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Mr. Fall Down Terror
Jan 24, 2018

by Fluffdaddy
it is a wise idea to check an oven before you turn it on to preheat it but that's just so you don't have to deal with heated pans or baking sheets stored in the oven, not a stapler. what the hell

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MarcusSA
Sep 23, 2007

DragQueenofAngmar posted:

AITA for melting the stapler in the oven

I do agree with the dad that you should always check the oven by why the gently caress was there a stapler in there???

Power Khan posted:

It's literally what she's getting off to and she's posting it for people with a similar fetish, interacting with them. She's generating content lol.

Not ok, unless your partner is ok with it too.

Yeah I came to post this. If your partner is ok with it go hog wild but if you are doing it on the sly it’s not ok and yeah kinda “cheating”.

zakharov
Nov 30, 2002

:kimchi: Tater Love :kimchi:

Hobo Clown posted:

AITA for not wanting to drive an old lady to her home like my friend wanted?

I hate this person so much

Fitzy Fitz
May 14, 2005




If your order is taking a while please just speak with your waiter. They are people and understand words. You don't need to glare at them while stewing in the corner.

Power Khan
Aug 20, 2011

by Fritz the Horse

Scathach posted:

Who the gently caress tries to dry a stapler in an oven? What the poo poo? gently caress that dude and his stapler. Now I'm mad about staplers.

People with dementia

sweet thursday
Sep 16, 2012

luxury handset posted:

it is a wise idea to check an oven before you turn it on to preheat it but that's just so you don't have to deal with heated pans or baking sheets stored in the oven, not a stapler. what the hell

He was told that he had to learn how to cook the staples

Meme Poker Party
Sep 1, 2006

by Azathoth

Dazerbeams posted:

Terminally white.

I'd say it's 50/50 white or Asian.

Scathach
Apr 4, 2011

You know that thing where you sleep on your arm funny and when you wake up it's all numb? Yeah that's my whole world right now.


Listen if someone leaves a meltable thing in the oven it's their fault it melted, not mine because I turned the oven on. Don't put weird poo poo in ovens.

Power Khan posted:

People with dementia

I mean I was assuming guy with a son living at home probably doesn't have dementia yet. But yes, this is true.

Scathach fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Oct 10, 2019

dudeness
Mar 5, 2010

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:
Fallen Rib
I think the real question is how did the stapler get so wet and what stapler emergency justified such a fast drying procedure?

Megillah Gorilla
Sep 22, 2003

If only all of life's problems could be solved by smoking a professor of ancient evil texts.



Bread Liar

DemoneeHo posted:

Have another racism and, more appallingly, flexing over how to eat a pizza wrong

AITA for leaving a friends house after they made fun of me for eating pizza with my hands and getting mad when she made a racial comment.

Did she eat at Trump's place?

gently caress those dumbass racists and enjoy eating your pizza however the gently caress you want.

a very large fish
Oct 18, 2012

Johnny Truant posted:

can you elaborate more on this, it sounds interesting

She was supposed to just map parameters on files that clients were sending and process them through a UI but she convinced her dummy manager to approve change access and she started scripting instead of mapping which is bad because there were strict rules in place stating that they cannot alter the data that is sent by the clients.
Anyway, she flew under the radar for a while but she was dumb and her SQL was poo poo so eventually she wound up changing a few hundred peoples emails to a single email address and all of their communications were sent there for about a week.
Now that's a bad gently caress up for any company but in this case, the emails in question were for COBRA and direct bill healthcare enrollments so it was sort of a big (legal) deal because it was a massive HIPAA breach.
Anyway that guy called the company and said, "hey I just got all of my coworkers COBRA eligibility emails." It blew up from there and within an hour I was tasked with figuring out if the client sent his email address on the file for everyone by mistake or if the changes were made internally. At first I assumed it was a client mistake but then I saw her user ID on the file processing report and got this sinking feeling that it wasn't the clients fault. Unfortunately I was right.

The Bramble
Mar 16, 2004

Ugh gently caress that guy. My wife is involved in an regional choir among other volunteer-related things and we are constantly getting roped into helping lonely, broke, old ladies get home after the one social activity they have for the month in between their busy schedules of sitting around hoping their kids call them today. While technically an inconvenience you'd have to be rear end in a top hat of unusual proportion to not feel some level of responsibility for the welfare of people in that situation.

BOOTY-ADE
Aug 30, 2006

BIG KOOL TELLIN' Y'ALL TO KEEP IT TIGHT

luxury handset posted:

neither party is really an rear end in a top hat here, they're just inexperienced and going through an inevitable and mutual breakup from a relationship which has clearly run its course

A few pages back but :wrong:

She pushed for marriage, wanted an immediate answer, he left due to a family emergency & didn't give the answer she wanted...so she broke up with him. Then reiterated by text & phone call that they were broken up after the fact. He dodged a huge, whiny, manipulative bitch bullet & she can go find some other sad sack doormat to push her bullshit on.

Power Khan
Aug 20, 2011

by Fritz the Horse

Scathach posted:

Listen if someone leaves a meltable thing in the oven it's their fault it melted, not mine because I turned the oven on. Don't put weird poo poo in ovens.


I mean I was assuming guy with a son living at home probably doesn't have dementia yet. But yes, this is true.

It can start in the 30s, many are really good at hiding it.

1st_Panzer_Div.
May 11, 2005
Grimey Drawer

Pvt.Scott posted:

This lady sounds like a real Karen. I’ll bet she has the hair. There’s also no way things went exactly as described by this Karen, and I’m sure there’s months of context missing. Given lack of evidence though, assholeness is indeterminate.

