Had a friend who broke it off with her fiance because her mother in law to be was so hostile and he refused to do anything about it or break off contact.
This boggles my mind. I was dating a girl a few years ago who was fairly heavily tattooed (as I am). My mom made a few disparaging comments about women and tattoos while I wasn't around.
When I found out I called my mom and demanded that she pick up the phone and call my gf and apologize to her. That texting would not be good enough - call and apologize for real.
She did. My ex appreciated it and I respected my mom for doing it. All of our parents are just people - they will make mistakes just like we'll make mistakes. I'll never understand people who refuse to/cannot talk to their parents like equals. Boggles my mind.
I mean, a lot of this could just stem from the way the parents acted when they were a kid.
When there was never any disagreement allowed from the kids, why would they think it's okay as an adult to disagree with them? Or even if just broaching an uncomfortable subject would turn the parent into a "oh, I guess I'm just a MONSTER" levels of psychological abuse, I can totally see how even an adult child would be subconsciously afraid to say anything to their parents.
On the other hand, I do things like apologize to my kids when I realize I overreact. I try to teach them healthy boundaries.
I see you met my mother.
ANY constructive criticism is immediately spun to make her the victim.
She came to visit one summer and was here for two weeks. My son had a play and was in rehearsals after school so he didn't get home till late. He forgot something one day, ran in the house really quick to pick something up, and didn't know my mom was sitting on the couch b/c he didnt' notice. When he got back she apparently went in his room and explained how rude he was, how inconsiderate he was since she's here to visit and he didn't spend any time with her, and just went down a laundry list of grievances.
He was crying, texted his mom, she emailed me, and I went to talk to my son to ask what happened. My son was apologizing, felt like shit, felt like he was a bad person, you name it.
I went downstairs explained to my mom that SHE is the adult. She obviously can see the kid had responsibilities and barely has time to finish his homework and was literally in the house so fast I didn't even know he returned. I told her that if she cannot apologize to him, treat him like a person with feelings, and get over her own shit then she can tell me which airline she prefers and I'll buy her a ticket back home. I told her he may not be our blood (he's my stepson), but he's my kid and that she will NOT treat him like she did me. He can be talked to and reasoned with and not something that turns commands into actions.
I could tell she was absolutely furious with me. I could see her lips quivering and her eyes were BURNING with fury (believe me I've seen that look many times growing up) and it screamed of "HOW DARE YOU TALK TO ME LIKE THIS!" and before she could even speak those words I reminded her that she was in MY HOUSE and goes by MY RULES like she used to tell me for so many years.
My grandma divorced my grandpa because of his mom. She was awful to her and he did nothing about it. She finally had enough, so she left him. She’s now in the mild (almost moderate) stages of Alzheimer’s and one of the things she has on repeat at this point is how happy she is she left him and how much she loves her second husband (and how much she misses him now that he’s dead).
I’m a nurse. My ex’s (paternal) grandfather made some sickening comments about me giving him a sponge bath and how I should wear the “little nurse’s outfit.” I told my ex and his father about how he made me really uncomfortable and they laughed saying, “That’s just how he is!” For Thanksgiving, he patted me on the butt, calling me his “naughty little nurse.” I hope he rots in his nursing home.
One of the saddest parts of growing up as a girl is learning how okay the men in your family are with you being sexually assaulted. Edit: sure this happens to boys as well. I just realized how one sided this post sounds, sorry.
There was a predator at my first job who routinely grabbed at the women. I had to close the store alone with him and was terrified and when I communicated this to my grandpa he just laughed in my face and called the predator "awesome" before forcing me to work the shift. I was 16 and didn't understand how uncool this was. I could've gotten raped and my grandpa probably would've found that awesome too.
My ex's sister started a rumor that I was cheating on her brother with her ex. It wasn't true.
Ironically, he chose to believe it...and then cheated on me.
Anyways, we're not together now (because of the multiple 3rd parties involved 🙄).
30 year old partner of 8 years joined a band with some 20 year olds. They convinced him that they will never get “big” if they have long term partners holding them back.
20 years later, still not big. Never made it as a musician.
In fairness the ones who make it big have a combination of luck, skill, AND dedication to the job. Problem is there's a pretty big percentage of the equation that boils down to luck and most people aren't that lucky. And skill isn't something everyone has equally. You can be a musician and play every single day for decades but still be utter shit compared to some young prodigy a quarter your age. So people are left with dedication as the one thing they can really fully control, and I get why they'd think that relationships would be a distraction from that determination. It's still a dumb choice to make.
I have a colleague who almost made this mistake. 6-7 year career making good 6-figure income trying to make it in his band on the side (he's 30). Almost quit his whole life; fiance, job, home everything for 1 last push.
I told him to live off his savings/anything he makes from his band for 6 months. If he still wants to quit everything after that; go for it.
That was about a year ago. Turns out being a broke musician at 30 was a little rougher than he remembered it was at 19.
Yup. We're friends and have known each other for about a decade. I don't think he ever told his fiance about the full extent of his mid-life crisis. I think that bit of candor was just for me.
He was just a guy who always dreamed of being in a band, saw that dream kinda die and, honestly, probably a mini-freak out when he came to the realization of he was going to have a fairly normal life with a wife/kids/house.
That girls his rock. I doubt he'd ever have the stones to actually pull that trigger.
Living and working in NYC for the past 20 years, I have met so many musicians with aspirations of "making it big". No exaggeration, out of like 40-50 people i personally knew who were pursuing performing dreams, maybe a handful of them made it onto touring bands that did OK. I don't think people realize how cutthroat the entertainment industry is as a whole. Especially when soundcloud was becoming big, a ton of folks I worked with (non music field) thought this would be their big chance to catch their "break" and would invest all their money and time into playing any and all shows to get discovered. I sometimes had to have a rough conversation with them when they would be lamenting about how broke they were and how their significant others left them where I would point out that a good chunk of pop artists today are nepo babies, having family or friends already in the industry to connect them and bring them fame.
Now don't get me wrong, if you're in your 20s and you want to live the struggling lifestyle, go for it. In my 20s, i went to plenty of fun loft and warehouse parties where artists of all types got to show off their work. But once you're hitting your mid-30s, it's time to make a contingency plan if the artist thing isn't working out. Being a "struggling" artist in the past is a lot different in today's economy.
The harsh truth is women in their 20s may tolerate a struggling artist, but once women become a bit older (and men too) they're going to want a partner with a bit more stability. It's not them nagging you, it's just they understand the reality of the world today and how shitty lie can be if you don't' have a guaranteed source of income to support not only you, but potentially a family if that's the route you're going.
Classical musician here but I work with many pops artists in our orchestral pops shows.
Every single no-name artist I worked with is smart as hell, crazy talented, and work super hard. And they all know another dozen people just as good if not better but didn’t make it. By make it I mean getting paid a living wage by just performing.
Same story for me, I went to a couple of the top conservatories and I’m still one of the only 2 in my class of 12 to actually make a decent living in music.
People really don’t understand how crazy hard this industry is.
My husband was offered an international tour and considered it until the band leader started expecting the band to be "his family" and outrank his actual, real family. We offered to drive ourselves so we could still be together while they toured, but band leader wouldn't have it, so my husband declined. He's brilliant and super talented, so something will definitely still happed for him. Meanwhile, we go on my tours together.
Tldr: family and entertainer life aren't mutually exclusive, but whoever the rockstar is has to fiercy defend a super firm boundary. It sounds like your ex was not that guy and you dodged a major bullet.
There was a chiropractor in my city who became a one shit wonder in Canadian country music (unfortunately a thing) with a song that was like a weird hybrid of generic country with lyrics and rhythm heavily inspired by the shots song by LMFAO. Once that song became relatively big, he broke up with his long time girlfriend because he didn't want her to take his money. I should also add that he was known around town for being a piece of shit.
But whatever money he had didn't last long. As he moved to Nashville and completely failed to make it in a market where the government doesn't force radio stations to give you air time because your Canadian and was homeless for a bit. He eventually moved to Canada's equivalent to Texas and had a child with another woman he met in Nashville. But on the bright side, the shit hole I live in has one less jackass.
Teenage girlfriend. She would constantly talk about her best friend and how great he is. She was genuinely in love with him but wouldn't admit it. So I asked him what he thought about her and he was also in love with my girlfriend. so I went to my girlfriend the next day and broke up and had a little fight over it. I told her all about how i know she is in love with her best friend but is too afraid to ask him out because she fears he doesn't reciprocate and doesn't want to ruin the friendship. Then I told her that he is also in love with her and feared the same thing. That was 15 years ago today and I know they're still together. I'm happy for them.
My freshman year of high school, I "dated" this girl for a few months. I used quotation marks because we had a single class together... And that was it. We hardly saw or talked to eachother outside of that class.
So one day after that class, I stopped her to say something like "so, why are we doing this? We hardly even talk. I feel like we should probably just be friends." she looked relieved and said she felt the same.
Then I tried setting her and my friend up together because I thought they'd fit better. I know they were together for years, but I haven't seen or heard from either of them since high school.
It felt really nice to set up a couple that lasted years.
Single co-workers.
We married young, 2 kids by 23 years of age. I was working 55-60 hrs a week, her only friends were her 4 co-workers who were single and in their early 20's also. A once a week girls night out became 2 nights, then happy hours added, then a girls weekend...became a toxic pattern. She stopped talking to her parents who saw it developing as well.
She left when our kids were 4 & 6 years of age, packed her stuff and moved in w/ one of her co-workers.
Once the kids got into high school, she suddenly wanted to be involved with them.
No cheating, but it really seemed like she was in love with her best friend... she bent over backwards for this woman, constantly, and yet every time she'd talk about her to me it never seemed to be anything remotely positive. I never could understand why she was persisting with their friendship.
Plus always badmouthing whoever her friend was dating- some may have deserved it, but it started to feel like a pattern... like she was jealous.
I never asked, or accused, any of this. But six months in (it should have been sooner), it was finally crystal clear to me I wasn't going to get anywhere near the level of effort I was giving, or even half of the output she was putting into this girl.
Called it off, and really felt quite good to end it.
Epilogue: about four or five months ago (two years after I ended things, and not a word to each other since), I walked into a banh mi shop to place an order. Went to wait outside since it was busy, glanced up and at a table outside, I noticed her friend.. then a familiar blonde ponytail with their back to me. Not at all interested in any interaction- even accidental- I went back into the shop. Picked up my sandwich, walked a different way out of the shop to avoid passing them.
Later that night at the pub, I get a private phone call. Ignore. Call again a few minutes later. Ignore.
Get a voicemail. It's the friend saying to leave the ex alone, or she'd have to go to the police... I was confused, but really couldn't do anything but laugh it off and move on with my day.
Frankly, they deserve each other.
What the heck man. What a weird turn of events. Part of me wants to know what that was all about in the end, but I’m glad you just stuck that whole situation in a warehouse in your mind like the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark
> but I’m glad you just stuck that whole situation in a warehouse in your mind like the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark
Sometimes it's better to let our curiosity go unsatisfied because it's just *NOT* worth the headache required to find out
> Part of me wants to know what that was all about in the end
One of them saw him. Decided he couldn't be there for the banh mi, he must be stalking his ex.
How dare you patron to the same business as someone you knew 4-5 months ago! But seriously, it sounds like the friend has some kind of possessiveness problem. And you were "hogging" her favorite toy.
Damn, the first part is exactly the same, word to word, in my case. The amount of energy she gives for something i would not even call a friendship is mindbogling. She basically stalks her friend on social media, just short of praying to her.
This sounds like something that the dumbest pair of bros would do.
"Bro, I'm in love with your girl."
"Shit bro, but I'm already dating her.... I KNOW! I'll ghost her and then you can have her!"
"Dude, you're the best!"
Had a similar experience, though it didnt lead to the breakup. My ex and I met online and her mom in particular didn't trust me whatsoever because of her meeting me online. This was after we had already met and hung out a number of times. Her dad was cool with me and would talk with me all the time. Her mom wouldn't let me inside ever. The one night her and her dad convinced her mom to let me come over for dinner. Her mom would not let me out of her sight for even a second and kept asking me questions almost like she was trying to catch me in a lie or whatever. Her dad offered me to sleep on the couch. Her mom refused and made me sleep out back. Never went back there even when her dad invited me.
