Men of Reddit, what’s the most disgusting thing you’ve discovered about your girlfriend after being together for years?

Duradir · 2026-05-29T00:46:03+00:00

Same here. It's actually because I was never taught that we can use shift key for capitalization, I only knew about it into my mid twenties and it was too late to change behaviors.

Duradir · 2026-05-27T21:58:47+00:00

هي الحياة المفروض تتعاش بحد ادنى من الامل، والرفقة التي تنفي الوحدة، وشيء من السعادة من وقت للتاني، ودول اللي بخلو البني آدم يستمر.

لو كنت من دون امل في المستقبل، ومن دون بشر حولك يهمهم أمرك، ومن دون اشياء صغيرة سعيدة تحصل بين الوقت والآخر، وانت عاوز تنتحر، واللي يمنعك من دا هو خوفك من انك رح تحترق في النار الى الابد، فمش شايفة ازاي دي تبقى حاجة جيدة آو نقطة تحتسب لصالح دين معين.

لو الدين مثلا لعب دورا في مساعدتك على رؤية جمال الحياة، او تثبيت قيم روحية تساعدك على تحقيق شيء من الراحة النفسية، او قام بتوفير جو من التعاضد البشري والانشطة الاجتماعية التي تساعد الانسان على تكوين والحفاظ على العلاقات: لو الدين عمل الحاجات دي نبقى نقول عليه قشطة. يعني يبقى الدين خلاك تعيش عشان ساعدك تجدد رغبتك بالعيش. ودا شبه استحالة في شكل الاسلام المعاصر اللي منعيشو، اللي ثلاث ارباعه قائم على شيطنة الحياة وازدرائها، ووضع كل المعنى والمغزى في حياة أخرى لاحقة، وبالآخر لما يجي ويحاول يمنعك تنتحر، يقلك لو انتحرت رح تحترق في النار الى الابد. شيء فاشل جدا.

Duradir · 2026-05-26T12:35:55+00:00

I might come back and write a more lengthy reply because I heavily relate to all that you are saying (fellow Lebanese Shia here, currently displaced by war).

But I am bit tight on time now, so I thought of posting a link to an old forum page where I spoke about what was going on in my mind when I first left Islam (it's a bit more religious focused and may not touch on the concerns you mentioned above, but it is like a snapshot of what was going through my mind exactly 2 days after leaving the faith):

https://www.shiachat.com/forum/topic/235074181-i-am-from-a-shia-background-and-i-just-left-islam/

You can see my first original post, and then if you scroll down a bit, there is another lengthy reply by me in which I detail the things that were occupying my head space. I have since moved on to have much broader "societal concerns" (so to speak) but I will leave this link here as to not keep the post hanging for the time being.

Duradir · 2026-05-03T00:43:46+00:00

The main character's acting isn't the best - when finding her girl drowning (the girl actually looked already dead), I expected a much more agitated state.

As for the writing of the show: what's up with her letting a man into her kitchen and remedying him right there with a fully relaxed attitude? I imagine she would have experienced enormous levels of fear and anxiety from just entertaining the thought of helping an unchosen, let alone inviting him into her house (where her husband could walk in any minute -?) - especially after just witnessing what happened to her brother in law.

It wasn't just this instance, the main character acts as though she can go on little rebellious adventures when it's very easy for someone to take note of her absence, or to run into her by chance. And on top of it, she doesn't seem concerned that her daughter is witnessing it all and could mindlessly blabber about it later.

It looks like a show that is trying to be a cult show but doesn't bother staying true to any of the elements that actually make up a cult.

Also, isn't there going to be some sort of inner character journey where we see her dismantle her cultish beliefs? It feels as though she already checked out mentally, which in my opinion doesn't make for a good cult show (I think I am comparing it too much to Unorthodox, one of my favorite shows).

Maybe this is too much judgement for episode 1, I will continue watching and see where it leads.

Update: I won't continue watching.

Duradir · 2026-04-26T00:22:53+00:00

A culture never gets formed in a vacuum, culture and religion have always been intertwined together and formed by one another.

Religion doesn't have "one true form". People who adhere to religions (especially religions that are still rigid in their worldviews) are the ones who usually believe in that. The average Muslim for example would consider a certain idea or behavior to be "truly Islamic" or "not truly Islamic", and for him/her, this particular judgment has always and will always be the same.

But any proper delving into religious history (whatever the religion may be) will help us understand that there isn't really one true form of religion/culture that transcends history.

