Latest / ok storytime / I GAVE UP my son to my parents years ago... Now I'm finally ready to be a mom! -r/AmITheAsshole | Reddit Stories | EP3141

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I GAVE UP my son to my parents years ago... Now I'm finally ready to be a mom! -r/AmITheAsshole | Reddit Stories | EP3141 · ok storytime

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Angie. And this is Dakota, your favorite
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: OK Storytime hosts.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: And we've got some great stories coming up.
• 0:05
  Speaker 3: But before that, we have a quick two-minute break from
• 0:08
  Speaker 3: the sponsors that keep this show running. I gave up
• 0:11
  Speaker 3: my son to my parents years ago. Now I'm finally
• 0:15
  Speaker 3: ready to be a mom.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Uh, actually, that one's mine. I'll take that. So I,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: 26 female, was inspired to write this by another post
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: that I saw that seemed similar to my situation. When
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: I was 19, I gave birth to a boy named Alex.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: He's 7 now. I didn't bond with him at all
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: when he was a baby, and even though I loved
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: him more than anything, my life was ruined and his
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: would be too. I was failing my classes, I couldn't work,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: I couldn't afford babysitting... I gave Alex up to my
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: mom and stepdad and they've raised him as their own
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: ever since. And I'm going to be so for real.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: That's their kid now. That's their kid now. My mom
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: and stepdad took on the role of grandparents. And while
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: I wasn't there for Alex as a baby, he knows
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: me as mom, which I am so thankful that my
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: mom allowed. Thankfully, my parents are tech savvy, so I
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: was able to FaceTime with him every night. My grades
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: went good. I have a degree, a good job, and
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: am in a relationship I hope will lead to marriage.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: My fiance, Jacques.
• 1:14
  Speaker 4: Ooh.
• 1:15
  Speaker 5: Ooh.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: 30 male. Like the strap. Yes, the Jacques strap.
• 1:21
  Speaker 6: Are you kidding me?
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Yes. That was so good. Everyone should laugh at that.
• 1:25
  Speaker 6: That's what you want.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Laughs in the chat, because I was like, laughs in
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: the chat. She's still talking to herself. That was good.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: I know, I know. Jacques knows how important Alex is
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: to me, even though he doesn't live with me and
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: isn't being raised by me. My parents still have guardianship
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: over Alex, but he started spending a weekend every month
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: at my place. But we still FaceTime good morning after
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: school and good night every day. By the way, this
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: comes from Throwaway Madulek. And if you want to spit
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: your own stories, go to the r slash showcase story
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: time subreddit. I'm Sophia. I'm Sophia.
• 1:59
  Speaker 6: I'm Sophia.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: And we're all Sophia. And if you're Sophia, put Sophia
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: down in the comments.
• 2:04
  Speaker 6: Don't put Sophia down in the comments.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: You'll put her up. Hey, guys. Someone said my vibes suck, girl.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: That's what they said. Someone said your vibe sucks, girl.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: Don't put a girl in there.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: We're not girls. Oh, I've had much worse. Opie says
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: yesterday Jacques surprised me with tickets to go with him
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: to his cabin in Ontario for a week. Jacques really
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: likes Alex and wants to get to know him better.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Jacques is really impressed by how smart Alex is and
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: thinks he could get him into the local private school
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: he teaches at. But I'll admit that Alex doesn't really
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: know him. Even if he's told me he thinks he's cool.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: I know I can't force love, but if Jacques didn't
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: respect my son, even if I'm not raising him, I
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: never would be with him. But I also don't feel
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: I can get married unless Alex is okay with it either.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: So I asked Jacques if he could get a third
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: ticket so Alex could come with us, and he agreed
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: right away, even though it costs more.
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: Tough.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: If I'm Jacques, if I'm Jacques and I'm about to
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: take my lady to a weekend stay at my cabin
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: in the woods and we're about to get it on.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: And then she says, hey, my child's come with too.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Is that cool? And I have to go, yeah, I guess.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: I called my mom and stepdad and asked if I
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: could take Alex on vacation after Christmas since he'll be
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: off school for the next two weeks. My mom didn't
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: seem that enthusiastic about it. My stepdad pretty angrily told
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: me that he, my mom and Alex already had plans
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: for that week. and they didn't want to cancel them,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: and that he was really upset and hurt by me
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: asking without even thinking they had something going on. He
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: told me to go and sort out my priorities before
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: phoning them back. I talked to a friend of mine
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: after that, who I appreciate for being blunt, and she
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: told me it wasn't a whole thing to ask because
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: I didn't focus on Alex enough to even know that
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: he and my parents might have plans. And I've felt
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: super terrible about it since because I don't want to
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: be taking my parents for granted. I told Jacques and
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: he told me I wasn't wrong to ask since I
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: wasn't demanding anything. And that my friend was wrong for
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: saying that I was an a-hole, but I'm not sure.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Am I the a-hole? And we do have an update.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: So she's not trying to get her son back... in
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: terms of, because I thought the title kind of implied, oh,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: she wanted custody back, but it seems she just wanted
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: to take him on a vacation to the cabin. Yeah,
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: I thought it was going to be a custody thing, too.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Be like, oh, now I'm ready to be a mom.
• 4:25
  Speaker 7: I would like to, you know, start incorporating my child
• 4:29
  Speaker 7: into my life now.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Do you think this was an a-hole ask? I don't
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: think so. I mean, I agree. I don't think it was,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: it was like she was demanding, like, my child needs
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: to come with me on vacation. Yeah, it was more like, hey,
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: can I, I'm going to bring him. Is that like cool?
• 4:43
  Speaker 7: And they're like, We're already going on vacation, so no.
• 4:47
  Speaker 7: For example, Savannah, hey, do you want to come to
• 4:50
  Speaker 7: my house for Christmas?
