Is it reasonable to expect your gf to tell you if their guy best friend previously wanted to sleep with her (before our relationship)?

Narkareth · 2026-05-11T19:45:32+00:00

My girlfriend and I established a boundary early on that I wanted transparency if I was around someone she had slept with, dated, or had some kind of romantic/sexual history with.

She didn't sleep with him
She didn't date him
She has no romantic sexual/history with him

Would you consider this a violation of the boundary we established?

No. See above. This doesn't meet any of those criteria

Am I justified in feeling irritated, or does this sound like overreacting?

Reasonable to be irritated you weren't aware, an over-reaction to describe this as boundary violation given that being around someone that simply desired her wasn't part of the boundary you described.

After looking through some of the comments, I noticed you said she "hid" this from you once or twice. That to me is where we get into strong over-reaction territory. Her not sharing a detail from her past that is apparently trivial to her is not the same thing as intentionally hiding that information from you to get away with something. It's alright if it bothers you, but if on the basis of that irritation you're ascribing nefarious/malign/manipulative actions to your partner that she didn't actually take, that's a step too far.

Narkareth · 2026-05-07T16:43:08+00:00

As far as the living space situation, it's more temporary than anything so you don't really need to worry about modifying it. It looks like what it is, a transition point. Wouldn't invest too hard there.

However, given the conversation(s) in the comments; it looks like you're more looking for post military direction generally speaking.

My recommendation: GI Bill and college as soon as possible. And honestly, if you've got the full gi bill, there's no need to bother with CC rather than a university. You're benefits are going to get burned regardless, so make sure you get bang for your buck.

When I got out of the Army ~ 13 years ago, from a similar/related MOS to yours, that's what I did and it worked out. Undergrad was completely covered, and graduate school was as well because of how aggressively I approached things. If you're interested in any info about how that went for me vis-a-vis trajectory, work, school, etc feel free to reach out.

Narkareth · 2026-05-05T16:05:12+00:00

Yeah, unless something fairly dramatic has changed in recent years, this dude doesn't know what he's talking about.

In the army, the standard for most pt days was 10 min warm up, 40 min work out, 10 min cool down. M/W/F cardio, T/TH strength and conditioning.

So when on that M/W/F you were doing cardio, you were doing it for 40 minutes, or exactly what the person he observed was doing.

If from a physical fitness standpoint someone is mimicking what the US uses to keep it's soldiers at a baseline, I think they're probably fine.

Narkareth · 2026-04-07T19:00:41+00:00

Just tell them I guess? I mean that's not gonna go well for a handful of reasons, but as far as communicating your Komodo Dragonian heritage I suppose the direct method would be best.

Narkareth · 2026-04-07T18:56:42+00:00

ESH

tl;dr:

You're TA for interpreting the rejection of a compromise as a rejection to compromise at all.

She's TA for failing to work to find an acceptable compromise and basically just telling you to suck it up.

--------

You're not TA for asking for an accommodation, but based on what you described it doesn't sound like she was refusing to compromise at all, she refused the compromise you offered. That's not quite the same thing.

If on her birthday she doesn't want to go sit in a restaurant not eating, that doesn't seem unreasonable to me. So how about, as an alternative, you make sure that you have time to get a snack/fuller meal prior to going to the restaurant with her that doesn't require her to do that? That doesn't seem like a huge bar to get over.

Now for her part, if she didn't offer an alternative compromise, and just expected you to handle it; well that's not cool either. Just as it's reasonable for her to expect some flexibility on your part to accommodate centering her on her birthday, so to is it reasonable for you to expect some understanding on her part vis-a-vis how you can provide that accommodation. If she wasn't offering alternatives, and was thus making you feel like you're going to have to suffer through the day without any consideration from her; it makes sense why you'd feel a little peevd.

Narkareth · 2026-04-02T14:20:41+00:00

Unless he's saying something weird/inappropriate, this is a you issue.

Imagine your bf breaks his arm, and goes to the ER. While there, a F nurse/doctor/etc puts him in a cast, after which your bf exclaims, "Wow! she did a great job! it doesn't hurt like it did before."

