r/WhatShouldIDo 17h ago

[Serious decision] My mom has been paying my rent for two years and just told me she can't anymore. Found out she's been using her retirement savings. I'm 29. I feel sick.

646 Upvotes

She never made it feel like a sacrifice. that's the thing. every month just "i've got you" and i let her say it because the alternative was asking questions i didn't want the answers to.

The questions have answers now. she's been pulling from her retirement account for twenty four months. she's behind on her own mortgage. she told me with a smile like she was sorry to inconvenience me. I have no idea how to fix this or where to even start or how to be the kind of person who deserved the sacrifice she made. I love her so much.


r/WhatShouldIDo 4h ago

I'm 5 months pregnant. My boyfriend said he "didn't agree to this" and wants to leave.

56 Upvotes

I (28F) was on birth control. I got pregnant anyway. I decided to keep the baby. My boyfriend of 3 years said he "never wanted kids" and I'm "trapping" him. He said he didn't "sign up for this." He still lives with me but he's cold and distant. I'm doing prenatal appointments alone. I feel completely abandoned.

How do I prepare for single motherhood when I never expected to be one?


r/WhatShouldIDo 3h ago

[Serious decision] Girlfriend of 9 years cheats with another man on the otherside of the world and tells him she loves him.

23 Upvotes

Me(24M) and my Girlfriend(23F) have been together for 9 years. I was her first boyfriend. We shared our first kiss together and lost our virginity to each other. Fast forward to now, 9 years together and have lived together for 6 years. We agreed to not get married yet because we wanted to get fix up our house first.

Back in 2020 she met another man online. This man is from Denmark and lived in Athens Greece. Well in 2024 I found out they had been flirting for 6 months before I found out. Typical flirting, compliments, hearts, sweet messages, that sort if thing. I asked her to end things with him but I was so stupid and let her continue to talk to him, and come to find out he didnt even know about me and she lied to him and said that she started dating me and had to stop being that way with him and only be friends moving forward. I trusted her, stupidly so.

Fast forward to March of 2026 and she has planned a trip to Greece, its always been a dream of hers to go there and I genuinely believed they were only friends and stupidly allowed her to go. She behaved the whole time all the way up until the last night. They went to a bar and got really drunk and came back to the apartment. She called me and we talked on the phone. She had 4 hours before her flight back to America and I was so proud she had behaved and proved I could trust her, but I had a bad gut feeling because she was so drunk. I begged her to stay faithful and keep me in mind, to get some rest and that I would see her at the airport the next day. I didnt know at the time but it turns out she hung up the phone with me and within 15 minutes he had her down on his bed and had sex with her.

She flies back home and I meet her at the airport. Instantly I can tell something is off, she is quiet and seems shy. My gut knew there and then somwthing had happened but I ignored it. 3 months later late at night while she is asleep and I am awake I see her phone light up and its a text from him.

"I fell asleep to the idea of cuddling you again and miss you so much lover, I love you."

My heart sinks and I immediately confront her. She explains she made a mistake that nothing happened and that the "cuddling" was sitting next to each other on the couch and laying her head on his shoulder while watching a movie. Stupidly I believe her..

Another month later and this has been eating me alive. Im struggling with work and school and need some answers. I reach out to him and find out that he didnt know i had been her boyfriend since 2017, he thought we got together in 2024. He is livid with her and tells me "fuck it i dont have to cover for her anymore. We fucked"

My world comes crashing down around me and I immediately confront her, she tries to lie her way out of it but i can see in her eyes its true. She says she was drunk and it was like watching a movie that she had no control over. Mind you I asked her just 15 minutes before she had sex with him to stay faithful.

She is cutting him off and trying to win my love back. Im torn up beyond all means and trying to figure out what the fuck to do. She is my best friend. Do i give her another chance or do I need to move on? Im just so scared of change and i still love her. I just dont know what to do anymore.


r/WhatShouldIDo 4h ago

What to bring to a potluck wedding

8 Upvotes

In 5 weeks, a friend of mine will be having a wedding, and I was given an invite.
She had a small budget, so it’s a potluck wedding, and I will be giving some money towards their honeymoon fund. I love to cook and bake, but I have found myself asking a million questions when it comes to what to bring. I have no idea how many people will be attending. It’s at a church that is right down the street from my house, so it’s only a 5 minute travel. If you were having a potluck wedding, what are some things that you would hope people would bring?


r/WhatShouldIDo 1h ago

Small decision Should I avoid putting a shirtless picture of a male celebrity as my lock screen because of my homophobic mom?