• 4:51
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: Oh, shoot.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Wait, okay. Oh, sorry, no. Okay, there we go. No,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: I don't. And then I go, oh, okay. Do you
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: have plans?
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 4:59
  Speaker 4: Oh, okay.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Well, that's fun. And then it's over. And then we go, oh,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: all right. Well, you have plans, so you can't make
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: my Christmas plans.
• 5:06
  Speaker 6: I thought you were going to ask me.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay, Keon, do you want to come over for Christmas?
• 5:10
  Speaker 6: Not anymore.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Wait, do you want to.
• 5:11
  Speaker 4: Come to my Christmas?
• 5:12
  Speaker 5: I'm here.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, the point is, it's not a crime to ask
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: a question. I don't think that's bad.
• 5:18
  Speaker 6: Is it a crime?
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: Is it a crime?
• 5:21
  Speaker 6: Democracy manifest.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: I don't think it's a crime. I don't think it's
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: a crime. I don't think she'd be, like, arrested.
• 5:27
  Speaker 6: Maybe put her in handcuffs.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but at least put the thumb cuffs on her.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: The thumb cuffs? The thumb cuffs? You ever see thumb cuffs?
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: It's like just your thumbs. It seems the Chinese finger trap. No, no.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: It's better than that trap. This is a cuff. For
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: your thumb. After I posted that I was going to
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: go to my parents and apologize in person, my stepdad
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: came over. He took me to the ice cream shop.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: He'd take me to when I was little to talk.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: Hey, kid.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: Let's go talk at the ice cream shop. I used
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: some of your pointers in our talk. He apologized for
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: making the comment about my priorities and said he was wrong.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: He told me how proud he was of how far
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: I've come, how I'm the light of his life and
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: that he'd always stand by me. He told me he
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: and mom were scared that I'd try and take custody
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: of Alex since I am finally ready to be a mom.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: And if that's what I want, then he'll support me.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: I told him I just want what's best for Alex.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: But my biggest fear is he'll grow up thinking I
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: didn't love them. And I want him involved with me
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: and Jacques because he's the most important thing to me.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: That I don't feel like I can get married or
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: have more kids unless he's okay with it because he's
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: my baby. This is really sweet. I was really worried
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: that this was going to go kind of down the
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: route of OP saying, I want the kid. Yeah, like
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: fighting for custody.
• 6:40
  Speaker 7: But it seems like they all just really love Alex
• 6:42
  Speaker 7: and they just want him to have a good life. Yeah,
• 6:43
  Speaker 7: they just want to spend time with him.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: We agreed to work something out after Jacques and I
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: came back from the cabin. He gave me a big
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: hug and a kiss on the forehead when he dropped
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: me off. That was the last time I saw my stepdad. Oh,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: he had a massive heart attack when we were at
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: the cabin and he passed away. Whoa.
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: Dang.
• 7:00
  Speaker 8: Whoa.
• 7:01
  Speaker 7: No yikes so the last wait the last time she
• 7:06
  Speaker 7: saw him was at that ice cream shop yeah.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: And you know what like that's like to have it
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: be your last time what a what a like gif it's.
• 7:14
  Speaker 6: Kind of crazy what a gift i was just talking
• 7:16
  Speaker 6: about we were talking about a friend's yeah mother that
• 7:20
  Speaker 6: we were like we just saw and my mom was
• 7:22
  Speaker 6: like well you know life's could be very short yeah
• 7:25
  Speaker 6: and she was like we just celebrated a birthday for
• 7:27
  Speaker 6: her granddaughter next day. Like she was happy, enjoyed like meals, everything.
• 7:31
  Speaker 6: Nothing like her health was fine.
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: I mean, yeah.
• 7:33
  Speaker 6: Stroke. It was just like, and my sister and I
• 7:35
  Speaker 6: were like, what?
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm glad in both these situations, like these people
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: had these lovely, you know, like last moments, but not
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: actually knowing.
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: And it was very sentimental. And just like him being like,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: oh my God, I'm so proud of you. Like how beautiful.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: Gives me chills. I don't like typing that. I moved
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: back in with my mom and Alex because I don't
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: want my mom to be lonely or for Alex to
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: feel abandoned. Since then, I've kind of gotten to really
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: be mom. I've been making all of Alex's food, dropping
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: him off, picking him up, helping with homework, putting him
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: to sleep, cuddling with him. Everything my stepdad did for me.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: It's tiring, but it's more rewarding than anything. And I
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: just wish I could see my stepdad again and ask
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: if I'm doing a good job. I have been like,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: my mood has shifted. That's all I can say. I'm
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: going to finish this off. Thankfully, my work has provided
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: grief counseling and I'm able to take Alex with me.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: I think it's helped him more than me because when
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: my mom put up a photo of when my stepdad
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: first took me fishing and when I saw it when
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: I came home, I just broke down crying because I
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: miss him so much. But then Alex came and hugged
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: me and said, Mommy, you don't need to cry. For
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: my mom, this is so sweet. I'm going to keep
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: stepping up and be there for her. And for Alex,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: I'm going to try and get stronger than I am
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: so I can be the mom he deserves. Thank you
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: guys for giving me help before. I know things are
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: a bit sad now, but I think the future is
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: a bright one. And my stepdad always told me to
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: look forwards.
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: Thanks.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: And that's the end of the story. But how beautiful.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: You know, OP's at a time in her life where
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: she really feels like she could step up and be
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: a parent. And then, unfortunately, under very... hard circumstances, she is,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: you know, kind of thrust into that role, but it
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: seems like she's really, but I think she was ready.
• 9:23
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Just obviously horrific circumstances, but.
• 9:27
  Speaker 7: You know, uh, it, it, In the end, I guess
• 9:31
  Speaker 7: it all, you know, worked out.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: There wasn't any like family feud or anything over this.
