My wife (31F) asked me (34M) to choose between my mom (55F) and her and I think I am going to divorce her.

A little background: my mum and dad were both orphans, my dad died two weeks before I was born, my mum didn’t really have a support system, so we were just the two of us.

I never lacked anything because my mother worked all her life to give me the life I have today and didn’t even have time for herself to start a new life again. She did all the little jobs possible so that we didn’t miss anything. She deprived herself of food to give me food, I had very good clothes while she had none.

I saw her make sacrifices again and again and always with a smile, frankly I always thought she was an angel dressed in a human body. The only time she yelled at me was when I was 16 when I saw her getting sick and working at the same time.

I wanted to help her by finding a job, but she was angry and told me it was not my job to take care of her and it was up to her to take care of me, she wanted me to get really good grades to get into the best universities it’s the only way I can protect myself when she can’t anymore.

Even at university she didn’t want me to work, I had to be focused on my studies, but she wanted me to volunteer “so that I could be an adult who could do something with his hands”.

I met my wife there while both of us were volunteered. My wife is a good person, but she was never close to her parents or her siblings.

Yet she adored my mother since she met her, there were times when I thought she loved my mother more than she loved me and we laughed about it, deep down, I think she was looking for the bond between mother and daughter that she did not have from her mother.

When I finished my studies, I found a job, we move in together, but she wasn’t confortable that I call my mom everyday (remind you those were 10 – 15 minutes call) but eventually she stop bring It on. Two years later I bought a house for my mother, because we never had a house in our name, we lived from apartment to apartment, so for all the sacrifices she made it was for me the least of it and it was non-negotiable, that’s where the problems started with my wife (then GF).

She wanted me to think about us first, I told her my dream had always been to buy my mom a house since I was little and that’s what I had to do. But she complained about It to my mom. My mom didn’t even knew I bought a house for her as It was suppose to be a surprise for her birthday.

she was unconfortable of receiving the house because of my wife and told me that wasn’t necessary that we could use It for us when we get married. I was furious, I told my mother that the house was for her that she could do with it whatever she wanted but it was time for her to think about herself first.

Our couple survived that, we got married and then we had our own house. Our life was going well until two months ago when my mother fell ill, I wanted her to come and live with us so that I could take care of her, but my wife didn’t want to, I then decided to rent an apartment with my own money right next to our house so that I could be close to her and go there to take care of her.

But even that idea didn’t sit well with my wife. Me and my wife don’t have children yet, we both work, I usually come home at 6 p.m., but since my mother is sick, I go to see her and come home at 8 p.m. On weekends I see her for 1 or 2 hours and the rest of the time I spend It with my wife.

We go on date, I always accompany her in her hobbies even though she never went to mine. Two days ago she told me that she thought about it and she thinks I prioritize my mother too much. She told me that I had to choose between my mother and the life I want to build with her.

The truth is that I never made her feel that way. We both work but I’m the one who cooks, and I pay a person to do the housework.

I make sure I do the dishes she likes, she didn’t even know what I like to eat because I never complain. I run her baths, give her massages, flowers, I write her poems that I hide somewhere in the house for her to find out, we go on a trip one weekend a month, I earn much more money than her, I told her to keep her money for herself and I take care of all the bills even hers, I always make sure to listen to her and consider her opinion, and I think I am easy going because I can change my mind to accommodate hers, but I realize that she tries to completely dominate me and the only subject where I don’t give her a choice is my relationship with my mother .

So there I’m going to have a talk with her and put some very clear bounderies, if she doesn’t want to, well, we’re going to divorce.

Just want It out of my chest

A guy shared a story of how he had wanted to date a girl that he always see around in the gym and proceeded to ask another guy (A) who was always hanging out with her if she was single.

(A) told him that they were only friends and he would help him ask the girl but while he was asking halfway, the girl mistook it as he was asking her out instead and told him that she has been waiting for him to ask her out for the longest time.

As a result, the guy accidentally became (A)’s wingman instead.

Here is the story

“At my gym over the past couple of months I’ve noticed a cute girl who works out around the same time I do and I was interested in asking her out, but I’m kind of awkward and I don’t approach girls in the gym.

A few times I’ve seen her talk to a guy (A) who she seems to be friends with, I haven’t seen anything romantic or flirtatious between them and I was pretty confident they weren’t together. So my awkward self decided to talk to (A) and ask him if she was single.

He said he had no idea, that they know each other because they used to work together, and have been friends ever since. As he was talking she came walking over to us, and before I could stop him he turned to ask her:

(Paraphrasing what I remember)

(A): hey are you single? Becau-

Her: God it’s about time! I have been waiting forever for you to ask me out.

(A): uh…

Her: …is that not what you were asking?

(A): yeah it is! Are you free Saturday?

