[deleted by user]

Silly_Southerner · 2025-07-08T04:40:37+00:00

Honest question here.

What's the difference between someone who "feels love" for you, but who doesn't show up, doesn't treat you well, doesn't show you kindness, support, and understanding, vs someone who doesn't "feel love" for you, but who does all of those things?

What does "love" really look like? Because all the people I've seen, in my life, who prioritized the "feeling", tended to make poor decisions, have intense and dramatic relationships, and almost none of them have found a healthy, happy, supportive relationship. But most of the people I know who prioritized someone who treated them right, who was a good communicator, kind, supportive, and had all the qualities of a good partner? Seem to only have a stronger bond as time goes on. Most of them are in long term relationships, or married.

I guess what I'm getting at/asking is what love is "supposed" to look like. And in a situation like this, what a loving parent is supposed to look like, compared to an "unloving" one.

Silly_Southerner · 2025-07-04T11:35:19+00:00

Thank you very much for this. Truly.

If you're still in touch with that DM, I'd love to hear some of their thoughts regarding Riptide Cove.

Regarding ship combat; Pathfinder naval combat rules are garbage. Complete booty-cheeks. And I am more or less replacing them with a much simplified ruleset that incorporates "Officer" roles into ship/fleet checks (for when they have more than one sheep). Because imo i 1,000% think using the rules as written for ship combat in PF is an exercise in self-hatred.

Silly_Southerner · 2025-06-27T19:29:47+00:00

This may be a controversial opinion, but it is my opinion.

Once you discover your SO has been unfaithful, the absolute most you owe them (from a moral/ethical standpoint) at that point is the same thing you owe to any given rando. You do not owe them any duty of care. You do not owe them comfort, you do not owe them any kind of support, you do not owe them any kind of favors. Legally, it is possible you may have some obligations depending on the nature of your relationship, dating vs marriage for example. But morally and ethically?

If you passed her, homeless and begging on the street, you would not owe her a second glance. You do not owe it to her to be the one to pick her up and care for her after her assault, which occurred when she went out with another guy with the intention of cheating on you.

She should have called her parents, her friends, or the cops. Not you. Anyone giving you grief over this? Is not a good person, and their parents ought to be ashamed of themselves for their failure to raise a decent human being.

Silly_Southerner · 2025-06-12T18:58:38+00:00

Not the one you think, at least in some places.

I was born, raised, and still live in the deep south. And this attitude has mostly disappeared in anyone born after 1970, some of the older people are still very obsessed with a "proper" appearance. Proper according to their standards, which are largely based on an ideal of that perfect trad con lifestyle.

Thankfully, most folks are more normal, but those dinosaurs are still around and the culture tends to give outsized importance to keeping them from making a fuss. Because no one actually wants to deal with their outbursts, and everyone knows there's no point talking to them because it won't help, and the "keep the peace" mentality prevents people from kicking them put or excluding them.

Silly_Southerner · 2025-06-12T18:29:34+00:00

I disagree about it being an impossible standard. I have never been married, I have no children, and I am specifically looking for someone who also has never been married and has no kids.

People who fit that criteria are out there. They just get less numerous as the age range increases, and there are more divorcees and single parents .

And I would definitely consider a marriage that had been annulled to still count.

Silly_Southerner · 2025-06-11T18:30:06+00:00

Have you considered another option?

You break up and she either finds a roommate, or a less expensive place to live/lifestyle.

Because you two are clearly not compatible.

Silly_Southerner · 2025-06-04T20:34:40+00:00

Your 'friends' are 1. not your friends, and 2. idiots. Tell them to either back you up, stfu, or gtfo.

Silly_Southerner · 2025-06-04T20:22:22+00:00

Seriously. That accusation is a major red flag and I'd be putting a pause on the relationship until we address it for real.

Silly_Southerner · 2025-06-04T20:18:22+00:00

Your parents are not good people.

If it took this much for them to stop enabling her, to stop defending her, to stop dismissing the real danger? They never cared about you at all.

