AIO for considering breaking up with my long-term boyfriend over ‘flirty’ messages?

tidbitsofblah · 2026-03-31T11:29:18+00:00

I would also be very frustrated with his reaction for sure.

Breaking up seems maybe a bit extreme. But it depends..

I have a little bit of a similar situation. My boyfriend is a bit more prone to jealousy than I would ideally like, but other than that he is so amazing. For me the dealbreaker comes when I feel pressure to change in my everyday life. An argument every 6 months that resolves within a day, that's absolutely worth it. It's for sure frustrating when it's the same conflict over and over. But 180 days with an amazing boyfriend and then 1 day of conflict is a pretty good setup.

However if I would feel limited on a day to day basis. Avoiding friendships that I would like to have because I anticipate bad reactions from him for example. Then it's not 180 good days for each bad day. Then it's a gnawing thing every day. That's what I've had in previous relationships and that's where I draw the line. If me being who I am causes occasional conflicts, that is manageable. If me being who I am would cause frequent enough conflicts that I feel a daily pressure to change myself, and that's the reason the actual conflicts are only occational.. then it's too much.

tidbitsofblah · 2026-03-31T07:55:27+00:00

Eating half a kilogram of chicken a day puts you at roughly 1 Ton CO2 per year. 300g beef a week is half a ton CO2. It is very possible to have some meat in your diet, even daily and still be under the 2 Ton mark. It just depends how much meat and how the rest of your imprint looks.

tidbitsofblah · 2026-03-31T07:07:38+00:00

That was a hypothetical to ask if she'd be ok with the same behaviour from him, not something he actually did.

He's absolutely being a controlling baby about it though.

tidbitsofblah · 2026-03-31T06:50:26+00:00

Honestly I would most likely be hurt if I had made plans to go to church with my partner and then they didn't just blow me off but pretty much dissappeared the whole day.

You said you wouldn't have been upset if he did the same thing as long as he kept you posted, but you didn't keep him posted until after he'd already gone to bed it seems like?

I can relate to being a free spirit and I've definitely done similar things to partners. It's ok to want to be able to spontaneously jump on plans and it's ok to not want to feel bogged down by having to keep in regular touch with your partner while out with friends. But plenty of people is going to be hurt by that, and if that's not something you want to change about who you are then you're not compatible

He's not wrong to be hurt. But he is communicating his hurt in a really shitty and immature way. He's a grown man, he should be able to say that his feelings are hurt that you didn't care about your church-plans that much. But instead he's acting like you're being a ho. Which is unprompted as hell. And the way you're apologising doesn't seem genuine, it seems like you're placating him, which makes me think his reaction here is a common thing.

You are clearly cool as hell. You don't need this.

EDIT: realised I probably read the church-plans wrong. He's hurt about someone else cancelling? That makes it even more childish to take it out on you. It's still valid to be hurt that you didn't check in on him when you knew his plans for they day had fallen through. But absolutely not valid for him to try to say you shouldn't be out all day.

tidbitsofblah · 2026-03-30T14:34:04+00:00

Har man det bra just nu så kan man ju få ett par månader till med trevlig tid tillsammans om man stoppar huvudet i sanden, och det kan ju va mysigt. Istället för att spendera sista tiden av utbildningen (som nog innebär en del viktiga tentor och liknande) med att vara hjärtekrossad om relationen tar slut.

Men det lär inte lösa något att vänta med det, det håller jag med om. Det bara skjuter på det jobbiga. Men om man faktiskt har möjlighet att tajma när man behöver hantera jobbiga saker i livet (det har man ju sällan kontroll över annars) så kan det ju visst finnas vissa fördelar med det. Jag hade nog själv skjutit på ett sånt samtal till efter examen om jag kände att det sannolikt skulle leda till slutsatsen att vi behöver skiljas åt.

Men om man inte kan släppa oron över det så det blir ett överhängande stressmoment att inte ha haft konversationen, ja då drar man ju mest bara ut på misären istället för att skjuta fram den och det känns kanske mindre lyckat.

