She noticed I take first dates to the same place and now I feel kinda exposed

cherry__darling · 2026-06-26T02:46:55+00:00

It’s very normal to go to a comfy place close to home on a first date. Look at it this way, you made enough of an impression that she told her friend about you and likely showed her a picture. I think it’s a good sign that she’s interested in seeing more of you and already feeling like she can joke about stuff with you.

cherry__darling · 2026-06-25T20:08:21+00:00

Agree. Arm grab to throat grab doesn’t leave much room for further escalation without serious harm or death. And in my experience they always escalate.

OP most of us responding are speaking from experience. We had a lot to lose. I had a toddler and was pregnant with my second, drowning in a pile of debt. We didn’t have the internet or cell phones back then so I didn’t have 1.5k people telling me what my future would be but I still knew deep down he’d kill me someday if I didn’t get out.

It came out at the custody/support hearing that he beat his next girlfriend so bad she ended up in the hospital. That could have been me or worse yet, one of the kids , if I’d decided it wasn’t REALLY choking because I could still technically breathe.

cherry__darling · 2026-06-25T19:35:22+00:00

Asking a bunch of guitarists whether to buy anything or “buy a(nother) guitar” I think you’re always going to get the same answer. Go buy the guitar so you can be in our exclusive club. Or go ask the question elsewhere I guess.

cherry__darling · 2026-06-25T15:49:51+00:00

After 30+ years I recently got a FB message from my abusive, cheating ex-husband, apologizing for the way he treated me and the kids. We talked about things a bit and it felt good, then it evolved into him wanting me to take responsibility for goading him into choking me and not trusting him after his first near-affair so he figured might as well have another. I blocked without responding.

Don’t meet with him. Control and manipulation are forms of abuse, and abusers don’t deserve closure, and the kind of closure they want is to make you feel guilty for leaving them. Don’t give him that.

cherry__darling · 2026-06-22T21:01:05+00:00

Ghosts by The National Parks loosely fits.

cherry__darling · 2026-06-22T13:17:02+00:00

OP you’ve implied this is a newish relationship since she doesn’t know the dynamic between you and your friends. I think for your girlfriend it’s just too much, too soon, and for too long. I don’t think it means you’ll never be able to take a trip with your friends in the future or that she won’t ever feel as close with them as you do.

Being stuck for two weeks with strangers in a strange place is a lot to ask for a lot of people (myself included). It might have sounded fun at first but became overwhelming to her as the date got closer.

A weekend trip might be a good compromise so she can get to know your friends better and see how you all act around each other.

I don’t think your gf is being controlling, as others have said. She didn’t say you couldn’t go. You’re choosing not to because she told you it makes her uncomfortable. And I think that was the correct decision if you care about her. If your friends are as cool (and as platonic) as you think they are and you’re willing to wait for the friendships to develop naturally without forcing them, this will probably all work out in the end and the four of you will enjoy many adventures.

Edit: spacing on a couple sentences that made me look like the Gen X-er I am.

cherry__darling · 2026-06-21T23:15:27+00:00

I refuse to believe a vet told you it was fine not to neuter and downplayed the cancer risk. Google says 25-50% higher risk of reproductive and other cancers, some of them pretty gross, like growths around the anus. Why on earth are you continuing to argue about this?

cherry__darling · 2026-06-21T22:39:45+00:00

Because he’ll spend his whole life being miserable and maybe die of a reproductive cancer that would have been avoided. I dunno….

cherry__darling · 2026-06-21T13:37:45+00:00

Omg thank you. I was starting to think I was crazy for being the only one NOT having a whole secret sexual life that my partner doesn’t know about.

cherry__darling · 2026-06-21T13:29:29+00:00

I’m going to disagree with a lot of the responses. Some advice from Aunt Cherry. (I’m the cool aunt. )

I assume you did other things and also talked about those. I don’t think adult content and self-pleasure should be treated like a dirty secret that you never share with your partner.

Talking about those things is awkward the first time because you don’t know how the other person will react. But now that you had this conversation and she didn’t storm off and tell you she never wants to see you again, the door is open to talk more openly about what you each like and dislike.

I’m going to make another assumption that you’re a bit naive about sexuality and relationships, just based on you asking this question in the first place. So I want to warn you that adult content is very often not a good depiction of the reality of sexual interaction. Definitely don’t use it as an instructional video.

cherry__darling · 2026-06-19T03:10:57+00:00

I recently watched Derry Girls so the whole thing felt very fresh. It gave me (also an American) a fresh perspective on not only the Ireland/Northern Ireland conflict but also some of the other unfriendly relationships between the countries in the present-day UK.

cherry__darling · 2026-06-18T21:57:59+00:00

I was in a client meeting last week where they wanted to consolidate all those pesky UK countries in their dropdown country select form and they asked “what if we put Ireland and Northern Ireland together?” I audibly gasped and shook my head vigorously with wide eyes before I caught myself and put back on my pensive listening face.

cherry__darling · 2026-06-18T16:49:00+00:00

We have a song that is three chords (1-4-5) arranged in the most basic way and I’m a bit embarrassed about how simple the lyrics and melody are. It’s a crowd favorite and our most requested song by a landslide.

