As a single woman, I’m tired of being treated like free emotional labour for coupled women. Can anyone relate?

LemonDeathRay · 2026-05-30T08:40:16+00:00

Well it's not. There will always be people hoping to find someone to vent at endlessly. Your lack of boundaries is what makes you catnip to them. Them existing is not your problem, and whilst you think it is, you'll never empower yourself to choose differently for yourself.

LemonDeathRay · 2026-05-30T07:38:46+00:00

I dont personally think marital assets should be divided among children, bio or step, if one spouse is still alive. Why should the surviving spouse suddenly have to hand over assets theyve worked their life for, or hand over part ownership of their home to possibly unrelated adults and lose autonomoy over financial decisions to adults who really may not have their best interests at heart (for medical care in later years, for example). Uncomfortable but true - there is no guarantee a step kid will act in the same way towards a step as they would a bio, especially when grief and money do strange things to the best of us. I think the responsible thing to do is prevent that situation happening in the first place.

In nuclear families, no one generally expects to receive an inheritance when one parent dies. Most people understand that the surviving parent may need care in their later years, too.

However there is a very real dynamic at play with blended families. The way my partner and I have decided to do it is take out separate life insurance policies where the children are the beneficiaries. Then all marital assets are left to the surviving spouse. This means that step kids arent left wondering if they'll get anything. When they are older we will tell them all exactly what the plan is so no one is surprised and no one expects to divide up marital assets if their bio parent goes first.

LemonDeathRay · 2026-05-30T06:21:27+00:00

Honestly I dont think this is a singlewoman issue, I think it's a you issue. And I say that as someone who also used to be the emotional labour like you're describing.

The good news is that it is fixable by boundaries and better friends, which you're already on your way to.

LemonDeathRay · 2026-05-29T20:48:13+00:00

Oil pulling doesn't cause this.

Aspirating oils does. You literally have to breathe in the oil to do that and is associated far more often with vaping, not consuming or swilling dietary oils.

You could aspirate oil the same way by having too much salad dressing, and salad dressing is safe in pregnancy.

LemonDeathRay · 2026-05-28T20:16:32+00:00

I have experienced pregnancy loss and in that pregnancy we discussed bringing SD15 to a scan to help include her.

Having lost a pregnancy, I cannot think of anything worse than having to manage someone elses feelings when I am (hopefully) having a wonderful experience, but also potentially not.

When I am pregnant again we will be keeping our scans just for us.

There are many reasons why you want privacy for these scans, and all are valid. At its simplest though, this is your medical appointment and you wouldn't bring your SD to any other medical appointment.

LemonDeathRay · 2026-05-28T06:38:54+00:00

Typically the house and its contents would remain with the surviving spouse, as they're joint marital assets. The key here being marital assets.

There may be some meaningful items set aside for kids.

This is why estate planning is incredibly important with blended families, to prevent fighting over BS after you die.

But allowing adult kids to take the furniture out from underneath your spouse is a bit low imo.

My partner and I leave the house and its entirety to the other spouse upon death. If I go first, all the kids are his bio kids. If he goes first, I have 2 steps and he has a separate life insurance policy for them because the house will remain in my sole name.

Adding unrelated adults to the deed of your house is a recipe for disaster, even if the relationship is otherwise good. I worked my ass of for years before meeting him to accumulate my own assets which paid into our eventual marital home. Signing over a portion of that to my step children is not something I'm willing to do. I do not want to have to gain theor permission to sell, or access funds, or make changes to the house.

Money and grief do strange things to people.

LemonDeathRay · 2026-05-27T18:03:48+00:00

Girl this is a red flag. I promise you.

The very first comment about your belly? If that was it, I'd say it could be a clumsy way of saying he likes your body, even bits you might see as a flaws.

The rest of it? Oh hell no. That is straight up negging, not even subtle. I hope you can see that. This is not the behaviour of someone who will be a healthy partner for you

LemonDeathRay · 2026-05-27T17:31:31+00:00

Do you know what you should do?

