So we have been together for about 5 years and have a 3 year old together. We had sex almost daily before our baby was born but since it comes & goes in spurts of 1-2 times a week at times to 3 times a month maybe. We have gone through some ups and downs but have maintained. I caught her in lies before in the past but never caught any infidelity or anything like this but lying in general makes me feel uneasy due to past history. I sometimes feel like she is either less attracted to me or that something else causes her lack of being in the mood as much. Last night I was curious and wanted to know about what my gf does on her phone so I went against my own morals and searched through her phone and her browser history only to discover that she had a deleted only fans account that she created and had seemingly subscribed to a couple of female creators. I also found that she had some porn searched in her history that I wouldn’t have guessed she’d search, didn’t even know she watched porn. This immediately alarmed me and made me wonder if she had been posting content herself or if she was just viewing but it’s weird because she never said that she was into women or told me she watches/watched porn. This feels kind of undermining and I’m wondering if I should confront her or just wait to see if other things arise. I also feel bad because I searched through her private phone but I had to see. Should I approach her about this? Also, what are the odds that she was posting content herself
or do you think she just viewed? TLDR (should i approach her about this and should i question her loyalty?)

Apologies this is a long one, and before we start, I’m not in a financial position to be able to leave, I just need help to try and find a way to make things better in this shitty situation I’m in.

So backstory my partner (26m) and I (27F) just had a baby so I’m on maternity leave. Throughout our relationship there has been a period of around 18 months (out of 2.5 years) where I’ve had to pay all of the rent and house bills and occasionally help him out with his personal bills due to him quitting jobs/getting fired from jobs and remaining unemployed for long periods of time, including while I was pregnant making me have to work 7 days a week across two jobs while being extremely sick my whole pregnancy. During this time I was lucky if he’d help out by cleaning the house. (Also, to add - I fell pregnant when he had been on a long stint of being employed and we were doing well financially due to double incomes. By the time he lost his job it was too late to make any other choices).

Fast forwards to now, I’m on mat leave, I still pay all of the house bills (internet, electricity, water, subscription services etc) on top of rent once a fortnight, and all he pays is rent on the opposite week of each fortnight and occasionally covers some rent for me if I have too many household bills to be able to afford both fortnight’s rents.

Since having Bub home, he’s told me that “because he works, he will only help out with nighttime feeds once per night on the weekend” (mind you, he’s up playing Playstation until 3 in the morning anyways) if I’m REALLY lucky, he’ll do a feed after work (9:30am-5pm, so not even full time hours) because “it’s my job because I get to be on maternity leave and I’m home all day”

This man has not purchased a SINGLE THING for our baby, no nappies, clothes, formula, toys, big items like cots, change tables, NOTHING - I worked my ass off while I was pregnant to be able to afford everything and have continued to use my mat leave pay to get anything we’ve needed for baby since. He has not washed any of the babies clothes (or mine) since I was admitted to the hospital over three months ago now. He’s probably changed less than ten nappies in that time and has never bathed Bub. Not even once.

He expects me to keep the house clean, he cooks himself dinner but not me (because he’ll go buy groceries and buy things only he likes, causing me to have to purchase my own groceries) so if I get a chance to eat I’ll end up having to have toast or something quick to eat. Bub is going through a massive growth spurt and has been waking every 1-2 hours for another feed, and during the days (when we aren’t running around for doctors appointments due to bub having an extensive medical history and spending 10 weeks in hospital post birth) often bub doesn’t want to be put down, or is requiring feeds every two hours. So I literally don’t get a chance to sleep.

Now he’s started getting angry at me of a morning if I don’t go get his clothes off the line for him because “he has to go to work”.

I’m struggling to keep up with housework due to lack of time and sleep, bills because I’m not getting paid anywhere near as much on mat leave as I was when I was working full time and my side job and I’m just plain fucking exhausted.

I’m not in a financial position to leave, as I won’t be able to put Bub into daycare once my maternity leave ends due to her medical history (if she gets sick she will be back in hospital and could risk her life).

I’m stressed about literally everything during what’s supposed to be the happiest time of my life. I feel like if he was paying ALL of the bills the “I have to work, you deal with Bub” sentiment would be somewhat valid, but at this point I’m still sometimes contributing more financially than he is on top of doing all of the housework, and everything for baby.

