what are the odds she would send a request in this period so he just brushed it off While we talked this through and it's been a little over a month now i still feel shit about it. I feel shit because he lied about the real nature of the relationship( while he thinks he did not lie she is nothing but an old friend for him and he said that this is not a significant story to bring up and she has no place in his life and that bringing up insgnificant shit from the past won't do us any good especially that they haven't even kissed she is just a girl he liked and nothing happened and then he fell head over heals for me) I feel hurt because he knew she was a crush and he kept talking to her even though we were dating for over a year. I feel shit because he would always respond to her. I feel shit because he never mentionned me ( he said he did not mention me because they never bring up their dating life and their conversations is always platonic ) and i feel shit for not telling me the truth when l asked. I feel shit because i don't know if he ever stopped liking her when were dating. Espacially the first 2 years when they were texting He applogized to me and said that he should've been more transparent and because he knows deep down that she means nthing to him that's why he did not bother go into details. He said that he never cared about any of my past relationships and what matters is when we got together. He said he never even thought about cheating and he responded out of friendship. I'm not mad because he had a crush on some girl back in 2015 and 2016 i'm mad because he lied when i asked. Am i overreacting and being paranoid over a nonsense story or is my husband hiding something? Idk what to think. I would appreciate some insghit

Tl;dr found out that my husband used to have a crush on a girl while he always stated that they were just friends and I don't know how to feel about it

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How we met: ‘Losing my wife and child was very hard. Then Rhiannon came into my life’

Dirk and Rhiannon, both 53, got chatting on a goth music forum in 2010. They married in 2014, and now live together near Frankfurt in Germany

In the early 00s, Rhiannon was a big fan of dark wave goth music. In 2010, she joined an online forum to follow German band Deine Lakaien. “I was living in London and working in a university,” she says. “I had studied languages in the past and thought joining the group would be a good way to improve my German, as well as learn more about the band.”

Through the forum Rhiannon, who is from Shropshire, soon met Dirk. He lived in Rödermark, near Frankfurt, and worked in logistics. “My hobby was writing about bands and taking pictures of them for different blogs and forums,” he says. “My friend had told me about this band because the singer had such a special voice. I wasn’t that into dark wave music, but this particular singer was really good.” Dirk and Rhiannon began to chat online, in German, and learned more about each other. At Christmas, Dirk gave Rhiannon a traditional festive Christstollen cake. “I’d asked her if she had ever tasted one and she said no, so I decided to send her one,” he says. “The way she wrote to me was very open and kind.”

Continue reading...

* This article was originally published here

Is it shallow to want to date only woman with no past?

i think it's insecurity only.

Actually I (25 M) have not been in any relationship due to various reasons primarily my shy, introvert and nerdy nature. In my school I used to be very introverted and didn't talk much to any girl. In my college there were very few girls as I was in an engineering institute though it was a premier institute but gender ratio was very skewed. Now I am very well settled in high paying stable job but I get very anxious whenever I thought about my future partner. Sometimes I think I have missed an important part of life that is being in a relationship, being loved by someone in wake of my career. Now everywhere I see people in relationship, loving each other.

Now when I see people so much in love, caring for each other I think how would they ever forget these loving memories even if they had breakup, now this makes me anxious if i will be in a relationship with any woman having past having these loving memories of years will she ever forget them wouldn't she compare me with her ex and what if she found me lower than that what she expected would she leave me.

Sayings like "first ones are so special" make these feelings much worse and sayings like "you should never ask about the past of any woman" makes me feel paranoid about even starting a conversation with any girl.

I have been very close to my family, I have seen long relationships and I know or at least I think that long term relationships are best, that's why whenever I think about a relationship i think about it as a long term and because of all these reasons i asked on this poll.

I know that even a woman with no past can do anything that I mentioned but it still feels to me more secure

Tl;DR: Feeling insecure because of not having any relationship, need help.

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Me [29F] hurting bf [29M] feelings when communicating?

We’ve been together for a year, moved in together after 6 months. This is the most healthy relationship I’ve ever been in. We’re both big on communicating and talking things out.

I have unresolved trauma from a past relationship (thought time would heal everything but that didn’t happen). I’m working on finding a therapist and I pride myself on being self aware and being in tune with my emotions.

That being said, whenever I’ve ever brought up something that’s bothered me or upset me, I end up feeling like the bad guy. He acknowledges how I feel but then always gets sad because he feels like he’s not “doing enough” or “doing things right”. This in turn makes me less inclined to communicate my feelings but I’ve done that whole “bottle it up, grin and bear it” bullshit and I refuse to do it again.

I make sure to try and speak in “I feel..” statements and after one conversation, he asked for me to bring things up as a “compliment sandwich”.