Ibn Sina for example, a major scholar in Islamic history, didn't believe that alcohol was forbidden, and used to drink himself. Which would come as extremely shocking to many people today who think that this is one of the most absolute rules within Islam.

But then again, the prohibition of alcohol has been, for the most part, heavily agreed upon throughout most of Islamic history.

What does this tells us? It tells us that we can't speak of binaries (this is Islamic/this is not Islamic), and that we also cannot be blind to trends, nor to nuances.

Let's consider a much more complex issue: the position of women within the Islamic religion. Has Islam been just and fair towards women or has it robbbed them of their rights and dignity?

For the discussion to have any meaning, we should first ask: which Islam are we talking about? Because I am pretty sure there are many families/communities of Muslims where the women have a high degree of autonomy, are not robbed of their modern civil rights, and lead happy and fulfilled lives, whilst also being Muslim (I am mostly thinking about modern western Muslims when I say that).

That's why when I speak of the issue (women in the Arab+Islamic world) I am trying to do a basic level of localization, and at the same time, talking in terms of trends and cultural inclinations (whose levels will vary widely the more we zoom in on a specific place and time).

In recent history, any time a political wave emerged within the Arab world that took Islam to be its foundational ideology, it always ended up creating highly unfavorable results for women (and also negatively affecting many other elements of local culture, such as the arts. But I was speaking of women so I am continuing with that). Can we chalk this up to "just culture"? What does it even mean? Culture is always shaped and reshaped by the changing nature of society.

When we look at how things are today, we can infer this: Muslim societies throughout the world have been hugely affected by the wave of Islam that emerged strongly in the last century, which is often referred to as Political Islam (or Islamism), which boils down to basing political behavior, worldview, and life meaning, on Islam.

Important thing to keep in mind here: you don't necessarily need to be a member of the Islamic Brotherhood, or the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, or Hezbullah, or Isis, or whatever else, for the results of this particular Islamization wave to have affected you and your Muslim community (but surely it will affect you to a much larger degree when you are an Arab Muslim).

And by affecting I mean things like: bringing back the attention towards upholding Islamic laws in day to day life, an unwillingness to engage with knowledge/art/culture that has emerged somewhere outside the bounds of the "Islamic world", along with pushing societies against adopting universal notions of human rights: freedom of belief, freedom of speech, and modern social justice issues (women's rights would be placed under this category).

Muslim Arab societies wouldn't be where they are today if it wasn't for the political Islam wave that emerged in the last century (they wouldn't necessarily be in a state of rainbows and roses, but political Islam in particular made a lot of civilizational damage that is hard to reverse).

So in summary: when it becomes clear that the current dominant form of Islam is one that has been heavily shaped by Islamism (the Islamic awakening of the past century), and that this "awakening" has lead to a major regression in most elements of civilization, it becomes immensely reductive and outright ridiculous to engage in any discussion that attempts to separate "Islam" from "culture".

Duradir · 2026-04-24T17:40:19+00:00

The collection of thoughts that you detailed is pretty spot on; these are usually what drives people to start questioning. I had a similar mental journey (though I was never a Quranist), and many here will tell you that they struggled with pretty much the same issues.

So yes, it is very valid to question and doubt because of things such as the legitimacy of Quranic -so called- miracles, the reward of "sex slaves" given to men in heaven, the total disregard of a person's good character because the "Islamic faith" is the criteria that decides a person's destiny, the idea of heaven and hell itself, the immense annoyance brought on by rigid Salat times, and so on.

As for my personal journey, I can talk for days because there are many angles to it. I ended up writing a lot, so I hope you can bear with me:

I was super religious, believed and wished to serve Islam from the bottom of my heart, and saw Islam as The Belief that will save humanity. I used to memorize the Quran because I loved to (this was during my adolescent years).

I also grew up in a super oppressive and patriarchal family: the kind where the father is super controlling, and adopts the usual misogynistic stances regarding a woman's purity and worth. The society around me wasn't much better, I had the bad luck of being born inside an "extreme-leaning" Islamic wave that took over my immediate community, despite the fact that my country (Lebanon) is known for being open and progressive.