Her: absolutely! Text me, I have to get going soon.

Throughout this I was just standing there like a third wheel watching like an idiot. After she left (A) turned to me with an apologetic look on his face and said he’d always had a crush on her but never acted because he didn’t want to hurt their friendship if she didn’t feel the same way.

I told him I completely understood and was happy for both of them.

All in all, -1 for me and +2 for them = net gain for love.”

My younger brother just told me that I’m not invited to his wedding and it almost broke me

For context, there are no sibling dramas. We use to be extremely close but due to the age gap (10+years) and my mum passing away we grew apart due to the fact that he’s my half brother and he when back to take care of his dad.

I understood that due to space constraints etc he might not be able to accommodate me and when he told me all that I just said ok on the phone hurrying myself to end the call and I also understood that at the end of the day it’s just a wedding and our bond is stronger then that but I saw a part of me die at that moment.

Am I overreacting?

Netizens’ comments

1. I’m sorry to be the person to tell you this but
   If he’s not inviting you to something as important as his wedding then obviously you’re not as important to him as he is to you
   The feeling isn’t mutual buddy
2. Space constraints sounds like a crap excuse. You’re literally his sibling and he has no space for you in his wedding???
   Sounds like there’s a lot more to this story or there’s some hidden animosity that you yourself are oblivious to.
3. I’m sorry to hear that. But just remember his wedding day is his day and if it means him not inviting his half brother for the sake of pleasing his dad then so be it. Nothing you can do to change that.
4. From your description, I guess is same mom different dad? If that is so it could be that his dad does not like you to be around, is the only thing that make sense. Even knowing that will not help you feel better. That’s life.

To me the ideal work balance is that I can turn off work. when I log off of work, I’m off of work.

I don’t need to monitor anything and I don’t have to address things over the weekend or whatever.

It’s perfectly fine if I do not have work things on my phone. I work in support so there is some minimal amount of pressure to check things after hours, but as of now my team doesn’t have those expectations. sometimes we come back to messages on Monday morning and think, if one of us had worked over the weekend we could have resolved this already. if they ever instill this expectation, I’ll leave.

sometimes I might need to stay late to finish something, that’s fine as long as when I log off I can log off. I’m salary so this is to be expected.

flexibility, permanent remote… those would all be very nice, but only if I can log off my computer and my brain when I’m done. not interested in full time remote work if it comes with an expectation to “work whenever needed.”

But end-of-the-day work-life balance is just an illusion. People just get used to it and say it’s “balance”.

Here are what netizens think:

• It’s very easy for me to get caught up in other people’s expectations. I can’t not care, so even if I could technically ignore expectations to work after hours without getting fired, I would think about it and fret constantly.

• I need to be able to log off work when I leave, and I need to be confident that when I take time off, it will be respected.

• I enjoy my career, am paid well, only work OT if completely necessary and I’m compensated for it. I travel, I’m not micro managed. I have great friends at work I take lunch most days, have a free gym at work and a very flexible schedule for appts etc outside of work. Work is done at the end of the day and I never bring it home.

How to work out a relationship with an extremely busy bf?

My bf and I have been together for 2.5 years, and we are both working adults.

When we first met, my bf was decided to quit his office job and join the uniformed service to contribute to the nation’s security. During the training period, while it was busy and tiring we still managed to meet 1-2 times a week and spend some undisturbed quality time together.

After his training had completed, i realised he became very much busier. I would see him work from 8am to 11pm regularly and occasionally clocking overnight shifts. Very often, he would also return to work on weekends to settle additional work and it could take up the entire day, leaving him only 1 rest day out of the whole week.

Our communications were significantly lesser now due to his busy schedule, and whenever we meet, he will also be busy on his phone, settling work issues or zoning out from tiredness.

I have been keeping myself busy with work and taking up extra activities such as swimming, jogging and yoga so i will not be too dependent on him and feel lonely when we are not together. However, recently i have been feeling quite a bit of disconnect in our relationship. We have not been updating one another about our lives despite having a daily 3-5 min catchup calls and i no longer feel as eager sharing interesting posts and videos that i came across online with him as he never had the time to look at them. Our whatsapp chat also became somewhat like a reporting platform where i will inform him my whereabouts. Occasionally i will message him happenings at my work and get a ‘yes/no/sorry i busy now’ reply. While i feel upset about our current situation, i cant bring it up as it is unfair to him too.

We discussed about applying for BTO within the next 0.5-1 year and settling down with a kid in the near future. But seeing as his schedule is so packed, im feeling somewhat uncertain about our future now, worried that I will be neglected and alone in the relationship.

To those married with a busy spouse, how do you deal with such feelings and prevent a disconnect in your relationship?

A little backstory on him: he’s from South Asia who’s been in Singapore for about 15 years and has never had a permanent position until this one.