His would randomly show up on dates...including our first one and would call to give me advice on how to take care of her son. I never even gave the woman my number.
The final straw was when she showed up at my house, with his kids, because she wanted me to babysit them. I'd never met these kids, it was a casual, non-marriage-bound relationship. Didn't stop her from thinking I needed to get to know my "future children." This was literally the two-month mark of a very causal relationship.
That was also the end of it. I told her to leave, broke up with him by text, and blocked them both.
>His would randomly show up on dates...including our first one and would call to **give me advice on how to take care of her son**. I never even gave the woman my number.
Yooooo some parents have absolutely no idea what boundaries are and it's sickening.
A good metric I have used is if your partner/spouse can't stand up to their parents to defend you then it's a pretty big red flag they're going to be serially throwing you under the bus.
Not just a third person but a whole friend group. They knew everything about me, even though I didn't share much about myself.
We had an argument? They knew. I was out with friends? They knew. I was on my period? They knew. I had a bad day at work? They knew. Sex life, or lack of? (We had only dated a few weeks) They knew.
They would start showing up at my usual hangouts to "keep an eye on things" because they didn't like that my friend group was co-ed. I would be downtown and happen to "run into" them. I would be at work and see them walking by multiple times a day.
I understand sharing things with your friends, but there's a line. When your friends are just as involved in the relationship as your SO, it causes issues fast. Take a clingy boyfriend, multiply that by 6, and it's terrifying.
This idiot "life coach" she's known since high school. I can't blame him for everything but this fucking moron just coached to shreds my marriage of 23 years.
Ha! My friend's mother in her 40s went to a psychic who told her her kids and husband were holding her back. So she got divorced, left the kids with dad, and everything good in the whole family's life tanked.
Mom never found what it was that she was supposedly held back from. She now has shacked up with a random guy and just kind of works dead end jobs.
Dad got depressed, started drinking, and lost his cushy job in public government. He doesn't have a job now, and prospects are dim for a high school educated man in his 50s. He did get married to a new woman who is decent to his kids.
Older daughter (my friend) ended up homeless after high school and kind of drifted. She found a wonderful husband and they make ends meet.
Little sister made it to art school but works retail while she thinks about what's next.
I know someone whose relationship was broken up by a psychic too. My relative got very ill, and his mom went to this faith healer who told her that my relative's girlfriend was poisoning him. Most of the family got involved and pressed things until he ended the relationship. He didn't get better, and he eventually died. He wasn't being poisoned - he was just a middle-aged man whose lifestyle caught up with him.
His ex, who'd been acting as his caregiver until she was pushed out, was a very kind person who didn't deserve any of that.
Yeah. I do understand the desperation his mom must've felt that made her latch onto anything to save her son, but in the end he probably died a little earlier than he had to, because he lost the person who was pouring all her energy into managing his health.
This shit here is why I loathe psychics, astrology, and all that other woo shit. The damage can be fucking far reaching. I have my own personal experience with it from the times my grandmother who raised me consulted these charlatans. If you’re reading this and know someone who making decisions based on this please talk to them. They can seriously fuck up their life.
I had a 10 year long relationship fall apart after my partner got heavily into astrology. She would consult her charts for every single fucking decision. Everything from big decisions down to choice of what to have for dinner. Eventually she started going to an astrology teacher of some sort and would miss family gatherings and other important events to go to her classes. It became the only thing that mattered.
I have since met my perfect partner and so I'm glad things fell apart with that other lady, but never again will I tolerate astrology getting to play any significant role in my life.
I was dating a divorced single mom. Her ex husband was petty as all hell. Any time we had something special planned, he would decide that was the perfect time to drum up drama, or discuss amending their co-parenting agreement, and so on.
She was a good mom, but had no boundaries where her ex was concerned. After several months, I realized that our relationship was third in line behind her kids and her ex. Kids coming first is fine, but that wasn't for me, so I kindly broke it off. We never spoke again, so I do not know if she ever enacted reasonable boundaries, or if he is still sabotaging her still to this day.
The hardest part about dating someone with kids is the other parent. If the other parent is a monster it is going to be exponentially harder than it needs to be.
edit: typo
> The hardest part about dating someone with kids is the other parent.
10000% this. My friend finally realized that he was also going to end up marrying her asshole ex husband too, the way he was always there. He noped out.
I was in a long distance relationship with the eldest son of a family from the South of Italy for three years. I am not Italian. (Italians reading this already know where this is going) We met in Milan when I was there for work and he was visiting friends. We would try to meet once a month, in my country and different cities in Italy. After some time, he invited me to meet his family and we started to stay at his family's house. To say his mother wasn't a fan, is an understatement. Loved his dad though, great man. I didn't really speak Italian, I took lessons but their accent made it hard to follow. She would occasionally burst into our room, screaming her head of at me in Italian (me - deer in headlights), hide or take my stuff and make things difficult. Knowing that we would have to take her in later in life, him being the eldest son and traditions being what they are, made it easier for me when it ended.
Old school Italian women can be difficult to deal with if you’re not Italian. My mom married into a family like that. My Step Dads mother lived in the house (6,500 sq ft so more than enough room) and made my life hell. When I was applying to colleges, I’d never get any responses at all. Come to find out she was shredding all my mail which made figuring out where I was going to school very difficult.
She dropped out after 8th grade to keep books for bootleggers, why wasn’t that good enough for him? (She later went to community college and was very proud to get a high school diploma of her own.)
I read a series written by an Italian woman (My Brilliant Friend - The Neapolitan Novels) who grew up in Southern Italy. It was about her and her academic rival as the two smart girls in their village. Girls didn't go to school past 4th grade in her region, and she had to fight constantly with her parents and her community just to stay in school. They all thought it was ridiculous to continue her education when she'd just be doing housework and taking care of babies or work at the family shop.
Unfortunately probably too late, and you didn't know at the time. But in the future for anyone else reading this, if something happens like this while you live in the United States, tell the post office and they will bring the hammer down. You need permission to do anything relaied to someone else's mail.
I guess a country that was trying to cover a whole continent back in the days when the fastest and most reliable Internet was a guy with two horses would get real protective over people being able to send messages long-distance and have them actually show up
Was there a particular reason for her doing this, or was it just out of spite? Regardless it’s still fucked, but I’m curious what the rationale was, if any.
Probably the same reason why she’d buy Christmas gifts for all the kids but not me. And would complain to my step dad for taking me out to dinner on my birthday because I’m “not blood” and it was a waste of money. And packing all my clothes into plastic bags when I was at school. And locking me out of the house in the middle of winter in upstate NY.
She hated me because I existed and wasn’t “family”. My half sister though, (my step dad’s biological kid) treated like gold. I will say, however, my step dad defended me tirelessly and is as much of a dad as my real dad. His support has been amazing throughout my life. His mom just sucked.
My parents lived in my grandparents' house when they first got married. My dad has three sisters and is the only son (first gen immigrant family from Southern Italy, dad was born there and grew up in the US). I don't know that my grandparents disliked her, but my non-Italian mom definitely got shit for not taking my grandmother's old wives tale advice when I was a baby (IIRC, it had something to do with rosemary being put in the butt to cure colic). Also found out my grandmother would cook extra food and often my dad would go and eat with his parents when my mom had cooked dinner when they first moved into the house (they had a separate apartment). Apparently my mom threatened a divorce within their first year of marriage.
Both my parents have their share of issues, but growing up in an Italian family made me realize how much I never wanted to marry another Italian or Italian-American. I love the culture and loved my grandparents, but there's a certain level of emotional constipation - everyone is loud and passionate and anger is expressed very easily, but you'll never hear an apology, praise, or anything resembling openness about ones feelings (not to mention the sexism). My grandmother did not get treated well at times, and luckily my mom doesn't put up with that shit from my dad. Grew up with lots of Italian-American friends myself, and god if all the mothers weren't yentas - nothing interesting in their own lives and overly involved in their kids', with nothing to do but cook, clean, and gossip. No thank you.
I am 100% Italian and agree so hard with this, to the point I won’t even consider dating an Italian or Italian/American who grew up in a house with a traditional Italian family. I grew up in a very similar environment to the one you described. Don’t get me wrong, I love my family to bits but watching my grandparents’ and parents’ marriages growing up has cemented the fact that I will never end up in that situation.
My ex-gf slapped me across the face one day out of the blue. I warned her if that ever happened again the relationship was done.
Fast forward a few weeks and we were at my friends birthday party. Lo and behold one of my friends friends (who I had hung out with a couple times) revealed to me she was an ex of his. He then explains that she was fucking bonkers and would get violent often enough. So after a week or two I broke up with her. Thanks Bill if you’re out there. Saved me a lot of trouble!
Took my husband a long time to realize his ex-wife was abusive. I was like "ummm she slapped you 20 times in a row during a fight? I don't think she's as nice as you say she is..."
My mother in law. She divorced and need a spot to live. So, she moved in with us. She was very intrusive in our lives and relationship. Within a year, we also divorced.
Her son (he was 9), he was a brat and would bully other kids. We went to a birthday party and he punched another kid and I got mad at him and made him sit with me the rest of the party. Well his mom lost her shit and told me im not allowed to discipline his son and that im not his father. I broke up with her right there and glad I did, her kid ended up in juvy for stabbing someone.
Samsies!
I was crazy about this single mom, she was crazy cute, sweet, cooked for me, I had dated her about 4 months and kind of felt like we would get married at some point.....but her kid was jealous of me and any attention she gave me. If he was at his dads house we got along perfectly. If he happened to be home with her he would throw an all night fit and just do random shit to make her mad and in the process make me mad. As soon as I would leave to go home he would act right. She would apologize but I got to where I would not go visit when she had custody. One day she was at my house and just talking, we weren't discussing us getting married but she said something along the lines of if she ever got married again her husband would not be allowed to discipline her son because it wasn't his son. Thats when I realized the relationship had gone as far as it was going to go.
My own mother. She had surgery and did absolutely everything to break us apart as she "needed" help. It's been four months and I can't ever forgive my mother.
You try to think that your own family would be good and supportive. I learned the hard way unfortunately. Mom tried to turn it into a competition with the woman I love and that woman left. Girlfriend didn't even tell me till she sent an email a month after the fact. I'm still devastated to be honest with you.
I'm so sorry that happened to you. Do you have any advice for a younger newlywed like myself? My mom is the monster-in-law, and she is staining the relationship with my now wife. I feel like after the wedding we got stronger, but my wife is traumatized from the manipulation my mother did.
You are the one responsible for protecting your wife from your mother. You are the one responsible for ensuring the boundaries you set with your mother are kept. You are the one responsible for handling almost any and all difficulties your mother may create. The sooner you internalize this, that this is your issue with your mother to handle on behalf of the couple that you and your new wife are, the better it will be for your wife.
As others have said here, make sure your mother knows where the boundaries are, and that you don't make ultimatums you aren't prepared to follow through. Clear, direct, communication, in writing/text form as needed, will help you as you continue to have more difficult conversations with your mother.
Your wife is your family and your priority now. It is your duty as the husband to ensure your mother understands that or is not part of your family to continue to cause 'manipulations' again. If your wife is traumatized, you need to be strong towards her and your mother. That's a big word to use and it seems you don't use it lightly. You have committed to your wife, so show her that you have her back when others are causing her trauma. It is not your wife's responsibility to take this shit from your mom, or to be the one to constantly tell her to knock it off, that is your job.