Also, not getting angry and not raising your voice is exactly how people who get angry and raise their voice describe their conduct on calls to customer support. My dad does this Ducks do this. If someone on the phone requests that you calm down or stop raising your voice, maybe take the hint.

Ehh, the whole Karen thing does have a lot of sexist tones, and her yelling and escalating to the manager got the bill fixed.

It's ok to get upset and get poo poo fixed when you're getting hosed over.

Pope Corky the IX
Dec 18, 2006

What are you looking at?
My ex-wife would put all kinds of poo poo in the oven and microwave. If it was in her way in the kitchen, rather than put it where it goes, she'd stick it in one of those two appliances. I once preheated the oven for something and then went downstairs to switch the laundry. By the time I came up maybe five minutes later smoke was pouring out of the open oven while the alarms were blaring and she's out on the balcony frantically pouring water on a smoldering melted black thing that I later found out was the goddamn CD player.

Mr. Fall Down Terror
Jan 24, 2018

by Fluffdaddy

BOOTY-ADE posted:

A few pages back but :wrong:

She pushed for marriage, wanted an immediate answer, he left due to a family emergency & didn't give the answer she wanted...so she broke up with him. Then reiterated by text & phone call that they were broken up after the fact. He dodged a huge, whiny, manipulative bitch bullet & she can go find some other sad sack doormat to push her bullshit on.

i wouldn't say she pushed for marriage any more than he declined a marriage, they just want different things out of this relationship right now. she wants deeper commitment, he likes the status quo. this alone is enough to break off a relationship if it cannot be reconciled. she's not wrong to want to take a further step, they've been dating for seven years and that's enough time to know if you want to commit or not

she did break up with him, in a moment of anger. they both should have stayed broken up. but she calmed down and wanted to reconcile. OP should have stayed broken up if he wanted to do that rather than trying to go back

think about it from her perspective - the man she was dating for seven years wouldn't give a straight answer about marriage, conveniently got a family emergency which turned out not to be a big deal, then within two days of their breakup was sleeping with one of his friends. this behavior makes sense the way OP explains it but also looks a whole lot like he was checked out of the relationship and ready to bail

really they both should just part ways, they want different things out of this relationship and neither of them ever learned how to end a relationship with grace and respect. it's not too late to learn this essential lesson but since it's the first big breakup for both of them they are making a lot of mistakes

Smirking_Serpent
Aug 27, 2009

WIBTA if I wore a black dress to Christmas after being told the dress code is red and gold?

I am very budget conscious, and also quite self conscious and often find it hard to find clothes that I think look good on me. I was in a mall the other day and I saw this pretty black dress with white dots on it on sale for a great price. I tried it on and it looked super flattering on me, which I was ecstatic about as this doesn’t happen to me often. I immediately decided I would buy the dress to wear on Christmas Day, which we are spending with my boyfriends family. Prior to this I had felt a bit anxious about what I was going to wear on this day as they always throw a huge Christmas party which to them is a big deal, so I was very happy with my find. I went home and tried the dress on for my boyfriend who agreed it looked great on me and was a nice outfit for Christmas Day. Today, we got a message in the group chat saying they had decided on a colour theme for the day which was red and gold. My boyfriend asked me what I was going to do about the dress, and I said I was still going to wear it, but I would paint my nails red and gold and maybe wear something red in my hair. He got a bit awkward and said that it’s probably better if I tried to find something better to wear that fits the colour scheme as they take their Christmas parties very seriously. I personally don’t think it’s a big deal, and the red and gold accessories would be enough. We can’t come to an agreement on this. WIBTA if I wore the black dress?

Edit: just want to add a couple more points. They didn’t say the dress code was red and gold, just the theme of the day. I realise I wrote dress code in the title, my mistake. It’s also not my boyfriends actual family, just a family that’s close to him as he doesn’t have much family himself. They are wonderful lovely people who I know wouldn’t mind if I wore a black dress, it’s just whether it would be rude of me to do so.

Hobo Clown
Oct 16, 2012

Here it is, Baby.
Your killer track.




Fitzy Fitz posted:

If your order is taking a while please just speak with your waiter. They are people and understand words. You don't need to glare at them while stewing in the corner.

The real power move is to wave a bunch of $1 bills at them and make a big show of putting them one by one back into your pocket for every minute your single pancake is late

Smirking_Serpent
Aug 27, 2009

AITA? My husband and I are getting my stepson a car for his birthday. His mother wants to chip in and say that the car is from all of us, but I don’t want to do that.

My stepson is turning 18 soon and my husband and I decided that we will be getting him a car. I make more than my husband does and we will be splitting the cost of the car 70/30. That’s fine with me.

His mother is a woman who I make the effort to be civil with but don’t like. I am much younger than she and my husband are, and come from a more privileged background; she had a lot of things to say about that. She called me her ex’s cash cow and that’s one of the better things she said about me. We are not friends and I won’t even describe her as nice to me.

When my husband told her that we will buy my stepson a car for his birthday, she said she wants to chip in 5% of the cost and then we could tell my stepson that the gift is from all of his parents and step parents.

I don’t want to do that. I don’t need her 5% and my stepson knows that his mom and step dad are not in a position to equally share the cost of buying the car. I don’t want recognition for paying 70% of his gift’s cost but I don’t want to share my and my husband’s gift to my stepson with a woman who has always been antagonistic to me.

