My fiancee (27F) and me (29M) have been dating for 4 and a half years and have 2 young daughters. I proposed last Christmas (2021) and we have recently booked our wedding for 4th May 2023. We chose this date as we are planning a wedding on a tight budget and as this is a Thursday we benefit from mid-week discounts… plus it’s Star Wars day!

My cousin (25F) and her partner (25M) have been dating for around the same length, and have been engaged for about 18 months. They booked their wedding around a year ago for 3rd June 2023. They have not yet sent save the dates or invites, but I knew their date from word of mouth.

My cousin and I are not really close, and have a very small immediate shared family, meaning there will be a maximum of 10 guests invited to both weddings. Add to the fact that my wedding will be local and a much smaller budget than hers (ours will be around SGD25k-SGD30K hers is SGD10k+), I figured that a months gap would be more than enough.

Anyway, a few nights ago I got a text from my cousin saying she was “hurt that we booked a date within a month of hers”. It’s not my intention to cause hurt to anyone, but moving the date of our wedding will definitely hurt my fiancee (so that will definitely not happen). On top of that, we have already paid deposits for several things, so the financial loss would mean we’d have to move the wedding by around a year.

I’ve had an anxious feeling for the last few days because of this so I guess I’d like to find out if I’m the wrong here, or if I’m justified in keeping the wedding as it is???

I’m a psychologist, currently doing a PhD in psychology. Psychology has always been my dream and my passion. I did my Bachelor’s and Master’s, internships, and extracurricular activities in Singapore, I always strongly focused on research too. After my PhD, I’m planning to establish a modern clinic back in my home country in China where I left to pursue my studies in Singapore

Back in China my mother is and always has been extremely mean. She would beat me as a child up to the point that I would wet myself, and then she would beat me more for it. She would beat me so hard that my head banged against the wall or floor. She used tools as well, like a wooden cooking ladle. Her reasons were always me not cleaning my room or talking back to her. After I grew up and she couldn’t beat me anymore, she would switch to severe psychological harm. I won’t go too much into it because that’s not the point of this post, but she did horrible things that ruined me as a person, and I’m in therapy to this day. Needless to say, I cut her off and have not spoken to her for quite some time. I can’t forgive her (not that she ever admitted any wrongdoings let alone apologised.

One of the things she loves to do is copying every key decision and passion in my life. As a kid I was in art school as a teen and still sell some work – she enrolled in art school and even went to the same private school that I had, and I quit. Up to this day, she uses one of my paintings as her timeline picture. She even purchased a set of ultra-expensive (fellow artists know) brush pens that I always dreamed to own. She never used them. Two years ago, I successfully lost 17 kg – she took up dieting and failed. My mother is now enrolled in a psychology programme at a private school, aged 60.

She intends to become a psychologist and I’m afraid this time she won’t quit – the issue is that she is not cut out for the job at all and pursues the career under a false profession. She does not do it to help people, she does it to compete with me again. She chose to specialise in child psychology.

Being a child beater, SHE CANNOT DO THE JOB. Not only will she possibly damage her clients, but she will also damage my reputation too, sharing the same name and being my mother. This will cause a horrible reputation for my clinic and will make potential clients think that we operate the same way. I cannot let this happen, I must do something to stop this nonsense.

I’m going to get in touch with my dad to try and stop her. If he can’t help me, I will contact her private school and expose her. In psychology, we have certain things that prohibit people from continuing their studies, because they are not to be trusted to perform the job.

However, I’m writing here, because there’s still a nagging voice in my head that I’m ruining someone’s career after all.

I (21F), and bf (21M), have been together for 3 years. I absolutely adore animals, particularly dogs.

He is in the army and always not at home. Previously we chose a breed for if we were to have one together, a samoyed. I also asked if he would be open to the idea of me getting my own dog while we lived separately, and if we moved in together, he didn’t have to take care of it or have any responsibility if he didn’t want to, I asked because he made it clear he wasn’t ready yet, but I was, and we had no plans of living together soon.

He said yes, he would be ok with it. We discussed and mentioned it a few times in total at the start of the year.

End of April I was financially, physically and otherwise able and ready.

I called my bf one night and was trying to check if he was still ok if I got my own dog first. He shut me down instantly, before I could say much and said “no, no, no, OP, no, you’re not getting a dog, no”. When I tried to talk about my reasoning, he continued saying no and wouldn’t let me speak.

Long story short. I went with my dad the next day to a few shelters and found a husky X. He was perfect. And bf likes Huskies, and his type of personality, FYI. I fell in love and got him.

Sadly after a few days, he showed signs of fear and aggressive towards my dad, which I now know is due to his previous owner’s ill-treatment of him. I thought a lot about if I was able and willing to keep him due to this, knowing the amount of work and cost he would need for it.

It’s the weekend and bf has met him. It has been brought back up the circumstances of when I got him. And how he was right because he is aggressive and not the “perfect dog”, and how I got him out of spite, and he was right.

I argued that he unilaterally made a decision, whilst I was trying to discuss it with him as a partner should, and tried to include him and check he was still ok with our previous agreement. He says he has no memory of this agreement. I explained again why a puppy wasn’t a good idea for now, but that the next dog would be. And that I choose one I thought he would like that still suited our needs. And that realistically, I’ll be the one, for the most part, taking care of it, especially given I need the company since bf is always in camp and I hate being alone, and we don’t have any plans on living together soon.

He basically had a go at me accusing me of using him or relying on him financially (I have never asked for money, except I once previously did to help with school fees and even recently told him I didn’t want the other half of it when he offered to pay it and didn’t take it).