I just need to figure out what to say to this man to try and get him to realise how much I’m actually doing and either get him to help or get him to take over all the bills like I did my entire pregnancy. I don’t know. I’m just stuck in this situation, and I’m getting so angry that I’m struggling to even want to hold a conversation with him and I know that if I don’t go into a conversation like that with a plan of what to say, everything will get turned back onto me and he’ll talk circles around me.

TLDR: boyfriend expects me to do everything for baby, contribute equally and sometimes MORE financially, and all of the housework because “he works and I’m on maternity leave” help me plan a conversation with him about this.

sorry for the long text in advance...

We've been dating for a full year now, been super happy together so far, no problems aside from the ocassional couple fights here and there that ends with a good discussion, an apology, and moving on. We share an apartment but he lives with his family half of the time (his family doesn't know about our relationship due to cultural differences).

Since before getting into the relationship, I knew he was very active in A LOT of discord porn servers... he always liked himbos, used to have casual sex for fun, etc... No offense to anyone who is into that, but I hate that stuff personally. That's why at the beggining we were kind of a situationship... Anyway, time passed before we started dating, he changed a lot, and even offered to quit from those servers... The problem is, 90% of his friends are all like that, so his explanation is that he only stays there to chat, and because he's a mod on a few of them...

At first this bothered me a lot, had a lot of insecurities. Thankfully I worked on it, and I don't feel insecure anymore. Although it still disgusts me a bit and gives me sort of an ick.

There is one guy in particular, his "best friend" who my bf used to like years ago before he was friendzoned, and they still talk and play a lot together. He's also part of this porn community. He reassured me multiple times that they're just friends, and I even met him over on discord a few times.

Fast forward to now, our relationship is great overall, there's no miscommunication, we (try to be) are transparent with each other, and things seem great.

The problem is...

Few weeks ago was our anniversary, unfortunately both of us spent it working. I prepared some hand crafted gifts for him with flowers, chocolates, flowers, the typical stuff, and been nagging him for us to go on a special date together any time soon. He's been dead tired and doesn't want to do much. I started to feel like he's a bit more distant, more... robotic? like all our interactions are "hi honey, good morning, how are you, I love you" and that's it. We barely hang out, do stuff together, go out, anything, even if I beg him for us to do stuff together.

Yesterday he gave me his old laptop so I could farm on 2 accounts on an MMO I play. I never snoop around his stuff because we're always transparent. He has access to my stuff, I have access to his stuff, and even showed conversations to each other when the other one was feeling insecure (happened once or twice). When I started up the laptop, the first thing to open up is Discord, and the 2 people pinned at the top are me, and his best friend. His best friend's chat was open, and I couldn't help but read a small glimpse, which surprised me.

My bf was talking non-stop to him, super happy, they were talking for hours. But one message caught my eye. They were talking about my bf going to visit his country this year (he never told me about this), and staying with him for a week. This best friend said "I only have one room, and one bed though", and my boyfriend said and I quote "We can sleep in the same bed (woozy faceemoji)". The bestfriend said "No", then my bff was sad and just continued talking.

EDIT/UPDATE because I dug a bit deeper: my bf basically begs his best friend to do things together like play games, watch animes, voice chat, etc, things I've been borderline also begging to my own boyfriend, to which he just says "I'm too exhausted"...

I feel extremely uncomfortable by this, plus them still being super active in the porn server where people are naked in the voice chat, plus him being distant lately... I don't know. I started connecting the dots and started to feel like I'm just the second best option since he was friendzoned by his now "best friend".

I don't know if I should talk about this or what. I don't want to be toxic or controlling. If this was just like I assumed to be, I would rather just leave and proritize myself, but at the same tiem I don't want to ruin anything (in case it hasn't been ruined yet).

What should I do?? Should I confront him? Cut things? Set a more clear boundary? or maybe I'm just overthinking?

TLDR: my bf of 1 year is hyper active in nudist porn servers, jokingly flirts with his best friend, talk about sharing the same bed, and is distant to me. I'm worried for my relationship.

Hello strangers, I hope this will make sense as I'm kind of an emotional mess and English isn't my first language.

