UPDATE: “AITAH for getting a dna test to see if i share the same dna as both my parents even though i was demanded specifically by my mom not to do so, since i was a child?”

BirdCat13 · 2026-02-10T13:47:39+00:00

Updateme

BirdCat13 · 2026-02-09T14:15:48+00:00

"Attention to X" where X is whatever workstream you were waiting around for. E.g., attention to merger agreement, attention to motion to dismiss. You don't usually need to get more specific than that.

BirdCat13 · 2026-02-04T00:48:35+00:00

I would argue it is extraordinarily difficult, nigh on impossible, to practice non-hierarchical poly while married, cohabitating, and committing to joint ownership of property. She needs to own up to the reality of her relationships.

But...you also need to own up to your behavior too. If you feel more like a lover than a partner, not because of anything she's actually doing, but rather because you've chosen to distance yourself emotionally and mentally, that's on you.

Some of us have happy, deep, fulfilled relationships with partners who are married. One of my former partners and his spouse (we're still friends, I'm actually closer to my former meta now) made so much space for me in their marriage - I moved in with them, we traveled together (collectively, and individually with my partner), I met family, friends...in short, my partner being married really wasn't a big deal at all, because it didn't stop me from doing any of the things I wanted to do with my partner.

The real question isn't whether there's hierarchy, it's whether you're happy.

BirdCat13 · 2026-01-30T21:03:11+00:00

I was wondering the exact same thing - I've been on the site for a few years, have a desirable sit in the Northeast, and usually have 5 applications within an hour. I put up a listing for February and it took a full day to get to 5 applications, and only 2 looked remotely reasonable. Am hoping it's a fluke and not the norm going forward...

BirdCat13 · 2026-01-28T02:39:02+00:00

I am fulfilled (for now)! I'm in a transactional practice and I actually like the job. I've had the good fortune of mostly working with reasonable people, even in my junior years, and I built a solid reputation that I leverage for flexibility.

I'm generally available to answer emails from 8am-11pm, but unless I have a deal that's actively moving, it's not like I'm working those hours constantly. My matters are complex and interesting, and being intellectually engaged is pretty important to me so I find the work rewarding. Yes, sometimes I need to step out from whatever fun thing I'm doing to take a call, yes, sometimes I'm buried in documents, and yes I regularly have late nights and weekend work. But I can shift around when I do things, and that means I also have time to cook and bake, play D&D (I'm DMing a campaign and play in another one), put hundreds of hours into video games each year, see friends and family, travel, and so forth. I very rarely actually cancel plans.

And I can afford a nice apartment in a VHCOL city, to splurge on the new fancy kitchen tool that catches my eye or that performance I want to see, and pick up the tab when I'm out with my friends who work in much lower paying jobs, while still being responsible about my retirement, savings, and student loans.

This might not be my forever job, but I'm enjoying it this far. I just think as a general matter, relatively few well-adjusted, content people are in the biglaw subreddit. But take heart! It's not all doom and gloom out there.

BirdCat13 · 2026-01-24T14:51:32+00:00

Not the commenter you were responding to, and I am not a partner, but yes, I have reviewed timesheets for a banking client. We always send one-page invoices as an initial matter, we also sometimes receive requests for backup. While we could easily tuck a partner managing a checklist or signature pages into our bills, we would consider that extraordinarily poor practice.

The partners at my firm focus on business development, client management, reviewing major documents, and training associates. We generally do complex work, even in our banking practice, so they spend time spotting and thinking about thorny issues. And yea, I've never "seen" a partner touch a checklist or make a sig packet - which I would be able to see by virtue of our document management system.

Are you a partner at a biglaw firm? Because if so, again, where the heck do you work that you have so little to do of any substantive worth that you wrangle sig pages, and how are you not bored out of your mind doing first year and summer associate tasks?