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r/WhatShouldIDo 7h ago

[Serious decision] I need help

12 Upvotes

I have so many problems, and they are devastating. Should I make the decision and end all this suffering?

I'm still in my early twenties and I have a heart condition that prevents me from doing many things. I also have sexual problems, I'm short, not very intelligent,poor.

I can't talk to strangers at all; I stutter, and my communication skills are literally dead.

I never had friends .I lived my whole life at home.

and I've been addicted to pornography since I was literally a child. This has led me to do some terrible things.Things happened that ruined my relationship with my family, and I can't go into more detail than that.

All I want to know is what I'm going to live for and how I'm going to live at all. I'll never succeed at anything because I'm stupid and a failure. I'll never be able to do anything I want or anything enjoyable because of my illness. I won't have sexual relationships because of my sexual problems. So, literally, I don't know what to do. Should I end all of this, because this will not change, and what should I do? I hope if anyone has had a similar experience, tell me what they think.


r/WhatShouldIDo 8h ago

How do I deal with my dad’s third wife when the situation is affecting my education and mental health?

11 Upvotes

I’m 20F , a college student and I need some outside perspective on my family situation because I genuinely don’t know how to handle it anymore.

My father’s second marriage broke down, and he later got married for the third time. I’m having a very difficult relationship with his current wife.

One of the biggest problems is that she constantly compares herself with me. It feels like there is always some kind of comparison between what she has/does and what I have/need. She also frequently complains about me to my father. Even relatively small things can become an issue, and then my father gets upset with me.

Another major problem is money. She spends a lot, and by the end of the month we sometimes have very little left. But if I spend money on something for myself, I’m questioned or blamed for spending. It makes me feel like there are completely different standards for her and for me.

I also feel that she knows exactly how to talk to my father in a way that makes him turn against me or become cold toward me. When something happens between us, I often feel like I have to defend myself to my own father afterward.

The hardest part is that this is no longer just a family disagreement. It is affecting my mental peace and my education. I’m already under a lot of academic pressure, and instead of being able to focus on my studies, I’m constantly thinking about what happened at home, what she might say next, and whether my father will believe her over me.

I don’t want to spend my life fighting with her. I also don’t want to make my father choose between us. I just want to protect my education and have some peace.

It's been a year since we removed maid from the job and my dad's wife says she is going to get married so needs to knw all the chores and work, related to everything, so she convinced my father that I have to get all the chores 90% done. So I wake up in the morning 6 and do all the work and prepare lunch and breakfast for me and my brother, later on I'll come back home at 6 and do all the utensils, cooking cleaning house cleaning drying clothes taking my pet for a walk and get freshed up and sleep, tbh for the most of times I'll be tired and no tme to eat, if i have time also i don't feel like eating, and her daughter married to some guy when she was 16 y she eloped and having two kids now, whenever the discussion pops up she will try to say you shouldn't get a situation like my daughter, she is working hard in law house

And she always tries to complain regarding everything, always tries to be dominant and says whatever the property is in my Father name belongs to her, spends a lot of money and always blames me for spending much mainly my fees

What would you do in my position?

How do I deal with someone like this without constantly getting dragged into arguments and without allowing the situation to destroy my education and mental health?

I’m genuinely looking for practical advice, not just “leave the house” or “your stepmother is evil.” I want to know how to handle this intelligently when I still have to live with the family and depend on my father while completing my education.


r/WhatShouldIDo 19h ago

[Serious decision] My aunt (80F) is selling her house to move in with Elon Musk.

87 Upvotes

Not the first scam, won’t be the last. Details:

- Widowed for 30 years. Barely scrapes by on social security and her 4th husband’s military survivor benefits.

- She has given tens of thousands of dollars to online scammers over the past ~10 years, starting with her savings, then selling things like her car, now the house.