I don’t know why she wants us to gift the car jointly now because we’ve never given my stepson a gift jointly before. And I don’t understand what’s so bad about getting separate gifts from me and his dad, and his mom and his stepdad.

I know that many people will say that it’s better for my stepson to see that all his parents and step parents are getting along. I’m civil to his mom and I never talk negatively about her to him. Is that not enough? Am I incapable of being a good step mother to him if I’m not best friends with his mom? Do I have to let his mom get her way whenever she asks in the name of all parents getting along?

Smirking_Serpent
Aug 27, 2009

WIBTA if I (22F) didn't want to sleep in the same bed as my boyfriend (40M)??

I love my boyfriend and I love falling asleep with him but I have not had a good night sleep in months because of his sleeping habits. He has to have everything his way to sleep or her gets angry. So first off, I have a deviated septum and get bad sinus pain especially when the fan is on at night. I've told him this a dozen times and even asked if we could just turn it down a notch but he still says no (I'd like to add it's October now so it's already pretty cold in the house) second, I'm pretty small I weigh almost 100lbs woke he weighs probably 190-200.. because of this her thinks we shouldn't get equal parts of the bed OR blanket even though we sleep on a California king. So I wake up most night cold and on the edge of the bed.. if I try to take some blankets he will get mad and yank even more. We have a spare bedroom so I go in there now and then you get some sleep for that reason as well as these.. When he wakes up he is obnoxious. He wakes up and yawns like a cartoon character (scream yawning) or will just start talking to me while I'm still trying to sleep or will turn the tv on before he leaves the room. But when he wakes up to find me in the spare room he gets mad at ME! He says I'm being a baby and overreacting I want to know if this is just how most guys are when it comes to sleep and I am just overreacting or is as rude as I think it is.

Edit: I also realize the age gap as I hear of it all the time. In this case it is irrelevant I just want to know if I'm the one being "ridiculous" as he says

Power Khan
Aug 20, 2011

by Fritz the Horse
WIBTA for exposing my late wife to my sons?
rear end in a top hat
Please bear with me while I try to gather my thoughts and explain just what’s going on. I (M40)was married to my wife (F38) for 18 years. We had what I thought was a perfect relationship, we barely fought, got along great, and she was my best friend. We had two sons together, J who is 14 and M who is 16.

My wife passed extremely unexpectedly a month ago and it absolutely shattered our world. I feel so alone and have even started going to counseling to help with getting over her.

Here is the hard part. Two nights ago I decided to go through my wife’s cell phone to read our text messages and look at some photos she had taken I never got sent. That’s when I found the messages after I decided to look through her browser history.

Messages to men in their 60’s sending dirty photos she had sent me. Nights she told me she was visiting her sister, she was actually out with these men doing god knows what for money. I don’t want to get into to much detail with how filthy some of they were, but I cannot believe she could have done this to me. I suspected nothing. Ever.

My sons are obviously still crushed and always talking up their mother and how sweet, amazing she is. How much they miss her love and honesty. I cannot see her as the woman I thought I knew and I am torn on what to do. On one hand, I don’t want to make this passing harder for them and hinder their thoughts about their mother but on another hand I feel they are old enough to know the truth.

WIBTA if I exposed my late wife to my sons and told them what she was really doing to our family? Please help me.

EDIT: Wow. Thanks for all the feedback. I never knew that me losing a best friend, wife and mother of my children would end with me being berated. This post didn’t come from malicious intent to hurt my children, and I apologize if it came out that way. I asked because I truly don’t know. I feel that I would have wanted to know who my mother was fully but I can see why so many disagree. This is something that I will keep to myself for now- and if my children ever inquire further that’s something I will deal with along the way.

To all the ones who were kind, thank you. And to those calling me a selfish piece of poo poo I hope you are never put in my position. Thank you.

--------------------------------

e: There's some horrible stories of similar calibre in the comments

Power Khan fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Oct 10, 2019

Clark Nova
Jul 18, 2004

What kind of tacky assholes would try to make their guests dress up in Christmas colors?

Leon Einstein
Feb 6, 2012
I must win every thread in GBS. I don't care how much banal semantic quibbling and shitty posts it takes.

Smirking_Serpent posted:

I don’t want recognition for paying 70% of his gift’s cost but I don’t want to share my and my husband’s gift to my stepson with a woman who has always been antagonistic to me
I'm guessing this is a 26 year old trust fund kid that is some 46 year old's mid-life crisis. She is seething with resentment towards the first wife, but wants to keep cool for her husband's sake. She will snap eventually.

Dazerbeams
Jul 8, 2009

Smirking_Serpent posted:

WIBTA if I (22F) didn't want to sleep in the same bed as my boyfriend (40M)??

I love my boyfriend and I love falling asleep with him but I have not had a good night sleep in months because of his sleeping habits. He has to have everything his way to sleep or her gets angry. So first off, I have a deviated septum and get bad sinus pain especially when the fan is on at night. I've told him this a dozen times and even asked if we could just turn it down a notch but he still says no (I'd like to add it's October now so it's already pretty cold in the house) second, I'm pretty small I weigh almost 100lbs woke he weighs probably 190-200.. because of this her thinks we shouldn't get equal parts of the bed OR blanket even though we sleep on a California king. So I wake up most night cold and on the edge of the bed.. if I try to take some blankets he will get mad and yank even more. We have a spare bedroom so I go in there now and then you get some sleep for that reason as well as these.. When he wakes up he is obnoxious. He wakes up and yawns like a cartoon character (scream yawning) or will just start talking to me while I'm still trying to sleep or will turn the tv on before he leaves the room. But when he wakes up to find me in the spare room he gets mad at ME! He says I'm being a baby and overreacting I want to know if this is just how most guys are when it comes to sleep and I am just overreacting or is as rude as I think it is.

