Haifisch posted:

My [22 F] boyfriend [28 M] has very black and white views on morality and crime. I have a dirty past he doesn't know about, and I've crossed lines he thinks "good people just don't cross"

Haifisch posted:

My [22 F] boyfriend [28 M] has very black and white views on morality and crime. I have a dirty past he doesn't know about, and I've crossed lines he thinks "good people just don't cross"

Haifisch posted:

quote:

And people who do cross thise lines don't deserve a place in society. And our country needs to be tougher on crime instead of moving towards "rehabilitation"

COMRADES posted:

Jim Barris posted:

That's unfortunate for her. This is a no win situation. It'll drive her crazy essentially lying by omission and he'll resent her for her past if she tells him. Though honestly I expected her dark past to be worse, kind of anticlimactic.

My Imaginary GF posted:

Maybe being open and honest about her past will help him check his privilege?

MarcusSA posted:

Yeah don't worry he just means non-white people. Ya know the criminals.

My Imaginary GF posted:

I hold similar views about terrorism to this dude. Terrorism is a line that one crosses for which no rehabilitation can cure. Similarly for communism and communists. Actions taken against America by terrorists and communists are not adequately punished these days.

Unfortunately, terrorism and communism know no race.

My Imaginary GF posted:

I hold similar views about terrorism to this dude. Terrorism is a line that one crosses for which no rehabilitation can cure. Similarly for communism and communists. Actions taken against America by terrorists and communists are not adequately punished these days.

Unfortunately, terrorism and communism know no race.

My Imaginary GF posted:

I hold similar views about terrorism to this dude. Terrorism is a line that one crosses for which no rehabilitation can cure. Similarly for communism and communists. Actions taken against America by terrorists and communists are not adequately punished these days.

Unfortunately, terrorism and communism know no race.

My Imaginary GF posted:

I hold similar views about terrorism to this dude. Terrorism is a line that one crosses for which no rehabilitation can cure. Similarly for communism and communists. Actions taken against America by terrorists and communists are not adequately punished these days.

Unfortunately, terrorism and communism know no race.

PetraCore posted:

Terrorists often are dumb teenagers indoctrinated and molded into the shape of a soldier by older people who won't get on the front lines themselves. There has been cases of rehabilitation reversing extremist conditioning when people are caught early enough.

EDIT: If terrorism 'knew a race' would you advocate genocide?

My Imaginary GF posted:

The firebombing of the terrorist states of nazi germany and imperial japan were some of the most moral policy implementations in American history.

My friends know they can get me riled up by talking about whether one could be a "good" german in the 30s and 40s. There is no such thing as a good nazi.

My Imaginary GF posted:

The firebombing of the terrorist states of nazi germany and imperial japan were some of the most moral policy implementations in American history.

cumshitter posted:

Taking it up to do smoke tricks is dumb as gently caress but he could fill one of those giant brick vapes with 0% nicotine liquid. Is he trying to do like competition level stuff from the ridiculous vape vids?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOI4beqmvx4&t=21s

I can't imagine what those places smell like. I assume they turn off the AC so there's less air disturbance but it has to reek of a 1,000 different cereals and BO.

My Imaginary GF posted:

The firebombing of the terrorist states of nazi germany and imperial japan were some of the most moral policy implementations in American history.

My friends know they can get me riled up by talking about whether one could be a "good" german in the 30s and 40s. There is no such thing as a good nazi.

Baronjutter posted:

*Commits terrorism against communism*
*MIGF Explodes*

My Imaginary GF posted:

Organized acts of violence against communism makes one a freedom fighter.

From Chile to Angola, Greece to Pakistan, America has a long and proud history of providing operational and financial capacity in support of foreign freedom fighters.

My Imaginary GF posted:

The firebombing of the terrorist states of nazi germany and imperial japan were some of the most moral policy implementations in American history.

My friends know they can get me riled up by talking about whether one could be a "good" german in the 30s and 40s. There is no such thing as a good nazi.