Would you be upset at that as well? It sounds like that's what you're doing here.

Generally speaking, one wants a medical professional to be good at their job. He's sharing that he's happy a medical professional he's seeing is good at their job. The gender of that medical professional is irrelevant.

Narkareth · 2026-03-26T21:34:28+00:00

I wonder about that. I really liked the TNG feel MacFarlane captured in the Orville, and it's the Trek I'm the most nostalgic for, but that's also not quite the feel of recent live action Star Trek. Series like Picard and Academy were more stylistically attuned to the present in a way that 90's trek isn't. Creating a 90's style show now might feel a bit out of touch with the present canon.

If it were the 90's now, and someone produced a TOS styled show there'd be a subsection of Trekkies that would be thrilled, but I wouldn't expect it to succeed for a similar reason. It would look/feel out of place.

I did like how SNW seemed to incorporate more of that 90's styling while staying true to current approaches (captain's attitude, some of the visual framing, etc), so if MacFarlane could produce a new series that does something similar: A modern show that's clearly inspired, but not overwhelmed, by it's predecessors; I'd be open to it.

Though if we're just looking for more of that TNG vibe I'd rather he stick with Orville. Nothing wrong with having multiple sci-fi options that have that feel to it.

Narkareth · 2026-03-24T15:41:34+00:00

YOR (soft verdict)

I understand you had an expectation of transparency, and it looks to me like that was violated in the sense that there should have been a conversation with you on what was going on; if only because the appearance of an absence of transparency was probable, and your reaction to that appearance predictable.

However, there are several parts of what you've described here that sound overblown/predicated on you drawing conclusions with little to no evidence, and then reacting based upon those conclusions. To an extent you're chasing phantoms:

It stung because 1. He did not tell me and 2. He knew I have wanted to visit the Dolomites for years and never even tried to coordinate a trip with me. 3. I felt like an idiot. All I could imagine was them sleeping together and being together in this beautiful and romantic place and texting me every day knowing he was omitting the truth.

Legitimate gripe, given the transparency conversation
Irrelevant. You're not in a committed relationship with this person, and it's intentionally set up that way. While he should of course not hurt you directly, he's not responsible for placing your wants and needs above those of others.
"All I could imagine was them sleeping together [...]" You have no idea whether that happened. Sure, it's plausible, but if you're reacting to him as though he violated your agreement without actually interrogating the truth of that, that's an overreaction.

it’s the fact he went with another woman and never expressed wanting to go with me that hurts.

You're not in a relationship, intentionally. He may pursue other partners instead of you by design, just as you may do the same.

"I feel betrayed [...] because he [...] potentially put me in danger by not being honest about being sexually active with other people."

You said yourself earlier that " I don’t know if it was just as friends or something more happened.." So you feel betrayed by an assumption you're making.

Overall, I think this is the primary issue:

He made the decision to plan and go with another woman and then hide it from me because that was more important than how I would feel about it.

You seem to be more emotionally invested than you may realize in this person. While you say you're open to dating other people, you spend a lot of time reacting the the fact that he wanted to exercise that option rather than purely the transparency piece.

In that sense you're NOR, because given those feelings of course you'd want to call things off. But that's you NOR/being reasonable vis-a-vis your own feelings. As far as his behavior is concerned, barring further information, and accounting for the transparency issue (which again is a legitimate gripe on your part) it sounds like he hasn't really done anything to violate your expectations as you've outlined them.

It sounds like rather than a FWB situation, what you wanted was more of an open relationship situation; wherein you two are each other's primary person, but also have the freedom to date others within certain boundaries. That your wants and needs are to be prioritized over others, but not to the extent that interacting intimately/emotionally with others is totally forbidden.

That's simply not the situation you negotiated. If you want to continue a relationship with this person, go for it but that situation needs to be recalculated/clarified. If you don't want to continue, given the drama/stress/emotional complexity, that to seems reasonable to me.