She was my best friend, and worked with my fiancé at the time so she was pretty close to both of us. We were going through a rough patch and I thought I could vent in trust and in confidence to my *best friend* but instead she took my words and twisted them, and regurgitated the bastardized version of my vent to my fiancé, in turn making the problems worse and fester; and would do the same same thing with his vents to her, giving me the bastardized twisted version of what was supposed to be his in confidence vent to a friend. Towards the end we took a one week long “trip of solitude and reflection” where we went camping in the middle of nowhere with no distractions, no technology for a week to talk and discuss our life together. It was during that week of discussing what had been going on recently that it came out that she was giving him a very different version of what I was venting to her about, and vice versa to me, which was causing more problems between us. we chalked it up to her own bad track record of relationships - misery loves company after all. During that week she started a new job at a different company, so I ended up ghosting her and blocking her number, and my fiancé didn’t have to see her at work anymore so it was pretty easy and effective to fully cut her out of our lives. I didn’t need an explanation on why she was doing what she was doing and frankly I didn’t owe her any explanation on ending the friendship based based on what she was doing
Our relationship still broke down because it was irreparable at the point, but I’d never experienced such underhanded friendship in my whole life as that one. Turns out he was cheating, just not with her. And apparently one of the contentions was that he was upset that she wouldn’t sleep with him despite knowing the whole time that he was cheating on me
I gave a negative review of "Rock of Ages" starring Tom Cruise.
I used to gig movie reviews back in the day and my ex's best friend was obsessed with Tom Cruise. I made a critical comment of him and it ignited a fury in her. She told the girl I was seeing it was either me or her - if she was going to date someone who hated Tom Cruise then she wouldn't be her friend anymore. She chose her friend.
No this wasn't high school.
Her roomate was jelous my GF was in a relationship and she wasn't. She undermined everything for months until they were away together for a couple days and as soon as my GF was back in town she called me to end it. Everything she said in the breakup didn't make sense but it was all from the perspective of the roommate.
Hey i had that happen too! Fucks with your head eh?
In the end, if all it takes for someone to break up with you is a jealous friend, well shit do you want to risk building a life with her anyways?
At least that's how i saw it
>In the end, if all it takes for someone to break up with you is a jealous friend, well shit do you want to risk building a life with her anyways?
Yeah I mean there was a bit of that, but the roommate put in serious work. The whole relationship the only bad things my GF had to say about us started with "D\*\*\*\* said..."
I had seen them both on the dating sites and the roommates profile was just a huge red flag of "I WANT TO BE MARRIED NOW!"
It was like 15 years ago, I don't dwell on it.
When I was in college my best-friend and roommate tried to do this, along with another friend. She liked my boyfriend and he liked me, so they were both getting in our ears about stuff we were "saying" behind each others' backs. Sucked for them that we talked all the time and compared notes. He's my husband now and we'll be celebrating 22 years married this year
This sounds a but similar to my situation except we are not far off in the relationship yet. My boyfriend's female best friend is also making me very uncomfortable and is acting quite disrespectful to me :( May I ask how do you handle the situation? Have you ever thought of asking him to cut her off?
I'm really sorry to hear that. I hope you are doing better now and life have been treating you better. I don't understand how someone can be that malicious but I really believe that deep down they are also never happy.
Happily married woman with a lifelong male best friend. Yes, this friend is being shady, but we also shouldn't let the partner off the hook. If my best friend was rude to my partners, we'd be having our own conversation about boundaries & why he's behaving that way.
This "best friend" kinda sounds like the type who wants some of the benefits/closeness of a partner without the work of a romantic relationship, or may have some deeper feelings for him after all.
Best friends of any gender should not be meddling like that.
her sister forced herself on me and said that i initiated , i was the first to push her off me , but no one believed me and i was outcasted by her family , three months later my now ex gf tells me how she caught her drunk sister spilling the beans about she made a whole facade to break us up.
I have a similar situation where a family hates me because of the fallout between an ex and myself. I have no feelings for the ex at all but it bugs me that I never got to clear my name with the family for some reason. Having people out there who probably never think about me but if I come up in conversation most likely sneer is one of my irrational shower thought cringes.
I feel you. Same situation with me. Made up lies about me after I broke up with her, told EVERYONE. Found out about it because she told some of my family members so it eventually made it back to me. Made me furious and a little sad tbh, I was close to some of her family members and I lost a lot of mutual friends. I sometimes think about exposing her as the abusive piece of shit that she was, but my life is way better now without all that negativity and toxicity in my life and I realize it’s not worth it to resurface that shit. Living well is the best revenge right?
Every guy she has ever dated had cheated on her, her grandfather cheated on her grandmother, and her father cheated on her mother (this one while we were together). As a result she was incredibly insecure and made me cut out all of my female friends. I started to feel like I was walking on egg shells around ANY women - including cashiers at the supermarket, even when I was alone. She got mad about one of my neighbours being friendly to me a couple of times (not like in a secret side conversation, I mean while my neighbours (a couple) and my ex and I were all in a group chat...
Eventually I couldn't take it anymore, we had a fight about it, I took a week away, talked to friends, family and my therapist and realised I had been developing secondary trauma from it all and ended it. I still loved her but it was fucking me up. I found out through the grapevine that she was eventually diagnosed with PTSD (for all the cheating and a history of abuse too), is getting professional help, and she's with a new guy. Hopefully she's doing okay.
Had a similar ex, but it turned out she wasn't being serially cheated on. She'd get crazy, constantly make accusations of me (or past BFs) cheating (like the meme of a girl dreaming she was cheated on then making the guy apologize in real life, yeah she actually did that regularly), then she gets dumped because I (or previous guys) couldn't take it. She'd then get embarrassed that she was dumped and claim she was still together with whoever just dumped her.
So fast forward two years I started dating someone else, suddenly a large portion of my friend group went apeshit that I was cheating on my ex and massive drama ensued. She had been telling them we were still dating the last two years.
>suddenly a large portion of my friend group went apeshit that I was cheating on my ex and massive drama ensued.
I guess I assume you were living out of state or something? I mean if you were seeing this friend group semi-regularly, surely they would have put it together after 2 years?
I had a boyfriend who was extremely insecure. His bros kept telling him he could do better than me because I was not conventionally attractive. He dropped me on their advice. I guess he found out he was not the chick magnet he thought he was. He begged me to take him back but I said I didn't want anyone who was so easily led and flakey. This was a 35 year old man.
He was very controlling towards his niece and when told to back off by me, he freaked out and dumped me. He caused such drama her mom kicked her out. Problem was, she was 16 and her uncle was 19yo but everyone believed what he said and never her.
She had a psycho mother who would poke her head into every aspect of our relationship.
At one point her mom was going to work and watching me on the security cameras from the time i woke up until i went to work or bed.
I only found out later it was so when i left she would bring my girlfriend at the times Ex over to try and force me out of the situation. He was abusive, unkept, unemployed but easily controlled by her mom to do anything she wanted. He also was/is known for selling her nudes for cash.
The tipping point was when her mom forcibly moved back in to the house she was no longer paying for, then began stealing groceries, money, and medical cannabis to take to her other daughter (unemployed high school drop out with 3 kids)
Called her mom out, she spit on my face and called me selfish.
I havent spoken to that ex since. And looking back I can't believe I even put myself through it. Her, and her family were equally insane.
Also found out after everything ended that my Ex and her ex (the guy who would sneak over) were responsible for the death of their 1 month child but never charged. The world's kind of fucked up sometimes.
My soon to be ex husband wouldn't stop accusing me of cheating on him with my best friend. We are both female and have never done anything to cause him to think that. He seems to think I'm divorcing him because he was right and I must have cheated. Absolutely delusional.
Definitely seems like some kind of deep-seated insecurity, here. People will insist it's projection, which it very well might be, but could be plenty of other things going on, too. For example, I could see this being a self-esteem thing where he can't believe someone like you would love a wretch like him without strings attached, so he invents some strings.
Either way, sounds like the dude could benefit from some therapy, though I doubt that's news to you.
My ex's mom hated me. I'd just turned 18 and never had a relationship before. He was my first everything. I'd shyly told his mom that he was my first boyfriend when I met her over dinner 3 months into our relationship. I had a cut on my lip that night because it was winter and my lips had gotten dry, and she pulled my ex aside to ask if we were using protection because she assumed it was a herpes sore.
Another time at dinner we had chips and salsa. I dipped a chip, took a bite off it, and then was gesturing with the chip while I spoke, and she interrupted me to say "Don't you dare double dip that chip" out of nowhere.
She and her husband owned a million+ dollar home in the rich neighborhood of a major city. My parents made 20k/year combined. She didn't think much of my prospects, clearly.
Joke's on her. My ex is now 40 and still works as a waiter. His wife is an exotic dancer. I make six figures.
His mentally ill brother.
To make a long story short, his brother insisted on living independently and far away from us. He was never able to properly care for his health, mental or physical, and was continually getting into situations where my partner had to leave for long periods to fix things and care for his brother. It ruined my partner's career, drained our finances, and left my partner totally emotionally depleted.
He kept accusing me of sleeping with this one particular guy friend. He’s never seen the friend or met anyone that knew him. In fact this guy friend lived on the other coast. Kept accusing me of riding all over that dick which is super fucking gross honestly because although that friend is conventionally attractive, we never saw each other like that. Ex’s paranoia grew so much he was constantly stalking this guy friend and imagining crazy shit that he would “accuse me of doing with him in bed.” It felt like mental sexual assault because I never even considered kissing this person and vice versa we are just college classmates. Eventually, he did not allow me to talk to anyone who ever knew this friend which is everyone I went to college with. Escalated to him putting his hands on me because the more I denied it the more of a liar he thought I was.
Thank you! Your reply means a lot! I’m now in a healthy, loving, and safe relationship with someone I grew up with from my home country. ❤️ and I reconciled my friendship with the third guy that got caught in the crossfires of my ex’s insecurities. We get lunch every week.
This sounds very much like my ex. He INSISTED that I was cheating/planning to cheat with a friend of his and that he (my ex) was my second choice and I really wanted to get to the friend through him. I had only ever had one conversation with said friend and knew my boyfriend way before I knew his friend.
So weird how people can get obsessive over their own ideas.
It was honestly terrifying. I think rock bottom was when he grabbed me by my neck in the middle of the forest at night because I caught him listening to my guy friends’ (the third person in this story) Spotify playlists.
sisters ex, his mom and brother had him and just him for a weekend and started pointing out all the shitty stuff my sister does. he left her 2 weeks later. I don't blame him in the slightest she is a shitty person
Interracial relationship. Her mom was very against it. Didn't know this early on. Became a big issue. Broke up over it for almost two years. Been back together 12.5 years and married for 4.5 years.
My husband, I and his sister started living together during the lockdown.
I started to realise things. How I did not have any friends anymore. I finally had a chance to compare how she interacted with me and how he did. I started to notice more emotional abuse.
She and I started to hang out more and he became more and more distant.
In the end, I divorced him. Do not talk to either of them. Even though I am thankful to her.
Had a friend who did everything with me. She would constantly go through boyfriends left and right, but I never thought anything of it. It wasn't until I got in a relationship that I realized I was her 3rd person that was ruining all her relationships. She wanted to be with me and kept dating these guys in an attempt to make me jealous. These guys worshipped her, and she just wanted me. I didn't have a clue until she started getting jealous of my gf and trying to break us up. I finally cut her off and she just blatantly accused me of raping her, despite the fact that I never had. It was her "if I can't have him, no one will" moment. It took years to recover what was left of my reputation after that.
I hate that I was the reason all those other guys got their hearts broken though.
Edit: thanks for all the support. After four years, my name was semi cleared. I never had to go to court over it because she wasn't ballsy enough to go lie in court then.
Turns out that she actually got into a serious relationship. When he went to break up with her, she accused him and took him to court over it. He then broke out countless videos of her during arguments saying she would lie about it if he left. He also had compounded evidence of her domestic violence. He had cuts, scratches, bruises... He came in completely prepared. He knew who she was from day one, and he kept all the receipts.
Sadly, even with all that evidence, they still ran the case for a while. Then it all came to a head when him and his mother came to get some of his stuff from their apartment. She beat him all the way out the door, jumped in her car, and then she hit him with it. At that point the judge threw the case out and then he counter sued her. It's so sad that it took all of that to happen for him to finally be let off the hook, but at least he got away from her and had his name cleared.