• 9:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: I'm really, really like, you know, there's no good time,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: but I'm really glad that OP got to have that
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: final conversation and not be like, not leave, you know,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: not let him leave angry or with, as you said,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: any resentment.
• 9:48
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 9:49
  Speaker 7: And it was just, and it was just them too.
• 9:52
  Speaker 7: Like didn't need anything. That was really, I don't know.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: I think that's just really beautiful. It gives me, chills.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Me too. But that's the end of that story. And
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: we got another one coming right up. Hopefully not so sad.
• 10:05
  Speaker 7: I wanted to leave my family's holiday early because they
• 10:08
  Speaker 7: made me feel unwelcomed. I guess I'm not wanted here. I,
• 10:12
  Speaker 7: 27 male, lost my vision three years ago and became
• 10:16
  Speaker 7: completely blind.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: Shout out to the blind one. That's horrid. That is horrible. Yeah,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: that's really hard.
• 10:23
  Speaker 6: All right, time to be Daredevil.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: That's the only thing you can do. Or Toph. Or Toph, yes.
• 10:30
  Speaker 7: It's been a major adjustment, but ultimately I'm doing well.
• 10:35
  Speaker 7: I've lived out on my own since before losing my
• 10:38
  Speaker 7: sight and continued to after. Over time, I actually saved
• 10:42
  Speaker 7: an appreciable amount amount in electricity as i don't need
• 10:46
  Speaker 7: the lights on.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: At all which is like you don't think about that
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: but that is i remember i saw a post and
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: it was like someone had a blind professor and they
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: were like do you save a lot on electricity he's
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: like yeah i just don't have the lights on i
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: don't have to watch tv yeah well you could listen
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: to podcasts.
• 11:01
  Speaker 6: You can that's listening not watching like.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Us any bad people out here in we're.
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 11:09
  Speaker 7: And if staying were here, I'd say in staying, but
• 11:12
  Speaker 7: it leads me to situations where it's just no longer
• 11:15
  Speaker 7: on my mind when entering or leaving a room to
• 11:17
  Speaker 7: flip the switches. I try to make a conscious effort
• 11:20
  Speaker 7: at other people's houses. I've been staying over at our parents'
• 11:23
  Speaker 7: place with my two siblings and their spouses. It's a
• 11:26
  Speaker 7: full house over the holidays. We all moved out to
• 11:29
  Speaker 7: other states.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: So it's a.
• 11:31
  Speaker 7: Bit of a distance for us to visit. Plus it's
• 11:33
  Speaker 7: been five years since all of us have been together.
• 11:36
  Speaker 7: And for some of us, it's been years since we
• 11:38
  Speaker 7: saw our parents. As a result, we're all celebrating Thanksgiving
• 11:42
  Speaker 7: and Christmas now.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: Multiple times during the.
• 11:45
  Speaker 7: Week so far, we've had light switch incidents, and it's
• 11:48
  Speaker 7: frustrating the family. The switches are ambidextrous and often connected
• 11:53
  Speaker 7: to another one inside the room, so it's entirely possible
• 11:57
  Speaker 7: for me to walk in, flip the switch to on,
• 11:59
  Speaker 7: and actually turn it off, or walking out, flip the
• 12:02
  Speaker 7: switch to off, and have it turn on.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: That's really funny, though. Bumpy's like, okay, bye.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: Lights off.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: My boyfriend will do that when I'm in the bathroom
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: or something. Sam will do this, too, where he'll walk
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: into my room, and he'll be like, hey, but not
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: even think. He'll just be like, okay, bye. I'm like,
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: I'm still in here. No, they know because he comes
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: back and he's like, oh, I'm sorry. And then he
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: turns him back on. This is creating chaos. I can
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: only imagine. Turn the back on.
• 12:29
  Speaker 6: He's like, you see what I see.
• 12:30
  Speaker 5: No, I don't.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: No, I don't see.
• 12:34
  Speaker 7: By the way, this comes from Family Trip Out, and
• 12:37
  Speaker 7: if you guys want to submit your own stories, go
• 12:38
  Speaker 7: to the r slash okay story time subreddit.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: I'm Savannah. I'm Sophia.
• 12:42
  Speaker 6: I'm Keon.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: And we are here to give some good advice, goofily,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: but we don't have all your answers. We're only going
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: to tell you.
• 12:47
  Speaker 7: What we would do, but let us know what you
• 12:49
  Speaker 7: would do down in the comments. As Opie says, I've
• 12:52
  Speaker 7: had someone throw a book near me or other times
• 12:55
  Speaker 7: start screaming in shock because I was in a dark
• 12:59
  Speaker 7: room and didn't realize they walked.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: In until they shouted.
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: Oh, gosh.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: Okay, but none of this is, like, your fault.
• 13:05
  Speaker 6: It's not your fault, but can you imagine someone just
• 13:08
  Speaker 6: sitting in a dark room?
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: But, yeah, like, okay.
• 13:10
  Speaker 6: Just staring at the wall.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: The first time. After the first time of someone walking
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: into the room and you go, oh my God, I
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: didn't know there was someone in here.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: Then you realize, oh, this is my blind family member
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: who doesn't have to turn on the lights.
• 13:24
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: Maybe I need to get used to this.
• 13:27
  Speaker 6: I do this with my dog. I think that's ridiculous.
• 13:29
  Speaker 6: Because my dog's blind too. So we just put like
• 13:30
  Speaker 6: a bell on her. Yeah, put a bell on Opie.
• 13:33
  Speaker 6: So we should put a bell on Opie.
• 13:34
  Speaker 4: That's fine.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I think they're all being ridiculous. I
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: think Opie should just not touch the lights. And there
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: we go. Opie shouldn't have to accommodate for anyone. Yeah.
