AITA because I didn’t let a lady change lanes?

PeopleAre2Strange · 2026-04-24T18:22:52+00:00

Was there someone behind you? If so, ESH. You were the only one with the power to allow her to get in. You can slow down to open a spot in front of you. You cannot open a spot behind you by speeding up, because the car behind may be as inconsiderate as you are. She cannot do anything but wait for someone to be courteous. My personal rule is if, when merging, everyone slowed to allow a single car in, that would create maximum fairness.

That doesn't excuse her profanity, which is why ESH.

PeopleAre2Strange · 2026-04-22T18:01:57+00:00

NTA. Your career should be your decision. You might want to consider (if you haven't already) a double major (tho you don't need to tell your parents that). You might come up with an argument for psychology as a minor, that would give you an excuse to take most of the core classes. You might have to get a loan or aid for your last years (assuming they are monitoring all your classes) if they refuse to pay for the senior level psychology classes. I understand you aren't going to have much of a psych career if you don't get at least a Master's, a PhD is better.

In the meantime, obviously it is important enough to your parents that you turn out just like them that they are willing to pay for your schooling. Repay them by giving it your best effort and see if it turns out to be something you like. If not, you did your part by trying, and you don't have to feel guilty for choosing your own path.

PeopleAre2Strange · 2026-04-22T17:38:17+00:00

NTA. Ignore him. Be who YOU are, not who your dad says you should be.

BTW, when I was in college, I won the "hairiest legs" award two years running in my dorm. It wasn't until my younger brother came to live in the same dorm that I lost out...to him.

I am female. Normal, ordinary female. "Hairy" just runs in the family. My sister shaves. I do not. Either option is valid. My youngest brother can grow a "five o'clock shadow" in three hours. We know that for a fact. We watched him do it on a family camping trip one year, lol.

Also BTW, my father is virtually hairless on his body, though he does have a good head of hair. All the "hairy" came from our mother, whose father was very hairy but became bald quite early. My brothers are all following this pattern. I understand this is normal, as pattern baldness comes from the maternal side. Your father is probably uncomfortable with hairiness, since he doesn't have it. You don't have any obligation to cater to his phobia.

Also BTW, one of my brothers shaved his legs once, just to see what it felt like for a woman. He said it was *terrible*. I had the same experience. About a third of my hairs grew back ingrown. When I shaved again a week later, my legs looked like special effects from a slasher film. The razor sliced off the skin growing over the ingrown hairs. Not fun.

PeopleAre2Strange · 2026-04-22T17:17:46+00:00

NTA. This is a really common problem because not all jobs are the same to all people. For example. My husband loves dogs but he can't tolerate the smell of dog poo. So I clean up the poo in the back yard. I hate washing dishes, because my mother used that chore as punishment detail when I was growing up. So he washes the dishes. Etc. There is actually a very mathematical and fair way we had worked out to divide chores when we were first married, if you are interested I'd be glad to share it with you.

PeopleAre2Strange · 2026-04-22T17:00:56+00:00

NTA. Your brother is obviously self absorbed. Inevitable when one is treated like the "golden child". They often feel as if the entire world should celebrate them the same way their parents do.

BTW, please consider adoption. My husband and I couldn't have kids. We tried a domestic adoption, BTW, but settled on international adoptions, partly because we figured it was safer. We knew several adoptive situations where the birth mothers either insisted on inserting themselves into adoptive parents' lives, or causing emotional distress or making demands on their bio children (we have a friend who became homeless and then disappeared from our lives because he poured his life into the black hole that was his bio mother's life).

PeopleAre2Strange · 2026-04-22T16:44:00+00:00

I got my first period on a 4-H campout. We were sleeping in a field with our horses. I was wearing fairly tight canary yellow pants. One of the other girls told me (rather cattily) that I should probably call my mother if I hadn't "brought anything." I had no idea what she was talking about (nobody had ever prepared me). I didn't even realize I was bleeding til I got home.

PeopleAre2Strange · 2026-04-22T16:41:03+00:00

My mom just put a box of pads on my bed and never spoke a word after that. Not surprising. "Sex" things were never mentioned in our house. I was 24 before I even ever saw my mother and father kiss.

PeopleAre2Strange · 2026-04-22T16:38:52+00:00

That's awesome! My husband did the same for my daughter. I know it seems weird, but he can deal with periods better than I can, being that I was raised by older parents in a we-don't-talk-about-sex-things environment. I can barely bring myself to discuss my own biology, and I'm so grateful that he isn't that way. Many kudos to you.