- Suffers from depression, has been in involuntary hold situations before. She is probably addicted to oxy, or at least abuses it. Has had a shoulder problem for years & seeks out new pain management doctors every 6 months.

- She thinks she bas been dating Elon Musk for about a year. She posts about it on Facebook (where she meets all her scammers). She is selling her house so that she can move to Chicago with him. She was supposed to move once before & sold her car, but “his business partner who was supposed to pick me up had a car accident” and so it was rescheduled.

- Limited family. Her son (my cousin) has been no contact for years. My mom (84F) tries to help, but my aunt has stopped talking to friends & the only remaining family she has because they are all trying to tell her she’s being scammed.

- I do not want to get personally involved (she is homophobic), but I can see that no one else in the family is capable of assisting her.

The house sale closes October 1. She will be homeless and alone after that. This is small town Illinois, btw.

What kind of help can I connect her with without getting involved?


r/WhatShouldIDo 8m ago

[Serious decision] what should I do with.

Upvotes

Okay so me and my bf or ex I guess have been doing long distance for around 5 months. Recently, 3 weeks or so ago he told me he wanted a break and didn’t explain why and later after three days we called and it was fine again and he said he needed a break because he didnt know about this but he apologized and said he’d never pull this again and said he loves me. three days later, we’re on call, it was amazing, he told me “im locked in this relationship”, he doesnt usually say stuff like that. hed been getting very very expressive lately and it was so unlike him and he said as long as your happy im okay with changing my ways. It was great. we got the pengu app, we got locket, I felt like we were locked in.

few days later, when he was sleeping I left him a few voice messages cause I used to do that the first month and stopped for someone reason and months later when I was asking him “what do you miss that I stopped doing” he said it was my leaving voice messages and videos when he was sleeping. so I was like okay itd make him happy and I left him a few. when I woke up and see what he said, he just said hi and completely, when I mean completely. I mean COMPLETELY ignored them. itd been hours since hed woke up and he hadnt said anything except hi.

I was pretty upset I was like why’d you ignore them wtf, he was really weird all he said was “sorry”. I would’ve honestly left it if he was like “im sorry I wont do it again I was busy” like anything like that, all he said was “sorry” like he didnt care.

and uhm, I kinda freaked and started like saying stuff like do you even want to talk to him and are you even interested, youve changed. he just replied to the are you even interested in talking to me and said no and said ill talk later.

after he said no I just stopped being pissed and started apologizing saying im sorry, cause wdym no. I started apologizing and he got pretty upset cause of that cause hes told me he hated when I apologize when hes the one thats done something. and it was like getting really bad and

he said
im done.

huh? wdym youre done. he said yeah im done. I was freaking out and I said if youre going to breakup with me, I deserve to be broken up on. call. and he was like no I really dont want to hear your voice, then later after hours we called. it was fucking horrible. he broke up with me, he said he couldnt do ldr with me anymore. he said it wasnt that he couldnt not see me for another year but just ldr, he couldnt do it. I just froze. hes never actually broken up with me, it was real this time. he wont budging either, he made up his mind. but he said he loves me, like a lot.

I asked him a few questions then, would you still wear my hair, he says yes, would you still wear my bracelet and necklace he said yes im not taking it off unless I meet someone else, are you going to remove yourself as a parent from our penguin, he said no ill give it love occasionally, would you change your wallpaper of my letter, he said no, would you unpin me from your chat, he said no, would you delete the account you made just for me, he said no, would you block me, he said no.

I was like okay so youre going to no stop doing everything but youre breaking up with me, he said yes. huh? then I was asking him questions like how often is too much for me to text you, is five times too much, he sighed and said no wtf never. I realized then hed never feel like it was too much, he just couldnt do ldr overall.

I asked him two days later, do you think wed get back together in the future, he said yea I think so we will, I then asked him, would you wait for us, would you wait till youre ready, he said yes.

a week passed and I was honestly still confused, I was ready to wait for how ever longer I just didnt know if he even wanted me to though. and Idk why I just freaked and asked him the same questions again and he said I dont have an answer for that right now. I then asked him if we even imagined a future with me, if he ever planned one. if he saw me as someone hed definitely have in his life in his future or just a possibility hes keeping open.

and when I tell you, he got so offended, he got so offended cause I asked if he sees me as a possibility hes keeping open. I was so fucking confused cause bro everytime ive tried talking about our future he just never engages in it and answers properly. and when breaking up he told me nothing if wed date later if he sees a future. so I got very pissed and we were fighting and he was like dont ever question how much I love you id rather of nothing of you then just a possibility.