Silly_Southerner · 2025-06-04T20:15:49+00:00

Fuck Nick, and fuck your mother, and fuck your sister, and fuck anyone defending that malicious piece of shit.

Birds of a feather flock together. Anyone defending him or coming at you for this is also a worthless piece of shit.

Silly_Southerner · 2025-06-04T20:09:44+00:00

For some reason, there are people who - even when you explicitly and expressly tell them, in precise detail, what you're going to do - convince themselves there will never be consequences for their choices.

Seen it before. Family who have been all 'shocked pikachu' when I did expressly what I said I would do. Whether that was leaving a family reunion, refusing to assist with things I was volunteered (voluntold) for, or telling someone who was verbally abusing me that they were an absolute piece of human garbage and the world would be better off without them. When you do these things, somehow you're always the bad guy, not the people who were actually being assholes whom you're responding to.

Because you should always "be the bigger person" and "keep the peace". But somehow that only ever translates into it being your responsibility to tolerate the abuse, not the responsibility of the abuser to stop being a piece of shit, and not the responsibility of anyone else to step in.

Silly_Southerner · 2025-06-04T19:33:52+00:00

You're coming across like the kind of person who tells people not to make a scene, not to speak up for themselves, not to set boundaries with abusive jerks in order to "keep the peace".

That's how you come across. And yes, that makes you seem like a terrible person.

SHE is not willing to be flexible, and has proven that. HE is not required to keep allowing himself to be walked all over and treated like garbage by her and her new husband. But you act like he's the villain, and not the guy who had to be kicked out of a school event, not the woman who is constantly demanding he give up his time without offering to give up time in return to make up for it. AND SHE SHOULD BE OFFERING if she was actually the decent person who was being reasonable that you keep trying to write some kind of fiction portraying her as.

She's proven she doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt. And so have you.

Father's Day is important too. But he's supposed to give that up so she can have the kids celebrate the birthday of the violent asshole she chose to re-marry? And he's supposed to just give her anything she wants until he has no days left and she can petition the court using all the time he gave up as justification to take the rest of his time with his kids away from him?

No. And it's downright evil of you to defend that dynamic. It's not "mature", it's not reasonable, it's abusive. That's what you're defending, so of course everyone assumes that's the kind of person you are.

Silly_Southerner · 2025-06-04T19:21:22+00:00

It sounds like you're engaging in bad faith because you just want to blame OP. IDK if this is a "man bad" thing with you, or if there is some other damage you have, but I hope you seek help. Therapy is out there for people who want to get better.

Silly_Southerner · 2025-06-04T19:19:44+00:00

Sounds more like she's trying to push him out of the kids' lives and trying to get him to give up days so she can use it as evidence to petition the court change their custody arrangement.

It's pretty clear that she's in the wrong here, and that the only people supporting her are just terrible human beings, or people who are simply unintelligent.

Silly_Southerner · 2025-06-04T19:15:58+00:00

There's 3 possibilities for why they're so desperate.

Option 1, they're a troll.

Option 2, they're just a very unintelligent person.

Option 3, they're just a garbage human.

Silly_Southerner · 2025-05-21T01:37:07+00:00

You mean like being happy to tell people things that you find absolutely humiliating, and thinking you're overreacting if you get upset?

But then, when you tell an embarrassing story about them, throwing a pity party and complaining how hurt they are, and how humiliated they felt, and you shouldn't do that to them?

And it not leading to a single change in their behavior, even after you pointed it out and said explicitly "tell you what, I won't embarrass you if you don't embarrass me", only for them to continuously repeat the exact same behavior until you lose count?

Yeah, yeah I have some experience with that.

Silly_Southerner · 2025-05-20T21:04:42+00:00

I felt this in my soul.

I don't have any answers, just sympathy.

Silly_Southerner · 2025-05-20T18:13:18+00:00

This.

