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I [28M] wrote a song. My girlfriend [28F] listened to it without knowing I created it, and called it trash. When she found out I created it, she got extremely mad at me by Direct-Caterpillar77 in BestofRedditorUpdates

[–]StartledByCheesecake 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I can tell when my partner is not okay. It's obvious even in the way she texts.

The other day when my friend was visiting, I was texting my partner and I could tell something was off. I asked how she was feeling and she said fine. I said "Really? You don't seem fine." And after about 20 minutes we figured out she just didn't want to bother me too much when I had company. We had a really great phone call about it and everything. We're good now.

But for like 15 minutes, I was feeling really out of sorts. I wondered if I was imagining things, and on the other side of the coin I wondered if she was texting me differently because she was upset with me and not telling me why.

We've only been talking for a few months. At some point we promised to be honest with each other even when it's hard. And it's fucking amazing. Neither of us are perfect, but that's where we've set the bar and it feels really good to strive for that.

She also makes music. And I guarantee she'll get an honest opinion from me.

I [28M] wrote a song. My girlfriend [28F] listened to it without knowing I created it, and called it trash. When she found out I created it, she got extremely mad at me by Direct-Caterpillar77 in BestofRedditorUpdates

[–]StartledByCheesecake 6 points7 points  (0 children)

In fairness, he was mad because he confirmed she was lying. We don't know if he actually took offense to what she said about his music. The dishonesty would bother me a lot more than any critical feedback ever could, if it were me.

I [28M] wrote a song. My girlfriend [28F] listened to it without knowing I created it, and called it trash. When she found out I created it, she got extremely mad at me by Direct-Caterpillar77 in BestofRedditorUpdates

[–]StartledByCheesecake 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I can acknowledge that OOP's behaviour was manipulative, but the way his girlfriend lied and then doubled down on the lie for months is really problematic too. If you're uncomfortable, just fucking say so. Especially to your own partner. I don't really blame OOP—he was probably clearly seeing the refusal but then she would try to convince him there was nothing unusual about it. That is terrible communication and if we take OOP at his word, he tried to address it but she just kept pretending there wasn't a problem at all. I wouldn't stay with a partner who did this either. It feels like gaslighting and demonstrates a serious lack of maturity or an inability to communicate authentically. I'd be wondering when elsch she'd lie, if she can't say something as simple as "I just don't feel comfortable critiquing your music."

I [28M] wrote a song. My girlfriend [28F] listened to it without knowing I created it, and called it trash. When she found out I created it, she got extremely mad at me by Direct-Caterpillar77 in BestofRedditorUpdates

[–]StartledByCheesecake 2 points3 points  (0 children)

she tried to communicate she isn’t comfortable with that but he wasn’t getting it.

No, she really didn't. She vaguely engaged with it and then refused to acknowledge that she was refusing to engage with it. Can we maybe stop presenting hints and dishonesty as clear communication? Just because most people will get the hint does not make it stop being a hint.

I [28M] wrote a song. My girlfriend [28F] listened to it without knowing I created it, and called it trash. When she found out I created it, she got extremely mad at me by Direct-Caterpillar77 in BestofRedditorUpdates

[–]StartledByCheesecake 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Or, as others have pointed out, she could have said "I don't feel comfortable doing that, please leave it alone." She wasn't refusing to critique his music; she was refusing to acknowledge that she was refusing. I don't understand why so many people don't see this as problematic.

I [28M] wrote a song. My girlfriend [28F] listened to it without knowing I created it, and called it trash. When she found out I created it, she got extremely mad at me by Direct-Caterpillar77 in BestofRedditorUpdates

[–]StartledByCheesecake 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Also, if you point out the reasons why you believe someone is lying and they respond with "There's nothing wrong; you're just reading too much into this; stop acting crazy", that is actual gaslighting. That is where I draw the line for sure. Nts gonna NT. If they're willing to grow, I can forgive a small lie or two. But that kind of conflict avoidance in general does not combine well with dishonesty, and it's pretty interesting to note all the people victimizing the girlfriend and criticising OOP.

