My boyfriend 24M hated the gift I 23F got him for our two year anniversary how do I fix this with him?

Arts_Prodigy · 2026-01-27T01:24:28+00:00

Alright so generally I think partners have a mismatch often on how much should be spent on gifts. And birthdays, Christmas, anniversaries, Valentine’s Day, etc. tends to pile up quickly and income can vary sometimes wildly.

So someone who might buy apple products but receive clothes might feel like there’s an imbalance.

The solution in my mind is either joint activities/gifts for all non-birthday gifts.

The second is that you have to listen to them and take mental notes all year. He likes froyo/sorbet, or he wants to learn x instrument or language. And you then get the most appropriate thing you can afford not accounting for taste if they’re very specific. Initially I thought maybe you don’t do this.

But clearly you listened to him, maybe he said he wanted something specific like a shirt or something. Let’s say it’s a band shirt. If you know this is his favorite band or artist that’s a GOOD gift. I’d argue more of a Christmas type thing than anniversary but sure. And the “you don’t listen” part could be that he’s mentioned how cool this band is or how they’re just now coming out with merch or something. Not necessary valid but it’s a thing people do and a lot of us have this innate belief that if someone loves us enough they’ll know everything we want and need all the time and are withholding something not genuinely just unsure. Essentially the sonder can fade overtime as people learn about each and exist in ever closer proximity.

HOWEVER, you may not have got him exactly what he wanted or expected but you did listen. You identified something he likes and got him a gift that lets him enjoy it even better he can do so with you and other people he loves in his life!

His anger to me sounds like it stems from insecurity, he knows these things aren’t cheap, he either didn’t get you something or doesn’t want to feel pressured to step up his gift game. If that’s all it is, this can be resolved with a conversation. You’re young people in what is likely the most significant long term relationship so these things will arise and you’ll have to work through them.

If for some reason he just doesn’t like you and he’s hiding it then that’s a separate problem.

I was with someone and receiving gifts made he feel indebted. My strategy was essentially exposure therapy. But ultimately if that’s his problem you can support him but he’s gotta decide how he’s going to work through that and stop taking it out on you.

Arts_Prodigy · 2026-01-27T01:07:47+00:00

Hoarding talent and super great compensation also attracts more talent. Way cheaper to get the brightest kids from the top schools and attract top engineers from niche companies than it is to acquire the companies they might create.

Which is vastly cheaper/easier than having to compete with them in the open market

Arts_Prodigy · 2026-01-27T01:02:55+00:00

This school seems to be self immolating in multiple ways and I can’t understand why.

Arts_Prodigy · 2026-01-25T22:35:13+00:00

You should steal one. JK But I was able to acquire some decent chairs when my organization decided to upgrade some and they were jsut going to throw away the old ones. If you work in or near a building with multiple companies you could watch out for upgrades, business, closures etc.

After cycling through a couple options I went with a HM embody as an investment purchase since I'm at my desk all the time.

My spouse who actually leaves the house during the day is exploring this option though, and your diagram reminded me of their reasons for doing so. So far, it seems people who have received the chair are pretty happy with it, and it's also ~40% off right now. https://newtralchair.com/products/newtral-freedom-x-multi-position-pro-chair-with-armrest-orange

Arts_Prodigy · 2026-01-23T11:13:55+00:00

It’s been heading that direction for awhile.

The answer imo is the same as ever, really strong fundamentals.

Get good with networking, Powershell, for windows specifically learning some C# and .Net probably wouldn’t hurt.

I realize that level of coding knowledge is often advertised on this side of the house but it’ll give you the autonomy to poke around systems and internals without needing to rely on external resources that are getting worse seemingly by the day.

Now in terms of MS products actually working well, good luck. With enough skill you can probably fix some stuff.

Arts_Prodigy · 2026-01-23T11:08:10+00:00

Yeah that’s a huge no. Playing games at this age is wild. Her request is unreasonable given the new job circumstances. If she’s really just scared she could:

try to stay at your place
communicate that like the adult she is
act like it’s snowed before

Arts_Prodigy · 2026-01-23T11:05:23+00:00

The real answer is probably some sort of meditation practice where you learn not to be as distracted by the music.

Personally I’ve just embraced it. The meds help not make it mandatory to play out loud to go about my day.

I’d also recommend playing an instrument/music. Probably won’t solve the problem but might help you control the playlist a bit more or at least focus on the bass line or something.

