I live with my parents and my younger sister. This year, due to my exams which contribute to me going to university, my whole family has been on edge.

For most of my life, I wasn’t really allowed to go out more than a few times a month but when I got a boyfriend this year, I obviously wanted to see him more. It is important to note that I met him at my job. As I hadn’t told my parents about him, it was getting hard trying to sneak out to see each other.

So, even though I don’t trust them, I told them about him. It all went wrong after that. Even though they promised to be supportive of the relationship and I still made plenty of time for my studies, my mother started calling me names and limiting my time with him from a couple of days a week to 1-2 hours around our neighborhood.

At that time we had been together 2 months. My bf didn’t like the idea of it but he didn’t want to anger my parents so he was willing to commit to those hours but I wasn’t, so I started sneaking out. Eventually, my parents found out and again, started calling me names such as being a woman of the night and using the term ‘first come first served’ because he is my first boyfriend.

They threatened that if I kept seeing him I would have to move out. To which I did, and they didn’t like it as a week later they started knocking on my boyfriend’s door and calling his workplace and causing trouble for him and myself. Because of that, I came back home, just so that they would stop harassing him, and they made me quit my job as well.

Now, I don’t have money for any of my little luxuries or even to go out, and when I ask them for money they say they don’t have any, but yesterday they came back from a five day holiday in Spain.

I am still together with my boyfriend, 4 months later, but I am considering moving and cutting any form of contact with them. My sister is not on my side and thinks I am just acting out and it got me thinking. AITA for never wanting to see them again?

So obvious trigger warnings //

Backstory, I  was maybe sexually harassed? last night by a friend and his friend. My friend and I just got to know each other a few months ago through a club and the conversation very quickly turned sexual. I was fine talking to him about it because I know I’d talk to my non-binary and female friends without an issue and I viewed him purely platonically so it never bothered me.

That being said, he kept mentioning how he had a friend who’d love my body and kept joking about me texting him every single day for WEEKS. He’d even send me blurred out nudes of his friend that I’d expressed I didn’t want but would give into because he kept asking me. Essentially to get him off my back I’d play along with everything sometimes but seeing as he would never stop asking me, I finally agreed to text his friend last night.

Within the HOUR this friend of my friend had asked to send me pics of his D multiple times and then started to describe touching himself to my texts? This is where I turned my phone off and started crying.

The next morning I texted my friend that I blocked his friend and would not be entertaining any more of this. He let me know that his friend would still pester him about me but I asked him to set a boundary as my consent is not there.

Despite all of this, despite knowing it’s not my fault … I feel like I asked for this to happen to me. I have been assaulted before by an intimate partner and this made me feel so similarly – but even then I blamed myself.

I feel like I just should’ve known better than to text in the first place or to engage in any of this conversation with my friend when he clearly did not understand my boundaries. I’m so worried about my reputation in this club we’re both part of, especially as my ex was ask a lady of iy, and I know that’s a huge reason I tried to brave through it and pretend I was ok with it.

Why I’m posting this here is also because I genuinely feel like this event will cause anyone new I date to feel repulsed but me and my actions. It’s causing me to spend any texting interactions with the guys I’m talking to thinking about how I need to tell them what an awful and weird person I am to have facilitated something like this.

Does anyone have any advice for me? I’m so sorry if this is the wrong sub but it’s literally making me feel like I have this awful secret now that I need to tell people. Will people I date actually be repulsed by what happened? Have I even done anything wrong?

Have been with my bf for 2.5 years, met through Tinder. Both of us were in uni when we first met and joined the workforce 1.5 year ago. He got promoted to a senior role and started getting really busy with work over the last 5 months. Our meetups were often shortened to just 2-3 hrs a week for a quick meal and catchup, to give him enough time for rest and to spend with his family over the weekends. We missed out celebrating for valentines day, mother’s day and my dad’s birthday during that entire period due to his busy schedule. My bf has always said sorry for not spending enough time with me multiple times every week and made promises to meet up with me more often.

His project has just ended and I was looking forward to meeting him more as his workload would hve reduced significantly. However, instead of making time out for me, he went ahead to fill his schedule for this entire week with meeting his friends for dinner and drinks, leaving the same 3 hr timeslot for me on a saturday afternoon.