Edit: I also realize the age gap as I hear of it all the time. In this case it is irrelevant I just want to know if I'm the one being "ridiculous" as he says

I've come around on these type of age gap stories. They used to make me so angry but these days I'm just gleeful at reading how miserable being in denial can make a person.

Meme Poker Party
Sep 1, 2006

by Azathoth

Smirking_Serpent posted:

Edit: I also realize the age gap as I hear of it all the time. In this case it is irrelevant I just want to know if I'm the one being "ridiculous" as he says

lol

gamingCaffeinator
Sep 6, 2010

I shall sing you the song of my people.

Pinecone Sample posted:

AITA for asking my wife to workout on her own time and be honest about how long she will workout or is she the rear end in a top hat for doing it whenever she wants and lying about how long she will do it?

This guy posted ANOTHER thread about his wife 'lying' to him about 2 hours ago. He deleted it, but the bot saved it.

quote:

AITA for calling my wife a selfish liar foe not considering me or is she the rear end in a top hat for doing what she wants when she wants?

I posted a version yesterday, but didn't accurately represent my case Please read and vote considering these relevant facts.

My wife thinks she should be able to workout whenever she wants, which I think is selfish.

The working out is not nor has ever been the problem. The problem is she selects times to do it unilaterally and inconsistently. We--the kids and I--on multiple occasions have been in the car buckled in waiting on her to come out and she is inside working out. This happened three times when we were going on long trips; she said she didn't want to be trapped in the car without working out, but she didn't ask what I thought before starting.

She literally told me she would say wrong time estimates, afraid I would get mad. what makes me mad is lying. She espouses how tired she is and how she doesnt have time yet there is always time to play on her phone. I see hundreds of people every morning out jogging or biking early in the morning. You know why? it's time that isn't meant to be shared.

it's not 7pm after a long day of work when a reasonable expectation is a meal, baths for the kids, then bed by 8 or 9. No what I get some nights is walk in at 7, no dinner started or planned and her wanting to workout because she didn't get a chance that day.

She exercises and it's almost 8, we haven't fed the kids so either she cooks or we order food late, feed the kids late, which is unhealthy and then put the kids to bed rarely before 9:30.

She will then spend 3 hours playing on the internet. Then she sleeps until 8 or 9, rinse, repeat. Can the "30" minute workout not come out of the hours of screen time or her sleeping late (8 or 9) everyday? No it has to come out of the 2 hours a day I'm awake and not working. 120 minutes a day during weekdays I'm not at work or asleep. 30 minutes is 25% of that when you add water breaks and warm up and cool down. That is over half my free time. In that 2 hours I also have to bathe, use the bathroom, bond with the kids and do self care of my own. If I ask that she do it early or late, I'm the controlling rear end in a top hat. Not her: the person who will do whatever,whenever she wants no thought for others.

She used to gaslight me by saying it's a 20 minute workout session video and it was a 35 minute video and she was going to warm up and cool down and take water breaks. That's not time management or bad estimates. That is deceit. That is manipulation.

recently we were going outside to roast hotdogs, and she brought out the yoga mat to do yoga. "Hey kids lets go roast hotdogs" and unannounced decides as were going outside that she is checking out to workout. She said she would exercise for 20 but she went for 28.

Am i the rear end in a top hat for asking her to workout while the kids and I sleep or at the very least be precise about the length of her workouts? Or is she the rear end in a top hat for wanting to workout whenever she wants then lying about how long?

pentyne
Nov 7, 2012

Smirking_Serpent posted:

WIBTA if I (22F) didn't want to sleep in the same bed as my boyfriend (40M)??

I love my boyfriend and I love falling asleep with him but I have not had a good night sleep in months because of his sleeping habits. He has to have everything his way to sleep or her gets angry. So first off, I have a deviated septum and get bad sinus pain especially when the fan is on at night. I've told him this a dozen times and even asked if we could just turn it down a notch but he still says no (I'd like to add it's October now so it's already pretty cold in the house) second, I'm pretty small I weigh almost 100lbs woke he weighs probably 190-200.. because of this her thinks we shouldn't get equal parts of the bed OR blanket even though we sleep on a California king. So I wake up most night cold and on the edge of the bed.. if I try to take some blankets he will get mad and yank even more. We have a spare bedroom so I go in there now and then you get some sleep for that reason as well as these.. When he wakes up he is obnoxious. He wakes up and yawns like a cartoon character (scream yawning) or will just start talking to me while I'm still trying to sleep or will turn the tv on before he leaves the room. But when he wakes up to find me in the spare room he gets mad at ME! He says I'm being a baby and overreacting I want to know if this is just how most guys are when it comes to sleep and I am just overreacting or is as rude as I think it is.

Edit: I also realize the age gap as I hear of it all the time. In this case it is irrelevant I just want to know if I'm the one being "ridiculous" as he says

It is forever and always the 15+ age gap when the older person is selfish and stubborn and throws tantrums if they don't get their way.