My Imaginary GF posted:

Organized acts of violence against communism makes one a freedom fighter.

From Chile to Angola, Greece to Pakistan, America has a long and proud history of providing operational and financial capacity in support of foreign freedom fighters.

Baronjutter posted:

Holy poo poo I'd rather hear more about Pick's weird sad attention seeking life than more of this awful schtick.

loquacius posted:

MIGF post a sandwich

Freudian posted:

You have friends?

La Brea Carpet posted:

My (22f) best friend (27m) took me to get a tattoo. Now he confessed feelings for me, which I don't have for him.. And says after all he's done for me I should have feelings for him.


Sometimes it's nice to visit the classics again.

quote:

Hey Guys,

.Throwaway account, names have been changed, yada yada. I was really trying to keep this short, but I obviously failed

TL;DR: I’m not inviting my best man’s S.O. to my wedding after her behavior at the past couple events.

So here’s how everything has built up. I’ve been friends with Jake (27M) since we met at camp when we were both 12, and continued to go to this camp every summer (as a camper at first, and then as counselors) up until our early twenties (I stopped going a little earlier than him, had to get a real life job). Additionally, we went to same university, hung out constantly with the same group of friends, and lived together for a year in the dorms. When I was struggling with whether I should propose to my now fiancée and has generally been the guy who I feel like is willing to see eye to eye and discuss issues with even if he’s not personally involved.

Jake was dating a girl named Erin (30F) from about freshman year of college (winter of 2009) until about a year and half ago (Fall of 2016). They had a rocky end to their relationship in my opinion. They had a few different periods of breaking up and getting back together throughout their relationship and towards the end Erin wanted to get married, but Jake was not into it. I think it was pretty obvious that their relationship was over, and Erin ended up breaking up with Jake at a wedding in September 2016. They were LDR at the time (they were both in graduate programs at different universities), I was kind of relieved at the time because this relationship had been dead standing for a while with their significant differences in how they wanted to move the relationship forward.

It’s worth noting that although Erin didn’t go to our camp growing up (it’s an all boy’s camp) but was a cousin of one of our friends and went to our sister camp. She also worked at our camp for a few summers with Jake. The point of this is to say she has established herself as a friend of most the people in our camp circle.

Two big things happened right after Erin and Jake broke up. The first is that my fiancée and I moved back to my hometown where large contingents of camp friends live, including Erin. Jake specifically encouraged us to hang out with Erin as he didn’t want this break up to create a rift in any relationships. I really respected this, as I knew there was still animosity between them.

The other big things that happened is Jake immediately jumped into a new relationship with his current SO, Jess. We were introduced to Jess and hung out with her a couple times just the four of us, and she seemed nice but quiet. No problem whatsoever, I understand it can be really hard to meet new people, and it’s not like she was rude or anything.

The issues with Jess have stemmed from the last three times we’ve hung out together, which happen to be in big groups. The first was during a big party for a local sports event; all of our camp friends got tickets together for a local NFL game in fall 2017, and my Fiancée and I hosted a party the night before (Saturday). I thought everything went well, but according to Jake and Jess, Jess tried to approach Erin and Erin was pretty standoffish and didn’t really give her the time of day. I’m not sure what else happened after that, but Jess didn’t really jive with any of the other girls there. My fiancée had a long talk with the two of them after the game on Sunday, where Jess expressed that she wasn’t feeling like she was making connections with the people in the group. My fiancée tried to suggest strategies, but what it came down to was to try and stay positive and hop in when you can! The next event was a New Year’s (2017/2018). This was again a camp party where about 20 people all met up at a friend’s family’s lake house. Again Erin was here, but everything was going fine. While a bunch of the guys (myself included) went for a hike in the cold, Jess actually led a Yoga session for all the people in the house and it seemed like everyone had a really good time! On New Year’s Eve, all the girls got dressed up with each other, and Jess went out of her way to help do all the girls’ hair. Everything seemed to be going well from the outside.