• 13:45
  Speaker 7: Sister-in-law apologized profusely for the book, though. Dad will start
• 13:50
  Speaker 7: complaining about how he's not made of money and reminds
• 13:52
  Speaker 7: us that he's told us a million times that the
• 13:55
  Speaker 7: last person out of the room has to turn out
• 13:56
  Speaker 7: the lights, only to get very quiet when I admit it.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Was probably me. Then he'll just say not to let
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: it happen again. But how can you? Opie doesn't know.
• 14:06
  Speaker 6: I think Opie just needs to be like, hey, leaving
• 14:08
  Speaker 6: this room.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, leaving this room. I'm in this room. I don't
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: know what they want from OP. I know. It's like,
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: remind you, I'm blind. Yeah, OP's not allowed to save
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: money by being in a dark room or spend money
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: by being in a room with light.
• 14:23
  Speaker 7: A couple times, my sister has brushed past me and
• 14:25
  Speaker 7: turned out a light behind me. And when I thanked her,
• 14:29
  Speaker 7: she sighed and said, well, you clearly have difficulty. I'm
• 14:32
  Speaker 7: getting real self-conscious in a way I haven't been for
• 14:36
  Speaker 7: a couple years now.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: Aw, and you should have.
• 14:39
  Speaker 7: I tend to stick in my room until I hear
• 14:41
  Speaker 7: multiple people awake in the morning and follow them around
• 14:44
  Speaker 7: the house. But even so, I've had to be careful
• 14:47
  Speaker 7: it was my brother or his wife because my sister
• 14:49
  Speaker 7: or her wife, book sister-in-law, or mom or dad will startle. Truthfully,
• 14:55
  Speaker 7: I think maybe we do need a bell in this situation.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: Or I don't, I don't even know. Or like, I
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: don't know. I think they're just like mad at OP
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: for everything.
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: Which is a little crazy to me because OP has
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: been blind for three years, three years. And you would
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: think if anyone would understand or would try to understand
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: it would be his family or her gender or him, him, him, him.
• 15:19
  Speaker 4: Okay. I said, right.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: The man. I said that first noise. It would be
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: his family. Um, but you know, it sucks.
• 15:27
  Speaker 6: Just start clapping when you enter a room.
• 15:28
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: It's like, I don't know what else to do.
• 15:31
  Speaker 7: Mom has always joked about having cardiac issues, but it's
• 15:34
  Speaker 7: starting to affect me when she says that I'll give
• 15:37
  Speaker 7: her a heart attack By my sneaking around.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: That is not your fault.
• 15:43
  Speaker 6: It's your fault that you're blind.
• 15:45
  Speaker 7: Even so, my brother will sometimes ask me why I'm
• 15:48
  Speaker 7: following him like his shadow, which is to avoid messing
• 15:51
  Speaker 7: up the lights. I don't want to be using my
• 15:54
  Speaker 7: eyesight as an excuse, but I feel like it might
• 15:56
  Speaker 7: be best if I head out now and let them
• 15:58
  Speaker 7: have their Christmas together.
• 15:59
  Speaker 6: Is your family dumb?
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: I think they are. I think they've all forgotten that
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: you're blind.
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: Your brother's like, why are you following me?
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: I do think, you know, I think it's a little
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: bit of when someone's only been had this disability for
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: maybe three years and you've grown up with them being,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: you know, not having that disability. You're maybe so used
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: to acting and interacting with them in a certain way
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: that you do forget. And I'm wondering if that's it.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: And then just every time they're like, oh, right.
• 16:29
  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah.
• 16:29
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 16:29
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: But it doesn't seem like they're even clocking it like after,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: you know, they make these stupid comments. Well, it's not clocking.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: I'm a father. The thing is.
• 16:38
  Speaker 6: I'm blind. It's not clocking.
• 16:40
  Speaker 7: I will give them this. They haven't seen each other.
• 16:44
  Speaker 7: Like some of them haven't seen each other in years.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: So maybe.
• 16:47
  Speaker 7: So everyone coming back into the house all at once.
• 16:50
  Speaker 7: Also having to now be like, oh, yeah.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: Oh, he's blind. I forgot about that.
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: And then. I don't know.
• 16:55
  Speaker 6: I feel like if one of you, like, even with
• 16:58
  Speaker 6: all my family members who I haven't seen in say,
• 17:00
  Speaker 6: a couple years. I get the information that they are blind.
• 17:04
  Speaker 6: I'd be like, what do you need? Let me help you. Obviously,
• 17:07
  Speaker 6: none of this is your fault. What do you need
• 17:10
  Speaker 6: to make sure that you're comfortable? Because this is crazy.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: Would I be the a-hole if I leave a family
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: trip early? Honestly, I would talk to them first.
• 17:18
  Speaker 7: I'd definitely talk to them and be like, listen guys,
• 17:19
  Speaker 7: I know I may be causing problems, but also I
• 17:22
  Speaker 7: don't live here.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: This isn't going to be forever.
• 17:24
  Speaker 7: And I'm sorry if this is an inconvenience to anyone,
• 17:28
  Speaker 7: but I cannot help my medical condition.
• 17:30
  Speaker 6: I think it's the perfect thing of help me help
• 17:33
  Speaker 6: you what do we need to make sure no one
• 17:35
  Speaker 6: has a minor heart attack or people start throwing books
• 17:39
  Speaker 6: at me or like people get annoyed by me what
• 17:41
  Speaker 6: do you need.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: Because I'm I'm moving the best I can yeah it's
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: just like this could be with anything like saying you
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: were like allergic to like gluten or something in your
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: family oh like it's not accommodating and be like it's
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: so annoying that like we have to accommodate for you
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: now and it's like.
