I tried so hard, and failed

Everytime when i look at influencers’ social media, they always seem happy and with their partners, doing fun stuff, teasing each other etc. And, i start to reflect on my life, why am i not happy with my partner? And i the cause of it?

Yes, i am. My partner tells me that all the time.

We used to do all the fun stuff together, you know. We joked around, we tease each other, we enjoyed travelling to many countries together (21 countries to be exact – lovers’ lock at 5 countries, message bottles buried under the trees in 2 countries, getting matching tattoos in 2 countries and PWS back to the first country we visited). I tried so hard to tell myself that we are meant to be. I fought against all odds, even when my parents were against you, to be with you. I am tired of trying all the time, only to be blamed for all your unhappiness. Goodbye my love, i will sign the papers.

Here are what netizens think:

• Pls don’t follow others , everyone have different life dear , everyone have a story behind close doors, why people don’t compare who’s coffin is beautiful and luxury? Life is prescious, don’t compare dear , those unfortunate people like handicap and illness ones how ? We are more lucky than them right . Relationship thing nobody can predict, today I can say I love you, few months later or few years can be enermy right.

• I sympathise with your impending divorce if that’s what you meant. But looking at influencers and thinking they are the gold standard for a perfect life? Eh bro or sis, you need some real nirvana.

• If you want actual real like stories, go to Reddit and read the AITA channel. You’ll have an idea how everyone suffers the same, just differently. Don’t buy into the social media bs.

• You choose what you want to post to social media. Influencer’s typically shows only the happy fun side. But we will never know what happens behind the scene. In front of camera is usually fake. So, yeah, don’t compare your life to influencer’s. Happiness comes from within and I hope you’ll be happy after this, whatever choice you’ll make.

• never heard of the Chinese saying 人比人气死人? A person can never be happy if his or her definition of happiness is based upon comparison with others, be it family friends and in your saddest case of all, social media influencers

Both my partner and I are in the same field of work. We both make great money and have good careers. I left my last job a year ago to refocus and decompress. A friend of mine offered me a job with the company he is joining. This job has stupid high pay. Last year while I wasn’t working she was making a lot. She recently just took a pay cut to reduce her workload.

If I take this job I’ll basically be making 2.5x her salary. She flat out told me she was angry and jealous, but not in the funny ha-ha way. She was very angry, almost crying. She’s always been slightly competitive, but I try not to be. I expected a celebration, or at least a congrats.

I have ideas of what’s upsetting her, but I don’t want to jump to conclusions. Is this common with couples? I’m just giving her space for now, but I was hoping for her to be happy about it.

I really did not expect her to respond this way and I thought that she will be delighted as we can eventually buy a better car or some gift or even a holiday for her to actually relax and be happy.

Oh well seems like money is not important, she has more pride than a man.

We’ve been together 10ish years. This was new for me.

I seek advice from a female friend and she said:

“From a women’s perspective. Her reaction was over the top and completely unacceptable. Yet let’s treat her and praise her for it. If GF doesn’t apologize and express regret for her reaction, he really needs to reevaluate his relationship not reward her. Give her a few days and see how she behaves after she calms down. Her reaction even with stress is not understandable. There are some people out there who are only happy if they feel you are below them or are doing better than you. “

Boyfriend broke up with me over vibrator

Lately our intimacy hasn’t been the best. We (me F 25, him M 36) haven’t really been active the last few weeks which isn’t typical for us.

We’ve been together for 2 years. He’s been stressed out from work, and it’s been an unfortunate time of the month for me.

Every time I’ve tried to get off manually, it’s impossible because either he interrupts me right as i’m close and I can’t get back in the mood, or our toddler is running around on a rampage.

Today, I decided to go purchase a self pleasure toy. I told him when he got home from work, and he told me I was selfish, and that he was done.

Went on about how he’s sorry he can’t satisfy me and that I should go marry my toy instead. that I’ve used 1 time.

I honestly thought it was harmless, but now I’m feeling a little ashamed for pleasuring myself. I figured it was a better alternative that getting it somewhere else?

Is it not normal in a long term relationship to masturbate? I’m really questioning my decision and feeling regret.

My GF just revealed she used to be a “serial cheater”

My girlfriend (F40) of 8 months revealed to me last night, rather casually, that she used to be a “serial cheater” for years; and cheated on every partner she ever had until a couple of years ago.

She said at the time she was remorseless, but eventually came to a point she decided it wasn’t conducive to a healthy relationship or her self esteem and decided to stop.

I (M38) have always struggled with trust issues my whole life for a variety of reasons I won’t go into. She seemed to brush this off as little more than an anecdote, but I gotta tell y’all, I’m shook.

I’d like to believe she’s changed and learned from this to become someone who would never do this again.

But if I’m being honest, I definitely have less faith in her that I did 24hrs ago. Any advice on how to much past this, or discuss it further would be appreciated.