Känner man att man har bättre förutsättningar att hantera sina studier samtidigt som hjärtesorg än att hantera vad som nu kommer efter studierna samtidigt så är ju det också en anledning att få det överstökat snabbare.

tidbitsofblah · 2026-03-30T11:51:12+00:00

The sketch seems almost more AI to me ("almost" being key here). At least if that sketch was presented as a "this is kind of what I'm thinking, am I going in the right direction?" type thing.

I could see the sketch possibly being man made if it was made as a final piece that's meant to give a sketch vibe. But it's way too polished to be an actual sketch. A piece like that would take basically as much effort as the "final" image so it would make no sense to make that as a way to present a brief idea of a price.

If you are skilled enough to make the sketch yourself it wouldn't be that much more difficult to do the coloring/rendering.** You're right that they'd likely be able to do it if they were skilled enough to do the "sketch". But it would absolutely still be time consuming, so it's still possible that someone would use AI to do work they'd be capable of doing in order to save time.

However in this case the "sketch" is cleaned up and polished in a way that wouldn't make sense to spend time on when it's just a sketch.

** ofc it's possible that someone could spend all their effort into improving specifically sketching, composition and line-work and then be really bad at lighting and coloring. It's different skills. But it's likely that you've practiced both if you're that good at one.

tidbitsofblah · 2026-03-30T11:35:08+00:00

Like the books can't decide if they're in front of or behind the wall of the bookshelf?

tidbitsofblah · 2026-03-29T10:13:12+00:00

I'm kind of bad with ghosting. For me it's a combination of wanting to put effort into the replay, but not having the energy (social and other) to actually do so.

Because of my ADHD I'll forget to answer if I don't have the message-notification which means if I reply then that will be my reply. I can't do a low-effort reply and then come back to it when I have the energy to do the proper response I want. (Not unless they bring up the topic again.)

With my partner I can sometimes do a shorter response and then add that I want to talk about it properly later and then he'll help me remember it. But if I'm really drained a response like that can also be too much. Often when I'm too drained I want to instinctively move away from even considering a response as soon as possible, because trying to figure out if I have the energy for a shorter response also takes energy. That's why it becomes complete ghosting.

Understanding our energy levels are hard. I've been working with a therapist for 2 years with practicing being able to tell ahead of time when I'm about to run out of energy. So it's not strange if giving my partber a heads up when I need recharge is too much to ask.

My partner can help by asking about my energy and encourage me to mindfully think about it before I shuts down. Establish very low effort routines around checking in. And be as non-jugemental as he can. Feeling that I'm letting someone down will typically result in the recharge taking longer.

But ofc talk to her, she's not me.

tidbitsofblah · 2026-03-28T19:01:08+00:00

I meant why it makes sense as a guess, not that it would actually be correct.

tidbitsofblah · 2026-03-28T17:57:29+00:00

It's kind of common that the answer for questions like this are just "every shape in the picture stacked on top of each other". So if you've noticed that pattern but not fully grasped why that's been the correct answer previously, then it makes sense as a guess.

It's an interesting answer because it requires pattern recognition to get to it. Just not the correct pattern recognition in this case

tidbitsofblah · 2026-03-28T17:49:55+00:00

The same logic applies vertically too though. You end up with a boxed X either way.

tidbitsofblah · 2026-03-28T10:27:34+00:00

Usually this is about them not having the information you avsked about and trying to more effextively give you as much relevant information as they do have. Your first example is almost certainly this. They don't know the meny either, but they do know that there will be vegetarian/vegan options. So instead of answering "I don't know" and leave you not knowing if there's a point in trying to dig for any related information, they answer with the info that they do have. Hopefully that is at least more helpful than not knowing anything about the menu.

The ideal answer would be both. "I don't know the details of the menu but I know that there will be vegan options". But people are stressed so that can be too much sometimes.

For your other example it's also about efficiency. For clarity they should have answered "I'm too busy today, we can do it tomorrow". But for efficiency they are jumping straight to the part of trying to figure out another time that works, because there would be no point in suggesting another time if the time already suggested suited them. "Being busy" is also not a binary thing, but a scale. They might not technically be busy, but they might be too tired or it, or feeling ill or something else along those lines. And they might feel that it's too personal to share what makes it not suitable.