• 17:55
  Speaker 7: It is not my fault my body rejects it sorry
• 17:58
  Speaker 7: I don't have eyes I don't know what you want
• 18:00
  Speaker 7: from me yeah my eyes don't work Update. I'll preface
• 18:04
  Speaker 7: everything that none of them meant to make me feel
• 18:06
  Speaker 7: like a stranger in my childhood home, or that I
• 18:09
  Speaker 7: had to hide just to avoid inconveniencing them.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: They all feel horrible and have apologized. Okay, OP, we
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: spoke to them.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: Amazing.
• 18:16
  Speaker 7: Book's sister-in-law has repeated her apologies especially, and my sister
• 18:21
  Speaker 7: said she didn't mean to come across as condescending.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: We're working on it. Dad seemed to get emotional when
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: he said that this house is my house too until
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: the day after. I pass away.
• 18:32
  Speaker 7: But then followed up with, or until they sell it,
• 18:35
  Speaker 7: men move in with one of us younger, young ones.
• 18:39
  Speaker 7: My sister hit him and told him that deflecting with
• 18:43
  Speaker 7: humor was how he got to this point and we
• 18:45
  Speaker 7: need to learn better means of communication.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Hey, sister. Okay. Her wife suggested family therapy and my
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: brother seconded. None of us are opposed. Even my bootstrap
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: loving father. I'm amazed by that, most of all. There
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: were a lot of revelations. A lot of liquor. A
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: lot of tears.
• 19:02
  Speaker 7: A lot of shouting of bringing up the very late
• 19:04
  Speaker 7: past and the more recent years.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: Then more tears.
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: Rhymes.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: Put that in a book of poetry or a song.
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: Rhymes.
• 19:13
  Speaker 7: We were not estranged, but we haven't been close in years,
• 19:16
  Speaker 7: and it shows. I've held off on responding, as I'm
• 19:19
  Speaker 7: sure I still don't do this justice with this post.
• 19:22
  Speaker 7: My family definitely wasn't yet accustomed to my blindness. They
• 19:25
  Speaker 7: kept tripping over sayings like, good to see you.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: Ah, shoot, but he can't see me. I can't say
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: good to see you. It's rubbing it in his face.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: What is he going to say?
• 19:36
  Speaker 7: They kept tripping over sayings like, good to see you,
• 19:39
  Speaker 7: and felt like they couldn't talk to me easily anymore
• 19:42
  Speaker 7: without committing... a faux pas of some sort. It's a
• 19:46
  Speaker 7: huge adjustment for them too. Basically what we have here
• 19:50
  Speaker 7: is a failure to communicate. I'm staying the rest of
• 19:53
  Speaker 7: the trip.
• 19:53
  Speaker 8: Yay!
• 19:54
  Speaker 7: Mom and dad are going to dedicate a single set
• 19:56
  Speaker 7: of switches and keep it year round until this house
• 19:59
  Speaker 7: is no more. So they don't build the wrong habit.
• 20:02
  Speaker 7: They want this to feel as much as a home
• 20:04
  Speaker 7: as it did growing up.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: There was a little bit left here. I think it
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: all worked out. Yeah. And it really was the communication.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: So it really, yeah. And it makes sense. You know,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: this is kind of what I was saying of they
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: haven't seen him in a while. It's only been three years.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: And they haven't been around for those three years. And
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: it is an adjustment period. Like when you are interacting
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: with a person who did not have that disability before.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: And then suddenly does. Or not suddenly, but you know,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: now does. And you're kind of relearning how to interact
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: with them.
• 20:35
  Speaker 7: I wasn't the kid that was overlooked all the time.
• 20:37
  Speaker 7: But I did have to suck it up a lot
• 20:39
  Speaker 7: of years or go without notice because of my siblings' achievements.
• 20:43
  Speaker 7: It means so much to me that my family is
• 20:44
  Speaker 7: going this far for me. There's more than just the
• 20:47
  Speaker 7: switches in therapy, by the way. But it's personal and
• 20:50
  Speaker 7: I won't go into that further for privacy reasons. Thank
• 20:53
  Speaker 7: you to the Redditors that urged me not to leave.
• 20:56
  Speaker 7: Same to more.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Other Redditors for similarly encouraging me to speak up rather
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: than just leave. I have high hopes for us. We
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: all didn't speak for so long because of poor communication
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: and other reasons that maybe this is the turning point.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: And you don't need eyes to see that. And you
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: don't need to see it because you can just feel
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: it in your heart.
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: And.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Also, physically, you could probably feel around and you could
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: feel it. But yes, I love that it worked out.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: This was honestly a very sweet little touching story. And
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: that's just, you know, our motto, communicate. Yeah, truthfully. That's
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: most of the stories. It's just like, just talk. Just
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: talk to each other.
• 21:36
  Speaker 8: And that's the end of this story. We're going to
• 21:37
  Speaker 8: go to the next one.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: My aunt refused to let me see my old home
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: and I made her cry that night. Oh, come on, crying.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: So I, 16 female, and my little brother, Ben, 12,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: live with her aunt, Katie, 35. She's like super rich.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: We live at a farm in BC?
• 21:58
  Speaker 6: British Columbia.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: British Columbia. And her house is huge. She's an engineer.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: She goes to fancy dinners, has met primers, MPs, some sort.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: Of, I don't know.
• 22:09
  Speaker 6: Many pies.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: I'm assuming that's some sort of political thing.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: And meets business people a lot. She got my brother
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: a PS5 the day it came out.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: Damn!