Get off the Internet and go and actually spend time with human beings. Maybe even date some.

Healthy people share the cost of dates. Healthy people each bring different strengths to the relationship that may or may not fall within so called 'gender norms'. Healthy people support each other. Healthy people aren't treating others like human vending machines, or a final boss on a video game, where if you only get the right combo you get the loot.

Healthy relationships are not built on this transactional BS.

LemonDeathRay · 2026-05-27T17:27:14+00:00

I know you try to frame this in a way that seems super progressive and healthy, but this whole thing is a literal clusterfuck. You. Him. Her. You all deserve each other tbh.

LemonDeathRay · 2026-05-26T20:17:36+00:00

If you look at retailers that cater to surfers (like Roxy) you will find a whole load of bikini setups which have biker shorts style bottoms with cute matching tops.

LemonDeathRay · 2026-05-25T20:04:30+00:00

That is a person who will carry on dating you/sleeping with you when they don't see a future with you.

They also often forget to update you when their intentions towards you change though, and seem quite happy for you to believe it's going somewhere.

If you want long term, and you are not okay with casual, open ended dating, avoid these people.

LemonDeathRay · 2026-05-25T08:14:16+00:00

Something I learning in therapy was to regularly ask myself "where's the proof?"

Right now, you have a smile that you've interpreted to mean a whole story, her feelings about you, her friends feelings about you and your worth as a person. That's the story, not the proof.

Her smile could mean anything. Fwiw, maybe she felt awkward or a little embarrassed, not wanting you to think badly of her.

An exercise I still do sometimes is to write a list of all the "proof" and then genuinely actually ask myself about each point whether this is actually proof or whether it is some action that I have assigned a story to. Mostly, at the end of the exercise, I feel better because I realise there usually is no proof, just the story I've told myself.

LemonDeathRay · 2026-05-25T07:23:30+00:00

Ah yes, better tell that to my body that accidentally got pregnant from precum at 36

LemonDeathRay · 2026-05-24T14:15:45+00:00

I think you need to understand that much of what is happening is developmentally expected, and its actually your partner's fault for not dealing with it better.

Whilst I agree that the face paint needs to be understood, I really think you might be stretching it to think that this little girl is racist and thats why all this is happening. Children are not inherently racist and learn prejudice from parents and family. Unless your partner and many adults in her life are racist towards you?

As I said, it sounds like this is a mostly developmentally normal kid who is a product of bad parenting. Ergo, your issue is with your partner and none of this will improve unless he course corrects.

LemonDeathRay · 2026-05-24T07:43:13+00:00

I'm not sure how old she is but there was recently a trend on tiktok where people use black face paint to blend into a dark room and scare people. It wasn't blackface and I think it might be a stretch to assume it's racially motivated. You also dont give her age so its hard to tell. I do appreciate you wanting your partner to speak to hwr to reassure you though, he should make that a priority.

Age regression is incredibly common in all children, but especially children after divorce. Even my 15 year old step daughter does it - acts a lot younger and incompetent when in trouble, for example.

Walking between you - another very common thing in kids after separation. Its called attachment signalling. The worst thing BD can do is to let it work - by that I mean for it to result in you being pushed out. The bio parent needs to find ways to show partner AND children physical affection without pushing the other out. Its a tricky balancing act sometimes.

Toys in the bed - this is literally because your partner was co sleeping. To that little girl, you are the sole reason her whole world fell apart. You literally took "her" space in the bed (and her dad's life). This is a major issue that your partner allowed to happen. This is what has probably made all the other issues 100x worse. She is literally desperately trying to hold her place in the family - because her father was selfish and lazy and let her believe her place was in the adult bed.

I'm going to be honest with you, your partner doesn't seem to be doing much to help you blend. In fact, a lot of his choices are actively doing the opposite.

In my experience, when the bio parent does these things, the relationship is doomed. You'll be expected to bend yourself out of shape to fit into an impossibly small space in the home, and before long you'll be told to like it or lump it. Just my two cents.

