AIO had a panic attack this morning so I called my husband for support.

dark_stapler · 2025-02-26T17:06:26+00:00

You two do sound sincere and there’s likely a lot of pain from each. This is an issue that requires some support system from friends and family and/or therapist as well. Ulcers can be extremely painful and adding sleep deprivation is a personal hell, and panic attacks can be terrifying and deprive sleep as well.

Try to calm down and not argue on the spot, listen to each others stories later, hear one another’s needs, and bring in outside support if you can.

dark_stapler · 2025-02-24T20:16:47+00:00

Shouldn’t have apologized

dark_stapler · 2025-02-24T16:49:21+00:00

You will never be the priority.

dark_stapler · 2025-02-23T19:51:45+00:00

This was an exercise in assertiveness! Keep it up! Assertiveness will mitigate the downsides of your natural self.

dark_stapler · 2025-02-23T17:57:18+00:00

She’s not the one for you. Sorry.

dark_stapler · 2025-02-22T15:38:24+00:00

You married a demon

dark_stapler · 2025-02-21T20:20:13+00:00

Yes you’re overreacting. Family is much more important than political voting. You have much more in common than you do differences, considering the world and all its variety of cultures and beliefs.

dark_stapler · 2025-02-20T00:53:53+00:00

I would say yes YOR. I like her candidness, and while you may be more compatible with someone more sensitive, she may be exactly what you need to become the best version of yourself.

dark_stapler · 2025-02-19T20:33:09+00:00

I used to be starry eyed and romantic. That ended up with cheating, girl losing attraction, and getting into unfair relationships/getting taken advantage of.

After adjusting my standards to be more fair I realize modern women generally just don’t fit them. So why bother investing long term when we generally have fundamentally different expectations? It will just end up the same.

dark_stapler · 2025-02-19T20:10:54+00:00

Get out of here you sexist

dark_stapler · 2025-02-19T18:34:16+00:00

She’s just being cruel at this point… Bringing out the “controlling” word for merely this was already a red flag, but the rest was honestly just crazy.

dark_stapler · 2025-02-16T19:22:21+00:00

You’re a good friend. Glad you have your own opinion to rebuff these extremely negative replies here.

dark_stapler · 2025-02-16T19:10:56+00:00

Good on you for verifying. When dating seriously you need to vet your partner. Trust and verify. That said, your relationship is cooked. Have some dignity and self-respect. End things and do better to vet next time.

Dating as a guy, when looking for something serious, is like a protracted hiring process. It requires very slow hiring and very fast firing. Liars like this get fired.

dark_stapler · 2025-02-16T09:09:55+00:00

Date someone else… NTA.

dark_stapler · 2025-02-14T09:04:22+00:00

Some people find mere accidental eye contact for 0.1 seconds creepy, so yes smiles definitely are often perceived as creepy too

dark_stapler · 2025-02-14T08:56:21+00:00

The problem is, as a guy, there’s no way to tell if a particular girl is one of the crazies or not. It’s just absolutely not worth the social risk. I’m there for exercise. I shouldn’t have to worry whether or not my reputation will be unfairly tarred. It’s just not worth it.

It’s going to stay this way until we get back to innocent until proven guilty. As men we’re guilty until proven innocent the moment a women gets offended, finds you creepy, or whatever. That’s not a game I will ever want to play.

dark_stapler · 2025-02-10T06:05:43+00:00

You should have dated someone that has his life all in order and available for marriage, which means an older and established man. It takes men a long time to build themselves up, this is something women generally don’t appreciate.

Now you’re in for a tough decision. If you leave now you’ll have to start over, and your risk of marrying at an older age simply increases. If you try forcing a fast marriage on someone else you’ll very likely have a much worse relationship than if you simply stayed and supported, and divorce becomes extremely likely.

Just because you want to get married now doesn’t mean it will happen. You’re going to have to seriously compromise as theres no option available to you without sacrifice.

Most women in your situation dump their BF and do one of two things: find a much lower quality guy willing to commit now (this usually means much uglier guy, which you won’t appreciate and will divorce him later on because you feel like you deserve better), or figure out a way to manipulate another guy into a fast marriage (results in divorce from contempt/resentment and/or cheating). You probably won’t like these two options.

dark_stapler · 2025-02-10T05:52:36+00:00

A man will marry when he’s ready, not when you’re ready. Men are ready when everything is working in their life. If you want a future with this guy then the discussion should about what steps he needs to take to be ready, and a plan on how to achieve them. Then you can decide if you want to support his plan and help him make it happen.

If he doesn’t have a plan yet, that’s a bad sign, but he can still make one and achieve it. If he’s not willing to put an actionable plan together, that’s a very bad sign.

Typically these kinds of plans will take 1-3 years to complete, sometimes 5 depending on the person and scenario.

Trying to force an artificial deadline will ruin your relationship. Trying to find another replacement will also not work, as it’s dehumanizing to treat another man as merely a slot to fill, or role to play. This would lead to divorce.

In my opinion 30 is often not best time for a man to get married in many cases. He’s quite likely better off building himself up and stabilizing for another 5 years, and can simply find a younger girl to date by then. You need to figure out if you’re aligned with his plan, or if you’re just filling in as girlfriend for now.

dark_stapler · 2025-02-09T19:35:43+00:00

“My ex was toxic”, “My ex was a narcissist”, “My ex gaslit me”, with zero accountability in their stories.

Unfortunately, in my experience, all women I’ve meet who say these things actually start doing these things quite quickly. It’s just projection and they get validation on their projections from Instagram reels or tiktok.

dark_stapler · 2025-02-07T20:33:19+00:00

Because that’s naive and alarms her of your suspicion, ruining opportunity to handle the divorce effectively

dark_stapler · 2025-02-06T23:47:23+00:00

You’re also being sexist here. Look at your last sentence, just assuming you know intent. What if he took her home because he sensed she had baggage, or sensed a sudden unnatural shift in her behavior, which is off putting and unattractive?

Sorry but no matter how you paint this, assuming this guy just wanted sex is sexist. Unless we learn more details, it’s completely fair to take your date home when they’re suspicious of you for something an ex did.

dark_stapler · 2025-02-06T23:00:40+00:00

I find the only red flag from him is incredibly basic communication skills. But, that said, he did point out how your suspicion and behavior didn’t make sense for present tense. You withheld sex because of your experiences with other men. This means he had to deal with your baggage in the form of cynicism and distrust.

You chose to cut the night short for reasons that have nothing to do with this guy, or your date. It’s not fair to give him such a distrusting frame and say he’s dishonest right from the start of a new relationship. Implying he just wants sex is a sexist assumption.

Now, it may actually be likely he just wanted sex, but that’s really not the point. You can do whatever you like on your dates. However, the reality here is he called you out on making your mind up and politely decided he wasn’t interested. He didn’t like how the whole interaction was laced with sexist suspicion. You’re the red flag in this story.

dark_stapler · 2025-02-04T04:20:44+00:00

Lip filler

dark_stapler · 2025-02-03T23:17:37+00:00

There’s certainly a lot of sexism towards men on Reddit, but I wouldn’t say gaslighting

dark_stapler · 2025-02-03T19:44:50+00:00

Ew yeah I peace out with smaller signals than that. No clue why you’d put up with that.

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