Well last night, I was very upset because he knows I’m upset about a family emergency that is happening this weekend. He was out with family which I was obviously fine with but he didn’t text me once in the 3 hours he was gone to check on me. My emotions were high so I wrote out in my phone exactly what I wanted to say to him when he got home, but my anxiety got the better of me and I wanted to solve the problem right then and now so I texted him instead of waiting for him to get home. This lead to me getting a response that made me even more upset (it wasn’t mean spirited, he just texts very dryly and I struggle to understand tone, over text and in person) so by the time he got home, I was an emotional mess. I started just rambling and totally forgot to include the compliment sandwich I had even written down in my notepad. He responded by reminding me of all the things he was going to do for me this weekend, and iterated that he feels like he’s not doing enough. Once I had calmed down a bit, I read him my note

Long story short, by the time we were done talking, he had apologized for his tone and I apologized for my behavior. Now the problem is that this has left a bad taste in my mouth. I’m mad. I’m sad. I’m upset. Because I feel like I can’t communicate with him anymore. Every time I do, I just end up with my feelings hurt because I’ve hurt his, regardless of how hard I try not to. He tried to cuddle me last night and I didn’t want us to be touching at all, which makes me even more upset because I really do love this man. But him throwing an originally kind, supportive gesture in my face has me angry. I don’t want his support this weekend if he’s going to hold it over my head. At the same time though, I want to tell him how I feel and try to work this out but again, I don’t want to hurt his feelings.

So I’m at a loss. I don’t know if I should just stop trying to communicate all together and let whatever happens, happen; or if I should keep trying to communicate and still risk hurting my bfs feelings, while still doing everything I can to keep that from happening.

TL;DR

As hard as I try, I always end up hurting my boyfriends feelings when I communicate my own to him in the most constructive, healthy way I can and it’s maki me want to bottle up everything.

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My (21f) girlfriend (18f) came out as bisexual. How do I approach this?

Hi. Burner. I have a problem.

I've known I'm a lesbian for years now, pretty much since I was 14. Men never really attracted me, and I've always been treated better by girls than by men, and since I've been aware about my lesbianism for the longest time, I've started noticing how different it is to be around women who love men than around lesbians.

With lesbians, I can always be sure I'm in a safe space. No men around, and it's always guaranteed I won't have men forced into my life ib any capacity. Lesbians treat women as people, and can separate us from men, which many straight, bi and pan girlies unfortunately tend to have a problem doing. (If you're het, bi or pan and you don't, congratulations. I'm not talking about you.)

In one of these safe spaces, I've found a girl I've gradually shifted closer to. We've bonded mostly through mutual respect and separation from men, through our shared worldviews and love for deconstructing the world around us. I've always found safety in knowing she would never put me in potential danger of bringing a man into our lives and that comforted me immensely.

We got together 2 and half years ago. A week ago, she came out to me as bisexual.

Now, let me just explain something really quick to people who aren't lesbians and aren't familiar with the lesbian experience. The LGBTQIA community is meant to be a safe space from homophobia which comes from homophobic straight people. But lesbian community is at even higher risk - not only are we threated by homophobia, we tend to also be threatened by men. And by extension, very often we're also victims of people attracted to them, often because these people suffer from internalized misogyny. And even though that makes them victims too, that changes nothing at how poorly it causes them to treat lesbians, since we're the only sexuality that doesn't effectively prioretize men in this patriarchal society.

This, among other identities, includes bisexuals. And bi women in the area where I live aren't particularly friendly, so forgive me if my experience is different from those of other gay people.

So, picture this. After years of constant support and safety within lesbian spaces, you suddenly lose all of that. Suddenly you can't bond over lesbianism with your girlfriend because she's busy thinking about men. Suddenly your safe space is no longer a safe space for people who separate themselves from homophobic men - suddenly, you learn that years of love and praise from your girlfriend were a lie, and she actually puts you -a lesbian- on the exact same level she'd put a man on. Suddenly you're no better than a man in her eyes. It probably doesn't sound bad to most people, but to me as a lesbian separatist, it's absolutely dehumanizing.

This is how I felt the first two or three days after she came out to me. So I started browsing various subreddits on my main to find anyone who might have had a similar problem before I go to my therapist with this. I didn't find a lot, and most posts were from people who either came out as bi afterwards, or suffered some prior issues with abuse from men. I'd prefer answers from lesbians - any lesbian, with or without prior experience with bi women in relationships.

To clarify, I haven't been abused by men OUTWARDLY. But as years went, I've watched my lesbian friends constantly be harassed by men, belittled by them and discriminated against in favor of men or people who are attracted to them. And knowing I live in a world where I can start being treated like shit by anyone who puts them on a pedestal has not been easy for me.

TL;DR, I'm angry. I'm heartbroken, I feel lied to, I feel like my own girlfriend is putting me in danger of being treated like shit by men. I feel like I've wasted two years trying to bond over my experiences with someone who secretly never agreed with them. And I want to sort my feelings out and get an outside perspective from people who have had this problem before.

What do I do about this?

(English isn't my first language, I'm so sorry for any possible mistakes.)

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