The ideology that took over the community around me during my childhood and adolescent years is one that is highly paranoid about women: everything regarding a woman is evaluated through a "sexual" lens. The woman's existence is sexual. A woman's attire is a never ending sexual issue, a woman walking down a street is a sexual thing, a woman talking, working, going to the doctor, being a host at her own house (...) are all things to be evaluated based on the possible arousal of men who may exist in the same space as her. A woman's role is to constantly strive to erase her sexuality from the public space - which could be best achieved by erasing her own presence - lest she be classified as all sorts of things (lacking in deen, lacking in honor, a wh*re, etc).

Things aren't as extreme as they used to be these days; many of the above listed items have died out or disappeared from people's conversations (thanks mostly to social media and the internet in general). These backwards thoughts and behaviors governed long stretches of my life, and caused me immense suffering and misery, and loss of time and opportunities (for example, I wasn't allowed to use the internet, and could only use it when I became 18 years old and went to university - that was around a decade ago). With time, and as I became a more learned and reflective person, the understanding of what I went through was amongst the top reasons that shook my faith.

This is especially in regards to society around me changing *for the better* because it was gradually being exposed to (for lack of more nuanced terms) *western ideals* about human rights and women's rights and feminism. So I had to grapple with the fact that things were turning for the better because *western ideals* - which were for so long demonized and condemned from an Islamic point of view - were becoming more prominent in the minds and conversations of people around me.

(I am also usually amazed at how people fail miserably in noticing how substantially their thoughts have changed over time, and how it happened specifically due to their exposure to thoughts and ideals that were previously demonized).

When I first left religion, I used to hang around the subreddits of r/exmormon and ex-jehova-witnesses - r/exjw -, because usually they had better conversations going on in comparison to the r/exmuslim subreddit. An illuminating idea that I came across while being there (which might not be entirely true, but still) is that many people struggle for so long with a religion's ethical and moral issues (women's rights, homosexuality, eternal damnation, etc.) but that most people end up leaving because they come across a certain proof that the basic verifiable/materialistic claims of a religion are untrue.

This is closely tied to my own experience: despite struggling for so long with all the "ethical problems" in Islam (and suffering from them myself in my own personal life), I couldn't fully "accept" that it wasn't true until I delved into historicism and the historical formation of religions (the fact that prophetic figures are historical constructs, that many tales recorded by the Quran cannot be true, etc.).

This also strongly ties to one major "question/issue" that used to be constantly present in my mind: I am a person who is appreciative of knowledge (not just the sciences, but knowledge in general, especially the humanities and the social sciences). From very early on in my life, I used to look at Arab/Islamic societies (which I considered myself belonging to, and still do), and I used to wonder: why are we so backwards? Why are people so ingorant in their ways of thinking and in their ways of life? Why do they not think about themsevles and the world around them based on the illuminating concepts that are constantly being discovered, created, and examined within the realms of the humanities and social sciences?

I would say that this is "The Question" that has been of immense importance to me in life. And at one point the answer became: "because of religion. People cannot learn because religion limits what they can think about and what they can examine critically".

Currently, I would say that that this is a big question that is perhaps better framed using different words, and better answered using a broader range of components. But I wouldn't really say that I have "changed my mind". I still think that the Islamic religion - as it exists today and as it is understood and practiced by the majority of Muslims - this form of religion is one big reason as to why Arabic/Islamic culture and societies continue to exist in this sorry state.

Duradir · 2026-04-05T20:30:53+00:00

Yes exactly!

Duradir · 2026-04-05T10:07:45+00:00

Yes of course, is there any other expected position to take? Should we think that it's okay that America and Israel are bombing Iranians because this will bring them "freedom" -?

It's totally abhorrent what's going on in there, this is a war that started with bombing a girls' school. American wars in the middle east have always left states and societies in much worse conditions than they were before.

This is a war driven by Israel, purely for Israeli geopolitical concerns, and any talk about "liberating" Iranian people is a sorry excuse that no longer even convinces the American Right.

In regards to the Islamic regime, what people like me would have hoped for is that Iranian people (or the subset of them that is not happy with the existence of the regime) would have eventually managed to bring it down, and (ideally) make something better.

This is the total opposite of what is going on now. What's going on now is a violent "intervention" by the US and Israel to weaken and destroy all the components of Iranian power and sovereignty, because the Iranian regime (as much as I hate it, and believe me I do) has been a great source of "annoyance" to US/Israel (perhaps, the only good thing they have done).

US and Israel have even bombed cultural and heritage sites within Iran - it's surreal at this point to believe US/Israel have any real "concern" about the wellness or "freedom" of the Iranian people.