Clitch
Feb 26, 2002

I lived through
Donald Trump's presidency
and all I got was
this lousy virus

Hobo Clown posted:

The real power move is to wave a bunch of $1 bills at them and make a big show of putting them one by one back into your pocket for every minute your single pancake is late

I really appreciate customers like that. It's very considerate of them to let me know when they've forgotten their "I'm an rear end in a top hat" sign at home. Oh it's going to cost me $3 to give bare minimum service to a jackass? Bargain!

Frog Act
Feb 10, 2012



My (32m) girlfriend (29f) struggles with mental health and is insisting on spending $27k/yr on a horse for her well-being. We make $42k/yr and are at the end of grad school. She blames me for not getting another job to afford this and says she's going to buy it anyway. [very long]


quote:

I don’t really know where to begin, because there is a lot of background to share and this is (sort of) a problem that my girlfriend (29f) and I (32m) have been having for several years at this point. We met going to graduate school in PhD programs in different departments at the same university in a large American city. We’ve been together for about four and a half years, and we’ve lived together for about four (it was quick, but my apartment complex kicked out all month-to-monthers to renovate and raise prices).

I'll be happy to answer any questions to the best of my ability.

TL;DR: girlfriend struggles with bipolar 2, I probably struggle with adult ADD. We currently make about 42k/yr combined. She has been through a lot of painful stuff in life lately, and wants to make a $27k/yr commitment to buy horse because riding helps her a lot. I am trying to finish a PhD, she thinks I should also go get a job so we can afford this and it is my fault we aren't where we want to be in life now. She says she is going to buy the horse with or without me, without the income secured, and will figure it out later. I want us to secure the appropriate income first. We have long fought in a pattern that blames me entirely that seems very unhealthy and I feel harms me a lot and I don’t know what to do to save this relationship/what to do next.

We’ve been having very similar versions of a fight every one to three weeks for a very long time. The fight today that precipitated this post was pretty much exactly the same as the one we’ve been having for the last few months, and the one where we had a big blow-up at each other yesterday. She wants to buy (maybe make payments for 12 months to buy) a $15,000 horse and pay upkeep costs of about $12,000/year, but I am in my last year of graduate school and she is recently no longer in graduate school (more on that later) and works part-time about 20 hours a week and we are just scraping by (if that…) with living expenses on a combined total income right now of about $42,000/year. She has some one-time funds totaling about $15,000 received as basically inheritance/a nest-egg from her parents, but my position has long been that if we get to a point where we demonstrate a stable income that can spend half(ish) of our above-basic-costs income on the horse, that would be a responsible choice, but committing to and buying a horse before that point is deeply irresponsible and a big problem because we don’t remotely have the money for that in terms of stable income right now, and spending one-time funds to fund the beginning of the commitment and hoping it works out is also irresponsible. Her anger at me for us not being in a position to do that right now or for me not being okay with just doing it anyway and hoping is right on the verge of ending our relationship, and it is the latest part in a saga of a much deeper problem that I just don’t know what to do with or about, hence I am seeking advice about how to proceed.

I really do apologize for how long this is going to be, and I appreciate anyone who finishes and has anything at all to say to me, because I could sure use it, so thank you in advance.

Some background: she grew up on her parents’ decent piece of land in the Midwest and rode horses competitively. She initially went to a university that was below her academic capability (she was valedictorian) and which she had some significant problems with (religious university and that mattered to them, all women) because she could continue to ride competitively for that university. After her freshman year, things weren’t working out there and she transferred to a school further away, hoping she could ride for them, but for complex reasons that didn’t actually work out and she kind of had to give up on that earlier than she wanted, and it was something that brought a lot of meaning and well-being to her life from a young age. In general, life with and around animals and caring for animals is a huge part of her and the best candidate for what brings her satisfaction and how she can spend her life and feel satisfied and engaged. She came to graduate school wanting to involve animal studies (how we think about and relate to them in our culture) and eventually work her way back to working with animals/educating people about them and probably work her way back to her midwestern roots.

However, her graduate school department was rife with lovely internal personal politics that divided things up into factions and screwed students over at every step. Her advisor sexually harassed her, made her work environment hostile, and leveraged her (the advisor’s) position as gatekeeper of professional opportunities to get girlfriend to do personal work and errands for little or no pay. Girlfriend reported this to the department chair and the Title IX office on campus, department chair initially said nothing could be done, but girlfriend was eventually let out from under that advisor under pressure from Title IX office. However the department chair immediately installed herself as the new advisor and railroaded girlfriend out of the university entirely, failing her for successive semesters while not engaging with her work at all and giving her no good-faith chance to succeed. A grievance was filed, denied, appealed, denied again because university is treating department chair’s word as more authoritative than dozens of emails submitted as evidence of railroading (“write a whole dissertation chapter per week and I won’t read or comment unless it is perfect,” etc). There is one more level of internal appeal to the university president possible, and the Title IX office is in turmoil for mishandling other stuff on campus but could in theory continue with her case pending her re-engaging there, but she’s having a lot of trouble bringing herself back to dealing with either process because of the trauma and because everyone on the university side has been incredibly lovely through the whole thing and it seems they just don’t give a poo poo about doing the right thing/students.