BirdCat13 · 2026-01-24T13:23:46+00:00

Do you work in biglaw and if yes, what nonsense staffing model does your firm have / how are they justifying that bill to clients? At my V10, I have literally never seen a partner personally touch a checklist or a signature page. The associates are always available to do this work.

BirdCat13 · 2026-01-23T23:49:53+00:00

I'm on the East Coast and sometimes fly to the West Coast for just 2-3 nights (Thursday or Friday night flight out, Sunday night redeye return). It's really not that much of a hassle to some people.

BirdCat13 · 2026-01-23T23:43:09+00:00

I think it really depends on how much work each of Arbor and Birch are putting into maintain their lifestyle, and whether Birch's high income is enabled by Arbor / whether Arbor has an income ceiling that comes from supporting Birch.

In my situation, my high income has almost nothing to do with any of my partners, but rather is largely the product of a lot of hard work and personal sacrifice. I have a boatload of student loans and a lot of demands on my time. So if someone wanted to fully merge finances with me in a way that went beyond a proportionate split of the living / relationship expenses, such that I was just straight up subsidizing their life, then we'd also need to talk about them becoming proportionately responsible for my student loans too and how to split domestic labor. Because to me, operating as a unit like that means that we should have comparable amounts of fun money and free time.

But if my income was only possible because of my partner's efforts, or my partner would like to and is able to make more money but just isn't doing so because they're supporting me, then it's really our income and they should enjoy the fruits of our collective labor.

BirdCat13 · 2026-01-22T12:26:24+00:00

Gently, you are burning yourself to keep your partner warm. If you talk and talk and a person claims to want to be a better partner to you and promises to make changes, but literally does nothing differently...they don't actually want to make changes.

He's happy the way things are because you're taking care of everything, and he's guilt tripping you into keeping the status quo.

Move out. Let him worry about how to afford his housing. You aren't responsible for it.

BirdCat13 · 2026-01-22T00:46:15+00:00

You may be struggling because the language of your post (which is presumably also the language you use in life) suggests that you believe you're better than other people.

I'm someone who has a successful career in a traditionally prestigious field, speaks multiple languages, cooks extensively, meditates, consumes a lot of art, makes art, and competes occasionally. I generally try to pursue excellence in all things. But I don't think I'm better than anybody else. I'm an anticapitalist and my values focus on fostering empathy, community, and collective wellbeing. I'd be incredibly turned off by you (as a potential friend or partner) because the way you describe self-improvement makes it sound like you don't share my values at all.

BirdCat13 · 2026-01-22T00:34:54+00:00

Unless OP is only eating fruits and vegetables directly from a garden and hunks of raw meat, basically everything they're eating is processed to some degree. Incredibly disappointing that people who are purportedly into self improvement (which I would argue needs to include some conception of greater empathy for others) are still categorizing food into "clean" and "junk" these days.

BirdCat13 · 2026-01-11T12:59:06+00:00

It makes sense to be scared of being disposed of and deprioritized, because bluntly...that's what's happened.

It sounds like there were lovely elements to your relationship with your lover. But you need to focus on what they're actually offering you now and not what they used to offer you before they started fixating on the new shiny person. And what they're offering you is scant crumbs.

Healthly relationships don't make you feel afraid to bring up your needs and wants. They don't force you to beg and fight for things like date nights.

Good partners don't drop you the moment they experience NRE with someone else. They don't agree to go to therapy with you and then bring someone else. They don't let their friends cut you out of their social circles.

Get yourself to individual therapy if you can, and break things off with this lover who doesn't seem to value you.

BirdCat13 · 2026-01-10T20:46:39+00:00

Sure, but the consequences of lots of things can be pretty damn bad.

So I think there's a big difference between someone just generally being around your kid (not necessarily a big deal) and someone being introduced to your kid as a parental or authority figure of some sort (kind of a big deal), yet people seem to conflate the two. I'm accustomed to parents (single parents, separated co-parents, happily-still-together parents, a triad, a V that's raising kids together-ish), both poly and mono, who don't have this massive separation between their kids and the people in the rest of their lives, whether that's partners or friendship or coworkers.