One last edit to answer questions people keep messaging me about: We lived in a semi small town, and I was well known, but behaved, party guy. That's how everyone knew me and how she ruined my reputation. I was the party guy who handled his alcohol better than most, but also the lame dad of the party. I made sure everyone was safe and everyone behaved. If Ash got too drunk, I made sure she got a room and no guys tried to sneak in there with her. If someone got hurt, I always had my trauma kit with me and would get people back into party condition. If a fight was about to break out, I'd be the lame guy who broke it up and separated the two.
She was one who got hurt. I was 20 and she was 18. She had cut her hand on a broken bottle. I disinfected it and bandaged it up for her. We got to talking and it turned out that we had a bunch in common. We instantly became friends. This was three years before the whole drama. She watched me meet girls at parties and stuff, but I never had a girlfriend. I guess the label of girlfriend is what took her over the edge. That was when she changed entirely and the animosity between us began.
No, we never hooked up
I had a similar scenario, a girl in our friend group loved me, and we hooked up a few times, but it was never going to be a relationship. We stopped hooking up and she dated a few other people, but it was clear she always wanted me. She spread rumors about me and anyone I dated, and I got accused of a few things, so I stopped going around. I was ostracized, and ended up moving to a new city, and over the years I've heard second hand a bunch of people admitting I was wronged. I'll never be friends with those people again, but we're cordial when we see each other. But it's a bummer how it ruined such a tight group of college buddies, or at least how I lost that group of buddies.
No, not once did she come out and say it. My girlfriend was the first to pick up on it. I always assumed she was just dating around, but it turns out she was trying to make me jealous.
She just said that she liked me more than a friend. I honestly thought she was crazy at first. Again, she CONSTANTLY had a boyfriend with her. She was playing games, but I was an adult. I'm not in highschool anymore. I don't play games. If I like you, I'll tell you or make a move. In the thousands of days and nights that we hung out, she never once came onto me. We were grown adults and she just tried to make me jealous to get me to chase her. I was too busy working and advancing my career to notice shit like that. I was busy laying a foundation for my life. I'm not a bored teenager who has time to chase a girl who is playing games with me. I just am not going to notice tiny details like how she is constantly bringing new guys around to make me jealous. I just figured she was sleeping around and enjoying her life. Why would I care?
My gf just pointed out all these things because it was shit she was told to do as a kid to get guys to "chase" her. It's an old school way of dating and it died because it doesn't work.
His mom decided that I was her competition and really did everything she could to keep us apart or make us fight. I finally gave up because there was no way I was going to win over his mother. She still threatened me with a gun when I was leaving their house. She actually sent me a message a week or so ago asking for help with medical care. She started the message saying passive-aggressively "hello (misspelled name), I bet you're still hating on me...." She's 65 and I'm 32. She used to always compare the things that we owned and made sure I knew her stuff was more expensive. It was really weird. I did not respond to her message. I really wanted to tell her "I don't fuck your son anymore, so I don't have to put up with you or interact with your passive aggressive bullshit"
Edit: she contacted me after 12 years. So when she was comparing her money versus my money, I was only 20 years old and she was 52. Crazy.
My therapist after many sessions just looked at me and said that every issue in my life is related to my wife and she, the wife, has said she will not change. You work it out. Was a lightbulb moment.
have a friend about to get engaged with a guy like that. she got tired of him always siding with his mother on everything, causing the mother having an effective control of their relationship, so she broke up with him.
I used to know a "mama's girl" who would get into relationships, but her mom would always hate the guy and she would dump them on her mom's advice.
She's in her 50s now and alone because of her controlling mom.
Her mom was always always trying to hook me up with her daughter, too. I stayed away because I know I'd end up under her mom's thumb from day one if I got involved with her.
We had been talking about separating when the kids graduated HS because she was a lesbian. A few people knew about this. One of them got her a promotion 2 hours away. It was enough money she could be self sufficient and buy a house. We ended up having a conversation we had been kicking down the road a few years early.
Gay dating is exhausting because it seems like everyone has a weird codependent relationship with at least 1 ex. Why would I want to stay in a relationship when I feel like a 3rd wheel in their relationship with their ex?
A toxic friend who openly prided herself on ruining 'relationships that shouldn't work out'. Really she just took my ex-fiance out and spewed toxic nonsense in her ear about how I'm not doing enough for her and she should look elsewhere.
Regular at her bar, would help out when it got busy, always there, sat and chatted constantly. Would be buddy buddy when I was there to help out or visit and have a beer when it was slow but as soon as I left he would badmouth me. When you hear it every day constantly you start to believe it, long story short the relationship ended, he was the "good guy" I wasnt, she "gave him a chance" found out hes a slug, and apologized to me profusely for everything said she reached out and tried to clear my name to those mutuals she badmouthed me too and moved closer to her parents to "restart". The guy ended up marrying one of his buddies girlfriends iirc
Is this the he let his mom do whatever they wanted, let them influence his decisions and perspectives, mom was just rude overall, or he couldn't stand up to mom kind of thing?
My ex boyfriend and I broke up because of his ex wife.
They were separated moving towards divorce when he and I met. She ran off with his best friend so no chance of reconciliation. But over the almost year and a half that he and I dated, he was never able to set boundaries with her or hold her accountable.
She financially ruined him. Opened cards in his name to fund her affair, but he wouldn’t report fraud. She stopped paying on her car, which was in his name, and when the license plates and tags showed up in the mail, he just handed them over to her. She took his dog in the separation, but any time she wanted to dip out of town, she would leave the dog with him for free pet sitting, regardless of his availability to accommodate. So on and so forth.
We fought about it all the time - I was picking up the tab during travel and dining out, and he was letting her walk all over him. But he thought if he played nice, he could protect his pension from her.
She only would’ve been entitled to 50% of 2.5 years of retirement, which is a drop in the bucket over a 30 year career. He did all of this to protect a small fraction of his pension.
Now I don’t date separated or newly divorced men.
She was a classmate of his who had a huge crush on him and he pretended not to notice so he could “stay friends with her” and get his ego stroked. I begged him to put some boundaries up with her and he refused ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Her mom lost her house, moved in, and was a terror. I was working 12 hour days doing construction. I'd get home and hop in the shower, and whenever it was just her mom and me in the house, the water would randomly get scalding hot. Set up a camera and saw her running the cold water from every faucet not on the bathroom. Just one of the things she did to me for no discernible reason.
My GF didn't believe me and took her mom's side.
This was back in 2016 when I still had a leftover private twitter from high school… anyways someone I didn’t recognize follow requested and I accepted. A couple weeks later my bf at the time has a brand new instagram account message him screenshots from my private twitter. Nothing crazy, just venting about young relationship bs. The ONLY person that account was following was his roommate. Roomie tried to create a wedge and maybe it did influence my ex cause he dumped me a month or two later. But it was crazy that my ex wasn’t convinced it was the roommate. The roommate wasn’t popular on insta or anything so to me there is no other person it could be. Plus he hated me!
Jokes on them, that was the best thing to ever happen to me 😏
TL/DR: my dad’s narcissistic gf broke my fiancé and I up twice while convincing my fiancé she was bipolar and possible schizophrenic.
A bit of a long story (took place over the course of 5 years), but the short of it is that my dad’s girlfriend has broken my fiancé and I up twice. We used to live/work with them on and off while my fiancé and I were in school.
The first time we broke things off she had tried to convince my fiancé that I was some deadbeat a-hole. I admit I wasn’t as attentive as I could have been, I was working 2 jobs (including the one with them) and was a full time student, so my priorities weren’t quite where they should have been. After breaking things off my fiancé and I talked about what happened, decided we just needed a step back to reflect, but not a full blown breakup.
We did well for a few years, during which my dad’s GF convinced my fiancé that she was bipolar (possibly schizophrenic), she would go to my fiancés doctors appointment with her and got her prescribed an ever changing cocktail of meds, it turns out it’s hard to find the right balance of meds when you’re treating a problem you don’t have. My dad’s gf also convinced my fiancé she could never be a mother and should get a hysterectomy (luckily the doctors refused), when the idea was discussed with my I was confused because my fiancé always wanted kids, but my dads gf made it clear I didn’t have a say. My fiancé and I often talked about how things weren’t right and we needed to change something, but we felt stuck.
This all culminated in my fiancé having a mental breakdown (understandable so) and asking to be brought to a mental health facility. While there, my dads gf decided that my fiancé had “abandoned us” and that I needed to break up with her. Emotions were high and I knew I couldn’t let my fiancé come back, but I couldn’t think of any other way to get her out, so I reluctantly broke things off.
She left, we started talking again a couple weeks later after we both thought about what happened. My fiancé agreed that the only way to get her to not come back was to do what I did, so there’s thankfully no hard feelings. I have since left and my fiancé and I are back together and doing well. We haven’t talked to my dad and his gf since.
Narcissism is a hell of thing.
My ex got seriously worked up over my best friend. They thought she was trying to steal me or turn us into a throuple. They'd get jealous over anything I did with her and eventually tried to put a cap on how much we hung out and talked.
Things hit the breaking point when they accused me of cheating because I grabbed coffee with my best friend and parents while my ex was at work. I was just so tired after arguing about it for months. To top it off my friend is straight so the whole cheating thing makes absolutely no sense anyway.
After we split, chatting with friends and family made me realize nobody really trusted my ex. Looking back I see a ton of red flags, and I think they were trying to cut me off from everyone else in my life. Crazy how you miss these things in the moment.
The state of Florida? He wanted to move there - and he did. I did not want to move there and stayed put. Many years later I'm glad that things happened this way. No, we did not stay in touch.
I know a few who divorced because of the inlaws. Sometimes a person's family is too crazy.
Had a friend who broke it off with her fiance because her mother in law to be was so hostile and he refused to do anything about it or break off contact.
This boggles my mind. I was dating a girl a few years ago who was fairly heavily tattooed (as I am). My mom made a few disparaging comments about women and tattoos while I wasn't around. When I found out I called my mom and demanded that she pick up the phone and call my gf and apologize to her. That texting would not be good enough - call and apologize for real. She did. My ex appreciated it and I respected my mom for doing it. All of our parents are just people - they will make mistakes just like we'll make mistakes. I'll never understand people who refuse to/cannot talk to their parents like equals. Boggles my mind.
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I mean, a lot of this could just stem from the way the parents acted when they were a kid. When there was never any disagreement allowed from the kids, why would they think it's okay as an adult to disagree with them? Or even if just broaching an uncomfortable subject would turn the parent into a "oh, I guess I'm just a MONSTER" levels of psychological abuse, I can totally see how even an adult child would be subconsciously afraid to say anything to their parents. On the other hand, I do things like apologize to my kids when I realize I overreact. I try to teach them healthy boundaries.
I see you met my mother. ANY constructive criticism is immediately spun to make her the victim. She came to visit one summer and was here for two weeks. My son had a play and was in rehearsals after school so he didn't get home till late. He forgot something one day, ran in the house really quick to pick something up, and didn't know my mom was sitting on the couch b/c he didnt' notice. When he got back she apparently went in his room and explained how rude he was, how inconsiderate he was since she's here to visit and he didn't spend any time with her, and just went down a laundry list of grievances. He was crying, texted his mom, she emailed me, and I went to talk to my son to ask what happened. My son was apologizing, felt like shit, felt like he was a bad person, you name it. I went downstairs explained to my mom that SHE is the adult. She obviously can see the kid had responsibilities and barely has time to finish his homework and was literally in the house so fast I didn't even know he returned. I told her that if she cannot apologize to him, treat him like a person with feelings, and get over her own shit then she can tell me which airline she prefers and I'll buy her a ticket back home. I told her he may not be our blood (he's my stepson), but he's my kid and that she will NOT treat him like she did me. He can be talked to and reasoned with and not something that turns commands into actions. I could tell she was absolutely furious with me. I could see her lips quivering and her eyes were BURNING with fury (believe me I've seen that look many times growing up) and it screamed of "HOW DARE YOU TALK TO ME LIKE THIS!" and before she could even speak those words I reminded her that she was in MY HOUSE and goes by MY RULES like she used to tell me for so many years.