From talking with Jake though, apparently there were some perceived slights from the other girls towards Jess. The one that literally blew up was later in the evening; Jake and our friend Joe were having a conversation around the kitchen island while Jess and Joe’s GF, Lisa, were just standing next to their guys. Joe, in an attempt to get the two of them talking, says “Hey Lisa, you’ve met Jess right?” in a joking manner. Lisa responds in kind by saying “Oh no, hi Jess I’m Lisa!” Jess obviously doesn’t perceive this as a joke, and responds “how could you say that?! I was just doing your hair for three hours!” and storms off. Jake goes off to console her… and then comes back and gets in Joe and Lisa’s faces about how they won’t give Jess a chance and how they’re acting lovely to her. And by in their face, I mean screaming right at them. My fiancée tries to come over and intervene, explaining that she saw everything and Jess must’ve just missed the joke… so he starts yelling in her face too. I’m not present for most of this, but I got outside at one point to see Jake still yelling at Lisa so I get between the two, tell Jake to leave, and try to console Lisa.

In Jake’s “defense”, he had not been drinking much at the time due to a medical issue and was definitely blackout due to his low tolerance and the day worth of drinking that we had all done before then. He kind of apologized to Joe and Lisa in the morning, but didn’t remember that he also got in my Fiancée and my face (I brought this up recently during our talks after the most recent event). But it was a side of Jake that none of us had ever seen before; quite frankly it was scary.

After this date Jake was moving out west for work so he and Jess took a long road trip across the country, after which Jake moved into his new place and Jess went back home to her parents on the east coast, where she is currently working. They have been doing the LDR relationship since that time.

The final and most recent event was a joint Bachelor/Bachelorette party that my Fiancée and I threw at her parents’ vacation house on the Eastern coast over Memorial Day. It was a group of about 25 people from both of our lives: college friends, friends from both of our hometowns, and a few camp people mixed in there too (Erin was NOT there). The weekend was incredible, everyone made friends with other people from the separate groups and got along just fine… except for Jake and Jess. They went off on their own for the most part (e.g. taking out a canoe for just themselves for hours while everyone else was hanging out, not being present for yard games we played, etc.) There was one point where everyone was in a big circle on the porch and they specifically chose to sit 15 feet outside of the circle just the two of them. I said “why are you guys sitting there, come hang out with everyone!” and tried to get them involved. It just felt like they were really there to see each other, and not to celebrate our upcoming nuptials which really hurt, especially coming from the guy who agreed to be my best man.

Anyways, on the last night a bunch of the girls turned on some pop-y dance music and were having a dance party on the porch. I had gone up there and was dancing with my fiancée, when Jake comes over and grabs me and Fiancée to go “have a talk with Jess”. So we immediately comply, and Jess says that she’s been feeling excluded. She brings up a bunch of examples like that she wasn’t invited to the dance party (no one was, all you had to do was go up there and dance), that my fiancée made “a face” at her during a bachelor/bachelorette card game, and some other minor slights that she perceived. We did get offensive and raise our voices saying that those slights are BS, and brought up that they have been basically excluded themselves! After some back and forth, we are very exasperated and are basically yelling “What do you want us to do to make you feel more included?!”

At this point she basically runs off crying, and attempts to start driving home at 1:30 in the morning. Thankfully the Maid of Honor comes over and talks to her and tries to hear her out, which I guess made her feel well enough to stay the night at least. The MOH’s direct quote from that conversation is that Jess seems to have “a very rough perception of reality”. They end up leaving the next morning without saying goodbye to anyone or helping to clean.

Since then, my fiancée and I have been in contact with Jake a few different times over skype. We tried to hash out how to move forward from this, and he really wanted us to apologize to Jess for yelling at her (which we did immediately). We tried to explain that nothing good was going to come out of a drunken late night confrontation like that, and were pretty upset that he basically walked us into a fight like that.