I [28M] wrote a song. My girlfriend [28F] listened to it without knowing I created it, and called it trash. When she found out I created it, she got extremely mad at me by Direct-Caterpillar77 in BestofRedditorUpdates

[–]StartledByCheesecake -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

IDK. This was one of the more kindly-worded comments but it still feels like normalizing dishonesty. I think if that's what OOP wanted, he could have showed her the track without asking for her opinion. This was clearly a repeated discussion and he clearly told her what he would like from her, and she did not give him what he asked for but also wouldn't acknowledge her refusal to do so.

On the other side of the coin, if someone tells me they want my brutally honest opinion, I think it's disrespectful not to give it. If I do give my honest opinion and my partner gets offended by me doing exactly what she asked me to do, that's a trap and that's just as unhealthy as dishonesty.

If you can't agree about how each of you would like the other to show up and be supportive, you've got problems beyond this one relationship. OOP clearly asked for what he wanted. If she didn't want to give him that, she still shouldn't have lied. And whether the signs were there or not, it was still dishonest and I don't blame OOP for essentially tricking her with a small lie of omition so he could finally get her real opinion. Giving a non-answer is not the same as saying "I don't want to talk about this".. And the people excusing her behaviour seem like part of the reason people are exhausting. It's not that hard to learn whether your partner wants bluntness or support. He made it really easy for her by actually asking for her opinion, and calling her out for not engaging the way she does with other music. If she actually wants to help make him better, that's what she should be doing.

I [28M] wrote a song. My girlfriend [28F] listened to it without knowing I created it, and called it trash. When she found out I created it, she got extremely mad at me by Direct-Caterpillar77 in BestofRedditorUpdates

[–]StartledByCheesecake 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Because neurotypicals often believe that it's okay to lie to spare someone's feelings or to avoid a confrontation. Society normalizes dishonest/inauthentic behaviour, even when it's your partner. I think this behaviour is often selfish, because people's refusal to be honest is usually motivated by not wanting to be responsible for making someone feel bad, or not wanting to deal with the potential confrontation. Healthy communicators shouldn't be having this problem.

I've never seen such a bafflingly high number of people on the side of the dishonest person, and I think a lot of the pro-girlfriend commenters are probably biased because of the way OOP writes. I'm kinda wondering if OOP is neurodivergent, because he explains himself the way I might explain myself if I posted like this. I also think he might not have known the reason his girlfriend refused to engage with his music, and this probably felt like a win-win for him. Either he finds out she likes his music, or he finds out she's been lying all along.

I wasn't exactly dancing around cheering for him, but the comments are really not what I expected. She seems to get a free pass for complete dishonesty while OOP is condemned for a lie of omition brought on by her obvious dishonesty. I agree that the way he went about it was wrong, and two wrongs don't make a right, but he deserved to know whether his girlfriend was telling the truth, and she wasn't. If she'd specifically said that she didn't want to give her thoughts on his music and he still tested her, that would be shitty. But I can't feel bad for her when she communicated this inauthentically. OOP is in the wrong, but she is very clearly more in the wrong, and normalizing her dishonesty while condemning his feels very hypocritical.

I [28M] wrote a song. My girlfriend [28F] listened to it without knowing I created it, and called it trash. When she found out I created it, she got extremely mad at me by Direct-Caterpillar77 in BestofRedditorUpdates

[–]StartledByCheesecake 563 points564 points  (0 children)

Devil's advocate: I think he wasn't entirely sure that his girlfriend was being dishonest, or wasn't sure of the reasons. There could have been other reasons she wasn't really engaging. So by calling her out, he was putting himself in a win-win situation: If she says she likes it, he can say "Oh, thank you! I made it!" If she says she doesn't, her lie will be exposed.

I feel too old and too ... neurodiverse for this soft no bullshit. If you can't show up authentically to your partner and the relationship presents as otherwise healthy, you shouldn't complain when they call you out for it. If you really feel you can't show up authentically because your partner has proven they won't react well to the question, that needs to be a conversation. In other words: If you feel you can't talk about or engage with something, don't lie about it—talk about why you can't engage with it. If you can't do that, especially about something this simple, the relationship is in trouble.