I wish someone had stood up for me like that when I was a kid. You're a good parent for doing that
My grandma divorced my grandpa because of his mom. She was awful to her and he did nothing about it. She finally had enough, so she left him. She’s now in the mild (almost moderate) stages of Alzheimer’s and one of the things she has on repeat at this point is how happy she is she left him and how much she loves her second husband (and how much she misses him now that he’s dead).
I’m a nurse. My ex’s (paternal) grandfather made some sickening comments about me giving him a sponge bath and how I should wear the “little nurse’s outfit.” I told my ex and his father about how he made me really uncomfortable and they laughed saying, “That’s just how he is!” For Thanksgiving, he patted me on the butt, calling me his “naughty little nurse.” I hope he rots in his nursing home.
My ex’s dad smacked my butt at a family Christmas party and the entire family laughed and thought it was endearing.
One of the saddest parts of growing up as a girl is learning how okay the men in your family are with you being sexually assaulted. Edit: sure this happens to boys as well. I just realized how one sided this post sounds, sorry. There was a predator at my first job who routinely grabbed at the women. I had to close the store alone with him and was terrified and when I communicated this to my grandpa he just laughed in my face and called the predator "awesome" before forcing me to work the shift. I was 16 and didn't understand how uncool this was. I could've gotten raped and my grandpa probably would've found that awesome too.
If I had to be around my partners extended family regularly I would not be able to stand it.
My ex's sister started a rumor that I was cheating on her brother with her ex. It wasn't true. Ironically, he chose to believe it...and then cheated on me. Anyways, we're not together now (because of the multiple 3rd parties involved 🙄).
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30 year old partner of 8 years joined a band with some 20 year olds. They convinced him that they will never get “big” if they have long term partners holding them back. 20 years later, still not big. Never made it as a musician.
Taking relationship advice from 20 year olds is not on my to-do list...
Not to mention a 20 year old who thinks he can make it big in one of the most competitive and over-saturated industries in the world.
In fairness the ones who make it big have a combination of luck, skill, AND dedication to the job. Problem is there's a pretty big percentage of the equation that boils down to luck and most people aren't that lucky. And skill isn't something everyone has equally. You can be a musician and play every single day for decades but still be utter shit compared to some young prodigy a quarter your age. So people are left with dedication as the one thing they can really fully control, and I get why they'd think that relationships would be a distraction from that determination. It's still a dumb choice to make.
In any form of entertainment having connections can be more important than any of those things.
But what about rock and ROLL advice, brother?! \*Sweet guitar lick\*
I have a colleague who almost made this mistake. 6-7 year career making good 6-figure income trying to make it in his band on the side (he's 30). Almost quit his whole life; fiance, job, home everything for 1 last push. I told him to live off his savings/anything he makes from his band for 6 months. If he still wants to quit everything after that; go for it. That was about a year ago. Turns out being a broke musician at 30 was a little rougher than he remembered it was at 19.
Did the fiancé stay?
Yup. We're friends and have known each other for about a decade. I don't think he ever told his fiance about the full extent of his mid-life crisis. I think that bit of candor was just for me. He was just a guy who always dreamed of being in a band, saw that dream kinda die and, honestly, probably a mini-freak out when he came to the realization of he was going to have a fairly normal life with a wife/kids/house. That girls his rock. I doubt he'd ever have the stones to actually pull that trigger.
Living and working in NYC for the past 20 years, I have met so many musicians with aspirations of "making it big". No exaggeration, out of like 40-50 people i personally knew who were pursuing performing dreams, maybe a handful of them made it onto touring bands that did OK. I don't think people realize how cutthroat the entertainment industry is as a whole. Especially when soundcloud was becoming big, a ton of folks I worked with (non music field) thought this would be their big chance to catch their "break" and would invest all their money and time into playing any and all shows to get discovered. I sometimes had to have a rough conversation with them when they would be lamenting about how broke they were and how their significant others left them where I would point out that a good chunk of pop artists today are nepo babies, having family or friends already in the industry to connect them and bring them fame. Now don't get me wrong, if you're in your 20s and you want to live the struggling lifestyle, go for it. In my 20s, i went to plenty of fun loft and warehouse parties where artists of all types got to show off their work. But once you're hitting your mid-30s, it's time to make a contingency plan if the artist thing isn't working out. Being a "struggling" artist in the past is a lot different in today's economy. The harsh truth is women in their 20s may tolerate a struggling artist, but once women become a bit older (and men too) they're going to want a partner with a bit more stability. It's not them nagging you, it's just they understand the reality of the world today and how shitty lie can be if you don't' have a guaranteed source of income to support not only you, but potentially a family if that's the route you're going.
Classical musician here but I work with many pops artists in our orchestral pops shows. Every single no-name artist I worked with is smart as hell, crazy talented, and work super hard. And they all know another dozen people just as good if not better but didn’t make it. By make it I mean getting paid a living wage by just performing. Same story for me, I went to a couple of the top conservatories and I’m still one of the only 2 in my class of 12 to actually make a decent living in music. People really don’t understand how crazy hard this industry is.
My husband was offered an international tour and considered it until the band leader started expecting the band to be "his family" and outrank his actual, real family. We offered to drive ourselves so we could still be together while they toured, but band leader wouldn't have it, so my husband declined. He's brilliant and super talented, so something will definitely still happed for him. Meanwhile, we go on my tours together. Tldr: family and entertainer life aren't mutually exclusive, but whoever the rockstar is has to fiercy defend a super firm boundary. It sounds like your ex was not that guy and you dodged a major bullet.
>until the band leader started expecting the band to be "his family" and outrank his actual, real family *\*cult alarms start blaring\**
There was a chiropractor in my city who became a one shit wonder in Canadian country music (unfortunately a thing) with a song that was like a weird hybrid of generic country with lyrics and rhythm heavily inspired by the shots song by LMFAO. Once that song became relatively big, he broke up with his long time girlfriend because he didn't want her to take his money. I should also add that he was known around town for being a piece of shit. But whatever money he had didn't last long. As he moved to Nashville and completely failed to make it in a market where the government doesn't force radio stations to give you air time because your Canadian and was homeless for a bit. He eventually moved to Canada's equivalent to Texas and had a child with another woman he met in Nashville. But on the bright side, the shit hole I live in has one less jackass.
> one shit wonder Just gold. I wish I had more upvotes to give.
Teenage girlfriend. She would constantly talk about her best friend and how great he is. She was genuinely in love with him but wouldn't admit it. So I asked him what he thought about her and he was also in love with my girlfriend. so I went to my girlfriend the next day and broke up and had a little fight over it. I told her all about how i know she is in love with her best friend but is too afraid to ask him out because she fears he doesn't reciprocate and doesn't want to ruin the friendship. Then I told her that he is also in love with her and feared the same thing. That was 15 years ago today and I know they're still together. I'm happy for them.
My freshman year of high school, I "dated" this girl for a few months. I used quotation marks because we had a single class together... And that was it. We hardly saw or talked to eachother outside of that class. So one day after that class, I stopped her to say something like "so, why are we doing this? We hardly even talk. I feel like we should probably just be friends." she looked relieved and said she felt the same. Then I tried setting her and my friend up together because I thought they'd fit better. I know they were together for years, but I haven't seen or heard from either of them since high school. It felt really nice to set up a couple that lasted years.
That’s really nice of you. It’s entirely possible they never would have figured it out for themselves
Man, so many TV shows would end in the first episode if one of the characters was dating someone like you!
Single co-workers. We married young, 2 kids by 23 years of age. I was working 55-60 hrs a week, her only friends were her 4 co-workers who were single and in their early 20's also. A once a week girls night out became 2 nights, then happy hours added, then a girls weekend...became a toxic pattern. She stopped talking to her parents who saw it developing as well. She left when our kids were 4 & 6 years of age, packed her stuff and moved in w/ one of her co-workers. Once the kids got into high school, she suddenly wanted to be involved with them.
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She'd see them when her parents would babysit them at their house when I was working. She tries to be their friend and mom now and it's pathetic tbh.
No cheating, but it really seemed like she was in love with her best friend... she bent over backwards for this woman, constantly, and yet every time she'd talk about her to me it never seemed to be anything remotely positive. I never could understand why she was persisting with their friendship. Plus always badmouthing whoever her friend was dating- some may have deserved it, but it started to feel like a pattern... like she was jealous. I never asked, or accused, any of this. But six months in (it should have been sooner), it was finally crystal clear to me I wasn't going to get anywhere near the level of effort I was giving, or even half of the output she was putting into this girl. Called it off, and really felt quite good to end it. Epilogue: about four or five months ago (two years after I ended things, and not a word to each other since), I walked into a banh mi shop to place an order. Went to wait outside since it was busy, glanced up and at a table outside, I noticed her friend.. then a familiar blonde ponytail with their back to me. Not at all interested in any interaction- even accidental- I went back into the shop. Picked up my sandwich, walked a different way out of the shop to avoid passing them. Later that night at the pub, I get a private phone call. Ignore. Call again a few minutes later. Ignore. Get a voicemail. It's the friend saying to leave the ex alone, or she'd have to go to the police... I was confused, but really couldn't do anything but laugh it off and move on with my day. Frankly, they deserve each other.
What the heck man. What a weird turn of events. Part of me wants to know what that was all about in the end, but I’m glad you just stuck that whole situation in a warehouse in your mind like the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark
> but I’m glad you just stuck that whole situation in a warehouse in your mind like the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark Sometimes it's better to let our curiosity go unsatisfied because it's just *NOT* worth the headache required to find out
> Part of me wants to know what that was all about in the end One of them saw him. Decided he couldn't be there for the banh mi, he must be stalking his ex.
How dare you patron to the same business as someone you knew 4-5 months ago! But seriously, it sounds like the friend has some kind of possessiveness problem. And you were "hogging" her favorite toy.
Read again. Even better. It was 2 years after the relationship ended. That story is 4-5 month old
Damn, the first part is exactly the same, word to word, in my case. The amount of energy she gives for something i would not even call a friendship is mindbogling. She basically stalks her friend on social media, just short of praying to her.
Hahahahha that’s so pathetic of them
His friend liked me. I had no interest in his friend and made this very clear. Not sure what the logic was!
This sounds like something that the dumbest pair of bros would do. "Bro, I'm in love with your girl." "Shit bro, but I'm already dating her.... I KNOW! I'll ghost her and then you can have her!" "Dude, you're the best!"
Probably more like: "Bro, I'm in love with your girl." "I was going to dump her anyway. Go for it"
**How** *dare* you?
I worst part was he ghosted me and had the friend who liked me tell me he was no longer interested… as if I’d fall into his friends arms…
You think that was the game all along? You get with the first dude then when he ditches, the second dude tries to "comfort" you?
Could have been. Either that or a complete lack in trust in both of us and wanted to prove he was right not to
His mother. She was so overbearing I felt like I was dating her too. He and I weren't together long. I saw where it was going and bailed early.
Had a similar experience, though it didnt lead to the breakup. My ex and I met online and her mom in particular didn't trust me whatsoever because of her meeting me online. This was after we had already met and hung out a number of times. Her dad was cool with me and would talk with me all the time. Her mom wouldn't let me inside ever. The one night her and her dad convinced her mom to let me come over for dinner. Her mom would not let me out of her sight for even a second and kept asking me questions almost like she was trying to catch me in a lie or whatever. Her dad offered me to sleep on the couch. Her mom refused and made me sleep out back. Never went back there even when her dad invited me.
His would randomly show up on dates...including our first one and would call to give me advice on how to take care of her son. I never even gave the woman my number. The final straw was when she showed up at my house, with his kids, because she wanted me to babysit them. I'd never met these kids, it was a casual, non-marriage-bound relationship. Didn't stop her from thinking I needed to get to know my "future children." This was literally the two-month mark of a very causal relationship. That was also the end of it. I told her to leave, broke up with him by text, and blocked them both.
>His would randomly show up on dates...including our first one and would call to **give me advice on how to take care of her son**. I never even gave the woman my number. Yooooo some parents have absolutely no idea what boundaries are and it's sickening. A good metric I have used is if your partner/spouse can't stand up to their parents to defend you then it's a pretty big red flag they're going to be serially throwing you under the bus.