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: Our mother was not rich and we lived in a
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: one-story house, but I loved it. After our mom passed,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: we were supposed to live with our dad's parents in Ontario,
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: but aunt took us both instead. I didn't really know
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: aunt Katie before that. Like I remember when I was little,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: she lived with my mom and grandparents, but then she
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: was gone one day. Mom always said they had a
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: bad fight, but she never talked about it. And Aunt
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Katie's told me enough for me to get the feeling
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: that they didn't really like each other because of it.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: I know Aunt Katie loves me, like she'll teach me
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: how to cook, go to my games, help me with
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: pre-calc when she's around. But it's not like it is
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: with Ben.
• 22:54
  Speaker 6: Also, MP was members of parliament. I was thinking military police.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: I assumed it was some sort of political.
• 23:02
  Speaker 6: I was like, oh my gosh.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: She treats him like he is her son. And I've
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: always just felt like I'm staying over. By the way,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: this comes from Piccolo Aunt.
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: Piccoloco.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: Piccoloco Aunt. And if you want to spin your own stories,
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: go to the r slash showcase story time subreddit. I'm Sophia.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: I'm Savannah.
• 23:17
  Speaker 6: I'm Dakota.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: And we're here to give good advice goofily, but we
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: don't have all the answers. So if you've got answers,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: put them down below. And Dakota was lying. That's Keon.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: And OP says, see, you're confusing all the black people.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: You're confusing my people.
• 23:31
  Speaker 6: They should know my voice then. They should know my voice.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: What if they're new?
• 23:35
  Speaker 5: No.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: No, they're not allowed to be new.
• 23:35
  Speaker 6: They'll be like, that guy's funny.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: Literally, last story, I'm pretty sure we were all Sophia.
• 23:40
  Speaker 6: We were Sophia.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: And I was ashamed.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: And I was ashamed. I don't know.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: I've really been missing home. And yesterday after dinner, I
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: asked her if I could go and see it. And
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: she said no.
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: Oh.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: I asked why. And she asked why I would ever
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: want to go back there when she's given me so
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: much better. That's a weird take on that. It kind
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: of started a fight between us. And she said she's
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: always hated that place. And it hurt her to go there.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: Then she said one day I'd appreciate her taking me
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: into this house when it's mine. And I just yelled
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: back that I want to go back to my real home.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: She just got really quiet and sent me to my room.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: I heard her crying in her room last night when
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: I went to the washroom and I feel bad, but
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm wrong because I just want
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: to see it again. When I told Ben about it
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: this morning, he told me I was an a-hole since
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: I made her cry. And she does so much for us.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, you're 16. You were bound to make her
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: cry at some point. That is true. Don't act like
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: that's the first time because it's not going to be
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: the last either. Writing this in my free period. So
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: not sure I'll be able to respond much. And edit.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: Quickly putting this in before lunch period ends. My mom
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: passed away when I was 12 and my brother was 8.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: And we've lived with Aunt Katie since then. She didn't
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: just take us in this year. And we do have
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: an update. But what do you think Opie should do?
• 24:55
  Speaker 7: Uh, I think, you know, maybe apologize and just be like, Hey,
• 24:58
  Speaker 7: I didn't mean for this to like be a huge thing.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: I just, you know, I just wanted to go home. Yeah.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: You can just say, Hey, I'm feeling these very big feelings.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: I miss my mom. I recognize how much you've done
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: and I appreciate it. But I just want to go home.
• 25:15
  Speaker 7: It's nothing against you. Like, that's how she's taking it.
• 25:17
  Speaker 7: She's like, oh, I'm not good enough then. Or this,
• 25:21
  Speaker 7: you know, everything I do for you, you're ungrateful for.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: And she's got these own, you know, she's got her
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: own feelings.
• 25:25
  Speaker 4: About the house.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: Exactly. So it's like.
• 25:28
  Speaker 7: I feel like she's projecting all of her insecurities and,
• 25:31
  Speaker 7: you know, scares that she has facing this big fear
• 25:35
  Speaker 7: of hers to go back to this house.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: And she's young. She's 35.
• 25:38
  Speaker 6: 35 dealing with a 16 year old.
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: Come on.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: She probably bonds better with Ben because he's younger. And
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: a guy. She just doesn't know how to talk to women.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: She hates women. That's what I've heard from this story. Update.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: So the day I posted, I didn't see Aunt Katie
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: because she was working all day. But the day after,
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: she surprised me by picking me up from school, Ben Bust,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: and she told me we'd talk about things at home.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: Then she took me shopping and then to the spa.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: And we had the best time together. When we got
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: home after dinner, she said we needed to talk now
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: and took me to the nursery. I did get scared
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: because that's the one room Ben and I aren't allowed
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: to go to.
• 26:17
  Speaker 6: What happened to the nursery?
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: Well, presumably she didn't have her child.
• 26:19
  Speaker 6: Well, okay.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: I would think. She said she was sorry if I
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: didn't think of her home as mine yet and would
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: try harder. She told me how bad her parents were
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: to her, but that it was okay for me to
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: keep loving them because they weren't like that to me,
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: but I can't anymore. Interesting. Wait, I thought that she
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: was sister to OP's mom. That's what I thought too.
• 26:43
  Speaker 7: Well, she's saying her parents as in like OP's parents,
• 26:48
  Speaker 7: I think in that sense.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: She said her parents were to her. So maybe OP's grandparents.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: Like her parents as in like. OP's grandparents.
• 26:55
  Speaker 4: OP.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: No. She told me how bad her parents were to her.
• 26:59
  Speaker 8: Oh.
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: I'm intrigued.
• 27:01
  Speaker 5: Oh.
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: Wait, what?
• 27:02
  Speaker 6: I mean, yeah, because going back to it, Opie's mom
• 27:05
  Speaker 6: said that they did have a bad fight between her
• 27:07
  Speaker 6: and Aunt Katie.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I'm wondering what happened between
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: Opie's grandparents. Now they're the same parents. Yeah.