Netizens’ comments

1. Did she mention anything about understanding the impact of the cheating on her ex’s? About hurt feelings and broken trust? Because that’s conspicuously missing here.
2. When people show you who they are, pay attention. She told you what she is capable of, now you know.
3. This! She is warning you, without warning you. Not saying she is intending to cheat but so you’re not surprised if she ends up doing so.
4. That’s the absolute worst “job reference” one could have. That’s like telling an employer “I stole from every company I ever worked for, but stopped cos self esteem and I wanted a better job”
5. I’d have to move on. Especially the “remorseless” part. Every relationship hits rocky times. I’d be concerned that if she’s not happy overall or she’s really mad at you, she’ll use cheating to get back at you.
6. Damn she’s treating it like a fun fact lol. Also you stated to having trust issues, this is a real bad match up, a serial cheater paired with a person with trust issues. Not to mention she did say she felt no remorse being a serial cheater, and it only ended a couple of years ago. That’s still kinda recent. Maybe talk more at length and see if she actually realizes what was wrong with her actions and what’s she has done to counter it ever since she stopped. If there is no genuine action on her part and it’s just treated as an after thought that tells you all you need to know.

So my fiancé and I paid $3,000 deposit on 2nd July with this well-known restaurant to hold our wedding in their venue.

We had trouble getting the contract signed due to their lack of response. This was due to the sales manager we were in contact with had resigned. So we were assigned a new sales manager.

The new sales manager, let’s call him Dude. Dude had us going back and forth for several weeks, saying he would get back to us but did not on multiple occasions, giving excuses that he was under the weather. This went on until end August, to the point where we decided to pull out and asked for our deposit back.

He drafted a “Refund Authorisation Form” for us to sign and it clearly states that the the deposit be returned in cash. We signed it and he asked us to wait 2-3 weeks for it to process. Dude, again, delayed the refund after deadline has passed.

Fast forward to October (last week), another sales manager came into the group chat. It turns out, Dude had embezzled the company asking couples to PayNow him their deposits. The sales manager filled us in and said the “Refund Authorisation Form” was not the official form of their establishment.

So, now, they are saying the deposit is non-refundable. They are only going to give us vouchers/dining credits.

We want to know if there is any chance of us getting back our deposit in cash.

TLDR:

• Deposited $3000 with restaurant for wedding
• Sales manager delay contract 2 months
• We asked for refund.
• Sales manager agree for cash refund but delay refund 2 months.
• Sales manager jailed for embezzlement.
• Restaurant say no to cash refund. Only dining voucher/credits.

Netizens’ comments

1. You put deposit before signing contract???
   • (OP) Haha isn’t it a good thing we did not sign anything with them? So we are not bound to their contract? Correct me if I am wrong 😅
2. So you paid $3,000 deposit under the tenure of the first sales manager who has resigned.
   “Dude” only came in to supposedly handle the refund but he was eventually caught for embezzlement.
   But your deposit was not to paid to Dude mah. He only gave a fake Authorisation Form without any actual money going to him.
   If the restaurant has indeed received the deposit via the first sales manager, then they could just refund you accordingly.

I’m not sure how to proceed with my GF of 15 years I was ready to propose to after she revealed she had 28k in debt

In the day by day flow, my GF and I get a long rather well. She is seemingly head over heels with me even when I can’t stand myself. However longer term planning is clearly a skill that we both don’t share.

For the last ten years I have made the majority of the income due to being a software dev. And as such have been happy to cover more if not all of some expenses.

In the future we agreed to move overseas since my skillset was in demand and I love cities and seeing the world, and there is more money out there.

Our understanding was that this would help her pay off her education loan debt for her uni, which I was led to believe there was $10k of.

It turns out not only was that not paid off in the last ten years, but she has $28k of debt, and not just the education loan.

The culmination of being in a 15 year relationship that has slowly gone from “Sweethearts” to ‘bitter that she has no plan” is tearing me up inside.

I’m constantly enraged that half of my life has been spent with someone who never seemed to seriously consider that their life is attached to someone else.

I’m terrified to propose because of sunken cost fallacy and I’m terrified of ignoring every warning sign and ending up miserable hating my partner at 50.

I’m also terrified of trying to min/max life and ditching her just to realize that I was over exaggerating. To go “live my life” but have it actually suck.

If I dump her and move away I’m effectively starting over socially.

I believe she never seriously made plans because she has a relatively more stable family network and connections.

I have always been more of a loner and just wanted to see the world and be a digital nomad. I’m 50% sure if I leave her and start a world tour then WWIII will immediately break out

How to handle a Quarter life crisis?

Graduated almost 2 years ago [24F] and mindlessly followed the majority of my peers and went into audit.

However, due to working for a toxic client with little to no supervisor guidance and support, my mental health deteriorated rapidly and I quit early this year.

I applied to other jobs during my notice period and took up the first job offer I received only to foolishly realise that the industry wasn’t what I was interested in (semi-con/engineering).

Though the people and culture in my company is infinitely better, I can’t help but still feel like something is missing and I still feel lost and aimless in life.