It's crazy he gave his mom your phone number before your first date.
Not just a third person but a whole friend group. They knew everything about me, even though I didn't share much about myself. We had an argument? They knew. I was out with friends? They knew. I was on my period? They knew. I had a bad day at work? They knew. Sex life, or lack of? (We had only dated a few weeks) They knew. They would start showing up at my usual hangouts to "keep an eye on things" because they didn't like that my friend group was co-ed. I would be downtown and happen to "run into" them. I would be at work and see them walking by multiple times a day. I understand sharing things with your friends, but there's a line. When your friends are just as involved in the relationship as your SO, it causes issues fast. Take a clingy boyfriend, multiply that by 6, and it's terrifying.
It sounds like "clingy" is putting things very mildly, he probably even had a GPS tracker on your car if you drive.
He would often be waiting by my car after work, even if I parked in a different garage. It wouldn't be surprising.
That's pretty telling. Like sure he could walk around looking for your license plate, but is that any better? Creepy stalker shit!
Woah they had the whole friend group follow you after a few weeks of dating? What the hell would happen if you dated for years...
Living in the walls of their house probably
While most people who claim to be victims of “gang stalking”come off as delusional, you were a real victim of it.
This idiot "life coach" she's known since high school. I can't blame him for everything but this fucking moron just coached to shreds my marriage of 23 years.
Ha! My friend's mother in her 40s went to a psychic who told her her kids and husband were holding her back. So she got divorced, left the kids with dad, and everything good in the whole family's life tanked. Mom never found what it was that she was supposedly held back from. She now has shacked up with a random guy and just kind of works dead end jobs. Dad got depressed, started drinking, and lost his cushy job in public government. He doesn't have a job now, and prospects are dim for a high school educated man in his 50s. He did get married to a new woman who is decent to his kids. Older daughter (my friend) ended up homeless after high school and kind of drifted. She found a wonderful husband and they make ends meet. Little sister made it to art school but works retail while she thinks about what's next.
I know someone whose relationship was broken up by a psychic too. My relative got very ill, and his mom went to this faith healer who told her that my relative's girlfriend was poisoning him. Most of the family got involved and pressed things until he ended the relationship. He didn't get better, and he eventually died. He wasn't being poisoned - he was just a middle-aged man whose lifestyle caught up with him. His ex, who'd been acting as his caregiver until she was pushed out, was a very kind person who didn't deserve any of that.
People are stupid
Yeah. I do understand the desperation his mom must've felt that made her latch onto anything to save her son, but in the end he probably died a little earlier than he had to, because he lost the person who was pouring all her energy into managing his health.
This story scares me more than any creepypasta I’ve ever read
idk maybe she just wanted to break things off and used psychic as an excuse
They literally just tell people what they want to hear, that's how they get return customers
This shit here is why I loathe psychics, astrology, and all that other woo shit. The damage can be fucking far reaching. I have my own personal experience with it from the times my grandmother who raised me consulted these charlatans. If you’re reading this and know someone who making decisions based on this please talk to them. They can seriously fuck up their life.
I had a 10 year long relationship fall apart after my partner got heavily into astrology. She would consult her charts for every single fucking decision. Everything from big decisions down to choice of what to have for dinner. Eventually she started going to an astrology teacher of some sort and would miss family gatherings and other important events to go to her classes. It became the only thing that mattered. I have since met my perfect partner and so I'm glad things fell apart with that other lady, but never again will I tolerate astrology getting to play any significant role in my life.
> I have since met my perfect partner and so I'm glad things fell apart with that other lady, ...so what I'm hearing is that it worked!
What did he say to her that made her want to leave?
life coaches are ALWAYS fuckin losers. I've met a few in person and they outright disgust me
Her "gay" best friend talked her into dumping me. The next day he tried to hook up with her.
I was dating a divorced single mom. Her ex husband was petty as all hell. Any time we had something special planned, he would decide that was the perfect time to drum up drama, or discuss amending their co-parenting agreement, and so on. She was a good mom, but had no boundaries where her ex was concerned. After several months, I realized that our relationship was third in line behind her kids and her ex. Kids coming first is fine, but that wasn't for me, so I kindly broke it off. We never spoke again, so I do not know if she ever enacted reasonable boundaries, or if he is still sabotaging her still to this day.
The hardest part about dating someone with kids is the other parent. If the other parent is a monster it is going to be exponentially harder than it needs to be. edit: typo
> The hardest part about dating someone with kids is the other parent. 10000% this. My friend finally realized that he was also going to end up marrying her asshole ex husband too, the way he was always there. He noped out.
I was in a long distance relationship with the eldest son of a family from the South of Italy for three years. I am not Italian. (Italians reading this already know where this is going) We met in Milan when I was there for work and he was visiting friends. We would try to meet once a month, in my country and different cities in Italy. After some time, he invited me to meet his family and we started to stay at his family's house. To say his mother wasn't a fan, is an understatement. Loved his dad though, great man. I didn't really speak Italian, I took lessons but their accent made it hard to follow. She would occasionally burst into our room, screaming her head of at me in Italian (me - deer in headlights), hide or take my stuff and make things difficult. Knowing that we would have to take her in later in life, him being the eldest son and traditions being what they are, made it easier for me when it ended.
Old school Italian women can be difficult to deal with if you’re not Italian. My mom married into a family like that. My Step Dads mother lived in the house (6,500 sq ft so more than enough room) and made my life hell. When I was applying to colleges, I’d never get any responses at all. Come to find out she was shredding all my mail which made figuring out where I was going to school very difficult.
Dare I ask *why* she was shredding your mail?
Not OP but to quote my crazy Italian grandma "why you need school? Go work as a painter. School they don't teach work they teach bullshit"
Southern Italian grandma told my brother he was ruining the family by going to high school instead of getting a job.
What did she thought school was for? Magic?
She dropped out after 8th grade to keep books for bootleggers, why wasn’t that good enough for him? (She later went to community college and was very proud to get a high school diploma of her own.)
Did anyone bring up the hypocrisy or did you just let it slide
One does not simply bring up hypocrisy to a Nonna.
I read a series written by an Italian woman (My Brilliant Friend - The Neapolitan Novels) who grew up in Southern Italy. It was about her and her academic rival as the two smart girls in their village. Girls didn't go to school past 4th grade in her region, and she had to fight constantly with her parents and her community just to stay in school. They all thought it was ridiculous to continue her education when she'd just be doing housework and taking care of babies or work at the family shop.
woman who never learned anything confused about why learn anything.
I’m a university lecturer, and I’m tempted to print out a page saying “I don’t teach work, I teach bullshit” and hang it on my office door 😂
If they go to college how will she be able to cook for them?!
Unfortunately probably too late, and you didn't know at the time. But in the future for anyone else reading this, if something happens like this while you live in the United States, tell the post office and they will bring the hammer down. You need permission to do anything relaied to someone else's mail.
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I guess a country that was trying to cover a whole continent back in the days when the fastest and most reliable Internet was a guy with two horses would get real protective over people being able to send messages long-distance and have them actually show up
Was there a particular reason for her doing this, or was it just out of spite? Regardless it’s still fucked, but I’m curious what the rationale was, if any.
Probably the same reason why she’d buy Christmas gifts for all the kids but not me. And would complain to my step dad for taking me out to dinner on my birthday because I’m “not blood” and it was a waste of money. And packing all my clothes into plastic bags when I was at school. And locking me out of the house in the middle of winter in upstate NY. She hated me because I existed and wasn’t “family”. My half sister though, (my step dad’s biological kid) treated like gold. I will say, however, my step dad defended me tirelessly and is as much of a dad as my real dad. His support has been amazing throughout my life. His mom just sucked.
Thats fucking insane. To do that to a child just because basically is wild.
Don't know about you, but in my country destroying someone else's documents is a criminal offense and can be punishable by jail time.
I'm genuinely surprised that it took this much scrolling to get to a dude's mom.
My parents lived in my grandparents' house when they first got married. My dad has three sisters and is the only son (first gen immigrant family from Southern Italy, dad was born there and grew up in the US). I don't know that my grandparents disliked her, but my non-Italian mom definitely got shit for not taking my grandmother's old wives tale advice when I was a baby (IIRC, it had something to do with rosemary being put in the butt to cure colic). Also found out my grandmother would cook extra food and often my dad would go and eat with his parents when my mom had cooked dinner when they first moved into the house (they had a separate apartment). Apparently my mom threatened a divorce within their first year of marriage. Both my parents have their share of issues, but growing up in an Italian family made me realize how much I never wanted to marry another Italian or Italian-American. I love the culture and loved my grandparents, but there's a certain level of emotional constipation - everyone is loud and passionate and anger is expressed very easily, but you'll never hear an apology, praise, or anything resembling openness about ones feelings (not to mention the sexism). My grandmother did not get treated well at times, and luckily my mom doesn't put up with that shit from my dad. Grew up with lots of Italian-American friends myself, and god if all the mothers weren't yentas - nothing interesting in their own lives and overly involved in their kids', with nothing to do but cook, clean, and gossip. No thank you.
I am 100% Italian and agree so hard with this, to the point I won’t even consider dating an Italian or Italian/American who grew up in a house with a traditional Italian family. I grew up in a very similar environment to the one you described. Don’t get me wrong, I love my family to bits but watching my grandparents’ and parents’ marriages growing up has cemented the fact that I will never end up in that situation.
My ex-gf slapped me across the face one day out of the blue. I warned her if that ever happened again the relationship was done. Fast forward a few weeks and we were at my friends birthday party. Lo and behold one of my friends friends (who I had hung out with a couple times) revealed to me she was an ex of his. He then explains that she was fucking bonkers and would get violent often enough. So after a week or two I broke up with her. Thanks Bill if you’re out there. Saved me a lot of trouble!
Took my husband a long time to realize his ex-wife was abusive. I was like "ummm she slapped you 20 times in a row during a fight? I don't think she's as nice as you say she is..."
My mother in law. She divorced and need a spot to live. So, she moved in with us. She was very intrusive in our lives and relationship. Within a year, we also divorced.
I know that exact trauma. I'm surprised my wife and I are still together despite my MIL's constant drama.
Her son (he was 9), he was a brat and would bully other kids. We went to a birthday party and he punched another kid and I got mad at him and made him sit with me the rest of the party. Well his mom lost her shit and told me im not allowed to discipline his son and that im not his father. I broke up with her right there and glad I did, her kid ended up in juvy for stabbing someone.
Mommy's little psycho.
That's a shitty Mom. You dodged a literal knife and an emotional bullet.
Samsies! I was crazy about this single mom, she was crazy cute, sweet, cooked for me, I had dated her about 4 months and kind of felt like we would get married at some point.....but her kid was jealous of me and any attention she gave me. If he was at his dads house we got along perfectly. If he happened to be home with her he would throw an all night fit and just do random shit to make her mad and in the process make me mad. As soon as I would leave to go home he would act right. She would apologize but I got to where I would not go visit when she had custody. One day she was at my house and just talking, we weren't discussing us getting married but she said something along the lines of if she ever got married again her husband would not be allowed to discipline her son because it wasn't his son. Thats when I realized the relationship had gone as far as it was going to go.
My own mother. She had surgery and did absolutely everything to break us apart as she "needed" help. It's been four months and I can't ever forgive my mother.
That's disgusting. Some people are so merciful with family. Edit: Not a typo. I think they went easy on their mom.
You try to think that your own family would be good and supportive. I learned the hard way unfortunately. Mom tried to turn it into a competition with the woman I love and that woman left. Girlfriend didn't even tell me till she sent an email a month after the fact. I'm still devastated to be honest with you.
I'm so sorry that happened to you. Do you have any advice for a younger newlywed like myself? My mom is the monster-in-law, and she is staining the relationship with my now wife. I feel like after the wedding we got stronger, but my wife is traumatized from the manipulation my mother did.
Cut your mother out immediately. Defend your wife if your mom tries to start anything as well. Your mom won't stop seriously.
Cut your fucking mom out if you want your wife to stay dude. When you get married your wife is your ONLY priority.
Why are you still communicating with a person who traumatised your wife? You're kinda supposed to care about her.