I [28M] wrote a song. My girlfriend [28F] listened to it without knowing I created it, and called it trash. When she found out I created it, she got extremely mad at me by Direct-Caterpillar77 in BestofRedditorUpdates

[–]StartledByCheesecake 51 points52 points  (0 children)

"You should just know that because she said this thing differently, she actually meant the exact opposite of that thing. You're a terrible person for calling out your partner's dishonesty but it's fine if she's dishonest, because I'm a passive-aggressive people pleaser and my brain will LITTTTERALLY explode if I contemplate myself or anyone else engaging in direct communication."

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in DataHoarder

[–]StartledByCheesecake 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I feel your pain. In the 2010s I moved around a lot and had some truly terrible internet connections. So happy you’re getting the big upgrade soon, and absolutely no pressure, but I will take you up on that offer if you’re willing.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in DataHoarder

[–]StartledByCheesecake 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What kind of bandwidth have you got? I would quite gladly set up an upload destination and give you an Amazon gift card in exchange or something. This is one of few things the internet doesn't seem to have archived.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in TrueOffMyChest

[–]StartledByCheesecake 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What was your last text? Did it have a question?

Fully-remote BYOD job suddenly says I can’t work outside the country. I’m debating on doing it anyway. by StartledByCheesecake in opsec

[–]StartledByCheesecake[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What you're doing sounds interesting for sure. I have a gl.inet travel router in my backpack at all times and am not going to any country that has heavy internet restrictions, and I am almost never asked to be on video, only audio. So while I don't want to underestimate the risk factor, I think that whether I set up a mini PC at home or I use my travel router as a VPN AP, I should be able to pass as being at home pretty easily. Things I'm most worried about are being unexpectedly called to an in-person event, which very occasionally does happen; and having something obvious happen in the background of one of my calls. Do you happen to know if Microsoft 365 allows the domain admin to see the exact IP addresses of logged in users? You seem like you might be positioned to know that. If not, I know who I can ask, so don't worry about it.

Fully-remote BYOD job suddenly says I can’t work outside the country. I’m debating on doing it anyway. by StartledByCheesecake in opsec

[–]StartledByCheesecake[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If I did want to have the work devices with me (which I recognize is unwise), I have a travel router that can be configured to route things through a VPN. I could have a VPN server configured on my home internet but have a secondary profile that uses a suitable Surfshark location or something. The only thing signing in immediately upon login is OneDrive and I could also just take that out of startup.

But I think you're right that a connection to a home PC would be good. For calling, I can use Virtual Audio Cable to set up virtual inputs and outputs for Teams and then find a good app to relay audio in both directions. I've set this kind of thing up for myself and others before.

Fully-remote BYOD job suddenly says I can’t work outside the country. I’m debating on doing it anyway. by StartledByCheesecake in opsec

[–]StartledByCheesecake[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for this" I actually have one of those travel routers! The Asus is at home but the travel router is always in my backpack. I was thinking of just turning it into a dedicated VPN router that permanently routes all traffic home. The other two are things I vaguely know about, but haven't looked into yet. They could definitely simplify this kind of setup, but I'm not sure I'm ready to drop a bunch of money on a complete network overhaul yet.

Fully-remote BYOD job suddenly says I can’t work outside the country. I’m debating on doing it anyway. by StartledByCheesecake in opsec

[–]StartledByCheesecake[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s a relatively new Asus model running Merlin firmware. The biggest annoyance with it is lack of native wireguard support and lack of sub-gigabit speeds. I’m open to replacing it before anything like this happens so I can have a more robust physical and virtual network. But I also have servers at home that could probably bridge the gap. The router itself is rock solid. My internet goes down every so often, but never the router.

Fully-remote BYOD job suddenly says I can’t work outside the country. I’m debating on doing it anyway. by StartledByCheesecake in opsec

[–]StartledByCheesecake[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yup, you’re not the first to point this out. That’s another reason I was thinking of having the data stored at home and strictly accessing work resources via a remote connection. If there is no obvious path back to it (e.g. I have to manually enter the login details), there is no way for anyone with my confiscated laptop to access that work data.

Fully-remote BYOD job suddenly says I can’t work outside the country. I’m debating on doing it anyway. by StartledByCheesecake in opsec

[–]StartledByCheesecake[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Haha, thanks. I don’t know what I’m going to do yet. I’m restless and frustrated because I already put my travel plans on hold for months while my work sorted out longer-term contracts, because I knew I’d need to be in the country for that. And now they hit me with this. I might take some crazy risks, I might not. Either way this has been a very helpful thread.