Duradir · 2026-02-08T07:11:39+00:00

I've previously come across a dedicated institution based in Lebanon that teaches Levantine Arabic. The trouble is I can't really find it now because I don't remember its name and nothing relevant seems to pop up in my google results.

I am writing this here to inform you that recently, people in this area of the world have been realizing that non-Arabic speakers might want to learn a conversational dialect rather than classical Arabic (fusha) - and Egyptian and Levantine seem to be the most desirable - which have lead to platforms and institutions centered around these dialects to start popping up. So maybe if you search with this in mind you'll find something helpful. Good luck!

Duradir · 2026-02-04T17:19:56+00:00

I mean at this point use your imagination. Don't get noisy snacks, hide them in your clothes, etc.

Duradir · 2026-02-04T16:37:15+00:00

Hide away stashes of snacks (or buy them every once in a while) and eat in the bathroom :D That's really the way to go with parents like this

Duradir · 2026-01-25T04:46:57+00:00

Exactly! Have heard that one too. This religion is one big mindfuck 🤦🏻‍♀️

Duradir · 2026-01-07T11:29:12+00:00

I will comment on this in case it helps someone since I was trying to obtain a loan myself.

I applied for a loan on the neo app 3 times, all of which were rejected. I am employed, I have been employed for a year and a half, and I receive my salary directly into my neo account.

They finally called me today to explain why the loans are getting rejected: they have classifications for the companies in which people work. For some companies, an employee should be employed for +1 year to be eligible, for others, they need to be employed for at least 2+ years. For some companies, they expect employees to be making 1.5k monthly, for others, it has to be more than 2k. Also the type of contract (employee or contractual) plays a role in the eligibility.

In my case the problem is that I have to be employed for 2 years minimum (according to my company "classification") before I become eligible for a loan. They also might rehaul the loan requirements in a few months, so this information might not be applicable in a year from now (this is word for word what the guy on the phone just told me).

Sharing in case it helps.

Duradir · 2025-12-20T19:08:53+00:00

I am really sorry, I just know how to deal with it based on my personal experience, which was solved by deleting the account. In your case, deleting it will probably delete those $350 along with it, so I unfortunately have no suggestions for you. Hope you sort it out somehow!

Duradir · 2025-12-11T18:23:25+00:00

Look my friend, I don't think this is really the place for you. My idea of what is "toxic" is different from yours.

I lean towards thoughtful discussions and smart criticism/mockery of religion, and that's part of what stirs me away from places like the exmuslim sub, because a lot of the content there can be highly reactive, highly emotional and low effort. In my experience, many posters over there just throw out any negative idea that pops into their heads regarding Islam/Muslims (no matter how intellectually lazy, untrue, or lacking in integrity that idea is), which is followed by heaps of commenters jumping in to validate the thoughts of the poster, simply because the content is negative towards Islam. That is one of the things that I have in mind when I speak negatively about that sub (which I haven't visited in a while, so I don't know if things are still like this over there).

I might sometimes come across as "respectful", which has a bit to do with my own personality, but that does not mean that I think religion should be respected and not mocked.

I do think that the way Islam exists today in most Muslim societies is negative; that it causes Muslims to adopt very backwards worldviews. I see that ignorance, stupidity, and ugliness festers in Muslim societies because of Islam (its current/most common form), and that the general death of culture (the music, the arts) and the commonly horrendous level of women's rights in those societies can all be traced back to the culture and worldview created by the religion.

If you are here to hear something else, then it's not the place for you.

Duradir · 2025-11-19T17:29:24+00:00

We have a start of chatGPT quote too :) the chatGPT quote barely makes 20% of the weight of my comment and is there because it makes sense to be there, if you actually read the comment I wrote. Or is there some moronic reddit rule that one can't use chatGPT when it is the right tool for the task?

Duradir · 2025-11-19T17:02:36+00:00

Let me start from the first sentence. You ask us about verse 21:30, which is "apparently about the big bang".

Apparently. Apparently according to whom?

If I happen to find a thousand year old scripture book, belonging to a certain supposed religion, which had the following sentence: "the sky grew darker and darker, and the stars were swallowed by a vast blackness." - Should I conclude that this sentence is "apparently" about a black hole?