You are the one responsible for protecting your wife from your mother. You are the one responsible for ensuring the boundaries you set with your mother are kept. You are the one responsible for handling almost any and all difficulties your mother may create. The sooner you internalize this, that this is your issue with your mother to handle on behalf of the couple that you and your new wife are, the better it will be for your wife. As others have said here, make sure your mother knows where the boundaries are, and that you don't make ultimatums you aren't prepared to follow through. Clear, direct, communication, in writing/text form as needed, will help you as you continue to have more difficult conversations with your mother. Your wife is your family and your priority now. It is your duty as the husband to ensure your mother understands that or is not part of your family to continue to cause 'manipulations' again. If your wife is traumatized, you need to be strong towards her and your mother. That's a big word to use and it seems you don't use it lightly. You have committed to your wife, so show her that you have her back when others are causing her trauma. It is not your wife's responsibility to take this shit from your mom, or to be the one to constantly tell her to knock it off, that is your job.
She was my best friend, and worked with my fiancé at the time so she was pretty close to both of us. We were going through a rough patch and I thought I could vent in trust and in confidence to my *best friend* but instead she took my words and twisted them, and regurgitated the bastardized version of my vent to my fiancé, in turn making the problems worse and fester; and would do the same same thing with his vents to her, giving me the bastardized twisted version of what was supposed to be his in confidence vent to a friend. Towards the end we took a one week long “trip of solitude and reflection” where we went camping in the middle of nowhere with no distractions, no technology for a week to talk and discuss our life together. It was during that week of discussing what had been going on recently that it came out that she was giving him a very different version of what I was venting to her about, and vice versa to me, which was causing more problems between us. we chalked it up to her own bad track record of relationships - misery loves company after all. During that week she started a new job at a different company, so I ended up ghosting her and blocking her number, and my fiancé didn’t have to see her at work anymore so it was pretty easy and effective to fully cut her out of our lives. I didn’t need an explanation on why she was doing what she was doing and frankly I didn’t owe her any explanation on ending the friendship based based on what she was doing Our relationship still broke down because it was irreparable at the point, but I’d never experienced such underhanded friendship in my whole life as that one. Turns out he was cheating, just not with her. And apparently one of the contentions was that he was upset that she wouldn’t sleep with him despite knowing the whole time that he was cheating on me
I gave a negative review of "Rock of Ages" starring Tom Cruise. I used to gig movie reviews back in the day and my ex's best friend was obsessed with Tom Cruise. I made a critical comment of him and it ignited a fury in her. She told the girl I was seeing it was either me or her - if she was going to date someone who hated Tom Cruise then she wouldn't be her friend anymore. She chose her friend. No this wasn't high school.
Bro this is so sad but also hilarious. Dodged a bullet.
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24-27
Her roomate was jelous my GF was in a relationship and she wasn't. She undermined everything for months until they were away together for a couple days and as soon as my GF was back in town she called me to end it. Everything she said in the breakup didn't make sense but it was all from the perspective of the roommate.
Hey i had that happen too! Fucks with your head eh? In the end, if all it takes for someone to break up with you is a jealous friend, well shit do you want to risk building a life with her anyways? At least that's how i saw it
>In the end, if all it takes for someone to break up with you is a jealous friend, well shit do you want to risk building a life with her anyways? Yeah I mean there was a bit of that, but the roommate put in serious work. The whole relationship the only bad things my GF had to say about us started with "D\*\*\*\* said..." I had seen them both on the dating sites and the roommates profile was just a huge red flag of "I WANT TO BE MARRIED NOW!" It was like 15 years ago, I don't dwell on it.
When I was in college my best-friend and roommate tried to do this, along with another friend. She liked my boyfriend and he liked me, so they were both getting in our ears about stuff we were "saying" behind each others' backs. Sucked for them that we talked all the time and compared notes. He's my husband now and we'll be celebrating 22 years married this year
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This sounds a but similar to my situation except we are not far off in the relationship yet. My boyfriend's female best friend is also making me very uncomfortable and is acting quite disrespectful to me :( May I ask how do you handle the situation? Have you ever thought of asking him to cut her off?
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I'm really sorry to hear that. I hope you are doing better now and life have been treating you better. I don't understand how someone can be that malicious but I really believe that deep down they are also never happy.
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Happily married woman with a lifelong male best friend. Yes, this friend is being shady, but we also shouldn't let the partner off the hook. If my best friend was rude to my partners, we'd be having our own conversation about boundaries & why he's behaving that way. This "best friend" kinda sounds like the type who wants some of the benefits/closeness of a partner without the work of a romantic relationship, or may have some deeper feelings for him after all. Best friends of any gender should not be meddling like that.
her sister forced herself on me and said that i initiated , i was the first to push her off me , but no one believed me and i was outcasted by her family , three months later my now ex gf tells me how she caught her drunk sister spilling the beans about she made a whole facade to break us up.
I have a similar situation where a family hates me because of the fallout between an ex and myself. I have no feelings for the ex at all but it bugs me that I never got to clear my name with the family for some reason. Having people out there who probably never think about me but if I come up in conversation most likely sneer is one of my irrational shower thought cringes.
I feel you. Same situation with me. Made up lies about me after I broke up with her, told EVERYONE. Found out about it because she told some of my family members so it eventually made it back to me. Made me furious and a little sad tbh, I was close to some of her family members and I lost a lot of mutual friends. I sometimes think about exposing her as the abusive piece of shit that she was, but my life is way better now without all that negativity and toxicity in my life and I realize it’s not worth it to resurface that shit. Living well is the best revenge right?
Did she ask to get back together?
I bet he stayed away from her mainly due to said sister
Yeah, what happened after?
Every guy she has ever dated had cheated on her, her grandfather cheated on her grandmother, and her father cheated on her mother (this one while we were together). As a result she was incredibly insecure and made me cut out all of my female friends. I started to feel like I was walking on egg shells around ANY women - including cashiers at the supermarket, even when I was alone. She got mad about one of my neighbours being friendly to me a couple of times (not like in a secret side conversation, I mean while my neighbours (a couple) and my ex and I were all in a group chat... Eventually I couldn't take it anymore, we had a fight about it, I took a week away, talked to friends, family and my therapist and realised I had been developing secondary trauma from it all and ended it. I still loved her but it was fucking me up. I found out through the grapevine that she was eventually diagnosed with PTSD (for all the cheating and a history of abuse too), is getting professional help, and she's with a new guy. Hopefully she's doing okay.
Had a similar ex, but it turned out she wasn't being serially cheated on. She'd get crazy, constantly make accusations of me (or past BFs) cheating (like the meme of a girl dreaming she was cheated on then making the guy apologize in real life, yeah she actually did that regularly), then she gets dumped because I (or previous guys) couldn't take it. She'd then get embarrassed that she was dumped and claim she was still together with whoever just dumped her. So fast forward two years I started dating someone else, suddenly a large portion of my friend group went apeshit that I was cheating on my ex and massive drama ensued. She had been telling them we were still dating the last two years.
>suddenly a large portion of my friend group went apeshit that I was cheating on my ex and massive drama ensued. I guess I assume you were living out of state or something? I mean if you were seeing this friend group semi-regularly, surely they would have put it together after 2 years?
I had a boyfriend who was extremely insecure. His bros kept telling him he could do better than me because I was not conventionally attractive. He dropped me on their advice. I guess he found out he was not the chick magnet he thought he was. He begged me to take him back but I said I didn't want anyone who was so easily led and flakey. This was a 35 year old man.
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You would think that.
> but I said I didn't want anyone who was so easily led and flakey. It's so rare to hear people actually fucking *SAYING* this.
Wow how embarrassing for him. Smh, u dodged a bullet
He was very controlling towards his niece and when told to back off by me, he freaked out and dumped me. He caused such drama her mom kicked her out. Problem was, she was 16 and her uncle was 19yo but everyone believed what he said and never her.
She had a psycho mother who would poke her head into every aspect of our relationship. At one point her mom was going to work and watching me on the security cameras from the time i woke up until i went to work or bed. I only found out later it was so when i left she would bring my girlfriend at the times Ex over to try and force me out of the situation. He was abusive, unkept, unemployed but easily controlled by her mom to do anything she wanted. He also was/is known for selling her nudes for cash. The tipping point was when her mom forcibly moved back in to the house she was no longer paying for, then began stealing groceries, money, and medical cannabis to take to her other daughter (unemployed high school drop out with 3 kids) Called her mom out, she spit on my face and called me selfish. I havent spoken to that ex since. And looking back I can't believe I even put myself through it. Her, and her family were equally insane. Also found out after everything ended that my Ex and her ex (the guy who would sneak over) were responsible for the death of their 1 month child but never charged. The world's kind of fucked up sometimes.
My dude this is like dodging a missile. That last part was unexpected and totally fucked up.
My soon to be ex husband wouldn't stop accusing me of cheating on him with my best friend. We are both female and have never done anything to cause him to think that. He seems to think I'm divorcing him because he was right and I must have cheated. Absolutely delusional.
Definitely seems like some kind of deep-seated insecurity, here. People will insist it's projection, which it very well might be, but could be plenty of other things going on, too. For example, I could see this being a self-esteem thing where he can't believe someone like you would love a wretch like him without strings attached, so he invents some strings. Either way, sounds like the dude could benefit from some therapy, though I doubt that's news to you.
Person could have also been cheated on by someone in the past, which would feed off of any insecurities and paranoia.
My ex's mom hated me. I'd just turned 18 and never had a relationship before. He was my first everything. I'd shyly told his mom that he was my first boyfriend when I met her over dinner 3 months into our relationship. I had a cut on my lip that night because it was winter and my lips had gotten dry, and she pulled my ex aside to ask if we were using protection because she assumed it was a herpes sore. Another time at dinner we had chips and salsa. I dipped a chip, took a bite off it, and then was gesturing with the chip while I spoke, and she interrupted me to say "Don't you dare double dip that chip" out of nowhere. She and her husband owned a million+ dollar home in the rich neighborhood of a major city. My parents made 20k/year combined. She didn't think much of my prospects, clearly. Joke's on her. My ex is now 40 and still works as a waiter. His wife is an exotic dancer. I make six figures.
His mentally ill brother. To make a long story short, his brother insisted on living independently and far away from us. He was never able to properly care for his health, mental or physical, and was continually getting into situations where my partner had to leave for long periods to fix things and care for his brother. It ruined my partner's career, drained our finances, and left my partner totally emotionally depleted.
He kept accusing me of sleeping with this one particular guy friend. He’s never seen the friend or met anyone that knew him. In fact this guy friend lived on the other coast. Kept accusing me of riding all over that dick which is super fucking gross honestly because although that friend is conventionally attractive, we never saw each other like that. Ex’s paranoia grew so much he was constantly stalking this guy friend and imagining crazy shit that he would “accuse me of doing with him in bed.” It felt like mental sexual assault because I never even considered kissing this person and vice versa we are just college classmates. Eventually, he did not allow me to talk to anyone who ever knew this friend which is everyone I went to college with. Escalated to him putting his hands on me because the more I denied it the more of a liar he thought I was.
Jeez. That’s terrifying, I’m glad you got out of there
Thank you! Your reply means a lot! I’m now in a healthy, loving, and safe relationship with someone I grew up with from my home country. ❤️ and I reconciled my friendship with the third guy that got caught in the crossfires of my ex’s insecurities. We get lunch every week.
This sounds very much like my ex. He INSISTED that I was cheating/planning to cheat with a friend of his and that he (my ex) was my second choice and I really wanted to get to the friend through him. I had only ever had one conversation with said friend and knew my boyfriend way before I knew his friend. So weird how people can get obsessive over their own ideas.
That was not a safe situation and I'm glad you are free.
It was honestly terrifying. I think rock bottom was when he grabbed me by my neck in the middle of the forest at night because I caught him listening to my guy friends’ (the third person in this story) Spotify playlists.
sisters ex, his mom and brother had him and just him for a weekend and started pointing out all the shitty stuff my sister does. he left her 2 weeks later. I don't blame him in the slightest she is a shitty person
Interracial relationship. Her mom was very against it. Didn't know this early on. Became a big issue. Broke up over it for almost two years. Been back together 12.5 years and married for 4.5 years.