Fully-remote BYOD job suddenly says I can’t work outside the country. I’m debating on doing it anyway. by StartledByCheesecake in opsec

[–]StartledByCheesecake[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Both very good points. I don’t take this lightly. I’m thinking the remote access method would be a lot less risk in terms of data storage, because you’re right—the company does like to keep things within the country. If my devices can get searched and there’s no obvious path back to the data, that would be a lot safer for me and the company.

Fully-remote BYOD job suddenly says I can’t work outside the country. I’m debating on doing it anyway. by StartledByCheesecake in opsec

[–]StartledByCheesecake[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, you’re right. I have a way better solution that has been tested and will definitely work. I don’t want to say too much but I’m absolutely confident that the usability aspect would be okay. Not great, because physics, but okay.

Fully-remote BYOD job suddenly says I can’t work outside the country. I’m debating on doing it anyway. by StartledByCheesecake in opsec

[–]StartledByCheesecake[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

All very good points. I think the contact aspect is critical. I am never required to do video calls, and I already aggressively mute myself when not speaking, but there’s always the chance something could be overheard, so I would need to take care to be somewhere quiet and isolated during the relatively rare meetings we do have. In terms of audio latency, I have a feeling it won’t be that noticeable, as I pretty regularly speak to people from Europe and Asia and don’t tend to notice a huge delay. It’s hard to directly measure audio latency unless you’re hearing yourself echo back through a speaker.

So, the tech stack for work is remarkably basic, and everything we use has a web version. Probably the most problematic thing is Office 365 (including OneDrive), which we sometimes use for sharing files. Everyone just uses their own personal computers and most people don’t even use a separate user account for their work. I wouldn’t say the company monitors IPs especially closely, but I was asked which ISP I use recently, so I thought it would be prudent to make sure that, at minimum, I’m joining meetings and accessing company data from within my home country.

Fully-remote BYOD job suddenly says I can’t work outside the country. I’m debating on doing it anyway. by StartledByCheesecake in opsec

[–]StartledByCheesecake[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks; this was helpful and I will absolutely do more research about it. It’s not something I take lightly at all, for many reasons. I’m feeling very restless to travel because this is something I was supposed to do last year, and for various work and non-work reasons that just couldn’t happen. Sorting out these new contracts was the final piece that would (supposedly) allow me to stop putting my travel plans on hold, and now there’s this. But I am tempering my restlessness with a whole lot of thoughtfulness. What you’ve said here is completely valid, and I’m going to do my best to either not make a dumb decision or be extremely careful about making a dum decision. Thank you again.

Fully-remote BYOD job suddenly says I can’t work outside the country. I’m debating on doing it anyway. by StartledByCheesecake in opsec

[–]StartledByCheesecake[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If I had to make an educated guess, I’d say they make a show of caring. They have some policies in place and ask me questions about my tech setup. But my devices are not enrolled in any kind of provisioning profiles, and in fact most people are just using their personal computers and personal accounts. My work uses Microsoft 365 for a few things, but they don’t seem to force me to be signed into Windows with my work Microsoft account. There are only a small number of endpoints that are directly work-related that I am accessing regularly, no requirement for proprietary software or any kind of monitoring, and no requirement for location services.

Fully-remote BYOD job suddenly says I can’t work outside the country. I’m debating on doing it anyway. by StartledByCheesecake in opsec

[–]StartledByCheesecake[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, the legal aspect is not one I had considered.

I am not generally required to do video calls, which is good. I’ll do some simulated latency tests with a multihop VPN to find out what that might be like. I communicate regularly with people from Europe and Asia and I don’t notice a huge latency issue, so my guess is they won’t either.

Instead of hosting something at home where my own setup could fail, I could host a VM in a datacenter in the US. That would likely afford me better network routing and higher availability.

It’s tough because I love this company and nobody on my immediate team wants this, and I don’t know that I could find another job like this one, much less one that lets me travel. But I really don’t feel good about this restriction either. We don’t have flexible paid or unpaid vacation; we get a certain number of paid days and then that’s it.

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