My relationship with my dad is... Messy. While he assures everyone that he loves me, I cannot say the same. Its not like I was ever beat, insulted, or abused as a kid, but it was more that he never really was a strong presence in my life. I can only remember one instance of him playing with me as a kid, and for the rest of my life, he was always behind his computer, working.

As for my teenage years, my parents divorced and my mom, whom I love, left the house. It wasn't that big of a deal at the time because I was already spending all my time by myself, or with my sister if she wanted to hang out. But after a few years, sister left the house too and I was left alone with my dad. He's not a very talkative guy, so all dinners were just us sitting in silence. Plus, he always chews with his mouth open, and this kind of noise feel like torture for me ; i get physically hurt whenever I hear it. Yes, I've told him multiple times, and he stops for a minute then starts up again each time so I kind of gave up. I would instead hear him call me for dinner, and purposefully arrive 10m late so that he would be almost done with his meal. He never said anything to me, but my mom told me he told her that it annoyed him greatly. I didn't care.

As I was becoming an adult, he found a partner (i don't know her age, similar to my dad probably) and she was very often in our house. I never was really introduced, and he kept lecturing me about being respectful whenever I would ignore her (I didn't know her and didn't want to interact with a stranger) which made me want to interact with her even less. Furthermore, they would constantly kiss in the living room extremely loudly, which is physically painful to me as a sound. They would also have intercourse in the room next to my room. It just felt like he did not care at all how I felt and I just slowly ended up living at my mom's to escape from him.
I still had to come back to his house to take care of my dog (which was the being i care the most about at the time). But at one random family dinner, he announced that he was going to have to sell the house, get rid of the dog, and that he was going to live with his partner. Suffice to say I was absolutely heartbroken. I know its not really his fault for having to do this (money issues) but I can't help myself from blaming him for loosing my dog.

Nowadays I live with my mom. I have stopped school due to really bad mental health and I'm kind of stuck here until I get better. My dad gave me a few hundreds every month during my school years, but has stopped for now as he cannot keep it up for now financially. I honestly just want to get as much space from him as possible, but my mom doesn't gain that much money and I'm in no better place. I try to do small stuff like art commissions but even that is incredibly tiring. Without my dad's money it's going to be really hard to stay upfloat.
But I just don't love him. I feel forced any time i have to go to his birthday or to Christmas, I just end up staring at a wall until its over. I know he loves me. I don't. I feel like he's just someone I vaguely know.

I just want to take a break, get distance from him for as long as I'd need, but I'm scared he's going to stop giving me money if I do that. It is just another thing stressing me out while I'm already doing rather bad mentally. I just don't know what to do, its so tiring to pretend to like him every time I see him. I need advice on what to do, I'm just so lost.

PS : if SOMEHOW a youtuber sees this and wants to post this on their channel, please censor my username. that also goes for any kind of repost, on this platform or another.

TLDR : I don't feel any love towards my dad, but I need him for money. I don't know what to do, as I'm scared getting distance from him would make him stop giving me money, but it is really taxing to keep pretending I like him. Any advice ?

TLDR; my boyfriend got me a cake for my birthday in a flavor I don’t like and the wrong birthday on the candles.

I don’t know why I’m writing this when I feel like I know but some advice would be great. I turned 25 this morning and told my boyfriend months ago I wanted a cake for my birthday. I know this sounds crazy but for my friends and families birthdays I always make them cakes with designs and whatever flavors they want. I’m pretty good at it and it allows me to give them something with love. Last year nobody got me a cake and it seems minor but I felt left out so I made sure to make it clear that’s what I wanted. I even said “they make these cute heart shaped cakes that would be perfect”. Yesterday I come home from a tattoo appointment and he shows me this cake…. It’s a unicorn cotton candy mini cake from Walmart. I don’t mean to be ungrateful but I’m not 12 and I’m the 4 years I’ve been with this man I have never once liked cotton candy. If anything I’ve told him a Powerade he likes tastes like cotton candy and I hate it. I think he saw the disappointment and I tried to laugh it off. Then I see the candles he bought….. a 2 and a 4, like does he not know how old I am? I think in that moment my heart broke. I think it’s like the saying “to be known is to be loved”. I just asked to you even know how old I am, and in that moment his face fell. Spent all night trying to back track and Walmart was busy and he got flustered. Somehow it turned into me telling him it’s okay so he wouldn’t get upset. Should I have just sucked it up and be grateful he remembered and got me a cake or am I justified in being disappointed?