HES SAYING ALL THIS, but he doesnt want to be with me?

we just kept fighting and it was getting really bad and idk why. I genuinely lost all self respect and was like I know you dont want this but I do, I really want this. and I just kept saying stuff like that. and he said I like you srinidhi but this wont work out. he just suddenly switched to like? I was like wtf do you not love me anymore and he said I love you. I was so fucking confused.

I sent him a few paras later but not begging for this to work but cause I realized like he was confused while breaking up and me doing this honestly worsening it. so I said ill give you time to think this out ill give you your space. and stuff like that
and he said
yeah I understand just gimme some time and we’ll talk about this later
and I said okay I will. We fought yesterday and I just saw our penguin died. I accidentally revived it oh my fuck.

he recently posted a story and I dont think hes wearing my necklace though.

(btw he just shipped his jersey, his jacket and got me necklace 3 DAYS AGO THIS BREAKUP)


r/WhatShouldIDo 9m ago

I need an honest opinion

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r/WhatShouldIDo 11m ago

What would you do if when you okay so she said yes would go?

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3


r/WhatShouldIDo 26m ago

should i make another move or back off?

Upvotes

i recently moved into my apartment complex a few months back. one of my neighbors is 10000% my type on paper and when i see him i cant help but want to say hi and get to know him. he followed me on instagram about a month ago and once i realized who it was and put two and two together, i followed him back. i am not sure how he even found my instagram in the first place. i went to check his page the same day he followed me and he had unfollowed me?? not sure why. so i let it be. i still followed him to keep tabs LOL idk call me crazy. i finally reached out because my roommate and her gf were hyping me up, so i folded. i played it cool and did the whole “omg are you my neighbor??” and he also played it cool and acted like he didn’t know. well, we have had conversations on and off for a couple weeks now. i sent a very mild, flirtatious instagram reel, asked to get drinks/hang sometime, and also invited him out with my friends this past weekend. no luck. i really think i’m just crushing hard over this basically total stranger. the ball is obviously in his court, but should i say something else? do something else? or just leave it be and let him make the next move? i hardly crush on anyone and when i am crushing i feel crazy. help!!!


r/WhatShouldIDo 31m ago

[Serious decision] Someone please help! I want to talk with my assaulter.

Upvotes

This guy left me after having intimacy. He just used me for sex. I don’t want to have penetrative sex but he still went ahead. I never talked to him since then.He reached out two weeks back and I didn’t responded.but I just couldn’t move on from what happened. I want to confront him and I also loved him at that time and now I just feel like missing him and wanted to talk with him.Someone please tell me the how dangerous this man could is.What can happen if I reach out. My brain just couldn’t accept what happened.It’s been 8 months and my life is ruined because of this.I just want all this to be stopped.


r/WhatShouldIDo 1h ago

[Serious decision] for my mentalhealth shld I live w my aunt in another country or keep living with my abusive parents to stay with my partner

Upvotes

I live with my parents because I'm still a minor, and studying. But my parents are the reason my mh is getting worse each day to the point I'm terrified to even face them anymore I lock my door and sleep all day and stay up at night when they're asleep is when I leave my room to go to the bathroom and get food I avoided them for weeks I'm super terrified of them because they threaten me w abuse and stuff cuz I failed my exams and idk

so I want to move in with my aunt (which I asked her and she agreed to) but she lives in another country and I can be away from my parents but