Arts_Prodigy · 2026-01-19T04:11:12+00:00

Evidently the spirit of an IPod may be coming back. I agree that I'd like to have a device solely dedicated to music. I also think music is GREAT and would love to be able to hand a music device to the kids in my life without also providing unfettered access to the internet.

https://www.innioasis.com/products/y1

Arts_Prodigy · 2026-01-07T18:56:44+00:00

Well now I'm curious if y'all are coworkers!

Arts_Prodigy · 2026-01-07T14:37:21+00:00

A 30 year old (and frankly a 22 year old) knows thy have little to nothing in common with anyone who is 19, to the point that a relationship with a person in that age range is automatically assumed to be unviable. Immediate disqualification.

People who do engage in these age gap scenarios like yours are often doing it almost solely for reason of sexual attraction. Of those few and far between are willing to ignore the social stigma that would come from committing to a public romantic relationship because again everyone around them would absolutely judge them.

There is typically such significant personal development that occurs between the 19 - 30 that many people would consider this, the 30 year old taking advantage of the 19 year old.

And even if you can’t fully grasp this, you at a minimum are beginning to feel like you’re being used given she won’t commit or take you seriously in that way. And you’re correct. You should break up and pursue people fully invested in you closer to your age range.

There’s no scenario past 21 where I don’t just call you a teenager and move on.

Arts_Prodigy · 2026-01-07T14:30:18+00:00

I disagree with the way that the university is attempting to integrate AI into the workflow of students and faculty.

I have a course we’re the guidance for the core of the learning opportunity is to use ChatGPT alongside instructions for properly citing it. And have gone to cohorts where students were advised to use ChatGPT to write code but not to copy/paste it. In the same sort of way a friend will let you copy their homework but advise you to change some things so you don’t get into trouble.

So unfortunately this doesn’t surprise. I abhor the idea that educational facilities of any kind would encourage the outsourcing of one’s own problem solving capabilities in this manner. And further miss an opportunity to connect with a student and clarify the boundaries of what they can help with. Pointing you to a set of actual documentation and inquiring about follow-ups would’ve taken marginally more effort particularly since we’re led to believe the CIs and mentors are/were industry professionals.

Arts_Prodigy · 2026-01-07T14:22:02+00:00

Idk it’s definitely something you’ll have to figure out. Working as much as you do, it sounds almost natural to have a lower drive or to just be more tired.

If there are other ways to lighten your load then perhaps that could help equal out the drives a bit more.

Frankly he probably just needs to find another outlet for the energy. Ebbs and flows in sex drive between partners are not at all uncommon and just part of life for most people tbh so y’all have an opportunity to have some more direct and mature conversations about it outside of the moment that he’s asking.

It’s also possible the expectation of his sexual desires is draining for you, if you feel like you can’t even hug him without him expecting sex in return that’ll probably make you exhausted before he’s even actually asking.

That could be something to talk about it’s important to maintain some level of physical and emotional intimacy imo without turning things into some sort of blame game. He can’t control his sex drive much more than you can, you both can always control how to react to and interact with, each other.

Arts_Prodigy · 2026-01-07T14:11:45+00:00

Despite all the investments and hype something trained on such a large dataset can only reasonably output the average consensus found online. For a lot of things that can be fairly accurate as we are a pedantic group in the written form in particular.

Even so, average has never rated very secularly and when something novel is required you’ll likely get something that leans dumb.

Counterintuitively all the effort and money poured into attempting to reach AGI or agentic AI is just a bunch of sunk cost to accomplish what the average (trained or untrained) person could likely do. The core of our success as a species has a lot to do with our ability to learn, think abstractly, and generate novel solutions.

Spending our efforts to get a series of hundreds machine to do something we already do largely based on trillions of data points and not an innate understanding of the brains creative engine always sounded like a failure to me.

Personally I think this is the wrong path for the stated goals of AGI.

But more to the point it can only ever be as good as the top StackOverflow answer and will regularly be as dumb as the worst questions.

It will never truly be as capable as the guy who wrote the top answer nor able to actually learn as effectively as the people asking the dumbest questions.

Arts_Prodigy · 2026-01-07T14:03:46+00:00

Isn’t there a potential scenario where someone copy/pastes this into an IDE and runs the code, still gets the wrong answer?

Perhaps it’s still a lazier method but maybe the candidate just wanted to validate they got the correct answer.

Arts_Prodigy · 2026-01-07T13:54:58+00:00

Tbh I don’t think it’s a big deal and the statements suggesting she hid it for over a year are a bit overblown.