• 27:15
  Speaker 6: I think it's parents.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: She told me she left home because my mom stole
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: her master's tuition money to pay for me and Ben.
• 27:21
  Speaker 5: Dang.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: Whoa.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: And she didn't tell me this because she didn't want
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: me to ever think of my mom as bad, but
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: I needed to know why she wasn't going back there.
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: I honestly felt like crap at that point. She told
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: me she took us in because our mom was probably
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: afraid of what would happen to us when she was gone.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: And what if being with our dad's parents let him
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: take us? Then she told me how everything she has
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: is for Ben and me and how it will all
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: be ours when she's gone. And I just started crying
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: because I didn't want to think of her being... passed
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: away like everyone else we love okay so they why
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: do they live with the aunt that is slightly unclear
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: because i was like did i just miss that yeah
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: it is unclear it.
• 28:01
  Speaker 6: Wasn't really said it was just like they just we
• 28:03
  Speaker 6: were supposed to live with our dad in ontario yeah
• 28:06
  Speaker 6: aunt katie took us afraid of what happened.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: To us yeah Okay. And then it seems like maybe
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: the dad... And then Opie's like, I want to go home.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: Probably Opie's mom was very young when she had Opie.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: Because she passed away when Opie was, what, 12, I believe?
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: So it's been four years since mom passed away. I
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: cried like a baby in her arms till my head hurt.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: And I think I ruined her shirt with all the fluids.
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: Aw, ew.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: My worst nightmare. I hate fluids from the face. I
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: tried to remember what you guys told me to say,
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: like how I should apologize and stuff, but I couldn't.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: So I just kept saying sorry. When she finally got
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: me to calm down, she asked if I felt okay.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: And I remember what one user said, and I told
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: her how I love doing all the things we do
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: together because it made me feel like I still have
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: a mom and that I felt jealous she did so
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: much more with Ben, like she wants to be his mom,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: but not mine. She gave me a hug and said
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: she loves me just as much and promised to make
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: more time for just us. She did make me brush
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: and go to bed, but she sat on my bed
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: and held my hand until I fell asleep. I know
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: it was babyish, but I did like it, and it
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: did make me feel a bit special again. I love this. Ugh,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: I'm not crying anymore. Since then, things have been so
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: much better. We've all been spending so much more time together,
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: and it has kind of started feeling like a real family.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: I still haven't gone to see my old home, and
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: I still want to, but maybe that'll come another time.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: I guess I'm just happy that things between my aunt
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: and I are better, and that's the way it'll stay.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: I love that.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: That was really sweet.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: Well, that really went well. Seems like maybe aunt just
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: didn't realize that she wasn't, you know, again, OP is
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: older than Ben.
• 29:46
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 29:46
  Speaker 7: And she probably is spending a little bit more time
• 29:49
  Speaker 7: just to like, she's 16, he's 12. So yeah, 12
• 29:52
  Speaker 7: year olds need a little bit more guys, especially when
• 29:54
  Speaker 7: they're when they're 12 you know yeah and you know
• 29:58
  Speaker 7: I know both of them lost their mom and whatnot
• 30:01
  Speaker 7: but it's still I don't know it's just you want
• 30:05
  Speaker 7: to make sure.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: The youngest is okay yeah just because it's.
• 30:09
  Speaker 7: I don't know that's just the way that it is
• 30:11
  Speaker 7: obviously you want to make sure everyone's okay but especially
• 30:13
  Speaker 7: the youngest because they don't know and.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: OP might have looked like she was you know taking
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: it a little better so she was focusing on.
• 30:19
  Speaker 8: Ben we don't know and that's the end of this
• 30:22
  Speaker 8: story we're gonna go to the next.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: One My friend asked me to hide my girlfriend, so
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: I said no. I would never do that to her.
• 30:32
  Speaker 7: I have a really close 25 year friendship with a
• 30:34
  Speaker 7: woman who was so loving and supportive when I came
• 30:37
  Speaker 7: out to her as bi.
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: What kind of bi?
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: Biracial. She came out to her biracial. I came out.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you notice. I came out as
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: a bicycle. I'm a bicycle. I don't know if you noticed,
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: but I do have wheels.
• 30:52
  Speaker 6: Queen wrote a song about me.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: You know that song? Let's call her Trudy.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: Oh, not about her.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: Trudy.
• 30:59
  Speaker 7: Six months ago, I met the love of my life
• 31:02
  Speaker 7: and we have had a wonderful relationship.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: Let's call her Anna. Anna has met almost all my
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: friends except Trudy. who lives far away.
• 31:10
  Speaker 7: Yesterday, I arranged to meet up with Trudy to introduce
• 31:13
  Speaker 7: her to my girlfriend. However, because Trudy couldn't find a babysitter,
• 31:17
  Speaker 7: she said she'd bring her three kids with her, all
• 31:20
  Speaker 7: under 12.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: Oh, dang. I hope her kids are okay with her
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: being bi.
• 31:25
  Speaker 7: A couple of hours before we were due to meet up,
• 31:27
  Speaker 7: Trudy texted to ask if it's okay to introduce Anna
• 31:31
  Speaker 7: to her kids as my friend, rather than my girlfriend.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: Oh, come on. So I had to read that back,
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: because I was like, huh? You can keep going.
• 31:39
  Speaker 7: No, but that's still like, like, cause they, what? So
• 31:43
  Speaker 7: she doesn't have to explain to the kids.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: She's like, I don't, I don't really want to explain by.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: It's just too tough.
• 31:50
  Speaker 5: Oh.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they're never, I'm going to keep them, I'm going
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: to keep them away from it forever.