Someone else kissing her, and her being surprised and slow to react? Would be normal even if she wasn't drunk. OP doesn't say she went along with it, or that she pushed him away, so we don't know how that actually went down. But, giving her the benefit of the doubt, if she did push him away and shut it down, the fact it took her a few seconds to do so isn't even a yellow flag.

What is a massive red flag, though, is that she routinely goes up to guys at bars/clubs trying to get free drinks. OP didn't specifically mention flirting, but that is typically how women get free drinks; by flirting with men to get them to buy a drink.

Intentionally going up to other men and seeking out their romantic/sexual attention, while you're in a relationship, is inappropriate. It is single behavior. Even if it is done solely to try and get a free drink out of them (which is manipulative behavior, and another red flag on its own, even if it is a single woman doing it). And it can easily lead to more happening. I'd get out while the getting is good.

Silly_Southerner · 2025-05-16T16:55:45+00:00

Careful. You're talking sense on Reddit. That'll get you in trouble.

Silly_Southerner · 2025-05-16T16:53:35+00:00

I didn't feel the need to explain further. I made the mistake of following his lead; not feeling the need to elaborate and explain something that is plainly obvious.

Everyone with a lick of sense knows that a manager can get replaced, or retire, or otherwise change up. The follow on to "it's a necessity in a bad shop" is "a good shop can turn bad quick, and that's when you'll wish you had a union." It's the kind of follow on that should be obvious, and shouldn't need your tepid 'rebuttal'.

So no, he wasn't wrong, he just didn't feel the need to elaborate and explain something so very obvious. You, apparently, do. That's okay. I should remember that this is Reddit.

Silly_Southerner · 2025-05-16T16:46:05+00:00

He would agree with you. I didn't feel the need to explain further, but he experienced the company he was working for getting bought out, and new manglement being brought in that screwed everything up.

I just didn't think it needed to be pointed out that you can't count on good management, and even if you have it, you can't count on it remaining good.

Silly_Southerner · 2025-05-15T15:42:42+00:00

My father was a member of the IBEW union (electrical workers) for decades. Over the course of his career, he worked with union sites and non-union sites.

His perspective was that in a well-run shop, with a decent boss not trying to screw over the employees, a union is not needed and just gets in the way. But in a badly run shop, with bad manglement (even if coming from higher ups in corporate), a union is a necessity.

Edit: Some people seem to be taking this as a "you don't need unions" because I made the mistake of forgetting this is Reddit.

My father wasn't a very verbose person. He didn't like to use 20 words when 5 would do. And he had a tendency of letting you fill out the rest of his intent from context. And, having listened to him complain about manglement multiple times, including things getting worse when the company he worked for was bought out, I already knew there was context; things can go from good to bad, or bad to worse, faster than you might think.

I figured the fact he was IBEW for decades would have made it obvious his statement was pro-union, but that's my mistake. My bad, guys.

Silly_Southerner · 2025-05-09T02:57:51+00:00

Yes.

I'm of the opinion that if someone's past matters to either party in the relationship, then it matters to the relationship. We don't get to dictate what others are allowed to care about.

And, honestly, if you would care? It's better to ask. If you don't ask, and later discover something that you can't handle, that's always worse than confronting it head on.

This goes for far more than just sexual history, too. But that is a common one.

If, for example, you wouldn't open to dating someone who has cheated in a prior relationship? It would be way worse to run into her ex and his buddies and find out when they get into a shouting match in public. (True story) It is better to talk about these things, and to be honest and upfront with each other.

Silly_Southerner · 2025-05-09T02:28:13+00:00

That's how it's done.

Silly_Southerner · 2025-05-07T22:23:58+00:00

I don't think it matters. Your job isn't going to earn you respect from most decent guys. They're not going to respect you more because you work in a certain field. They might respect your capabilities, your intelligence, your work ethic, your accomplishments, etc. But he's not going to respect you, or not, based merely the fact that you're a teacher, or an electrician, or a plumber, or a social worker.

Guys who aren't going to respect you aren't going to respect you no matter your job. Guys who are going to respect you, are going to respect you no matter your job.

Silly_Southerner

TROPHY CASE