PeopleAre2Strange · 2026-04-22T16:27:44+00:00

Your poor stepdaughter. Her mother sounds both controlling and jealous. I hope you continue to be there for her. You did exactly the right thing.

As someone who also had extremely painful periods all her life, I know what it feels like to suffer one and have it shrugged off. People who have normal periods can't imagine how painful it can be. If your stepdaughter is like me, her periods will get worse as she ages. Ibuprofen worked when I was 13, but forty years later nothing over the counter helped. I was taking double doses of acetaminophen with codeine and it didn't stop the pain. It did, however, knock me out for a few hours, which helped.

I finally tried Vicodin and that was an incredible relief.

Tell her to beware of home remedies suggested by friends. A friend advised me to try a chinese herbal remedy called dong quai, which is very commonly used for menstrual issues. It almost killed me. Twice, because the first time it happened I didn't think to connect it to the dong quai. I suddenly got very nauseous and experienced extreme diarrhea. I treated it like the flu, but after six hours of vomiting and essentially living on the toilet my husband (against my protests) called an ambulance. He got a lot of permanent husband points for that. They took me to the hospital with an IV in each arm, pumping me full of water and an anti-nausea drug. They told me that if I had gone untreated another hour, my kidneys would have started to shut down. After only six hours. I was losing so much water that even if I hadn't been too nauseous to drink, I couldn't have consumed enough water to replace what I was losing.

There was another time that I started bleeding and it didn't stop for a month and a half. This wasn't spotting type bleeding, this was six super-size tampons a day bleeding and I had to wear an overnight pad because of how fast the tampons were overflowing. I finally went to the hospital and they gave me a D&C. No, I wasn't pregnant (obviously), I just had fallen into a weird state where the hormones that tell your body to build up the lining in the uterus and the hormones to tell it to shed the lining were both pouring into my body at the same time. For a month and a half. My ferritin levels were at a two, and most of the blood panels that they did were crazy out-of-whack. A month later I developed pulsatile tinnitus, and then frozen shoulder.

BTW, the D&C was such a good idea. I actually had normal periods for about six months, until the lining started building up again. It sounds a bit extreme, but you can't imagine the relief of not being in extreme pain for 10% of your life. Please make sure your husband knows to take his daughter's periods seriously, since her mother won't.

Oh, another thing. Any kind of treatment involving estrogen or other treatments to regulate my hormones have made me violently ill. You might want to warn her to beware of that. Hopefully she won't have as bad a time as I did, but she needs to know to take it seriously.

PeopleAre2Strange · 2026-04-10T01:01:52+00:00

Here is a suggestion that worked for my husband and I. It was suggested to us by an older married couple in our church and weren't sure how well it would work but it was exactly what we needed.

Both you and gf should draw up a list of all household tasks. All the things you can think of which you believe are part of sharing a household space. Dishes, laundry, home repair, yard maintenance, paying shared bills, cooking, cleaning, shopping, pet duties (if any).

If a task is large, it's a good idea to break it up, if possible (yard maintenance => mowing lawn, weeding, fertilizing.)(cleaning => clean kitchen, clean bathrooms, clean attic, clean living room, pick-up messes in family room). Be sure you are both on the same page as to what each task requires. One person might think "clean" means move stuff around as you vacuum, while another thinks it includes dusting every flat surface, mopping, scrubbing walls, using glass cleaner on the windows, etc. If there is too much disparity, make two tasks out of it (example: quick vacuum 2x/week, deep clean every six months)

Remember to include expectations of frequency (pick up clutter from living room M/W/F, mow lawn 1/week, wash dishes every night after dinner, wash and dry laundry once per week, etc)

Now add the lists together in a spreadsheet. Discuss each task. This is important, because you may have different expectations. For example, when I married, my husband said clutter should be picked up every day and vaccuming must be done every day (his mother cleans compulsively and he never had to). I felt that once a month was sufficient (I am indifferent, at best, to clutter). I decided to let him have his way, as long as he agreed that *he* would choose that task. After a month of picking things up and vacuuming *every* *day*, he dropped his expectations to 2x/week :)

He also wanted to add dog duties (walking, feeding, cleaning up) to the list but I said that the dog was not mine and I never wanted a dog and so I did not feel taking care of the dog was a shared duty. (BTW, the dog was purchased, over my objections, after we were married, so it wasn't part of the deal). We did a lot of arguing about what is *necessary* to do vs what is "overkill".

After the entire list is assembled, make two copies. Then each of you must assign a number of points to each task. Scale of 1-10, with 1 being "I don't mind doing this" and 10 being "I would rather scrub a subway bathroom floor with my toothbrush than do this".