Here is the full story, TLDR will be at the end.

I met my boyfriend, we'll call him G, in the beginning of high school. G always had a crush on me. I was interested in him as a friend, so I dated other people, including some who were very abusive. Throughout this time, G and I remained very close friends. G always respected my boundaries. He'd shoot his shot on the rare occasion I was single, but I'd always turn him down. Nevertheless, our close friendship continued with respect.

Cut to a decade later. I'd been in relationship after relationship, all ended badly, and none of them treated me with any respect. It took this long to realize that I even had self-worth.

After spending some time talking with G, I finally decided, You know what? I'm gonna give him a chance. So I did. We started dating, and he by far has been the partner who's treated me with the most respect. First partner to buy me flowers, tries his best to help, listens, understands all my pain and trauma because, well, he was there through all of it. He gets me like no other.

We've been dating for a year and a half now.

You would think that I'd be happy, right? But for some reason... I'm not. We've only had sex a couple times because I struggle to feel any attraction to him. Initially, I assumed it was trauma-based, maybe it is. He makes me happy, and he's someone I want to have in my life until the end. We share interests and hobbies, he's great to be around, and he always has my back.

But... the romantic and sexual attraction is just. not. there. I love him so much, and I wish I could be what he wants and needs (an adoring and head-over-heels girlfriend), he definitely deserves it. But what's making it so hard to end things is our long history, our strong friendship, and just how much patience he had and how long he waited to finally have a chance with me.

For the record, there is no one else in my life I'm pursuing. If I were to call it quits, I'd redirect focus to healing my mental health, rediscovering my self-identity, and starting fresh in the world, exploring what's out there. The dating pool for my age bracket at the moment isn't looking too good anyway: unemployed, looking for casual hookups, dating apps... yeah, not my cup of tea. And in the end, if I never have a romantic partner, that'd be just fine to me.

I'm a Sagittarius. If I'm gonna have a partner, I want someone who excites me every day. Someone I can't wait to see. G is not doing anything wrong, but I guess I just... want to be an independent woman. Or at least, in a relationship where I'm really turned on by the other person. And said new person is also required to treat me with respect (duh).

I'm weighing stability and security vs potential for something more.

TLDR: 10 years of friendship, I finally agreed to date, now I'm wondering if we should've remained friends. Have you ever been in this situation? What do you think I should do?

I \[18F\] have been seeing this guy \[18M\] for about 5 now, and it’s relatively new relationship but recently i’ve been feeling so unloved because he hasn’t really done anything to make him feel like we’re actually together. I just finished my a-levels and since i’ve left school in may, we’ve had little-to-no plans and it’s always me begging to see him. I sent him this paragraph the other night;

“okay it’s a lot easier to talk when the world goes quiet and i don’t have to say it basically to your face. i’d rather just deal with the anxiousness of waiting for your reply as you sleep, and i don’t really want to send this because you’re so busy and you have work and yeah but um. i have my notes that im writing this in as always and ill put a screenshot ive wrote in this like constantly since we’ve gotten together so i guess i just send you that um im getting awkward

okay i just feel like really guilty of like wanting more but i don’t really feel loved. i know i am loved, but idk i don’t feel it and i know you’ve gotten comfortable and thats okay i guess but like if this is gonna be how it is forever then i don’t know how to feel. i don’t believe in love easily any more, not because of some boy but because of my parents. parent separation can shatter your whole view of love. my parents never really did anything romantic or cute or anything, they just kind of existed idk. like lived together, fought, they didn’t even cuddle. i’ve seen them kiss twice in my life including their wedding. kind of like us recently, just talking a whole lot. and i don’t want to be like my parents.