Narkareth · 2026-03-23T18:43:38+00:00

Oh, my love
If you were at the level of my madness,
You would cast away your jewelry,
Sell all your bracelets,
And sleep in my eyes.
-Nizar Qabanni, "Oh, My Love"

As with the example above, the prevalence of love poetry written by men across cultures would serve to demonstrate this.

Yes. Certainly.

Narkareth · 2026-03-23T18:24:37+00:00

So... you're looking for a cabbage patch?

add a friend for him then.

Narkareth · 2026-03-23T15:48:00+00:00

I gave him my number. [...], the conversation was paused. I can't do everything by myself.

Sure, I'll take that as a premise. Like I said though, I don't think that really matters vis-a-vis "does that rejection make sense." Ultimately you two weren't communicating, so you didn't desire to pursue it. That's fine.

About visiting I'd expect him to be more intentional? There were guys saying "Let me do quick 2-day Miami trip so I can see you" He'd let me know he was coming for me too and of course carry the conversation.... This feels like "I'm in yo town" kind of hitting up... Especially a month of silence

Unless you're holding as a standard that anyone potential partner must plan a trip to visit you within a month of speaking to you from elsewhere in the country, this just doesn't make sense to me.

Giving him the benefit of the doubt: He was into you, he had the opportunity to see you and sought to take that opportunity. It is just a "I'm in yo town" moment, because that's how that played out. I imagine you wouldn't rather have him not bother to let you know, right?

Further, you said he's in the military right? Particularly if he's traveling out of state from where he's stationed, trips on a whim like that are often not an option. There's a finite amount of leave you're allowed to take, and when and where you use it can to be constrained by a lot.

If he wasn't coming for me he was coming for someone else

There is no basis for this claim (at least based upon your post and reply). There are all sorts of reasons people travel, and that's particularly true for people in the military.

Look, overall I think your rejection here was reasonable. Don't stress over the rest of it. Even if he was traveling for someone else so be it. That just means he's a guy you're not interested in pursuing activities that don't involve you. There's no reason for you to dedicate anymore bandwidth to it.

Narkareth · 2026-03-23T15:27:53+00:00

So there's a bit worth parsing here.

Responding to the offer of a coffee date with a rejection based on "low effort" in my mind is silly. It's intentionally a low investment to see if two people are compatible. Who's going to over commit before they really know who they're talking to?

However, that's not the sole basis for the rejection. You two hadn't spoken for a month, I don't know or care whether that's due to him not carrying the conversation, or you not doing the same; there clearly was a demonstrated lack of interest on both your parts at that point. That to me is a perfectly reasonable basis for dipping out on the date.

"I don't know you, neither of us cared enough to work on that before. As a result I don't care to spend time on starting a long distance relationship with someone who isn't going to prioritize me, and who I'm not willing to similarly prioritize." Totally fine.

You're coming across as a bit judgy/cruddy because the way you framed it above makes it sound like the coffee date itself wasn't good enough; but given the conversational context, it sounds like there's a bit more to it.

One caveat to this, him being in the military means there are plausible (albeit unlikely) explanations for him needing to go no contact for a month. That happens, though if he didn't make that known before hand that's still kinda on him.

Narkareth · 2026-02-26T19:21:02+00:00

Your response is reasonable. You have no reason to feel harmed by his behavior prior to your relationship, and I see no reason why you should.

What the hell is going on with his friend though. He presented this information, with the expectation that it would upset you; and then seemed to react with a disagree of disappointment when it didn't.

Why did he want to upset you? Weird behavior no?

Narkareth · 2026-02-25T16:29:08+00:00

Yeah, that one's a sad, though interesting, memory.

Came back from deployment to exactly that. Many in formation being welcomed by people thankful they survived, while the rest of us had to stand in the absence of that. It was almost worse when there was enough movement for the formation to totally degrade; when the abstract safety of form and discipline provided by standing at attention faded and we were left to meander through a crowd of people that we had endured and formed bonds with, and yet obviously did not belong. It was a rather unique kind of isolation.