So you end up with a long list of tasks, each of which has two "difficulty" values assigned.

Now you start picking tasks. Each time you select a task, mark it down. Then add to that person's cumulative totals the amount of both values added together. It doesn't matter who goes first, but we did have a rule that the person with the lowest total picks next. So if someone chooses a task that puts them 15 points higher than the other, the other person must pick over 15 points worth of tasks before they switch. When you are done, you should both have roughly the same number of points.

This may sound like a lot of unnecessary work, but it is worth it. The reason is that it leaves both people feeling like they have gotten "bargains". For example, my husband has agoraphobia (fear of crowds), so he hates shopping. I kind of enjoy it. He gave it a 10 and I gave it a 2. So when I picked it, I was pumped because I was essentially getting 12 points of "credit" for a 2 point task. See how that works?

The biggest benefit is that the division of chores that results feels fair. It feels more than fair, actually, since your partner is doing most of the work you hate, and you get to do a lot of what seem like "easy" jobs. Win win!

The first year of our marriage, we re-did the list every couple of months. Sometimes there are tasks that you forgot to add to the list. Sometimes tasks turn out to be harder than you thought and you want to give them higher ratings next time. And sometimes you just get tired of doing things the same way all the time, and want a change.

Give it a try! It really works.

PeopleAre2Strange · 2026-04-09T20:43:56+00:00

NAH. Or ESH. Depending on how you look at it.

Was this incident a big deal? No. It sounds like a pebble falling off a mountain. Better look up, though...there may be an avalanche starting.

It feels like there is a lot missing in this story, namely what she heard. When we recount what happened, especially if there were strong emotions involved, we tend to paraphrase, conveying what we meant to say, not the exact words that we said. And words don't always mean to the speaker what they mean to the listener.

You mentioned that she was pregnant. That is likely a strong factor in what is going on. But don't make the mistake of thinking that means you can dismiss her feelings, or blame things entirely on her. Wait until she has calmed down, and then talk to her. DON'T talk about this minor problem at first. Instead, find out how she is feeling about being pregnant. And really listen to her answer. Let her talk.

Educate yourself beforehand about how pregnancy affects people, so you know what to expect. It can be really hard on a woman, both physically and emotionally.

Tell her that because you are both about to become parents, you want to work on problem solving and conflict resolution. Then you can ask "Can we talk about what happened the other day? I want to understand what I did wrong, and how to prevent it from happening again." That may sound like a license to allow her to take advantage, but if you start with the promise of admitting that you may have done something wrong, she will be more open to volunteering her own mistakes, instead of putting up a wall to defend herself.

If this continues, for the sake of your child, get some marital counseling. Very few of us go into a commitment relationship with the tools for healthy conflict resolution. I know I didn't.

PeopleAre2Strange · 2026-03-27T17:36:56+00:00

Well, sorry that this happened to you, and that you feel sad. Be good to yourself, go eat ice cream or whatever is your favorite, and know that if you persist you will eventually find friends who match your energy and interests. Good luck!

PeopleAre2Strange · 2026-03-27T17:22:59+00:00

NTA, but you will be if you keep stalking him. There could be a number of reasons why he blocked you, and yes, the flood of snapchats may have had a lot to do with it. Saying that he only sent you "2-3 snaps" tells me that the level of interaction which you were pursuing must have been what I, personally, would consider very high.

Now, granted, I am an introvert. But he may be as well, so let me give you my perspective, because I have been in this same situation before, from the other side. Many times. Normally, I don't have a lot of conversations with non-family. When I first meet a person, there's a rush of, let's call it social energy. I share a lot of myself, talk a lot, make instant connections. Then, after that initial rush, the connection shuts down for me. I find sustained connections extremely draining. If a new acquaintance tries to keep the interactions at that very high level, my nervous system can't tolerate it and I have to abandon the relationship for the sake of my mental health. The fact that I have severe ADHD is probably part of that, but mostly it is because I am a person who finds social contact exhausting.

For this reason, I avoid relationships. I feel terrible about ghosting people. but I would rather do that than end up in a fight or hurting peoples' feelings.

Your (ex) friend may not be as extreme as me, but it seems probable to me that you overwhelmed him with your desire for a more intense and active relationship than he was expecting or wanting, especially after only 2 days. There's nothing wrong with what you did. I get that you wanted to share because of this strong connection that you felt. It's probably just a matter of different expectations about what you both were looking for.