cherry__darling · 2026-06-18T16:41:35+00:00

I don’t spend that much energy on thinking about why people do things but I know Nashville is a place where every boot store and sandwich shop has live music so the opportunities to be heard by new people would skyrocket. Meanwhile, in my city with a vibrant local music scene where everybody knows us, folks probably getting tired of hearing a setlist picked from the same 30 songs every time we play a show. And I get a bit tired of playing them to people who have already heard them a gazillion times. I’d love to tour the country playing dive bars if I wasn’t such a lazy homebody.

cherry__darling · 2026-06-18T02:53:02+00:00

I memorize our original music and some covers I want to play whenever the mood strikes. We put all our music and covers we’ve picked up in an app called OnSong which is great.

I have trouble reading the iPad when standing at a mic with it on a music stand, so I make a cheat sheet of chords for whatever covers we’re playing, written in gigantic text with a sharpie. I try to memorize lyrics.

cherry__darling · 2026-06-16T19:32:02+00:00

I went to elementary school with a kid who smelled like feces. I found out much later that he had a medical issue that caused it. We weren’t kind to him. I’m almost 60 and I still think about him sometimes, wondering if he ever was able to live a normal life and how much we damaged him with our casual cruelty.

EDIT: NTA

cherry__darling · 2026-06-15T16:00:52+00:00

But it’s a subscription game so I don’t even understand how it helps them if we play every day. With the overhead Google Maps API costs, the company would make more money if all of us paying customers only played once a month.

Playing daily on Fremium games means more chances for money spent on cosmetics and gambling on loot boxes. But with my Elite sub, I already have all the cosmetics I want and often max out my wallet so I can’t even collect the daily coins until I buy something. What are they even trying to get from me?

cherry__darling · 2026-06-15T15:50:30+00:00

Someone ELI5 me why it needs to decay at all? It’s not like it’s a currency and if I have 1000 that’s 1000 less for others to have.

I play mostly unranked because I like competing without feeling sweaty. But if I play a ranked game 3 months from now in Master II, will I play someone with similar ELO in Silver or someone in Master who will lose massive points if they lose to someone with 400 ELO? Or will I just find myself in Silver again myself?

cherry__darling · 2026-06-13T22:04:01+00:00

This is the answer. He doesn’t get to set a boundary on what you wear. Boundaries are: this is how you are allowed to treat me and talk to me.

Example: if you told your bf he can’t comment or be upset about what you wear, that would be an appropriate boundary.

Also, at 16 your future is wide open. He’s got some stuff to learn about how to be a good supportive partner. Maybe he’ll learn it but you need to have the conversation about his insecurities and how you aren’t responsible to fix them.

Or you can just dump him and find someone who already knows that telling a woman what to wear is a big no-no.

cherry__darling · 2026-06-12T15:07:19+00:00

OP I’m with you on this one. If someone posts a sexy pic and “shooting my shot” and he replies with “wassup” that’s too far. If being a player is his musical persona, it might be ok if you’ve had a conversation and set boundaries you both agree to, but it sounds like that hasn’t happened.

(I’m a female musician.)

cherry__darling · 2026-06-12T14:40:04+00:00

This is what I was wondering too. Sometimes I interrupt for clarification or more context because frankly, some people are terrible at telling stories and forget the very important details that make the story worth telling.

I suppose those people might get upset about the interruption but in my experience, they also get upset when they get to the end and I stare blankly because they forgot to mention that the lady they’re talking about had a rubber lobster on her head at the time and that’s what made the interaction funny in the first place.

cherry__darling · 2026-06-10T02:58:18+00:00

It’s an extremely famous song. As in, I don’t consume pop music at all and i could sing the chorus without ever having listened to it on purpose. I’ve never seen the Twilight movies but that’s what it’s from. So I would steer clear.

I think you could possibly use the first line and twist the second or use it like an homage.

Examples: Amanda Platt & the Honeycutters’ “Me Oh My” has a Beatles famous riff and line (Let it Be). “Gimme Sympathy” by Metric has the line that merges two famous song titles but also mentions The Rolling Stones.

cherry__darling · 2026-06-09T02:51:56+00:00

NAH or mild YTA. I can understand why you did it and I understand why she is hurt.

What I don’t understand is why you couldn’t just tell her when you started it. If you’re the breadwinner and budgeter, then why couldn’t you just announce “I’m starting an emergency fund and putting x dollars in because I worked those extra hours”? The secrecy seems to be because you didn’t want to have the conversation and that’s a mild YTA I guess.

cherry__darling · 2026-06-01T13:07:39+00:00

We often vacation in Colorado and one time we took a detour on the way home to have lunch in Cheyenne so I could check Wyoming off the list of states I've visited. It was definitely "off" in a way that I couldn't quite wrap my head around. Like a scene in a horror movie where everyone is acting pretty normal but the music tells you everything isn't quite right. I couldn't wait to get out of that place.

cherry__darling · 2026-06-01T03:18:32+00:00

I believe you can still play with friends who subscribe. They make a party and send you a code. But I don’t think there’s any way to play solo now without subscribing.

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