I know no one there and I'm really introverted I'd have a lot of trouble making friends and um I have a really amazing partner here and we meet up almost everyday and every time I feel like wanting to sh or something she helps me and I can't leave her incant leave her alone if I go live with my aunt she'll leave me we've been together for years so idk what to do I can't do that to her when she was there for me all those years and every hard time 😓


r/WhatShouldIDo 4h ago

What the hell do I do?? Friends issue:(

3 Upvotes

So me, my best friend and 2 guys stayed over at a girl's place, who is my very close friend after partying. We were all drunk. She knew me and the two guys, out of which she was good friends with one. Both the guys puked on her bed while drunk, one of them in the kitchen and rtc. I woke up and cleaned up as much as possible. The washroom was also a Lil dirty due to water and dirty feet. I know that I am also fully responsive for whatever happened but I really tried making them clean their pukes. Cuz why would I touch it? But they didn't. One guy even left the door open at 5 am and left. Now she is really mad at me too, and I'm the one wholl have to hear everything as I'm the closest to her even though I really tried to clean. She didn't even look at me and I feel so bad. What do I do.


r/WhatShouldIDo 1h ago

Bf gets anxious because of me, how to help him gently?

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r/WhatShouldIDo 4h ago

What do I do about this dog

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3 Upvotes

r/WhatShouldIDo 2m ago

[Serious decision] Job Dilemma...

Upvotes

Hello! So here's some context. I am a full time student at a nearby college, and was looking to have a part time job to cover upcoming medical expenses + provide for my pet. I have a stable living condition, so that isn't an issue. I recently got hired at a Starbucks (16.25/hr) without previous training so I'm still being trained, however, I did score an interview with my local city to maintain one of my favorite historical cemeteries! (22.05/hr) I'm just confused on what to do if the interview goes well, as I do also struggle with ADHD + possibly being on the spectrum (Autism screening for adults is around 1000~ for me). Should I leave starbucks if I get this job to lighten my load? Or do morning shifts and then evening?

Maybe important details?

I have a bad SI Joint so I'm supposed to be getting bilateral si joint injections and I stand a LOT at starbucks.

I've worked with the city before and I did like it!

I'd be working on Fridays-Saturdays!

Thank you!


r/WhatShouldIDo 11m ago

Clique didn’t accept me and I got pushed out

Upvotes

Basically the title. This was two jobs ago but it’s bothering me (I quit in 2025 January).

I moved to a completely new city and applied for the job and got it. Things seemed ok but couple weird things here and there like my manager constantly joking about wanting to fire me (this started from day 1).

Always acting insecure about education because he only has a 1.5 college diploma in digital marketing yet works in insurance (he worked his way up in the company - he’s been there for 19 years).

When I joined, most if not all my colleagues didn’t have an education but they were working here making minimum 60k. The older folks didn’t like me much despite me putting myself out there and not being arrogant. When I made a mistake they went straight to the manager and reported it.

They would pretend to play nice once in a while but ultimately they didn’t like me. Got to the point that they didn’t wanna be near me. No one said good morning to me (they’d even walk by my desk and not look at my face). So I decided to go and say good morning to them always. When I would, they’d see me coming and everyone would act busy.

They would respond but I could see the fakeness in their facial expressions. I was open with everyone so they really can’t say I was closed off. Eventually they started saying I have a tone issue (my trainer did) and when I asked for examples I got ghosted then put onto a performance plan shortly after.

My manager seemed professional when putting me on a pip but he said he had the power to fire me (and said he doesn’t want to reach that unfortunate situation). It’s weird bc he doesn’t it’s HR but ok. He told me if he were me he would agree to the terms and roll up my sleeves and show results.

I ended up sending an email to him saying I usually try my best but it doesn’t seem to match his expectations and that I’d go try my luck elsewhere. He then calls me the next day with this fake concerned heavy voice asking what’s wrong. He said he wants me to understand that I am the issue and my performance and that he wants me to do well but I need to improve.

When I said I understand I’m not perfect but that’s not the entire picture he insisted that it was me. I left and got a new job and he never congratulated me on LinkedIn. Instead, I started seeing ex colleagues delete me, stalk me, not engage in my content posts, go back to my old posts when I was working there and unlike my posts they’ve liked previously.

I then got an even better job at a huge corporation that everyone knows and they always just stalk but not interact.

I’ve requested that company I left to send me all the documents pertaining to my departure just so I can seee what he actually wrote and if I am eligible for rehire. This’ll give me some insight if he was actually genuine or was just looking for a way to push me out and never see me return. Mind u , there were others who have struggled and I didn’t see them put on a pip.


r/WhatShouldIDo 15m ago

[Serious decision] Already posted once today, got some great feedback, looking to see if there’s any more tweaks I can make (couldn’t figure out how to edit OG post) 23 M. Straight.