Another thing to know, she has been having some mental health struggles for our entire relationship. This didn’t bother or scare me, because I had some serious mental health issues earlier in my life and some focused cognitive behavioral therapy did a lot for me to redirect me very much for the better in life, and we all have our “issues” and our challenges, recognized or not, and that’s part of being in a relationship with a real person. She was being treated with prescription medication for depression. She deals with a lot of anxiety and anger issues. Initially she saw a therapist through school, but she came to feel that there was no progress being made there and he made comments she felt were inappropriate (I agree, based on what she said). She’s been to two more since then. They haven’t worked out and she currently isn’t seeing anyone for therapy for the last several months. She says at this point a major issue is finding someone else in our insurance network (I get insurance through school and added her as a dependent). She does have somewhat-regular 15-minute-ish check-ins monthly or so with a doctor who prescribes medications. She is presently being treated with that medication under a bipolar (type-2) disorder diagnosis.

Over the course of the latter half of graduate school, I have struggled a lot. I had two real pillars of support for the first half in the form of other people, two genuinely great friends. One died of cancer while in the middle of school and the other one moved across the country to live with her boyfriend where he got into school. I have discovered a lot about myself as I have needed now two extra one-year extensions beyond the initial planned time to finish. My first advisor didn’t work out for entirely professional, no-hard-feelings, approach-to-the-work reason. I was able to change advisors to someone who is stylistically much more suited to me when I received the first year extension, but that did set progress back quite a bit. I have learned that I probably have undiagnosed and untreated adult ADD or ADHD. I bought a couple books about it, and it really seems on point for being a big part of the way I have struggled to be as productive as I want to be and I should be.

She started to work at a local (horse-) riding program as a part-time instructor about a year and a half ago, before the harassment inquiry and subsequent railroading got really out of hand. She told we she was seeking a once or twice a week a couple hours each day gig to get back in touch with horses for the mental health benefit and because she would enjoy that. I was for that, because it seemed it very healthy and worth encouraging, so long as it didn’t overcome the other stuff she had to do in life. But now, having been forced from graduate school, that is now her source of income, and she works there about 20 hours per week but doesn’t make nearly what she should for the level of skill involved -- at present it’s about $20k/year.

Around the same time when we were both in grad school and in need of more money, we started petsitting from home. She had three dogs when I moved in that got along well with my cat and it using a popular online home-sitter-listing service was a good way of getting us some extra money through having people pay us to watch their dogs for daycares or longer stays. We eventually became pretty successful at it, until one neighbor moved out and the new neighbors (these are smaller rental houses in a neighborhood) just didn’t like it (we kept it quiet, only took calm dogs, never left them outside unsupervised, etc) and reported us directly to the city, including our web profile. We had to shut down the web stuff because our city has a blanket ban on caring for pets you don’t own for money. We still have a few regular clients we handle under the table, but it doesn’t bring in what it used to. It brings in about $10k/year right now.

I still get a small amount of money for being in school, worth about $12k/year, so fast forward to now and we are starting to face up to serious financial danger renting our house in a nice neighborhood she and her parents insisted on staying in with a total household income of about $42k/year. As I said earlier, she wants to either buy outright or commit to a 12-month payment schedule on a $15,000 horse, which will then cost another $12,000/year to house/care for at a minimum. She wants to start all this by using a total of about $15,000 she received from her parents after some property sales intended for savings, and then “surely” we’ll be in a position to afford it stably after that.

I would say since about six months into the relationship or so we have always had some verbal fights about some things. At first they were only once every month or two, and they weren’t as bad. At first they were about some of my bad habits; I am generally much more messy at home than I should be. Leaving things out in the kitchen. Leaving things out on the coffee table or the kitchen table. Leaving laundry on the floor on my side of the bed. I sort of struggle to see messes the same way that she does, and we have discussed how much it helps her. I try to be better, for a while she was actually encouraging of me and it got slowly better, but I still need to be better.

As the relationship went on, they got worse and more frequent. Then a financial squeeze started to set in and we needed some more income. I have a lot of trouble focusing on enough stuff in one day to work part-time and work on my dissertation. I have taught for my university before, and on teaching days the teaching kind of consumes me against my will. It is a part of probably having ADD. We settled on a combination of the dog-sitting at-home business, which I struggled with at first but got much better with, and she went out and sought some part-time teaching stuff (this is before the barn). We fought about money. She felt it was unfair she was doing more. I tried to take things off her plate. I offered to completely take over the dog-sitting arrangements. I tried to do so and I kept us booked full at our maximum capacity, but it quickly wasn’t enough for her and she chose to take it back over to send even more messages and pictures and blamed me for not doing enough. Not sending tons of messages and pictures and being really over the top with it was something she had a lot of uncontrollable anxiety about, even though I had kept customer relations good and kept us booked at capacity. She blamed me for not doing “my job” or doing enough. I suggested she should look into a teaching gig at another small local university. She accepted the gig and hated it. I offered to grade for her. I offered to write up lesson plans for her and post them online on the course site. I offered to do everything I could to help her get through the term and take as much work as possible off her plate. She wouldn’t let me. She blamed me for “making” her take the job, where what we had was a calm reasonable discussion and mutually decided the money was worth it.

Then not long after starting work at the barn, the issue of the horse started to come up. I resisted because we couldn’t afford it. We can’t even afford the pure upkeep costs of $12,000/yr (yes, that’s what it costs to board a horse at a barn/stables). We fought about this then. At the same time, one of our regular dog-sitting clients, a puppy, found itself in need of a new home because the owners’ couldn’t handle her. Girlfriend begged and begged me to adopt her. We already had the city’s legal limit worth of dogs, and one more would be against code. And we were running a dog sitting service that was also technically against city rules. Adopting this dog put that income we needed in further jeopardy. I resisted adopting this dog because it would therefore be irresponsible. We fought about it a lot. I didn’t ask for this, but she said many times if we adopted the dog she’d give up on the horse quest. Eventually I just couldn’t take the fighting anymore so I relented. We adopted the dog. The dog is a very vocal beagle, and honestly the most likely thing that pissed off our new neighbors enough to report us to the city and get the business mostly shut down was her noisy barking in our yard. But I do love the dog and she is a part of our family now and that all ended well. The quest for the horse resumed by April.