-He completely freaked out on another female that worked there, claiming that she moved his equipment, but it was found out later that she had not moved it. He proceeded to tell her she was stupid, he didn’t know why she had been hired, that she didn’t know anything, that she needed to shut up and listen to him, and a bunch of other condescending things. She filed a complaint against him. This was my third week on the job.

-Asked me to stay late almost every day. Would get mad when I had something to do and actually left on time. Later would try to not pay me for the overtime he made me work.

-Only got along with 1 other person in a 50 person unit.

-Constantly would get locked out of his computer, lose his pass, “break” his computer. Told IT lady that someone was breaking in and sabotaging him.

-Everything is my fault. It started to rain he said the mood is dull and boring and said its my fault

-Gets mad at me for relaying a message to him, tells me that whoever gave me a Master’s degree should not have, that I’m too dumb to work for him, I should have never been hired, he has enough money to fire me and everyone else and hire all new people, and that I won’t be doing his research anymore (my job description, basically).

-Tells me that in his country a woman would be stoned for speaking out against a man (this was when I began looking for other employment).

-I get a summer helper, my boss tells him that females should not be in the workplace.

-When I handed him my resignation, he asked me if I was serious. I gave him 20 days notice because I needed to use my overtime before I left or I would not be paid for it, he tried to tell me I could not do that (fun fact: I did).

-Freaks out on me after he realizes I’m leaving. Tells me I won’t be hired by anybody else. Imagine my smug look when I told him I already had another job lined up.

-Brings in someone for me to train as my replacement, I train them and on my last day, he tells them it’s not working out. Not sure why, but I have a sneaking suspicion that he was told he wasn’t allowed to hire anybody else as I was his 2nd technician in the last 6 months.

-On my last day he tried to act like he didn’t know it was my last day, and asked me to come in the next day.

-Called me every day for 4 days after my “official” last day. Never left a message, so I never responded.

I have a very good friend whom i have met during my uni days who is a year junior from me. During uni we study together, sometimes my friend would cook for me during my exam week, we travelled places together, we work really well as a team during sports.

After graduating uni, i got an offer to work in a private company, however my friend did not get an offer and was jobless for 6months and keep asking me to check if my company would like to hire him too.

However there were no vacancy in our company.

So i suggested my friend to join venture as partners to start a business together. I listed my offers and shared my ideas. My friend was very interested and agreed to our business start up. At first, my friend did the part to helped me look up on locations and price comparison for the business. I have been busy for awhile with my current work at hand but will do some research during free hour. Soon after a month from our discussion. My friend had already started his own business with my ideas without informing me.

These were exactly his words, ” Not sure if i got tell you this, i already started renovation and plan to open my business in a few weeks time.”

He acted nonchalant, no apologies ,never say he doesnt want to partner anymore and still can continue to take food from my fridge while telling me that with his back facing me.

This hurt me really bad. I think i would feel better if he had told me earlier during our discussion that he would not like to partner with me. And not after he had started renovation and planning to open the business in a few weeks time. It felt like being stab at the back.

My friend still message me occasionally to ask me regarding things in the business field and it irk me. I was thinking if i should just ignore this person despite had really good past time together as friends? I need some advice. Should i keep a distance and avoid all messages or should i continue to be a friend?

Later did i noticed that this friend only contact me for ideas, for informations and like to keep things as a secret.

I can’t get a closure for this incident and it still gets me despite all this happened during pre-covid time. When i chose to ignore the messages, i feel bad. But when i replied, my friend got his answer and information and will ignore me without replying a thanks or ok.

Should i just break all ties with this person and move on? Or should i forgive this person and mend my own injuries with time? Any good advises?

Is it common for a couple to split the bill/ for the guy to pay/ for the girl pay most of the time (assuming both parties are working and earning decent amount)? I am quite curious since my bf used to pay while he was working and I was studying. Now I am working and paying for most meal but my parents told me I shouldn’t be paying since he is the one asking me out.

Here are what netizens think:

• The relationship is a two-way street. Whatever works for you, every couple is different. Some believe guys should pay since they are providers, some believe going dutch since it’s gender equality.

• both should pay. why are you paying for MOST meals?? Or is he paying for the other stuff like movie tickets, etc etc while you pay for meals?

• Surely you are past that stage when he was chasing you? And it’s a mutual decision to go out and eat together, right?

• A person who pull their weight is often welcomed, gender aside. If a person is able to pay, why the fuck wouldn’t he/she? Relationship aside, if I ask my friends out and want their time, I would be footing the bill. But that’s not the same context your question is sharing. Going by your parents logic would mean if he asks you to BTO with him, he pay everything meh…

• If it’s important enough, both parties should have an honest discussion about it and have an agreement so that it doesn’t turn into making assumptions who’s paying whenever they eat out.