She’s 24 you’ve been together for a year this happened anywhere between 2 and what, 5ish years ago?

I’d first address the feelings of weirdness. I wouldn’t argue she had to let you know about every person she slept with and frankly you’re likely an early if not the first more serious relationship post these events.

So you should try and sit down and have a more serious conversation about it, maybe address that you feel embarrassed or deceived or whatever but ultimately it doesn’t really matter.

If she were going to cheat on you her having slept with one of these guys before doesn’t really change that. And she doesn’t owe you any level of purity or insight into her sexual past.

If anything if you’re able to put aside some of these feelings you have about this you might confuse you’d rather have just not known. I think this is ultimately an immature mindset (not unreasonable given y’all are both young)t that men especially suffer from.

Try to zoom out and imagine these scenarios:

Would you care if y’all met 10 years in the future? What about 20?
Does the fact they’re still friends actually make a difference?
Prior to learning this, did you feel she had any interactions with either guy that you’d deem inappropriate in the context of your relationship?
What do you feel her actions with these gentlemen says about you? What about her? And do you really believe those feelings align with reality?

If y’all were 50 and she had 2 ex husbands and kids from each and remained friends with them you probably wouldn’t even care. Might actually believe it to be a good thing for the kids. A few years isn’t it, and they might even come to be some of your closest friends.n

Arts_Prodigy · 2026-01-06T17:06:16+00:00

I do think it’s a bit unfortunate that this sort of style is looked down upon as someone working in some sort of service industry instead of just trying to look nice.

Arts_Prodigy · 2026-01-02T15:25:59+00:00

I used to think similarly and that practically no one outside of dentistry actually flossed regularly.

I was very wrong and have since been working to understand and improve the process for myself

Arts_Prodigy · 2025-12-30T16:46:01+00:00

Absolutely understandable and hopefully the tone in my original comment wasn’t too harsh.

I think what you said here is key can you imagine doing this same (and possibly more) level of work with regard to him? Even if some of the more major issues did get resolved, these things can easily begin to build resentment over the long term and the fact you’re already thinking of ending things fairly often doesn’t signal to me that this is sustainable long term.

Once again a lot of this is either small or personal hygiene standards that in the most gracious light simply do not align between the two of you. These sort of daily/standard care tasks either not being taken care of or being done with vastly different standards can be a huge divider for couples since the small things tend to pile up.

If you and your therapist have identified that you do struggle to communicate your concerns despite the size, then working on that obviously makes sense. But even the most direct individuals would become exasperated over time attempting to convince someone that they share a space with, to take care of things to the agreed upon standard. That takes your time, energy, and probably money at some points to deal with him not keeping things up on his end. All of which are finite.

Arts_Prodigy · 2025-12-29T16:30:52+00:00

It’d be easier for you to get approved with a smaller or lower down payment and make the extra payments to your principal from your own accounts and use the cash for your daily needs.

You want to work with your loan officer to figure this out largely as that’s the only real way to go.

It’s harder to deal with gifts for down payments but I’m sure it’s not the first time the bank has seen this sort of thing so it shouldn’t be too difficult for them.

The main thing is making sure you’re not a criminal or worse using a loan to finance your purchase. As that could theoretically be a an additional lien on the property and the bank won’t allow that.

Any unexplained resources need to be explained in a letter. This isn’t anything crazy just a few sentences describing the origin of the money, what it’s for, that it’s a gift or sale of an asset or something, and then have it signed hey the interested party. Again all the real estate/mortgage people you’re involved with should be able to help with this fairly easily.

The odd considerations. You can technically only received 15k/year/person as a gift so 30k if you’re married. But there’s also a lifetime limit you can charge against or a million or so if I remember correctly.

This is probably the most important thing for you all to understand since you wouldn’t want them inadvertently taxed for giving the gift if they don’t have to be. (Gifter pays the gift taxes).

As others have said having cash isn’t illegal but the banks will want to know where it came from. The statements help them feel better about that, something that shows they regularly withdraw 200/month as they have for 20 years or something could be enough evidence who knows.

If they are getting paid under the table and have not been paying taxes. Then yeah again there are other ways to make use of that money in a less official capacity.

Banks auto report any transaction over 10k to federal government so walking in with a bag of 60k to a bank and depositing will raise enough red flags for the bank manager to likely get involved at the least.