So what is on my plate that I am struggling with is making fast enough progress on the PhD to finish by May and getting a part-time job to help us out more. I want to do these things, but it is genuinely difficult in life. I want to do these things and I try, I try to sit and focus and do work, but I also feel that the atmosphere of this relationship and this household for the last several months has become a real hinderance. I will explain more about that and how I think that has a lot to do with my failures to succeed at these two things on my plate when I give a long list of some of what has gone on in two paragraphs’ time.

At this point she is flat-out insisting on making the $27k commitment to the horse by the end of this week, and I am trying to say that it would be irresponsible of us to make that commitment right now. My position has always been that we should focus on fixing our other problems to make us both more productive and happy so that we can go get ourselves the jobs to glue together the income to where this expenditure is reasonable, and once we demonstrate that level of income is stable with a month of paychecks at that rate, then we can go horse shopping. So she can pick up a second part-time gig dog-walking and I can get my dissertation under control for a few weeks and then go get a tutoring gig and maybe in two months or so we can be in a position to spend a lot more money once we know where we are. She says she won’t wait and is going to do this with or without me.

But a lot more than just this concerns me regarding our fights and our relationship. At this point there’s no coherent narrative way to describe all the features I mean, so I will just list them. Sorry this is such a mess:

-We always discuss what I’m not doing, or what is happening that isn’t good and what I need to do to change it. She expresses a lot of frustration with me.

-She brings up and lists my shortcomings, what I’m not doing. She accuses me of being lazy. She says I am just using her. She says she doesn’t trust me. She says that I never deliver (because I have problems being as productive as I should be and I don’t currently have a part-time job in addition to trying to finish a dissertation as a full-time student probably with ADD). She says I am a slob. She says I don’t care. She says I should have finished my degree years ago. She says she will never be okay with it/me if I don’t finish. She has said before when asked that yes, she does feel like I am the one holding her back from the life she wants and that I have been for four years. She said at one point she didn’t think I would be a good father (though she doesn’t want children). She says about my struggles and my not-big-enough steps to try and move toward addressing it that “she’s been hearing that for years” and “she’s pushing me to get a move on,” “What push will it finally take to get you to see/be better?” Things like that.

-I always try to de-escalate and it doesn’t work. I try to ask to talk about this later, and she just continues with the fight now. In one of our last fights, as I asked twelve times for her to please stop. The first six times I asked were very calm, after which I increasingly felt panic and hurt set in and had less and less control until I was yelling. I have thrown objects in frustration before, which I should not have done. But I ask her to stop and she just keeps going. It is very difficult to listen to.

-I recognize and apologize for my failures and shortcomings, but we just keep discussing what I am not doing as the problem.

-She says she isn’t doing this and saying all of these things to hurt me, but is continuing on with my flaws and shortcomings and her anger about them “because they are facts” and accuses me of not wanting to deal with the truth, says it is my fault for being upset by this.

-She says I don’t do enough to get better. I do want to be better. I mentioned trying to make small steps in the right direction, like buying a book about the condition and reading it as a way of working toward accepting more therapy. She says this isn’t good enough, yells at me that I need therapy right now.

-She brings up over and over that I don’t keep my word because I struggled to make progress fast enough. I think this is undercutting and would rather she support me.

-She thinks I am wrong for seeing her cataloging my failures in every fight to talk about what I am not doing and haven’t done that means she can’t have the horse (or whatever) as her being undercutting. Says I am the one perceiving it that way. She is just “stating facts.”

-In life, I have asked that we try to encourage even small steps in the right direction as a way of building momentum to being better and taking bigger steps. She very much struggles with actually being encouraging. She responds to my reporting what good thing I did by suggesting more I could do. I need to be physically healthier, so I make something to eat healthier than usual. She suggests I take things out to make it better. I cleaned the kitchen without us discussing it, and while I understand that doesn’t deserve a medal, she commented about what wasn’t done well enough. I tried to explain that I do much better contributing and doing things for us when I feel like I am in control and not being tasked to do so as a condition of her/us being okay, to feel like I have some pride of ownership of my efforts. As soon as the kitchen got messy again, she got angry about it and admitted that she was “waiting for me to do it” and kept checking in on if I had done it yet. That kind of thing happens a lot, and it makes me feel like a child or like someone living with his boss who sets tasks and timetables, not a loving and supportive partner.

-I bought a bike to be healthy. I shopped and researched for months. I need to lose weight and be healthier. I bought a $1,200 bike on credit. I ride it some, though at times she has guilt tripped me into not going for rides because she is upset and feeling down about everything in life. I screwed up big and missed some payments. I owe some interest now. I screwed up but its a fixable amount of money. She brings it up every time we fight about the horse now as an irresponsible expenditure. It was $1,200, or less than 5% the cost of the horse and a year of care.

----END of PART 1----- I'll post the rest as a comment....

top comment:

quote:

Stop it. Stop IT. STOP IT!

Stop writing oh my goddness gracious me!!