This past weekend Jess had flown out to visit Jake, and we had a skype call between the four of us. She never really gave us an apology for bringing up accusations against us that night, but instead used this call to go through all her justifications on why she was acting so lovely that weekend and in general. She admitted that she was not looking forward to coming down for that weekend, but wanted to do it anyways because she doesn’t get to see Jake often. She admitted that she was shut down and reserved because of how girls associated with our camp had treated her in the past, and made a bunch of statements about “how girls are”. She explained that she has a hard time telling the difference between camp people and other people at our party (understandable), so I guess her reaction was to shun everyone.

She also described herself as “real” in the sense that if she has an issue with someone she won’t act “fake” and nice to them, but will rather bring up any issue directly. She explained that she just wanted “a buoy to hang onto” that she could socialize with at these events and felt like she wasn’t getting that.

My fiancée and I were unsure whether we wanted her to attend our wedding after the bachelor/ette party blow up, but after the skype call with her we decided that we didn’t want her there. In our talk with her, apparently a couple of camp girls that are close friends with Erin were outwardly hostile to her, and all of them are coming to our wedding (Erin included). In addition to that, Jake is supposed to be my best man and will be stuck hanging out with the rest of the groomsmen and I all day so she’d be on her own. Out of all these other events, she has not been able to make a significant friendship with someone else there, so she’d really be on her own all day. She would not have a good time, it would be seriously stressful and distracting to the guy who’s really supposed to be by my side that day, and she brings the potential to have another big dramatic fight; all things I don’t want at my wedding. Additionally, if she can’t be there to be happy for us and celebrate at our bachelor/ette party, why do I think she’ll be able to do that at our wedding?!

I texted Jake yesterday to let him know that we aren’t going to invite her. This obviously stressed him out, and he sent responses along the lines of “The exclusion continues… from my own friends” and “Jess is the easiest person to remove from the situation for your wedding to go smoothly and I get it. But it’s not totally her fault”. I immediately called him and we had a 1.5 hour conversation about what to do going forward. He agreed that she wouldn’t have a good time, but said that she’s obviously going to be hurt by this and the relationship between us and Jess will be forever damaged by this. He went on to say how they’ve been talking seriously about marriage and starting a family, and how important she is to him. He also explains how he’s going to feel sad at our wedding because he’ll be thinking about Jess.

Honestly, I feel bad because at this point I feel like I’m driving a wedge between him and his SO. I let him know that if he feels like he can’t handle best man duties, that’s totally fine. I go on to say that I don’t want to gently caress up his relationship with Jess, and if he feels like he can’t attend our wedding while doing that, that he’s more than welcome to skip the entire thing. I told him I didn’t need his answer right now, and he said that he really appreciated my sentiment. He said he had to think on it, and I said that’s fine, but please let me know when you do because I’ll need to get a new best man.

I don’t even know what my question is from here. I’m honestly really hurt that Jess is driving this huge divide between him and all his friends associated with our camp, but I’m more hurt that he’s letting her. He’s told me of some of the catty things three of the camp girls have done towards her, but it’s already poisoned her view of the entire group and it’s obvious she wants nothing to do with us. It just seems like she has some victim-complex and needs all of Jake’s attention on her at these events. Other people have commented to him about how different he is around her, and I really just want my friend back.

I guess my question is what do I do now? Our wedding is in August, so I really don’t have much time to bring in a new best man or anything like that. Should I just bite the bullet and invite her, and pray that she doesn’t come (fiancée is 100% against this idea)? Is this just one of those times where people grow up and grow apart and I need to let him go his own way?

If you’ve made it this far I really appreciate you taking the time to read through my jumbled thoughts. I don’t expect this to get big, so I assume I’ll be able to respond to all comments.

TL;DR: I’m not inviting my best man’s S.O. to my wedding after her behavior at the past couple events. I think he may not end up coming too.

EDIT: My fiancée wanted me to include that we have a ton of third party stories that have concrete examples of them trying to connect with her, but she was especially unreceptive to any attempts. I didn’t want to include that because i don’t have first hand experience of these interactions. I also wasn’t present for any of the cattiness/passive aggression, but I believe Jake is telling the truth on that.