I drag my body and soul to work and I sometimes feel like yes doing things I like in the weekends makes me happy but that happiness is temporary.

But in the same vein, the unhappiness at work is also temporary. (I know I may seem ungrateful and yes it is a blessing to have a job in this economy but everyday I still feel)

I’ve worked at both jobs at slightly less than a year and I wonder if it’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.

So I just want to know your experience about this and whether I should just suck thumb, shut up and deal with this as it seems that so many people seem to have come to terms with this?

I keep ruminating over what I should do? Stay for another year so I don’t seem like a job hopper? Take a master’s? Transition into another career again? Thanks for reading till here.

Netizens’ comments

I’ll say stay put not because that’s what you should do long term.

Stay put so that you can figure out what you dislike or like in your current job. Reflect back to your audit days. How is it different in this job?

Make a shortlist of 3 things you absolutely prioritise in your work. Is it money? Work life balance? Feeling the work is mentally engaging? (If it is this, what kind of work makes you mentally engaged).

With that in mind, take a look at what industries is relatively easy for you to join. You did audit so I guess you have accounting background. What industries have similar accounting / business models that you can convince the hiring manager to hire you? Just apply for all the accounting, finance, and analytical roles in those industries, ensuring you have done enough to update your resume.

If you get interviews, prepare for it. Both in terms of how to get the job and also what questions can you ask them to find out if you can get what you want in a job. If culture matters, find out what questions can you ask to suss that out.

If you don’t get interviews, then it might be more justified to consider further education after you exhausted all efforts to update your resume. Or if you just hate accounting then maybe a switch in career paths. But either way, don’t jump into further education unless you are clear what you want from work and whether this cert helps you get that.

At 77 What Do I Regret? Please read if you are young. You may learn.

I am a 77 year old widow. I was married for over 55 years to a man who didn’t love me. He never wanted to sleep with me, he rarely cuddled me, he was never faithful, he was never an active father to our daughter, he never took care of the house or financial matters.

He did work steadily and brought home a paycheck. I had no siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents: they all died when I was a young child.

My parents had thrown me out when I was 15 because I slept with my boyfriend once. (No, I did not get pregnant.)

They called me vile names, locked me in my room and I was not allowed to finish school. My self esteem was totally gone and I never fully recovered it.

I married when I had trouble getting a job after I went back to school and graduated, and had no money coming in.

I had nobody to “fall back on”, if my marriage failed, so I pretended it was OK. My husband criticized me for: being too fat; being too thin; being too anxious; being too complacent; being too smart, being too stupid.

Those were only a few of the things he said, but they saved my life, because even in my misery, I knew it was IMPOSSIBLE to be all of those things at one time!

He turned our only child against me. She was jealous of me and hated me because I had very high intelligence. He always backed her up and never disciplined her even by talking to her about how she treated me.

He totally blamed me for the failure of our marriage (for all those reasons), but he was the one who would not work at being in counseling, so therapists ended the counseling for that reason. In short, I was a COWARD.

Five years ago he had open heart surgery, a cerebral stroke (permanent brain damage), permanently deserted me, completely cut me out of his will, isolated me and would not let me contact him at all and I was left indigent and too old to be hired, although for many years I’d had a successful career.

Then he finally died without saying a word to me. My life has been lived and wasted.

YOU MUST BE STRONG AND FEARLESS, EVEN IF IT ALMOST KILLS YOU. You have to take risks and not cower, because otherwise PEOPLE WILL TREAT YOU AS BADLY AS YOU ALLOW THEM TO TREAT YOU.

Ive been finding that no matter what job i get even if its decent, i always feel have feelings of dread right before the shift starts, especially on Monday.

In some cases it becomes unbearable where i would rather not exist so i dont have to feel like that anymore.

At school i dont remember ever having these feelings except for first day of the school year. Why does work feel so different from school even though its similar structure?

I just want a job where it just feels like as if im waking up for school.

How does one get rid of this feeling? I find it hard to cope that im going to have these negative feelings for the rest of my life, during school i was content but now as an adult i keep getting stressed but i know work is a necessity, just wanted to know a way to resolve these feelings i have.

Netizens’ comments

1. You need a better job. In the last 3 years, I’ve gone through over 12 jobs easy. I’m always moving and looking for a better opportunity. I’m like that. I used to think there was something wrong with me. But I’ve learned to accept it and go ball out!
   Reset your mentality. Go on indeed and bullshit your way into a new job. If you don’t know something just YouTube it.
   I’m proof that you just need to be you and forget all these rules of how to work for one career or at one job.
   Life’s too short.
   Best of luck!
2. probably because work is harder and more stressful than school. As of right now it’s the other way around for me, I do not enjoy waking up and being an engineering major lol. I just wake up stressed about what ever homework and studying I gotta do but fortunately I have a really laid back job that prioritizes my school
3. I show up at work about 10 minutes before my shift starts. I sit there in my car contemplating whether I should just turn around and go home. The building looms over me like one of the dementors from a Harry Potter story, sucking the happy out of my soul.