The first part alone sent up enough red flags to make me thing this relationship is an utter dumpster fire that’s going to lead you both to utter ruin!/

there's more to it but that's the relevant bit lol

the holy poopacy
May 16, 2009

hey! check this out
Fun Shoe

pentyne posted:

It is forever and always the 15+ age gap when the older person is selfish and stubborn and throws tantrums if they don't get their way.

well what's the point of having a surrogate child you can gently caress if they won't even listen to your rules

Tempura Wizard
Sep 15, 2006

spending all
spending
spending all my time

gamingCaffeinator posted:

This guy posted ANOTHER thread about his wife 'lying' to him about 2 hours ago. He deleted it, but the bot saved it.

She's definitely intentionally doing it during these times to avoid her clearly insufferable husband. I would too. :ssh:

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

Frog Act posted:

My (32m) girlfriend (29f) struggles with mental health and is insisting on spending $27k/yr on a horse for her well-being. We make $42k/yr and are at the end of grad school. She blames me for not getting another job to afford this and says she's going to buy it anyway. [very long]



top comment:


there's more to it but that's the relevant bit lol

3879 words according to MS Word for this post and I just need 5: You are being a dumbass.

sweet thursday
Sep 16, 2012

"if we get to a point where we demonstrate a stable income that can spend half(ish) of our above-basic-costs income on the horse, that would be a responsible choice"

pentyne
Nov 7, 2012

Kuros posted:

3879 words according to MS Word for this post and I just need 5: You are being a dumbass.

Horses and boats are two of the worst financial decisions a human being can make.

Johnny Truant
Jul 22, 2008




dick wizard posted:

She was supposed to just map parameters on files that clients were sending and process them through a UI but she convinced her dummy manager to approve change access and she started scripting instead of mapping which is bad because there were strict rules in place stating that they cannot alter the data that is sent by the clients.
Anyway, she flew under the radar for a while but she was dumb and her SQL was poo poo so eventually she wound up changing a few hundred peoples emails to a single email address and all of their communications were sent there for about a week.
Now that's a bad gently caress up for any company but in this case, the emails in question were for COBRA and direct bill healthcare enrollments so it was sort of a big (legal) deal because it was a massive HIPAA breach.
Anyway that guy called the company and said, "hey I just got all of my coworkers COBRA eligibility emails." It blew up from there and within an hour I was tasked with figuring out if the client sent his email address on the file for everyone by mistake or if the changes were made internally. At first I assumed it was a client mistake but then I saw her user ID on the file processing report and got this sinking feeling that it wasn't the clients fault. Unfortunately I was right.

ohhh okay, i thought it was somehow related to the "you call my s/o MASTER" thing

DragQueenofAngmar
Dec 29, 2009

You shall not pass!

Smirking_Serpent posted:

WIBTA if I wore a black dress to Christmas after being told the dress code is red and gold?

I am very budget conscious, and also quite self conscious and often find it hard to find clothes that I think look good on me. I was in a mall the other day and I saw this pretty black dress with white dots on it on sale for a great price. I tried it on and it looked super flattering on me, which I was ecstatic about as this doesn’t happen to me often. I immediately decided I would buy the dress to wear on Christmas Day, which we are spending with my boyfriends family. Prior to this I had felt a bit anxious about what I was going to wear on this day as they always throw a huge Christmas party which to them is a big deal, so I was very happy with my find. I went home and tried the dress on for my boyfriend who agreed it looked great on me and was a nice outfit for Christmas Day. Today, we got a message in the group chat saying they had decided on a colour theme for the day which was red and gold. My boyfriend asked me what I was going to do about the dress, and I said I was still going to wear it, but I would paint my nails red and gold and maybe wear something red in my hair. He got a bit awkward and said that it’s probably better if I tried to find something better to wear that fits the colour scheme as they take their Christmas parties very seriously. I personally don’t think it’s a big deal, and the red and gold accessories would be enough. We can’t come to an agreement on this. WIBTA if I wore the black dress?

Edit: just want to add a couple more points. They didn’t say the dress code was red and gold, just the theme of the day. I realise I wrote dress code in the title, my mistake. It’s also not my boyfriends actual family, just a family that’s close to him as he doesn’t have much family himself. They are wonderful lovely people who I know wouldn’t mind if I wore a black dress, it’s just whether it would be rude of me to do so.

gently caress this poo poo. you can have a party with a dress code if you want, based on level of formality, and I guess crazy people are now having weddings where you dictate the color choices of your guests which is incredibly obnoxious, but you can’t color code enforce a goddamn christmas party. who are these insufferable wasps

Tempura Wizard
Sep 15, 2006

spending all
spending
spending all my time

Frog Act posted:

My (32m) girlfriend (29f) struggles with mental health and is insisting on spending $27k/yr on a horse for her well-being. We make $42k/yr and are at the end of grad school. She blames me for not getting another job to afford this and says she's going to buy it anyway. [very long]


Food $200
Data $150
Rent $800
Bike $1200
Horse $27000
Utility $150

someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my family is dying

Beachcomber
May 21, 2007

Another day in paradise.


Slippery Tilde

sweet thursday posted:

"if we get to a point where we demonstrate a stable income that can spend half(ish) of our above-basic-costs income on the horse, that would be a responsible choice"

This is the only enjoyable part of that post.

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Clitch
Feb 26, 2002

I lived through
Donald Trump's presidency
and all I got was
this lousy virus

Beachcomber posted:

This is the only enjoyable part of that post.

You read that poo poo?

My wife wants to spend half our yearly income so she can dual-class Crazy Person.

I was good to stop there.

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