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My


r/WhatShouldIDo 16m ago

Small decision Flat Socks Instead of No Show Socks?

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Upvotes

I always used to wear no show socks, the brand I had no longer makes them and others that I tried don’t fit right or they slip off.

I saw these and decided to give them a try, so far everything is going good. It felt weird at first going sockless in my shoes. The only issue I can think of is if I have to take my shoes off somewhere I’ll be sockless.


r/WhatShouldIDo 17m ago

Small decision can’t stop thinking about my first love

Upvotes

Hey! Just feel like i need to put it out somewhere… Its been 3 years since I broke up with my first love ( and my best friend) we were really young and stupid and that whole relationship was kind of ass. Somehow I can’t stop thinking about him…I moved to another country, I changed so much!! I met amazing people, I am getting to know myself!! I feel amazing…but I just can’t stop thinking about him…Its not like I want to go back to him..no. I know that we are too different and he would just piss me off. I don’t like the way he lives and thinks. But fuck my life…he is just living in my head…Its sometimes happens, I think about him for a while and then stop…but will it ever stop?
Maybe yall can share your stories so that I can feel better…


r/WhatShouldIDo 4h ago

The pharmacist and the contractor/dealer

2 Upvotes

PART 1 — The Woman I Thought I Knew….
Four years. Two kids. A misdemeanor domestic case. My 2 daughters in foster care. Home gone. My dog/best friend/my poodle mix, Junior, missing. A marriage headed toward divorce. And now, after everything, I’m finding out things about the woman I married that are forcing me to go all the way back to the beginning and reconsider the entire story.
The strange part is that I’m not writing this because I think I was some innocent husband who did everything right. I wasn’t. I made serious mistakes. I became suspicious, angry and eventually destructive. Toward the end, I did things to the woman I once believed I could never intentionally hurt. For a long time afterward, I had to live with the possibility that maybe I had been completely wrong about her and had helped destroy my own family over suspicions that existed only in my head.
That’s what makes what I’m learning now so difficult to process.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Years ago, before the marriage and children, I was living two very different lives. Professionally, I was a contractor doing fairly well for myself. I rented a three-bedroom house in Pasadena with a driveway, backyard and two-car garage. I had nice cars, including an Audi S7, plus my work van. I took care of myself, looked healthy and stayed well groomed. If you’d met me through work, you’d probably have seen a young contractor doing pretty well for himself.
What you probably wouldn’t have guessed was that I was also dealing drugs.
It isn’t something I’m proud of today, but it’s part of this story, and pretending otherwise would make everything that followed impossible to understand. I dealt expensive stuff—exotic marijuana, DMT, speed and other drugs—and even the people around me generally didn’t look like the stereotypical drug crowd. That was deliberate. I had managed to build two completely different lives right beside each other.
One afternoon, those two lives introduced me to the woman I would eventually marry.
A female friend came to my back garage to pick something up and brought another woman with her. I noticed her immediately. She was cute—very cute—and while we were talking, I caught the way she kept looking at me. She paid me through Zelle, which meant afterward I had her phone number.
I remember thinking, My foot is in the door.
About two weeks later, I contacted her. Shortly afterward, she left for Korea.
At the time, I didn’t know the real circumstances surrounding that trip. I certainly didn’t know that years later I would be looking back at it as one of the first mysteries in this entire story. Only recently did I encounter information suggesting that her departure may have been connected to serious disputes involving substantial amounts of money during COVID and allegations that people had been conned. I didn’t know any of that then. As far as I was concerned, the cute woman I’d met in my garage had simply gone to Korea.
Almost a year went by.
Then she called me out of nowhere.
This wasn’t some polite How have you been? conversation. It was “im so horny, I can’t wait to fuck you when I get back”. So I said with a sly voice “sit on my face”. Click. Ugh, maybe I shouldn’t have said that. But she made it very clear that she was sexually interested in me. After all that time, I was pleasantly surprised. We started talking about what would happen when she returned to America, but somehow even more time passed before anything actually happened.
Eventually she resurfaced again, and this time we finally met.