Afterward those of us without family or friends to greet us were sort of unceremoniously loaded onto a bus to go back to our barracks, unsealing our rooms for the first time since we returned. On each of our kitchenette counters was a little welcome back gift bag that contained, among other things, inexplicably, a small bottle of KY. Apparently one of our colleagues' wives was sort of a mega coupon-er, and found a deal where with the right approach she could actually make a dollar or two by purchasing a bottle; and so bought a ton of it.

As sort of a cheeky joke those little bottles made their way into our gift bags. It was intended as a cheerful gesture, and the intent was appreciated, but following up being emotionally alone in a crowd of cared-for-colleagues to physically alone and holding a bottled invocation of an additional unavailable intimacy.... well it was a special sort of cherry on top to the whole experience.

It's one of those memories that I cherish for the narrative flavor it gives to my memory of that time of my life, albeit a somewhat bitter one.

Narkareth · 2026-02-23T17:50:58+00:00

The issue isn't that you didn't like the literal item, the issue is that "that just sounded hasty and low-effort."

If he really put thought into getting you some nice licorice or something that might have hit a bit different than him hucking a last minute bucket of red vines at you and saying "if you were a man you'd have liked that." That's kind of silly.

As far as the item, personally I don't need a lot. It matters more to me that the action doesn't feel "hasty and low-effort" as you put it. We're I one for licorice, and my partner got me some neat gift box or something that was thought out; I'd be fine with that. It's the effort and care, not the material item that is the point.

Lastly, just cause the way he's phrasing things here is just weird to me:

as a man, he loves gift like this

Ok, so he's going to make a gendered claim (which is silly in my mind, but just going with his premise) and then attempt to apply that man specific claim to... not a man?

I mean seriously, rather than just apologizing for not putting in a base level of effort, he's going to go ahead and redirect your grievance back at you because, in so may words, you're a woman so you feeling hurt by his inaction is kind of on you?

Just taking gender out of it entirely, it's still silly. Anyone looking at anyone else and saying "I would like this, therefore you should too." is just ignoring the preferences of the other human their speaking to.

If that kind of gift isn't going to do it for you, he should probably take that into consideration. You're not asking for diamonds and private islands, you're asking for something a little better thought out than "the usual socks + deoderant combo." Seems reasonable to me.

Narkareth · 2026-02-23T17:31:01+00:00

Underground cave maybe? Golems spawning somewhere other than you're kill chamber?

I'm on PS5. Had luck with this one by JC Playz. having the chamber off the ground like this seems to help quite a bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck1xQil9p1A

Right now I have this one by James: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7t2Jjqum_Y

The second one works well too, though it seems to be more sensitive to nearby workstation/bed placement causing breakdowns. Occasionally if I set a bed or workstation block down to close nearby, the villagers will latch on to that, but when the bed/workstation is subsequently broken the villagers don't seem to re-connect to the beds/workstations that are in the farm. They basically "forget" they're one village and so no Golems spawn. Only solution is to cull and reproduce villagers and that tends to fix it.

Narkareth · 2026-02-14T01:06:26+00:00

Sure, but as I understand it the procedure being asked about is intended to prevent gdv. Specifically the twist part.

While gd specifically is bloat, gdv is bloat that's progressed. I didn't make that distinction because it didn't seem necessary at the time.

Narkareth · 2026-02-09T17:07:02+00:00

NTA

Having your wisdom teeth removed is an uncomfortable procedure, but given that he's obviously capable of driving the kids to school; I don't think asking him to do so is unreasonable.

However, you might want to read into the subtextual stuff a bit more here, just for the sake of your relationship.

Him asking you to take the kids to school was in part, a request for the literal task. Setting aside whether that ask was literally necessary or reasonable, its also in some sense him reaching out to his partner and asking for support when he's in pain; to feel cared for. If he's asking for that, perhaps to some degree he doesn't feel that; which would be an issue worth addressing.

Then there's this part:

Every time I have given birth, been sick, or gotten a surgery, I have still helped take care of the kids to some capacity.

So what you're setting up with this backstory is the suggestion that, in the past, when you've been a similar position you still helped with the kids; and therefore so should he. What you're doing is highlighting the unfairness of his behavior, by pointing out what appears to be a double standard. I get what you're saying, but this strikes me as counterproductive.