I asked if he will be free next week but he say he will be starting on another project next week and will be back having overtime and a really busy schedule so he is unable to make time out to meet me. Yesterday, I saw a notification from his female friend saying 17 June would be a better date for dinner and out of curiosity, i opened the message. I realised he asked her for a catchup next week as he is free the entire week and gave all the evenings as available options to cater to her schedule. He also offered to send her home after the meal since it would be late (around 9-10+pm) and he wanted to watch out for her safety.

I confronted him about it but he turned it into an issue of me looking into his messages without his consent, which I then apologised. He mentioned that it is an old friend and he havent met her in 6 months hence he wanted to set aside some time to meet her. Sending her home would be a given as he has a car and he wouldn’t have to make much of a detour to return back home after that. I tried asking why he seemed very available to meet her and his other friends but not me, and all he ever did was to make it as if I am the one demanding too much from him. He said that he had discussed about his hectic work schedule with me early on in our relationship and he expected me to be more understanding and allow him to meet his friends during his free time.

Am I really asking too much from him? I feel very lonely in the relationship and I’m thinking of leaving if this goes on.

We’ve had several discussions on the topic of consent over the years, and several discussions of the dangers of alcohol. Recently the intersection of these two topics come up directly. In that conversation, my son was very quick to affirm/understand that a girl who was pass-out drunk couldn’t give consent and how, in his own words, “it’d be pretty f’d up to even try doing something with someone in that state.”

However, he seemed a little less sure-footed when certain aspects of the scenario were modified. E.g. “what if the guy is really drunk too?”, “what if the girl is just drinking alcohol to loosen up a bit?”, etc. My responses were starting to feel like “lecture-mode-dad”, and I felt like I was giving legalistic-sounding advice that might be hard for him to connect with in a real-world situation.

But in a flash of inspiration, I said, “Think of it this way. You and [his friend’s name] might agree that getting a hold of some alcohol and getting drunk at a party would be a lot of fun. You guys would definitely agree that going sky-diving would be all kinds of fun. But what would you say to [friend] if he called and said, ‘Hey! I got some beer and two passes to go sky-diving! Let’s get really drunk and then go sky-diving!'”

My son actually laughed aloud at the sheer idiocy.

I continued “Right!? I mean, first, sky-diving while drunk would be Darwin-award levels of stupid. But even if you survived… what was the point? You’d remember almost nothing about the experience itself, probably puke half-way through, have a crappy landing, and find yourself lying on the ground, bruised and battered and covered in vomit, wondering ‘what the f just happened?'”

He was nodding along, still smirking at the absurdity of the idea, when I connected it back to the topic at hand. “Think of having S with a girl you’re into as something you’d want to be like sky-diving: an exhilarating and memorable experience. Something that was done with all precautions to be sure nobody got hurt. Basically, a positive experience, shared between the two of you, that left you both feeling like, ‘Wow, that was great! We should do it again!'”

I could see his expression shifting into “OMG my dad is talking about S, the awkwardness, it hurts!”, so I wrapped up. “Just think of drinking alcohol and having S as an either/or proposition. Treat your decision – or that of a girl you’re with – to drink alcohol as being the *same* decision that you’re going to have that kind of fun that night, and forgo any sky-diving adventures until some other night.”

One can never know with teens… but I *think* this analogy really connected for him, so again, I figured I’d share it here for others to use.

I had to take a trip out of SG to perform work for a client of ours. This is a big prospective client that my company has and they wanted everything to go smoothly. However, due to a significant amount of poor planning, this project was a disaster. For context, I am an engineer working for a consulting company.

So, first off there is no kick-off meeting with the customer (just emails.) A kick-off meeting is a crucial part of getting things in order for engineering and consulting projects. In order to save time and money, however, my company likes to skip those. I did have a meeting with one of the project leads to get a scope of what I needed to do. He gave me the diagrams provided by the customer and gave me a rundown on what all needed to happen on site. He also told me it would take a day to complete the work so I should just plan for a day trip with a one-night hotel stay. And based on this, I planned for exactly that. He gave me the customer contact info to coordinate my onsite and I went from there.

Fast forward to me being on the customer site; first off as I’m pulling up I’m thinking “this place looks WAY bigger than what our diagrams have led us to believe.” Already I’m starting to feel that this is not going to go well.

I meet with my contact and we start discussing everything I need to do. This is where I find out a section of the warehouse I needed to do work in was several stories high… which when I talked to my project lead he informed me it was 1 story. There is also another section of the building I need to do work in that isn’t even in the diagrams given. I let my lead know this and I tell him I can’t finish this today, and our great office coordinators booked me a super early flight the next day so I couldn’t finish tomorrow.