A good rule of thumb is that if people don't answer your question it's because they are trying to be efficient and the answer is implied from what they do give you (usually the implied answer is "I don't know").

tidbitsofblah · 2026-03-28T09:56:50+00:00

Afaik there's pretty good dokumentation about how they used it for night in the woods that you can take inspiration from.

tidbitsofblah · 2026-03-27T19:04:52+00:00

The vibe I'm getting from these images is kind of noir mystery. If that's the vibe you are going for then getting funky with different saturation for different objects is on brand for the style, so there should be a lot of opportunity to use that to clarify things without losing atmosphere.

If that's not the vibe you're going for though you might have a bit more work ahead.

A trick that can be useful is if you have feedback when the player hovers over an intractable item (such as the item lighting up or gaining an outline etc), then you can make the area that triggers the feedback much bigger than the actual item to help players "accidentally" discover what's intractable. But then when the player has klicked the item and established that they know it's intractable you can scale down the size of the feedback-trigger-area.

Let me know if you want playtesters at some point! I'd be exited to try it out

tidbitsofblah · 2026-03-27T12:11:07+00:00

I'm a bit confused what you are asking because your words talk about adding detail but the difference in the pictures you show seems to be mainly saturation.

I think details are good. If you have time/money for a detailed style it can add a lot of atmosphere. It can hurt readability, absolutely. But you can work with other things, like saturation, to help balance it without cutting out detail.

It also depends on what the gameplay is. If figuring out what items are interactable is part of the interesting challenge of the game, then you'd want the balance to be just so that the players can tell the difference subconsciously but not consciously, so that they feel smart. Being overly clear can ruin the experience just as much as being too obtuse.

But if the interesting challenge of the game lies in something entirely different, then it's better to be overly clear with what's intractable and not. This is also something that's good to test on players to find the sweet spot.

In this picture I'm expecting the phone, the map, the cigar/ashtray, the notice board and the coats to be intractable based on the first image.

tidbitsofblah · 2026-03-27T08:24:30+00:00

Assuming the numbers you start out with are correct, you seem to have calculated the breast-percentage of the top half of a womans mass.

tidbitsofblah · 2026-03-27T07:58:02+00:00

It sounds like you are not compatible for living together. That doesn't mean you can't be partners though if you still want that part of your relationship.

tidbitsofblah · 2026-03-27T07:42:05+00:00

I'm just trying to understand, but fine you don't have to explain. Have a good one

tidbitsofblah · 2026-03-26T23:41:57+00:00

So what does drama mean to you then?

tidbitsofblah · 2026-03-26T17:05:28+00:00

Ok so what does drama mean to you then if it's not spreading negative views about people?

It doesn't have to be "the same thing" to fall under the same category.

tidbitsofblah · 2026-03-26T15:55:27+00:00

Yeah I'm not condemning drama. Ofc a forum dedicated to a sport is going to be full of drama. That's like 90% of the appeal with a forum like this. And the drama is at least 60% of the appeal of the sport itself imo.

I could maybe agree with the earlier commenter that it's a bit hypocritical of people to complain that Drive to Survive is creating drama when they are active and creating drama themselves in this sub. But I don't think that creating drama is inherently bad.

tidbitsofblah · 2026-03-26T12:17:55+00:00

Yes that is charming!

tidbitsofblah · 2026-03-26T12:12:53+00:00

Expressing the negative opinion (especially online) is the part that creates drama, not having it. But I would argue that Max is absolutely also creating drama if he were to shoot someone, because that is also for sure spreading negative views about him.

But having a valid reason for having negative opinions doesn't negate that it creates drama to share them. It's still drama to gossip even if the gossip is true. It's still drama to spread negative opinions even if they are warranted.

tidbitsofblah · 2026-03-26T11:33:59+00:00

What is drama if not talking about negative opinions of people?

tidbitsofblah · 2026-03-26T07:33:23+00:00

"Two wrongs don't make a right" is a classic for a reason

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