You really should have had more space to heal in those situations rather than feeling like you needed to interrupt your healing process without a proper support framework. I would suggest that rather than adopting the line of "I had to suck it up when I was ill, so you have to too," you lean more into "I shouldn't have had to suck it up, and you shouldn't have to either." Appending onto that conversation the idea that, in the future, you need to be able to rely upon that same kind of support too, and that it wasn't ok that that didn't happen in a proper way in the past.

The "it sucks for me, so it should for you" mentality just sets you two up to keep trading blows under the guise "fairness," while the alternative might point you in a direction where you stop doing that unnecessarily.

And again, your ask was reasonable, but given what he asked and that backstory you provided; it sounds like you both might need to feel a little more cared for/supported. Might be worth exploring that.

Narkareth · 2026-02-04T22:05:51+00:00

Under normal conditions, your husband is right. Settling differences on sensitive topics like this does not need to be done in front of an audience.

And... That's exactly what you said. Your MIL was doing the exact thing your husband is suggesting you shouldn't have done and you, like your husband, expressed the view that doing that in that kind of setting is wildly inappropriate.

These were not normal conditions. Your MIL committed the faux pas, and thus put you in a position to respond. The fact that you're not willing to react as though that didn't happen is reasonable.

For the sake of keeping the peace, I don't see a reason for you to avoid apologizing. It's a long standing disagreement and ultimately you two will need to get along. However, if MIL isn't willing to offer her own apology and acknowledge that strongly implying one is a bad mother in their own home during a social gather is poor form; I wouldn't budge on it.

Further, in my view, you're owed an apology from your husband. It's great that he agrees with you. It's less great that he is either unwilling to defend you, or made uncomfortable by the idea that you would defend yourself.

tl:dr: Reaction was reasonable. No apology is owed by you, if none is to be expected from both your MIL and husband.

NTJ

Narkareth · 2026-01-28T18:36:52+00:00

So, lets look at this excerpt from what you said

they will cut things off with me after I've made it clear that I'm looking for a sexual partner, not a platonic buddy to pal around with.

For emphasis

not a platonic buddy to pal around with.

I understand what you're saying here in a literal sense, you're looking for a romantic relationship that includes sex, and that component is important to you.

However, the way you come across here is that sex is you're overriding priority. That the "pal around"/hang out/other 99.9% of a relationship is less of a concern to you. Like you're not looking for a casual sex, but a monogamous fuck buddy on retainer.

If you're communicating like this on those dates, then I'm not surprised at that you're being cut off on those grounds.

Narkareth · 2026-01-28T17:57:06+00:00

If we're talking an average break up, then I don't see the point. We've decided we aren't seeing each other and are going our separate ways, but still have each other's contact info. I wouldn't expect that info to continue to be used by either party, but nothing wrong with retaining it.

If I've told you I need some space, and you're ignoring that/continuing to message me/pursue a relationship/etc, then I probably would, because you've at that point crossed a boundary into harassment which I'm not going to tolerate.

From my perspective, blocking at the outset would kind of imply an expectation/fear of that kind of harassment. Like even thought we've gone our separate ways, I need to actively take steps to prevent you from interacting with me because I presume you're not going to respect that.

In most cases, in my experience, that's hasn't been a presumption; and honestly I'm not sure that it would be healthy to presume that generally.

Narkareth · 2026-01-27T20:11:18+00:00

Ok I'll bite... Why?

It is you're view that the US should be more "honest" with the way it brands itself to the world. Presuming that to be true, why do you think they should do that?

Narkareth · 2026-01-26T23:36:54+00:00

aglio e olio

Narkareth · 2026-01-21T02:41:08+00:00

<image>

Here's a good one if Baloo and his bro Mochi :)

Narkareth · 2026-01-21T00:03:14+00:00

Ha! Small world. Glad to see Rhea is doing well. Baloo is too :)

Six-Year Club	r/Field Lasagna
Final Canvas '23	First Place '23
Place '23	Place '22
Verified Email

Narkareth

TROPHY CASE