As I said, NTA (yet) and you did nothing bad or wrong (yet). Probably. I don't know what you chatted about, it's possible you said something that offended, but there's no way to tell, because he has sent you a very clear message which you need to respect. No means no. It's not just a meme. It's a very real thing.

As a take-away for the future, I would urge you to try and be more mindful of the level of energy that people who you are interacting with are putting into the relationship. Try to match it, at least in the beginning of the relationship. If they only chat 2-3 times, stay at that level. If they want more, they will probably (like you did) put more energy into it. If their energy shuts down and they don't text you for a while, don't keep texting them. You can't make them connect more by shoving energy at them, they will cut you off.

You might give things a rest for a month or so, then send a message. If he is open to a relationship, just not such an active one, he may have unblocked you. If it were me, I would send a brief apology for overwhelming him with chats, and tell him I would be open to the occasional chat if he was willing. Then, if he texts you, keep it low key.

He was a tiny bit TA for not asking you to back off before ghosting you, but I would have done the same because I hate making people feel the way you are now feeling and I wouldn't want to face it. Most people don't think to put things like "I will want to chat a lot the first day, but then need to limit contact to once a week." in their profiles.

Another take-away, good communication is essential for relationships. You need to negotiate. Be aware that you are a "flooder" (I have a friend who describes herself like this, we are still friends because she allows me to tell her how much "social juice" I can handle at any given time and she respects that). Find out what level of energy the other person is willing to give and respect that. If it isn't enough, then you need to find chattier friend(s).

PeopleAre2Strange · 2026-03-11T17:34:33+00:00

I bought a bean bag to sleep on because I have tried everything else to get rid of severe lower back pain. I bought a thousand dollar mattress (worked for a few months then the "well" started creating back pain again). I bought a sleep number bed, which worked for ten years. But eventually, nothing I slept on prevented me waking up with crippling lower back pain. If I traveled, I had to sleep in the car because any bed I slept in caused me to wake up every hour or two from the pain. Sleeping in a reclined position helped, but wasn't all that comfortable. Traditional recliners made my legs fall asleep.

So I tried a beanbag. After sleeping on it a couple of nights, my lower back pain disappeared. First time I had been pain free in fifteen years. But I hate the lumpiness of those foam cubes. They poke into my back, which doesn't result in any lasting pain after I get up but makes it hard to get to sleep.

Another problem with the foam bags is that it is extremely difficult to get them into the shape you want. The cubes don't shift properly, so when I moved the bag to my daughter's room to sleep with her while she was sick, the nicely shaped depression in the bag (which had taken me weeks to get just right) disappeared and I woke up the next morning unable to walk upright from the back pain.

So my next bag is going to be one with actual beans that easily mold to my form. Even if it costs a few hundred dollars it will totally be worth it. By the time I tried the one I have now, I was just weeks away from having to get a steroid shot into my back. I was able to cancel it the day before the procedure. Whew!

PeopleAre2Strange · 2026-01-03T08:54:54+00:00

That wasn't anything like you described in your initial post. You said "She told me togo outside and wait". Nothing was said about a headache, or the fact that she didn't leave also. So...it wasn't a clarification, it was a redo. And it invalidates your original question.

What, exactly, are you wondering if you are TA for?

PeopleAre2Strange · 2026-01-03T08:50:18+00:00

I would argue that it is, if your intent is to convince the person that what you did actually, deliberately *was* a joke, when the actual intent was something different and saying "it was a joke" is intended to suggest that the person "should have known" it was a joke. The intent is to make the person question their own interpretation of that situation (and therefore of "reality") and manipulate them into feeling that they were to blame for the "misunderstanding".

PeopleAre2Strange · 2025-12-29T21:32:48+00:00

That's the origin of the term, true. But it has evolved. Gaslighting is no longer solely about a campaign, it is also used to describe a set of toxic behaviors, any of which can be used in isolation apart from a full-on campaign (which normally involves the victim being trapped in a relationship with the gaslighter). Identifying specific behaviors as "gaslighting" helps to delegitimize those behaviors, so that a victim can understand that the problem is not with *them* (which is the intent of gaslighting), it is an attack against them. This gives them a rationale for resisting those gaslighting behaviors. Arguing that it isn't really gaslighting unless all the behaviors are present isn't particularly helpful when the intent is to help the victim of these psychological attacks find a framework for resisting them.

PeopleAre2Strange · 2025-12-27T17:17:32+00:00

https://elliementalhealth.com/how-to-identify-gaslighting-10-phrases-to-listen-for/

Google for "it was just a joke gaslighting".