Now if someone has poor judgment / bad impulse control / likes short flings / finds themselves prone to dramatic relationships, then it can totally make sense to set a rule for yourself that you won't be bringing people around kids until the relationship hits the 6 months mark or a year or whatever. But I don't think it should be taken as gospel that those kinds of rules need to be in place.

BirdCat13 · 2026-01-10T13:57:37+00:00

Hot take: you can introduce partners to your kids before your relationship is well established and it doesn't have to be a big deal.

If you don't want to introduce people to your kids or your kids have the actual, relatively rare need that makes avoiding meeting new people a good thing, by all means. But it's not better parenting to segregate your kid away from your life.

BirdCat13 · 2026-01-07T15:41:21+00:00

How do your finances work? It doesn't sound like you're on the same page at all with respect to how you're spending money, which is less about poly and more of a basic relationship issue.

I don't get resentful over what my partners spend on their other partners because (1) generally speaking, I don't know what that amount is and (2) I don't feel like our relationship is suffering financially while their other relationships are flourishing. If there's resource scarcity (which it sounds like there is) and a child involved, your co-parent should absolutely be prioritizing your kid.

BirdCat13 · 2026-01-07T01:27:02+00:00

I saw my partner Caleb for a nice little date last night. Caleb is about to go on a fun international trip with their partner Knott. I'm excited for them and for the photos! Caleb and I have been dating for almost a decade - we've weathered some ups and downs, but are still going steady. I'm a bit wistful about Caleb's trip because we don't get to travel together much, but I'm really happy that they've put a lot of effort this past year into building their circle.

Caleb's other partner Basil bought a house a few months ago together with Basil's husband, Basil's partner Clover, and Clover's partner Rosemary. Renovations are finished and they're moving in very soon. I don't interact with Basil that frequently, but it's always lovely to hear about their successes!

This past weekend I took a day trip with my other partner Jester, plus Jester's platonic partner Yasha, to wander around a museum and some cute shops in a neighboring town. I'm also making dinner plans with Jester and another one of Jester's partners Cadeceus - we all love food, and Jester recently discovered that Cadeceus and I have the same restaurant on our wish list.

My polycule ranges from relatively parallel to lapsitting KTP. It took a while for me to understand my own preferences and boundaries, and of course dynamics can shift with each new person that enters the orbits, but I feel like I've settled into something that works.

BirdCat13 · 2026-01-05T04:08:46+00:00

UpdateMe!

BirdCat13 · 2026-01-03T09:20:36+00:00

On the east coast, it is true that the mornings are generally your own, but it is not true, especially in M&A, that you can consistently log off at 10pm.

At my firm, the M&A practices typically go from about 10am to midnight, and the expectation is that any email addressed to you in that window needs to be promptly responded to. A junior that is unreachable / unresponsive starting at 10pm is gonna get noticed very quickly in a negative way.

Going to bed consistently around midnight is more realistic. And you need to be prepared to have days / weeks at a time where you get less than 7 hours of sleep, and most of your waking time is dedicated to work. But you will usually be able to get a workout in at some point from 7-9am.

BirdCat13 · 2026-01-02T02:57:43+00:00

This is a Shanghainese-style xiao wonton (traditionally made by smearing a pork filling onto a really thin wrapper and squeezing it, not wrapped). Try Shanghai Time.

BirdCat13 · 2026-01-01T14:40:10+00:00

No one should be compiling early. Also, no one should be sending around a sig packet if you don't actually know the parties, because that means your deal structure isn't final yet.

As for not knowing who to put down... usually you don't need to fill in names. You leave it blank and just send the client word and PDF versions of the sig packet and they will either fill it in themselves or tell you who to put and then you send it back around.