Haifisch posted:

My [22 F] boyfriend [28 M] has very black and white views on morality and crime. I have a dirty past he doesn't know about, and I've crossed lines he thinks "good people just don't cross"

Theophany posted:

I changed my mind. Girlfriend's reaction is justified. He's deliberately choosing to be a certifiable retard.

"New York Magazine posted:

Rob and I were together for 12 years before we decided to open our marriage. It happened not that long after we had our last child. For most of our relationship, I’d been very focused on my career and then motherhood, without much time to think about my sex life. Once we were done having kids, my sex drive came roaring back. We loved each other very much but we’d never been a perfect match in terms of sexual compatibility. I told him that I didn’t think our marriage was big enough for my new sexual curiosity. I wanted to explore. Rob was very receptive, but we wanted to take things slowly. We read all the books on non-monogamy, did a lot of talking and negotiating. Both of us were fully onboard.

I think it’s important for me to say that by this time, Rob and I had already been talking about alternative living. I’d always been interested in communes, and we had joined a co-housing group, the kind of place where you have your own house or apartment but where there’s shared responsibility for rearing children, assisting with the aged, addressing ecological concerns. That was a huge investment of time and money, and taught us a lot of things about how to communicate with one another about hard stuff. It taught us how to ask for what we needed without blaming someone for not having given it to us. So that was useful when we became non-monogamous, and none of this was as odd to us as it might be to others.

We were also primed for it by watching Big Love. It’s definitely melodramatic, but we loved the idea of sharing parents, and sitting down at a table with your partners with a calendar and making a schedule for the domestic labor. Scheduling is as much a part of non-monogamy as sex, though sex is what monogamous people tend to focus on when they hear about non-monogamy.

We were very open about what we were doing with everyone, including our kids, who were 4 and 8 at the time. We sat down with them and explained that some people think when you’re married to someone you can only love that one person, but that we didn’t believe that; we thought you could love more than one person at the same time. Our oldest child thought about it for a moment then said, “Well, right, like I love you and I also love Dada.” And I said, right, and that was the end of the conversation. Children are naturally very tolerant about these things. We teach them our intolerance.

Anyway, both of us started dating. Rob began dating a woman pretty seriously, and I was seeing Mike, whom I’d first met in my 20s. We’d had a passionate but brief relationship while living on opposite coasts. We had since fallen out of touch. Now he was living five hours away, and we began a long-distance relationship where I’d see him every month or two for a couple days.

After about two years of long-distance dating and getting to know our whole family, Mike decided to move to our town to be close to us. He was divorced and had no kids and a job he could do from anywhere.

When he first moved, he rented an apartment a few blocks away and the idea was he’d live there for a year or more and we’d see how it went. But it became almost immediately apparent that it just didn’t make sense, because he and I wanted to spend every night together and he was eating all his meals with us. So we all decided he should just move in. Rob and Mike got along well from the start, not like best friends, but they genuinely enjoyed each other’s company. If I wasn’t home they’d watch basketball or make dinner together. They wouldn’t turn to each other if they were in crisis. For that they’d turn to me. But they get along well.

Of all the questions people ask me about non-monogamy, the one I get the most is probably about the living arrangement. People want to know why Mike “got to live with us,” while none of the people Rob dated “got to.” That seems like such a silly way to look at it. The reasons you do or don’t choose to live with a partner are complicated. It’s not that Mike “got” to live with us. It’s that it made sense for him to move in. He was getting a divorce. He had no kids. He worked from home.

When Mike first moved in we decided that he would have the small bedroom on the first floor because it was more private — all the way on the opposite side of the house from the kids’ rooms and the master bedroom. The idea was that Rob and I would keep the master bedroom but that I could go downstairs and sleep with Mike when I wanted to. Honestly, Rob has always preferred to sleep alone and was happy to have the bed to himself. The problem was that our kids were still very young and they’d wake a lot in the night and need me. So it really didn’t make sense for me to be all the way downstairs and on the other side of the house, so we all decided that Rob would move into the downstairs guest room and Mike and I would move upstairs.