He begged me to stay for another day and told me about a flight later in the day tomorrow that I would need to book myself. I was NOT about to pay $500+ for a later flight at my own expense (even though they likely would reimburse me) and also sacrifice part of my weekend. I told him no because I wasn’t given all the correct info or all the building diagrams.

Now that I’m back, I am being painted as the bad guy for not finishing out the work. I was also told I should have worked with the customer to get a better understanding of how big the building was and what they wanted me to do (by the same project lead who had a meeting with me in the first place to discuss the scope.) However, even when I reached out to the customer he took several weeks to get back to me and only told me the days I could come on site. Based on my schedule and what I was told for a time frame, I planned for one day.

Now the project might be in jeopardy and we likely will need to go on-site again to finish out the work properly. Many people at the company also seem to be disappointed and mad at me for just going home.

So, am I wrong for not staying on-site and finishing out the work even though I was misinformed

Next generation of (tiger) parents

I am an angmoh guy. Been in Singapore about 8 years.

My first local friends used to complain a lot about their tiger parents. All the pain they went though, from extra tutoring, always having to study, banned from having romantic relationships and ensuring to be home for dinner even when they are full grown adults. I think the worst aspect was not being able to meet their parents high expectations even with amazing performance.

Now they are all starting to have their own kids and I’m very surprised to see they are doing the exact same things to their kids that their parents did to them. In some cases even harder – like enrichment classes when their kids are still babies!!

Can someone tell me why they repeat this toxic behaviour? I don’t get it, especially when there’s little evidence that pushing your kids so hard actually helps them.

Here are what netinzes think:

• It’s because as they grew older they realized they can’t fight the system.. changes in the educational system whilst taking place now will only bear fruit ( for better or worse ) decades later. While economic and political uncertainty just makes competition even more rife. You can argue its only going to get worse with this generation of parents experiencing even more FOMO and kiasuness amidst increasing costs.
• Generally new parents have only two main sources of reference. Their own childhood, and the experiences of their (equally clueless) peers. From when the lady receives the good news on her pregnancy, well meaning friends, relatives and colleagues will start feeding information about parenthood, school life, childcare and anything and everything there is about “getting your child that headstart” I feel it all starts from there.
• As a parent who signed her mini me for a baby enrichment class, i would like to say that it’s a fun session where he enjoys the teacher telling stories/singing songs/play baby gym. It’s only a 1hr session once a week where he gets exposed to a different setting from home/grandparents house and gets exposed to different pple (teachers/other babies). I’m hoping this will help ease him into school eventually. But no we don’t expect him to be the president scholar of his batch 15yrs down the road la. Definitely no crazy tuition schedule for him when he gets older 
• Lessons and experiences imprinted from childhood are commonly brought forward to the next generation because its so deeply ingrained.

I wonder if you consider your partner stingy if:

Pay for

• Outside meals
• Doctor visit

Dont pay for

• Shopping (kid’s growing up stage thing, stroller, walker, high chairs etc)
• Household necessities
• Child necessities (milk powder, diapers etc)
• Helper’s salary

These are just some of the things I remembered… im very confused with my partner’s love language… he told me because I said i can afford so he dont give me allowance for the things that stating above as dont pay…

He earns 3/4 times than me… those i stated as dont pay is a monthly expenses… while those “pay” don’t happen frequently… we dont go out often for meal, needless to say we dont go doctor visit every month too… so basically im the one spending more… i dont know whether he is acting blur or he just being stingy to me… whenever i bring up the issue, ended being gaslighting… i told him to take up helper’s salary as its 20% of my salary but not even 10% of his… but he always reluctant to give, and i have to remind him every month…

im sick of being a “beggar” in this situation, any advise how to deal with this type of person?

Here are what netizens think:

• I guess both of you never sit down to discuss finances together. Some of the earlier people approach is good. What I can say is tell you hubby to do a proper sit down discuss, share the load equally and plan future goals together. It’s not 1 person responsibility to shoulder the entire household expenses. Do a balance sheet up listing assets, loans and monthly bills that need to be clear. Joint account for joint liabilities – diapers, food, helper, Internet, utilities bills goes here. Each can contribute X amount monthly. If he refused, then you need to consider if he is really a husband that you can depend on in crisis.
• Having a bank account with both parties contributing to the account in ratio of payscale?
• Yes, he’s stingy. Make him contribute or start taxing him for things that he use and never pay for.
• Yep. Tell him u going to stop having a maid. If he wants he pays. Maybe he gambling, investing or just super stingy. Tell him the kids are his also, need to share right.