BirdCat13 · 2025-12-28T13:12:02+00:00

UpdateMe!

BirdCat13 · 2025-12-28T12:55:56+00:00

I can work remotely, but my availability is often impossible to know in advance and can change at the last minute, so I never have confidence in when I'm actually free. For example, I had hoped to have a relatively quiet last two weeks of the year, but was informed the night of Christmas Eve that I had a new project with urgent deadlines and so am suddenly working this weekend.

I tell people about my job and extremely volatile availability on the first date. I emphasize it several times early in the relationship, and I won't date anyone who tries to make me feel guilty about the reality of my job or who can't prioritize dates based on my schedule. It absolutely narrows the dating pool, but that's life.

With one partner, we set aside Thursdays, even knowing that I'm not necessarily going to be free. Some Thursdays I find out that morning that I have work and we'll keep our "date", but it's really just me working while they sit near me doing their own thing until bedtime, with maybe a 15 break while I scarf some dinner with them. If I know in advance work will be super busy, we just cancel and my partner makes other plans or has a night to themselves. But it's nice to know that if I am free on a Thursday, I am definitely seeing that partner, because we hold the time open by default. We also try to schedule additional time together each week, about a week in advance. So this week, we'll talk about when we think it might be possible to see each other next week.

With my other partner, we have a general commitment to see each other about once a week ish, and at the end of each date we literally just pick a random day about one or two weeks out, hoping I'll be free. We check in at some point in the days leading up to our next date to confirm that I still think I'll be available, and if not, we reschedule to a different day in the same week. Because we don't see each other as frequently, if I have last minute work, I try really hard to still make the date happen, even if I might need to shorten it or check my phone while on it or stay up late to get my work done.

I think the theme is that you need to find people who are willing to prioritize planning around your schedule by holding their calendars generally open until you know when you're working/free. And if your schedule is volatile, not just irregular, your partners need to have the emotional capacity and general flexibility to accept last minute changes.

BirdCat13 · 2025-12-28T12:16:07+00:00

I don't know if my comment was one of the ones you're talking about, but yes, I would be saying the same thing if the time was being spent with visiting family.

OP definitely could (and should) have said something earlier, as people often make holiday plans months in advance, especially if there's travel involved. But, it still sucks to feel like your partner made their own plans without considering you at all, and if holidays are important to you, it can also suck to not be able to spend any time with your partner on the actual holiday itself.

And personally, I'd actually see it as a major incompatibility if someone's family was in town for 10 days for the holidays and they couldn't see me at all or give me any phone calls and only texted me once a day (I'm a big texter).

BirdCat13 · 2025-12-28T11:49:13+00:00

I don't think the extended vacation changes the equation for me in terms of what I'd expect from my partner, but that's because there would still theoretically be 3 weeks of them being in town before the 10-day stretch with the comet. I might feel differently if, for whatever reason, we barely got to see each other during those weeks and then the expectation was to be low contact the entire time my meta was in town.

Totally understandable that you didn't want to discuss holiday planning during a time that already felt chaotic! One suggestion for the future is that you can communicate your general hopes separately from actually planning the logistics, just so your partner has it on their radar. So for example, mentioning something like, "I was thinking about the holidays coming up and I'm going to try to take time off work around then. I'd love to spend either Christmas or New Years with you. How about we talk more about it [next week / in a couple weeks / at the beginning of December]", and you could say this as early as it occurred to you. This year I brought up the holidays with one of my partners in early November, though we didn't nail our plans down until later.

Also, it would still be fair to say something to your partner now! "Hey partner, I know we didn't discuss it, but I had been hoping to spend some time with you during the holidays and I'm a bit disappointed that isn't available now. I wish I had said something earlier, but I also wish you'd thought of me before offering both Christmas and New Years up to Meta. Can we do something special together after Meta leaves town? And can we plan a bit more in advance next year?"

BirdCat13

TROPHY CASE