I also get asked all the time about jealousy. People will say things like, how could any person possibly deal with that — the jealousy of having their wife sleep with another man in their own house! They talk about jealousy as though it’s this unmovable, immutable force, and not simply an emotion that can be worked through like any other. Also, by the time Mike moved in with us, my relationship with Rob was loving, but it was no longer sexual. We both accepted the way our relationship had changed. Rob is also not a fundamentally jealous person. He never viewed me as his property just because we were married, or thought that marriage should give him control over who I have sex with. He was also dating and having sex with other women. And to be honest, I’m a pretty intense person. I can be a lot to deal with, and I think in that way he was happy to share me.

The other issue besides jealousy that I get asked about a lot is parenting. I think people are generally very uncomfortable with the idea of mothers having sex at all, or enjoying sex or being sexual, but particularly with anyone besides their husband. People will say things like, “What about the kids?” as though we are hosting orgies in the dining room before dinner. The reality is that our kids have such a wholesome life: We all sit down to dinner together every day, and they experience a very smoothly running household with three adults around taking care of them.

I was recently telling my son the story of his home birth, and he said, “Where was Mikey?” I had to explain to him that Mike wasn’t around yet. When my kids play pretend games, they talk about how a certain imaginary creature has green magic beams that shoot out of her fingers and she can fly and she’s polyamorous and nonbinary. For them, this is a perfectly normal way of living.

I should also say, though, that our experience of familial harmony may be unusual. Both Mike and Rob are really domestic. I actually don’t remember how to use my own dishwasher because I almost never run it, and I can’t even tell you the last time I did the laundry. They both lived with housemates as young adults and thrived on communal living. They’re happy to do the dishes and the laundry with me acting as the cruise director. Most of my monogamous female friends don’t know how I got so lucky, since their husbands won’t even pick up their own clothes.

That said, I still think I put in the lion’s share of emotional labor in a traditionally gendered way. I’m the one who keeps up with the kids’ doctors appointments, the meetings at their schools. I delegate, but I’m still the planner. I don’t mind, though, because I’m doing a lot less of the other kinds of daily labor. It seems to me that in so many traditional marriages, the woman does almost all the emotional labor, and then she also does more than 50 percent of the housework and child care. At least. Whereas I do closer to a third.

It’s funny … when I talk to people who don’t want to know that there’s an alternative to monogamy, they’ll often say, “Oh, it sounds like so much hard work.” And I’ll say, “Well, is your marriage easy?” And they say, “No, my marriage is hell.” Well, mine never was. It never has been.

Living together worked really well for us for four years. Recently, Rob decided that it was time for him to get his own apartment, mostly because he wants a little more autonomy, even though he lives right nearby and comes over for dinner most nights. So we decided to divorce. People might point to that and say, oh, so I guess non-monogamy didn’t work in the end, or I guess it ruined your marriage. Or they think, poor Rob, poor Rob. But Rob dates. He has a life he fully enjoys and chose. He’s about to turn 50 and he wanted to feel what it was like to steer his own ship for a while, to have a little more space, and that’s what he has.

Mike and I are going to get married soon, and I think people assume that now we’ll be monogamous, since our relationship is so romantic. But nope! We have no interest in a marriage that doesn’t provide us space to express and act on attractions to other people, and to continue to change and grow. In a funny way, and given the statistics around infidelity, I think we’re a lot more committed to non-monogamy than most monogamous people are to monogamy.

My Imaginary GF posted:

Organized acts of violence against communism makes one a freedom fighter.

From Chile to Angola, Greece to Pakistan, America has a long and proud history of providing operational and financial capacity in support of foreign freedom fighters.

TheScott2K posted:

Someone at New York Magazine opened the marriage. Looking forward to her husband's inevitable r/relationships post.


This lady found a way to replace her husband with her gently caress Man with zero guilt and wrote a word salad about it.

Patrick Spens posted:

Trivial Bullshit! Get your Trivial Bullshit here!

I [28M] think I may have just lost my best man [28M] for my upcoming wedding