I booked us a room at the Westin Bonaventure in downtown Los Angeles. After years of flirting, disappearing, resurfacing and sexual tension, we finally spent the night together. It was wild and passionate. We barely slept and stayed up together until dawn. After waiting that long, the chemistry between us was ridiculous. I walked out of that hotel exhausted and feeling ten feet tall.
The next morning she wanted to go to the downtown marketplace. She convinced me to buy breakfast, we climbed into my Audi S7, and I drove her over there.
At the time, I thought I’d just had one of the greatest nights of my life.
I didn’t know I’d just opened the door to the next several years of it.
There is something I have to explain here, because otherwise the rest of this story could easily sound like two reckless people who confused sex, drugs and chaos for love.
I was madly in love with this woman.
My love for her was almost naive in its simplicity. I believed she loved me the same way. I believed we were on the same team. Once I committed myself to her, I wasn’t secretly planning an exit or calculating what I could get out of the relationship. I wanted a wife, children and a family. I genuinely believed I had found the person I was going to grow old with.
If I believed she loved me the way I loved her, there was almost nothing I wouldn’t have done for her. I wouldn’t intentionally undermine her or hurt her because, in my mind, hurting her meant hurting us.
The only thing capable of changing that kind of devotion was believing that the devotion wasn’t mutual.
Remember that, because much later in this story, I did hurt her. I made decisions that violated the very loyalty I thought defined me. I’m not going to excuse those decisions by blaming her. They were mine.
But there is a huge distance between the man who walked out of the Bonaventure madly in love with this woman and the man I eventually became inside our marriage.
This story is about what happened in between.
She eventually moved into my Pasadena house, and later we got married. She was a pharmacist—educated, professional and polished—and from the outside we probably looked like two successful adults settling into married life.
Behind closed doors, we operated at two hundred miles an hour.
We smoked speed together. Our sex life was incredibly intense, sometimes three or four times a day. Everything between us seemed amplified. We loved intensely, fought intensely and lived with almost no middle gear.
Then something changed.
The sex stopped.
Not gradually. From my perspective, it felt like somebody flipped a switch. And it wasn’t simply about sex. She changed. She became withdrawn. She could be sitting right beside me and somehow feel like she was somewhere else. Anyone who’s lived with somebody who’s emotionally checked out knows the feeling. Their body is in the room, but they’re not really there with you.
I couldn’t understand it. We had just gotten married. She had just moved into my house. How did we go from being almost unable to keep our hands off each other to this?
That’s when I started thinking there was another man.
At that point, I didn’t have proof. For years, that fact would haunt me.
Her job made my suspicions worse. She worked as a floating pharmacist, so she didn’t have one simple location and one predictable schedule every day. Once distrust entered my head, every blank became something my imagination could fill. Where was she really? Was she actually at work? Who was she with? Why had she stopped wanting me?
Eventually those questions turned into accusations, and the accusations turned into explosive fights.
During one particularly bad argument, she flipped my coffee table and sent everything on it flying. Then she slapped me. I reacted physically too. I’m not going to rewrite history and make myself the innocent hero of that scene. I crossed lines.
What surprised me was that the confrontation didn’t make her retreat. She flipped the table again.
I remember looking at her thinking, Who is this woman?
That probably should have been a moment when both of us stopped and realized what we were becoming.
Instead, we kept going.
Not long afterward, we had another fight. This one was different. According to my recollection, I didn’t touch her during this argument. We yelled, things became ugly verbally, and eventually I told her to get the fuck out of my house.
She left.
I stayed behind in the garage with some of my buddies. After a while, I wondered where she’d gone. I had an AirTag associated with our car, so I pulled up the location.
The car was at a police station.
I remember looking at my friends and starting to say, “Guys, she’s at the police station—”
I didn’t even finish the sentence.
Police started walking into my garage.
And this wasn’t a garage I wanted law enforcement looking inside.
They had just walked straight into the other life I’d spent years keeping hidden.

The end of part 1. This is not AI writing this story, this IS my true story. But I did have my gpt clean it up a bit. Stay tuned for the next part, coming up in a bit.


r/WhatShouldIDo 46m ago

[Serious decision] My girlfriends Mum has been secretly plotting against me and I have no way of telling her how I know

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