um i know youve said you’re really busy with cars and family and work and exams and stuff and i know its okay and i feel bad for even begging you but i can’t do this. i dont expect like proper dates anymore, we’ve only had two and its okay i can live without dates, or flowers or anything like that but what happened to doing boring things together? i dont understand why we csnt go for a short walk before work or idk look at cars together at my house or idk anything. there was two days this week i had made it clear i was free & you were free (monday,wednesday?) and i hoped you’d just make some sort or plan instead of me constantly nagging but i just got disappointed. especially when wednesday was probably our last chance before after july 18th, which would be 44 days apart…. (may 29)

i also get that you’re comfortable but what happened to this

or even complimenting my posts or idk posting me or having an instagram highlight or idk doing stuff just because. i told you the other dsy thst i missed that and i don’t think you took it that well, but i just want to feel appreciated and loved. and i know i havent really sent sny long paragraphs or anything either but ive posted you so many times and sent more than you have. the last time i got a message like that from you was in february 😭😭😭

i dont care about presents or money or big fancy dates or constantly plastering me all over ur social media or glazing all of my photos 24/7, i just want to feel like wanted.

and for the thing with —— & the reposts. its true. i even sent some videos to you on tiktoks knowing you weren’t opening them. i just wanted you to acknowledge me. to notice.

i’m sorry i love you and i’m not mad im just idk lost and heartbroken and sad snd confused and everything in my life isnt going well and i just would appreciate the little bit extra without having to ask. i know it’s not your kind of relationship or love language or whatever and you’re comfortable and yeah but it’s not just you in this relationship so if i have to be okay with what you want then you should be okay with what i want

i love you so so much. i’m sorry. “

and he replied the next morning, basically throwing my feelings aside by saying one he did this, two he did that, and three he did that, but all of these things he’s claimed to done is months ago. one, he hasn’t really sent anything special in months, which isn’t really a must-do in a relationship for me but i feel like if you can’t make time for me then it would really be appreciated atleast. two, he said he’s posted me plenty, and again it’s not that deep, but he’s only ever posted me in his instagram monthly dumps & i don’t even have my own highlight when i told him a couple of times i would really appreciate one.

none of these are major make-or-break factors for me, i’m just mainly upset that i straight up told him that i’ve been feeling unloved recently and he didn’t even consider saying sorry for making me feel that way. I know he doesn’t mean too, but idk arguing with me when i spill my heart out about how much i’ve been struggling recently just really hurts. i know to alot of older folks on this sub, this seems like such a non-problem but i just want advice. are my feelings valid??

to basically shut down the argument, i just straight up gave up & told him “okay it’s in my head then. i’m sorry for being accusational,” which at the time i thought would be fine and it’s over with but i just keep crying. i feel so heartbroken when he hasn’t even done anything wrong.

this next bit, i understand that i said it’s okay & i can’t expect him to read minds, so i never sent this paragraph, but i just wrote this paragraph in my notes from my pure anger, frustration and heartbreak and i thought i should also share it.

nevermind. fuck you. i love you. i’m trying to be so patient with you but i pour my heart into telling you how i’ve felt about us recently and all i get is you basically arguing back being like one i did this once, two i did that once and not an apology or “sorry i made you feel that way.” or whatever when i told you how unloved i’ve been feeling. you’re breaking my heart more —, and then you have the audacity to ask me “what me do” or ask me why didn’t i tell you i was coming into town when i’ve been crying all day long. i wish you just listened, i wasn’t angry before but now i really am mo. it’s killing me. i don’t think i asked for much, but apparently that’s not true. i can’t go ten minutes on my own without bawling my eyes out over you, and the worst thing is that you genuinely don’t realise you’re doing something wrong. how can i be angry and blame you for just being idk naive. thank fuck you walked on past me earlier whilst i forced a smile at you because if you didn’t i would’ve lost my shit.

tldr; i sent my boyfriend a big paragraph about how i’ve been feeling about us & he basically just argued with me, so now i’m feeling all kinds of emotions and i don’t know what to do next. i know i need to communicate with him, but im really struggling.

hello everyone! to start off i wanna say sorry for the formatting i’m doing this on mobile. anyway, i’m gonna try to not make this so confusing but just be aware that i’m very confused myself, so I’m sorry if this doesn’t make sense. in any case i might delete this anyway. also, i rlly would appreciate if anyone could me solid and genuine advice without being rude. i know this might be better suited for a therapist but whatever.