I dated this older guy (34yo and I’m 27) for a few months and he lived at my place. He still paid for his rent at his place, but he stayed with me because I live in 2 bedder apartment by myself. We did house chores equally. The only exception was laundry, I agreed to do the laundry, ironing and putting back clothes to the closet. I didn’t mind it because I’m pretty particular with separating laundry as well as ironing every single thing including bed sheets and quilt covers. It’s a little too much, but I grew up in a family that does it and I am not asking anyone to help me do it.

One time I was on call for a week, so I decided to sleep on the sofa in the second bedroom so that I wouldn’t wake him up every time I get a call.

I just changed the bed sheet and the quilt cover earlier that week and hadn’t slept on it ever since. One night before bed, I came to him to say goodnight and I saw the quilt was very crumpled and the bed was messy. So I scolded him for making it messy.

He then joked around and wrapped himself with the blanket and rolled with it all over the bed. I was annoyed and said “fine you can do that as long as you iron it tomorrow”.

He got mad immediately because of what I said and said “if you ask me to iron, then I don’t want to sleep here anymore!”. I was taken aback by what he said, but because it was already late I cut it short and just say good night and went to the other room.

In the morning, he woke me up to ask if I wanted to go to the park with my dog. I was still pissed so I told him that what he said last night was childish as I spent hours ironing the bed sheets and quilt covers and all I asked was for him to be considerate and not make it crumpled on purpose; but instead of saying sorry, he threatened to not stay with me anymore.

After I finished my sentences, he threatened to leave again for the same reason, “if I can’t roll on the bed, I cannot stay here anymore”. And then he insisted that we need to discuss about the rolling on the bed rules because he still wanted to do it (btw we were already living together for 5 months and this was never an issue).

And he also said he was not gonna comply with my request because then I’m changing him as a person. he said that we were just different, he’s just the kind of person that likes to roll on his bed, and if he can’t have that he’s not going to be happy.

FYI, I never mind it if the bed gets messy when he sleeps, it’s something that he can’t control. I’m also okay if he rolls as long as he doesn’t wrap himself in the blanket when he does it. The thing that I’m most troubled with is the fact that he doesn’t appreciate the effort I put in to make the bed feels nice to sleep in and his response to the request that I think is rational, which is not to roll around intentionally to make it all crumpled, is just ridiculous.

It’s just something that I would never imagine fighting about with an adult.

Long story short, I just graduated from a PhD program. My boyfriend of 5 years me multiple times that he was getting me a really special present to commemorate this event.

(He is also a PhD, and at the time of his graduation, his friends got him a very fancy watch.)

After my thesis defense, he gave me the gift, and it was very very cheap earrings. I know they were cheap because the gold metal color was peeling off and the earring backs were those little rubber things instead of metal backs.

Later, I looked up the earrings/brand and found that they were $20.

This really hurt my feelings as he had talked up this gift extensively, and we almost never exchange gifts with each other– only for birthdays– so I was looking forward to receiving whatever he got me. I’ve told him in the past that I am allergic to many metals in jewellery and usually only wear sterling silver or gold. I don’t really care about the price, but I felt the price tag should have told him the earrings were not really gold.

I calmly told him that I really appreciated the gift, but that my ears are very sensitive to some metals, and I wasn’t sure if I could wear these earrings. He understood that, and sort of offered to get me a different gift, but I got the feeling that he didn’t really want to do that.

I want to ask for a different gift because I would love to have something that I can use forever and remember this event. Am I to blame for doing that?

My life is meaningless. I am so down.

My monthly salary balance after loan deduction is negative.

Been doing full time + part-time jobs but still insufficient to cover the loan. I am making 4600 per month, but my loans are 6500 (cc and personal loans). Worse, my parents are sick and I am unable to provide for my their medicine.

The worst feeling you can have as a man. My wife is covering all the household expenses right now. About the time I will be fcked up big time and that’s the end for me.

Here are what netizens think:

• Some loans are not dischargeable in bankruptcy. I believe student loans are in this category, but it may differ based on lender. A bankruptcy would adversely affect the spouse too, who apparently is in better shape.
• What loans are being deducted from your salary? Perhaps the term on those loans should be renegotiated.
• Have you looked into loan consolidation? Do you have the opportunity to pick up more shifts at your job or pick up a second job/gig work?
• Go try work at Geylang be a duck and settle it once and for all