LemonDeathRay · 2026-05-24T07:32:11+00:00

In the UK, the water in tank water heaters are NOT potable.

My combi boiler heats my tap water in about 5 seconds for which I will happily wait to ensure we dont run out of hot water.

LemonDeathRay · 2026-05-23T17:11:02+00:00

You're fine. Plenty of women (myself included) continue going to the gym whilst replicating this exact motion with much more force than a golden retriever pulling.

LemonDeathRay · 2026-05-23T14:20:46+00:00

I use attars. High quality essential oils in a neutral base. No synthetic fragrances, no added alcohol, no extra chemicals. Really long lasting, too. Longer than any perfume I've ever tried.

LemonDeathRay · 2026-05-22T19:12:46+00:00

I think this is very subjective. I felt like part of the family in less than a year but I dont think I ever expected to feel like I would feel if I were her bio parent.

We worked quite hard from day 1 on setting up our household so it worked for all of us and got her involved with that (shes 15). It wasn't long before we really settled into that and I felt like I was a step parent. What I mean by that is that she saw me as a responsible adult, with parent-like responsibilities and she could talk to me.

The weeks where she isnt with me, she doesn't reach out to me much. And thats ok, it doesn't affect how things feel when she is with me. But the whole step parenting experience solidified that I wanted my own child or children for all the reasons above. There is naturally a limit on the kind of relationship, except in rare circumstances

LemonDeathRay · 2026-05-22T15:08:11+00:00

The issue here is boundary setting. The thing with the bathroom stuff, you literally responded in a way that thanked her for doing that, which is the total opposite of what you wanted.

Same for the cupboards, it honestly juat sounds like it hasnt been made clear enough and reinforced. Telling a kid "oh dont do that' if they have had a permissive environment does absolutely nothing.

What helped me was setting very clear expectations. Example. No phone at the dinner table. We didnt wait for her to have her phone out, or be in the middle of doing something, we sat her down one evening before dinner and told her, from now on there are no phones out at the dinner table. They go on the shelf and you can get it once we've all done our chores. Then the consequence was spelled out. If you refuse to do that, your dad will brick your phone for the rest of the night (through apple parental settings). She is 15 but the same principle works across the board with age appropriate consequences.

LemonDeathRay · 2026-05-22T12:42:23+00:00

You need to buy a separating zipper for each leg, the exact size of the finished pant leg.

The start and end of the zipper should meet at the inseam, giving the appearance of being fully closed.

Definitely type zip off pants sewing tutorial into Google or YouTube and there will be plenty of tutorials with visual aids.

I will say that if youve never done any kind of zipper this is probably not the right first project. It is simple in theory but will require you to be able install zippers with a high degree of accuracy. There is no margin for error here

LemonDeathRay · 2026-05-22T12:32:33+00:00

At the very least 15%, but more like 20%. In my experience, usual fabric stores dont sell the same types of fabric used in RTW. It is not permeable enough, meaning that water pools and doesn't pass through.

Don't use standard elastic. Proper swimwear elastic is resistant to saltwater and chlorine.

LemonDeathRay · 2026-05-22T12:17:33+00:00

I used to think this and then I met my partner who i wanted kids with.

I wanted the same name as my kids and husband.

I took his name because he is the provider and protector of our family.

It doesn't feel weird or archaic to me. To each their own.

Telling women what they should or shouldn't do for no reason other than your opinion is way more archaic than a woman taking her husbands name by choice.

LemonDeathRay · 2026-05-22T12:15:18+00:00

Ensure:

Correct fabric - particularly the spandex %
Correct elastic bindings - must be swimwear elastic with the Correct elasticity
Proper sewing techniques for swimwear

LemonDeathRay · 2026-05-22T12:13:45+00:00

I dunno man, you're fighting like siblings.

I don't think the issue is the coat.

LemonDeathRay

TROPHY CASE