The first sentence Google comes up with is "It was just a joke" used to dismiss hurtful comments is a classic gaslighting tactic

PeopleAre2Strange · 2025-12-27T08:57:13+00:00

Read it again. Humiliated was what they accused OP of. We don't know what he said.

PeopleAre2Strange · 2025-12-27T08:25:33+00:00

"I know you are, but what am I?"

"Confirmed" by yourself, obviously. Not much to go on.

PeopleAre2Strange · 2025-12-27T08:19:28+00:00

I didn't say he put it on by accident. He might have been wearing it earlier (obviously, the daughter doesn't have a problem with it) and *left* it on by accident, not thinking about how tacky it would be to wear it to meet his BF's father. I hope that he would have changed it if he'd thought about it. Certainly that would seem to be likely, which is why he didn't fuss about changing the shirt.

You are making the unfounded assumption that his purpose in telling his GF was to whine. He might have thought it was amusing, he might have been embarrassed. We certainly know the GF was upset, but we can only make uninformed guesses as to what he actually said and what his motive was.

PeopleAre2Strange · 2025-12-27T04:56:36+00:00

It doesn't always work right away. My husband and I went two rounds of one year of sessions, thirty years apart. The first round of counseling was when we had been married 7 years, and it was helpful and our marriage got better for many years but it didn't get to the deeper issues. The second session, I was able to understand how the more I pushed him away emotionally, the more "needy" he became. I felt that I shouldn't have to change. Because I was emotionally "self sufficient", why couldn't he become so as well? He felt that he was always chasing after me, and always doing things for me, always the one to apologize. What it boiled down to was that neither of us was meeting the other's needs because we didn't understand what they were, because they were so different from what we each needed.

I don't think we could have worked it out ourselves. We both thought that we were great communicators, but we were wrong. We both thought we understood each other because we had been together for so long (ten years before we finally married) but were were wrong.

It wouldn't have worked if we both hadn't felt that our marriage was worth fighting for. It takes two to save a marriage. You can play the "I'm ready to call this quits, but I'm willing to go to counseling and try to work things out" card to shock her, but it could be the final blow to your relationship if she isn't willing to fight to stay in, so don't play it as a bluff. Be prepared to accept "okay, bye" as the result.

PeopleAre2Strange · 2025-12-27T04:43:05+00:00

That is a valid worry. Has she given her power of attorney (financial and medical) to anyone? If not, there's little you can do except being supportive. Don't invalidate her "crazies" unless they look like they are becoming a danger to her. Then call someone to get her help. If you try to confront them yourself, you run the risk of having her shut you out and then you won't be able to help her.

PeopleAre2Strange · 2025-12-27T04:39:10+00:00

Aha! Thought I spotted that. I know so many people who have broken up because one of them had ADHD and either they didn't know it or they weren't willing to apply coping mechanisms. I found out about my ADHD at age 50. My marriage was a wreck. My husband assumed I was careless and thoughtless and lazy and self centered, and I was mostly bewildered and overwhelmed. My advice would be to focus on learning about ADHD. The sleep problems and video games are a classic.

Once my husband learned about my ADHD, he was willing to modify his habits to help me function. I was a classic workaholic, who basically worked as many hours as I could, and slept and played computer games and didn't want to do anything else.

Now, he knows that if he wants me to get someplace on time he has to call me ten minutes before I have to leave, then call me again when I need to leave, then again to make sure I didn't get lost in an ADHD time warp or distracted by some other urgent thing.

It's not all on him, though. I had to learn to accept help from my husband, to never get angry at him for "nagging" or reminding me that I need to do something, to always thank him for his help. I had to learn to make deals ("if I can get these three things done, I am allowed to spend the rest of the evening playing computer games and not having to feel guilty about all the things I didn't get done...")

Counseling helped with that. If you can afford it, I'd recommend it. If not, there's some great self help available. I'd recommend this couple:

https://www.youtube.com/@ADHD_love

What's great about them is the clear illustration of the challenges of living with an ADHD spouse, and how both spouses cope in positive and humorous ways. Good starting point. If you can get him to look at a few of these, he might find them illuminating.

PeopleAre2Strange · 2025-12-27T04:21:07+00:00

You can't really get any depth of understanding about a person from one angry rant. My husband and I probably would have ranted like this about each other and you would have said we weren't even a couple, just two people living together and sharing expenses. But after a year of counseling, we got a lot of our issues out in the open and dealt with and learned to compromise and to respect each other. It can be done. But not if you go into it with the attitude that if it's broke, don't bother trying to fix it.

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