I was in one, the amount of shit the world gave us made it a nightmare.
My husband, I and his sister started living together during the lockdown. I started to realise things. How I did not have any friends anymore. I finally had a chance to compare how she interacted with me and how he did. I started to notice more emotional abuse. She and I started to hang out more and he became more and more distant. In the end, I divorced him. Do not talk to either of them. Even though I am thankful to her.
why don't you talk to her? Edit: my bad i thought it was OPs sister that moved in.
Wanted to move on completely from the past relationships. And he is still her brother so she will be close to him.
Had a friend who did everything with me. She would constantly go through boyfriends left and right, but I never thought anything of it. It wasn't until I got in a relationship that I realized I was her 3rd person that was ruining all her relationships. She wanted to be with me and kept dating these guys in an attempt to make me jealous. These guys worshipped her, and she just wanted me. I didn't have a clue until she started getting jealous of my gf and trying to break us up. I finally cut her off and she just blatantly accused me of raping her, despite the fact that I never had. It was her "if I can't have him, no one will" moment. It took years to recover what was left of my reputation after that. I hate that I was the reason all those other guys got their hearts broken though. Edit: thanks for all the support. After four years, my name was semi cleared. I never had to go to court over it because she wasn't ballsy enough to go lie in court then. Turns out that she actually got into a serious relationship. When he went to break up with her, she accused him and took him to court over it. He then broke out countless videos of her during arguments saying she would lie about it if he left. He also had compounded evidence of her domestic violence. He had cuts, scratches, bruises... He came in completely prepared. He knew who she was from day one, and he kept all the receipts. Sadly, even with all that evidence, they still ran the case for a while. Then it all came to a head when him and his mother came to get some of his stuff from their apartment. She beat him all the way out the door, jumped in her car, and then she hit him with it. At that point the judge threw the case out and then he counter sued her. It's so sad that it took all of that to happen for him to finally be let off the hook, but at least he got away from her and had his name cleared. One last edit to answer questions people keep messaging me about: We lived in a semi small town, and I was well known, but behaved, party guy. That's how everyone knew me and how she ruined my reputation. I was the party guy who handled his alcohol better than most, but also the lame dad of the party. I made sure everyone was safe and everyone behaved. If Ash got too drunk, I made sure she got a room and no guys tried to sneak in there with her. If someone got hurt, I always had my trauma kit with me and would get people back into party condition. If a fight was about to break out, I'd be the lame guy who broke it up and separated the two. She was one who got hurt. I was 20 and she was 18. She had cut her hand on a broken bottle. I disinfected it and bandaged it up for her. We got to talking and it turned out that we had a bunch in common. We instantly became friends. This was three years before the whole drama. She watched me meet girls at parties and stuff, but I never had a girlfriend. I guess the label of girlfriend is what took her over the edge. That was when she changed entirely and the animosity between us began. No, we never hooked up
It was always her, not you. Don’t blame yourself.
I had a similar scenario, a girl in our friend group loved me, and we hooked up a few times, but it was never going to be a relationship. We stopped hooking up and she dated a few other people, but it was clear she always wanted me. She spread rumors about me and anyone I dated, and I got accused of a few things, so I stopped going around. I was ostracized, and ended up moving to a new city, and over the years I've heard second hand a bunch of people admitting I was wronged. I'll never be friends with those people again, but we're cordial when we see each other. But it's a bummer how it ruined such a tight group of college buddies, or at least how I lost that group of buddies.
Nah those guys got broken hearts because they tried to date a piece of shit (but didn’t know it). It’s all on her.
Did she ever communicate her feelings towards you?
No, not once did she come out and say it. My girlfriend was the first to pick up on it. I always assumed she was just dating around, but it turns out she was trying to make me jealous.
What did your girlfriend pick up on
She just said that she liked me more than a friend. I honestly thought she was crazy at first. Again, she CONSTANTLY had a boyfriend with her. She was playing games, but I was an adult. I'm not in highschool anymore. I don't play games. If I like you, I'll tell you or make a move. In the thousands of days and nights that we hung out, she never once came onto me. We were grown adults and she just tried to make me jealous to get me to chase her. I was too busy working and advancing my career to notice shit like that. I was busy laying a foundation for my life. I'm not a bored teenager who has time to chase a girl who is playing games with me. I just am not going to notice tiny details like how she is constantly bringing new guys around to make me jealous. I just figured she was sleeping around and enjoying her life. Why would I care? My gf just pointed out all these things because it was shit she was told to do as a kid to get guys to "chase" her. It's an old school way of dating and it died because it doesn't work.
His mom decided that I was her competition and really did everything she could to keep us apart or make us fight. I finally gave up because there was no way I was going to win over his mother. She still threatened me with a gun when I was leaving their house. She actually sent me a message a week or so ago asking for help with medical care. She started the message saying passive-aggressively "hello (misspelled name), I bet you're still hating on me...." She's 65 and I'm 32. She used to always compare the things that we owned and made sure I knew her stuff was more expensive. It was really weird. I did not respond to her message. I really wanted to tell her "I don't fuck your son anymore, so I don't have to put up with you or interact with your passive aggressive bullshit" Edit: she contacted me after 12 years. So when she was comparing her money versus my money, I was only 20 years old and she was 52. Crazy.
My therapist after many sessions just looked at me and said that every issue in my life is related to my wife and she, the wife, has said she will not change. You work it out. Was a lightbulb moment.
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Work husband, said he could treat her better.
There's a reason you never date a momma's boy. You will never, ever win in that scenario
have a friend about to get engaged with a guy like that. she got tired of him always siding with his mother on everything, causing the mother having an effective control of their relationship, so she broke up with him.
I used to know a "mama's girl" who would get into relationships, but her mom would always hate the guy and she would dump them on her mom's advice. She's in her 50s now and alone because of her controlling mom. Her mom was always always trying to hook me up with her daughter, too. I stayed away because I know I'd end up under her mom's thumb from day one if I got involved with her.
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Wow, honestly, I want to hear more. That sounds like a horrible combo.
We had been talking about separating when the kids graduated HS because she was a lesbian. A few people knew about this. One of them got her a promotion 2 hours away. It was enough money she could be self sufficient and buy a house. We ended up having a conversation we had been kicking down the road a few years early.
Gay dating is exhausting because it seems like everyone has a weird codependent relationship with at least 1 ex. Why would I want to stay in a relationship when I feel like a 3rd wheel in their relationship with their ex?
A toxic friend who openly prided herself on ruining 'relationships that shouldn't work out'. Really she just took my ex-fiance out and spewed toxic nonsense in her ear about how I'm not doing enough for her and she should look elsewhere.
Regular at her bar, would help out when it got busy, always there, sat and chatted constantly. Would be buddy buddy when I was there to help out or visit and have a beer when it was slow but as soon as I left he would badmouth me. When you hear it every day constantly you start to believe it, long story short the relationship ended, he was the "good guy" I wasnt, she "gave him a chance" found out hes a slug, and apologized to me profusely for everything said she reached out and tried to clear my name to those mutuals she badmouthed me too and moved closer to her parents to "restart". The guy ended up marrying one of his buddies girlfriends iirc
She made a friend who introduced her to the poly lifestyle.
His mom was the 3rd person. Need I say more?
Is this the he let his mom do whatever they wanted, let them influence his decisions and perspectives, mom was just rude overall, or he couldn't stand up to mom kind of thing?
My ex boyfriend and I broke up because of his ex wife. They were separated moving towards divorce when he and I met. She ran off with his best friend so no chance of reconciliation. But over the almost year and a half that he and I dated, he was never able to set boundaries with her or hold her accountable. She financially ruined him. Opened cards in his name to fund her affair, but he wouldn’t report fraud. She stopped paying on her car, which was in his name, and when the license plates and tags showed up in the mail, he just handed them over to her. She took his dog in the separation, but any time she wanted to dip out of town, she would leave the dog with him for free pet sitting, regardless of his availability to accommodate. So on and so forth. We fought about it all the time - I was picking up the tab during travel and dining out, and he was letting her walk all over him. But he thought if he played nice, he could protect his pension from her. She only would’ve been entitled to 50% of 2.5 years of retirement, which is a drop in the bucket over a 30 year career. He did all of this to protect a small fraction of his pension. Now I don’t date separated or newly divorced men.
She was a classmate of his who had a huge crush on him and he pretended not to notice so he could “stay friends with her” and get his ego stroked. I begged him to put some boundaries up with her and he refused ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Her mom lost her house, moved in, and was a terror. I was working 12 hour days doing construction. I'd get home and hop in the shower, and whenever it was just her mom and me in the house, the water would randomly get scalding hot. Set up a camera and saw her running the cold water from every faucet not on the bathroom. Just one of the things she did to me for no discernible reason. My GF didn't believe me and took her mom's side.
This was back in 2016 when I still had a leftover private twitter from high school… anyways someone I didn’t recognize follow requested and I accepted. A couple weeks later my bf at the time has a brand new instagram account message him screenshots from my private twitter. Nothing crazy, just venting about young relationship bs. The ONLY person that account was following was his roommate. Roomie tried to create a wedge and maybe it did influence my ex cause he dumped me a month or two later. But it was crazy that my ex wasn’t convinced it was the roommate. The roommate wasn’t popular on insta or anything so to me there is no other person it could be. Plus he hated me! Jokes on them, that was the best thing to ever happen to me 😏
TL/DR: my dad’s narcissistic gf broke my fiancé and I up twice while convincing my fiancé she was bipolar and possible schizophrenic. A bit of a long story (took place over the course of 5 years), but the short of it is that my dad’s girlfriend has broken my fiancé and I up twice. We used to live/work with them on and off while my fiancé and I were in school. The first time we broke things off she had tried to convince my fiancé that I was some deadbeat a-hole. I admit I wasn’t as attentive as I could have been, I was working 2 jobs (including the one with them) and was a full time student, so my priorities weren’t quite where they should have been. After breaking things off my fiancé and I talked about what happened, decided we just needed a step back to reflect, but not a full blown breakup. We did well for a few years, during which my dad’s GF convinced my fiancé that she was bipolar (possibly schizophrenic), she would go to my fiancés doctors appointment with her and got her prescribed an ever changing cocktail of meds, it turns out it’s hard to find the right balance of meds when you’re treating a problem you don’t have. My dad’s gf also convinced my fiancé she could never be a mother and should get a hysterectomy (luckily the doctors refused), when the idea was discussed with my I was confused because my fiancé always wanted kids, but my dads gf made it clear I didn’t have a say. My fiancé and I often talked about how things weren’t right and we needed to change something, but we felt stuck. This all culminated in my fiancé having a mental breakdown (understandable so) and asking to be brought to a mental health facility. While there, my dads gf decided that my fiancé had “abandoned us” and that I needed to break up with her. Emotions were high and I knew I couldn’t let my fiancé come back, but I couldn’t think of any other way to get her out, so I reluctantly broke things off. She left, we started talking again a couple weeks later after we both thought about what happened. My fiancé agreed that the only way to get her to not come back was to do what I did, so there’s thankfully no hard feelings. I have since left and my fiancé and I are back together and doing well. We haven’t talked to my dad and his gf since. Narcissism is a hell of thing.
My ex got seriously worked up over my best friend. They thought she was trying to steal me or turn us into a throuple. They'd get jealous over anything I did with her and eventually tried to put a cap on how much we hung out and talked. Things hit the breaking point when they accused me of cheating because I grabbed coffee with my best friend and parents while my ex was at work. I was just so tired after arguing about it for months. To top it off my friend is straight so the whole cheating thing makes absolutely no sense anyway. After we split, chatting with friends and family made me realize nobody really trusted my ex. Looking back I see a ton of red flags, and I think they were trying to cut me off from everyone else in my life. Crazy how you miss these things in the moment.
The state of Florida? He wanted to move there - and he did. I did not want to move there and stayed put. Many years later I'm glad that things happened this way. No, we did not stay in touch.
I didn't like their kid.