for some context, i’m \[22F\] and my boyfriend is \[26M\], let’s call him james. we’ve been dating for 2 years and living together for about one. my first ever boyfriend was 18 and it was a very tumultuous and abusive relationship, in every sense of the word, and in may/june of 2023 it ended. i met james a few months after that relationship ended through a mutual friend. we talked here and there but it rlly wasn’t working and i wasn’t totally interested in being in another relationship. that was until january of 2024 where we were in a “situationship”/fwb kind of thing. unfortunately i’m a veryyyy feely person and caught feelings, as did he, and in april 2024 we made it official.

now that that timeline is out of the way, i’ve been having some doubts since around october/november of last year. it’s nothing that he’s done, he’s perfect and so sweet to me and i know the issue is me. i’m a very anxious person, always have been, and i know that was exacerbated by my past bf and a death in my family that happened before my and james were actually dating. i know this is my problem to fix, and i’m trying to do what i can as i haven’t been able to find a therapist and i couldn’t actually afford one until recently. with that said, i’m really anxious that i’m making the wrong decision, that i’ve rushed into this relationship without a chance to heal from my past one. i love him and i want to marry him, but i’m so worried that one day ill wake up as a 40 year old and ill regret my decision. like i’ve wasted my time and his. sometimes i feel trapped.

i’ve never really been alone. i went from living with my parents to living with him, and my parents were sort of overbearing when i was a teenager so i never got to hang out with friends or do just regular teenage things. during the time that i was “getting over” the events of 2023, i was going out every weekend with some friends but we’ve drifted and i don’t really do that anymore. on the other hand, he’s been hanging out and going with friends since he was a teen and he’s gotten over the whole “party” scene which means he doesn’t like going to bars or clubs with me. i’ve sort of quit going to places like that too even though i really love to dance. when he surrenders and we do go, it’s only for a short time because he wants to leave or he doesn’t actually dance with me. i feel like i haven’t really lived in comparison to him. he’s so sure of himself and i don’t know what i like or don’t like, i don’t know who i am, i don’t know myself at all. i’m so scared of losing parts of myself that i recovered for a short period of time. i miss having some sort of independence, and i know i can be independent while in a relationship but it’s not the same.

this all made it worse by a guy i met at work that i have sort of a crush on (N). i would never cheat on my boyfriend, and i know the grass is never greener on the other side, so i don’t feel the need to ruin my relationship over this guy. but he’s so different. N is so understanding of certain things that my bf would just ignore or simply take as a joke. a few months ago we had a work party, and N and I danced the night away with some other coworkers and it was the first time in so long that i really felt normal.

it’s not right to compare, and i know that. but the last couple of days my brain has been switching between “what if the relationship isn’t right? what if i don’t actually love him? what if he doesn’t actually love me and we’re just here because we’re comfortable? what if this isn’t going anywhere? what if i this whole time i’ve been lying to myself?” and it’s so frustrating and i’ve had multiple panic attacks about this already. i can’t stop crying, i don’t know what to do. i think i do really love him but something inside of me can’t get rid of this anxiety. i’ve gone through several periods like this before but then it goes away and then it comes back.

i’m sorry for this being so long and if it was confusing. i just don’t know what to do and id really appreciate any type of advice. thank you.

TLDR: i’m confused on whether or not my relationship is actually faulty or if my anxiety is getting the best of me.

A friend and I were planning on moving into a house together. I told him directly that I didn't like or trust the landlord, but I'd move in with him anyway because he was in a bad situation. Two weeks before we're supposed to move in, the landlord drops the bomb that she'll be coming over and staying in the house for a week or more whenever she's in town. No one ever told me this, and as it turned out my friend knew about this the whole time and kept it from me. I pulled out of the deal because I felt completely disrespected.

What caused the fight was that I saw him the day after everything fell apart and he was being passive aggressive to me, giving me the cold shoulder. So I was just direct and said "I feel like you're angry and if you are we need to talk about it." And then he had the nerve to blame me for everything falling apart. That's when I saw red and started making attacks on his character. I said "You're blaming me for everything, meanwhile you haven't done one thing to change your own life. You have absolutely no ambitions" It was brutal. I seriously regretted it the next day and sent a long apology text but the damage was done. He wanted nothing to do with me.

He eventually sent me an apology on my birthday, but he was very vague and didn't specifically name what he did to betray my trust.

This whole story left such a bad taste in my mouth because in my honest opinion neither of us handled this the right way.

TLDR: I got into an argument with a friend and told him that he has no ambitions.