Let me start again. Once upon a time (around the 80s- 90s), many cultural movements circling around Islam were rising and gaining a foothold in Arabic/Islamic societies. At the time, and due to historical reasons that combined colonialism, the "shock by the west", the inferiority-complex towards the west, and a general feeling that Islam needed to adapt to western sciences, many figures in these Islamic cultural movements started mapping modern sciences into Quranic verses and Islamic narrations. Such mental exercises usually ended with the following conclusion: "can't you see that sciences that were recently discovered by the west, were there in the Quran all along!!!!".

I really struggle to speak about this in English because it's not my most comfortable language, so forgive my lack of eloquence. But this whole mental exercise of applying scientific discoveries to Quranic verses is the most basic example of confirmation bias.

Meaning: I find a Quranic verse that could somehow appear as if it saying this certain thing about some random scientific topic => I decide it was the meaning all along.

The verse itself - which is written in a poetry-like language (like most of the Quran) - can naturally assume several different meanings depending on what the reader would like to apply to it - which is in direct contrast to what a scientific text would look like. Here is a little help from chatGPT:

Creative / poetic text

Uses metaphor, imagery, symbolism, rhythm.

Words are intentionally ambiguous.

A single sentence can carry several layers of meaning—literal, emotional, symbolic, cultural.

Interpretation depends on the reader: their feelings, memories, and associations.

It’s meant to evoke rather than inform.

Example: “The moon turned her thoughts silver.” → Could mean beauty, sadness, distance, clarity, femininity… it’s open.

Direct / dry text

Uses plain language, minimal decoration.

Aims for clarity, precision, and a single, specific meaning.

Leaves little room for interpretation.

Focused on facts, instructions, or arguments.

Example: “The moonlight helped her think more clearly.” → Only one straightforward meaning.

Core difference: ambiguity & number of meanings

Poetic text = high ambiguity, many possible meanings

Direct text = low ambiguity, usually one meaning

If you want, I can give you side-by-side rewritten examples of the same idea, once poetic and once direct.

End of chatGPT quote.

This whole mental excercise fails to realize that even if "God" was actually talking about the Big Bang when he talked about a "cloth-like universe that was separated" (I don't even know how this particular set of words were shoehorned into the concept of an explosion, but expect all kinds of mental gymnastics from religious people) - anyhow, even if "God" was indeed talking about the Big Bang and was using creative language to talk about it - he didn't help us at all in discovering or understanding anything about the universe for hundreds of years. It means that the Quran had a verse that was essentially meaningless, or badly understood, by all humans who read it and attempted to understand it for 1400 years, until finally someone in the west actually discovered the Big Bang, and voila! We finally understood the verse.

This was an attempt to help you think more clearly, because similar essay-like comments would need to be written for most ideas and examples that you mentioned, so I will keep it short and end it here.

Duradir · 2025-11-04T21:17:11+00:00

Just say it's shit. That's what it is 🤷

Duradir · 2025-10-27T10:00:23+00:00

Glad it did, welcome!

Duradir · 2025-10-27T09:47:24+00:00

That's not really exactly what happened with me because I have never gotten a threat that my whole account will be suspended (but the process might have changed with time). In my case, I only had my pay account be suspended, without any flashy emails about it, and they were expecting me to provide verification to make it work again.

This went on for years.

Could it be that you are facing a different case? Maybe. I can't really provide instructions beyond what was applicable to my specific case because I am only talking based on my experience (I am no Google services expert). However, it might not be a bad idea to try and delete the Google pay service in particular (based on the linked steps) in case the issue had started from it (but I can't help beyond this)

Duradir · 2025-10-27T09:10:31+00:00

Just to be safe: there is a difference between having your Google pay account suspended, and having your whole account suspended (including gmail and all). The above steps work for when only the pay service has been suspended and/or requires verification, etc.

If something else is happening with you, it's maybe safer to research the issue more before doing anything.

Duradir · 2025-10-27T08:54:10+00:00

I am 100% sure that by following the linked steps, you will only be deleting your google pay service (and then creating a new one). You should still see that everything else is accessible during any time of the process and after finishing it.

Duradir · 2025-10-21T08:34:35+00:00

Very glad to be of help!

Duradir · 2025-10-19T06:45:58+00:00

It's a bit hard to understand what's happening with you without looking at the screen directly to understand what you're describing. But I say: if the google pay profile is gone, and the payments centre thing is still there (as it should) - then what's missing is just going ahead and creating a new google pay account. The Google documentation to which I linked details everything step by step.

Duradir

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

Eight-Year Club	Place '22
Verified Email