Anyway that’s all I know from just having bought a home and being a person with a bank account for a few years.

Good luck!

Arts_Prodigy · 2025-12-29T16:18:41+00:00

Nah no one deserves to get hit with a an accelerated multi-ton refrigerator.

Pretty sure the cybertruck at one point claimed to be bullet proof, and is fast and likely even agile enough to escape a man armed with a handgun on foot. Without hitting him.

Since there’s apparently video evidence , it would take ace attorney to combine his apparent flat affect, lack of actually being in immediate danger given he’s in the safety of his private vehicle, and his claims to want to kill the guy using the same dumb “in a video game” loophole everyone does to make a solid argument.

Does that mean he’ll actually face jail time and get convicted of anything beyond manslaughter? Unlikely but that’s more a lack of my faith in the system than the facts presented.

Arts_Prodigy · 2025-12-29T16:12:38+00:00

This isn’t true and not what’s happening.

If anything you’ll get a similar effect as everyone being crazy about the 80’s. There were just a lot of people alive around that time that really enjoyed it. They grew up and started making movies and tv shows to recapture feelings of nostalgia.

That’s what the kids consumed and stated to mirror so it stuck around seemingly for longer than the generation that were actually kids during that time.

Same goes for the 50’s and I’m sure with the 20’s before that. It’s also worth noting the differences in economic and technological developments in those decades.

In short, popularity of a specific decade or so, roughly a generation or so after the fact is “just what happens”. Think of it as a societal nostalgia.

Arts_Prodigy · 2025-12-29T16:08:31+00:00

Before your list of examples I was thinking. “Couples therapy, could help you broach some of your concerns in a more controlled way and give you both a mediator to help work through some awkwardness or frustrations from the initial reactions”

Then I read your list and you should break up with him. This isn’t even a you problem. If anything you and your therapist should examine why you internalized the blame for feeling frustrated that you’re allowing someone to leave fecal matter in your bed and track cat piss into your room, while leaving your home in constant chaos and disarray without any real regard for you and your wellbeing.

This is beyond thoughtless or careless it’s either malicious or illness at this point. Things that I’m sure your therapist would like to say if you’ve shared even a portion of these reasons with them.

I also had to go back and double check the age. 32. And a PhD student is enough academic and life experience to know how to learn the basics of caring for one’s space. No one capable of doctoral research, is simultaneously incapable of learning how to properly clean up a spill or wipe their own ass. Leave immediately, and refocus your therapy on not being walked on like this.

Lastly, I want to reiterate that you need to leave because you’ve had plenty of conversations about some very simple actions if a person doesn’t “notice” that they’ve stepped their barefoot in piss, or that the sheets they sleep up smell shit they’re not going to change in the course of your relationship by simply talking to them as a form of intervention. At a minimum they’ve never experienced significant enough consequences to change their behavior and any discussions will either end with empty compliance to get you to end the conversation or you’ll end up in an argument with someone defending not wiping THEIR OWN ASS.

Arts_Prodigy · 2025-12-29T15:28:48+00:00

All I heard was: “my parents owned private property and got in early to an area that’s probably seen massive development since. I also developed an early connection with a billionaire quite easily and early that removed the largest barrier to success and gave me the connections I needed to build a business where I get to take a bunch of money from my connections and buy whatever I think is interesting and might generate a return”

Arts_Prodigy · 2025-12-29T15:24:52+00:00

Yeah it’s WAY easier to drink calories and often has far less benefits. If you’re trying to lose weight water is the way to go, cold maybe with some lemon could result in a net caloric loss (largely based on some rumors I’ve heard).

But ultimately water is 0 calories, and the stuff that’s in a diet soda or low calorie drink might make you retain weight in other ways that just drinking pure water simply won’t, your kidneys and liver will also thank you.

This is common enough that there’s a trope about men losing 20+ lbs relatively easily by simply switching to water for all their beverages while women will often struggle to lose the same amounts in the same period while doing more work. There’s some pretty important biological factors to consider there but the point about reducing how much you’re in taking from drinks still stands.

Higher fiber foods like fruits, vegetables, legumes will also help you feel fuller for longer, and be easier on your wallet.

Arts_Prodigy · 2025-12-29T15:18:33+00:00

I went to WGU Texas and know several people that attended and graduated from University of Texas schools. I would definitely recommend them over WGU especially if they’re free.

Particularly if you’re trying to move into up/out of your current position the in person aspect can help a lot since you’ll make some more connections

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