• 31:54
  Speaker 6: They're still learning their multiplication tables right now. It's really
• 31:56
  Speaker 6: hard for them to do math.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: Kids are like the, it's the easiest thing to explain
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: to kids. They don't have any preconceived notions. They're just like, oh, yeah, okay.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: Probably this is how they would respond. They'd be like, oh,
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: this is Trudy's, this is your mommy's friend's girlfriend. Yeah,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: they'd be like, girlfriend? You'd be like, yeah.
• 32:12
  Speaker 6: Like friend?
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: No, like how daddy and I are dating. Do you
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: guys kiss?
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: And there we go.
• 32:18
  Speaker 6: And they just start puking.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: And then they start making out. Everyone makes out.
• 32:23
  Speaker 7: She said they won't understand that she's my girlfriend and
• 32:26
  Speaker 7: she's not ready to have that talk with them yet.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: Oh, my gosh. You don't even have to have a
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: talk with them. It doesn't even have to be a talk.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: She's like, this is her girlfriend. I would say no.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: I'd be like, nah.
• 32:36
  Speaker 8: Sorry.
• 32:37
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: By the way, this comes from Mundane Coworker.
• 32:40
  Speaker 7: And if you want to submit your own stories, go
• 32:41
  Speaker 7: to the r slash okay story time subreddit.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: I'm Savannah. I'm Sophia.
• 32:46
  Speaker 6: I'm Keon.
• 32:46
  Speaker 7: And we're here to talk about some stuff, give some advice,
• 32:48
  Speaker 7: but we don't have all your answers. I'm going to
• 32:51
  Speaker 7: tell you what I'm going to do.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: She's going to tell you what she'd do. And maybe
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: he's going to come in here sometime and say some stuff.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: He'll say something.
• 32:57
  Speaker 6: Stuff. Something.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: Got it.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: He got it. He S & ed the crap out
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: of that. Look at him go.
• 33:03
  Speaker 7: And what your job is to put your... things in
• 33:08
  Speaker 7: the comments.
• 33:09
  Speaker 6: Not your private things just yeah let me.
• 33:11
  Speaker 7: Rephrase that put your comments in the comments there we
• 33:14
  Speaker 7: go put your opinions in the comments okay there.
• 33:16
  Speaker 6: We go don't keep your things to yourself keep your.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: Things out of the comments your private things to yourself
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: as op says i was totally taken aback by this
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: request and said no i said that i'm not comfortable
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: being in an environment where my relationship isn't acknowledged and
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: i don't want to hide who my girlfriend is to
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: me I said that if she isn't ready to talk
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: to the kids about same spicy sleep relationship. Is that weird?
• 33:40
  Speaker 7: I said if she isn't ready to talk to the
• 33:42
  Speaker 7: kids about same spicy sleep relationships, which admittedly is a
• 33:46
  Speaker 7: big subject, it might be better if we reschedule to
• 33:48
  Speaker 7: another time. Trudy was very hurt and said she had
• 33:51
  Speaker 7: been incredibly supportive of the relationship and isn't asking me
• 33:54
  Speaker 7: to hide anything.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: Yes, she is.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: You literally just asked me to hide something. She's like,
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: I'm not asking you to hide anything. I'm demanding you
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: hide it. Yeah. I'm demanding.
• 34:05
  Speaker 7: I'm not asking, actually. I'm very hurt by her response
• 34:08
  Speaker 7: and so upset. I feel like I've extended a lot
• 34:11
  Speaker 7: of kindness and understanding to her. whilst holding my own boundaries.
• 34:15
  Speaker 7: I'm not asking her to discuss anything with her kids
• 34:18
  Speaker 7: that she's uncomfortable with, but I'm not prepared to put
• 34:21
  Speaker 7: myself or my girlfriend in that situation. Trudy genuinely doesn't
• 34:25
  Speaker 7: understand my position and now isn't replying to my texts.
• 34:28
  Speaker 7: This is a friend who has been nothing but supportive
• 34:30
  Speaker 7: and loving to me for 25 years and has been
• 34:33
  Speaker 7: so excited about my new relationship. Am I the a-hole
• 34:36
  Speaker 7: for not meeting up with her unless she introduced my
• 34:39
  Speaker 7: girlfriend as my girlfriend?
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: 100% no. You're not the a-hole. No. It's pretty ridiculous that,
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: and it's not supportive of her, you know? Update!
• 34:49
  Speaker 7: Trudy rang me. She said she was sorry about what
• 34:52
  Speaker 7: happened and explained that she only realized on the bus
• 34:55
  Speaker 7: with the kids that they'd be meeting and attract to
• 34:58
  Speaker 7: the same gender couple for the first time. She quite
• 35:01
  Speaker 7: understandably didn't want to have the conversation with them on
• 35:04
  Speaker 7: the bus in front of lots of strangers, and that's
• 35:07
  Speaker 7: when she texted to ask if she could introduce Anna
• 35:09
  Speaker 7: as my friend. I think it would have caused us
• 35:13
  Speaker 7: both a lot of upset.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: If I'd known that was the reason.
• 35:17
  Speaker 7: And if I knew that, I wouldn't have had a
• 35:19
  Speaker 7: problem if Anna and I were introduced as friends. She
• 35:23
  Speaker 7: said she will talk to the kids about same spicy
• 35:25
  Speaker 7: sleep relations.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: And look forward to meeting us another time. I'm so relieved. Okay.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: Okay there. So then it worked out. I think she
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: just probably felt a little overwhelmed.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: But like genuinely for any parents who are like, oh,
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: I just don't know. I don't know how to tell
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: them you're putting it off. Really, it's not hard. You
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: don't have to go into immense detail because kids understand
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: things pretty easily.
• 35:54
  Speaker 8: And that's the end of this story. We're going to
• 35:55
  Speaker 8: go to the next one. Hey, it's Angie, your favorite
• 35:59
  Speaker 8: fake redhead host here.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: And we're going to get back to the stories. But
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: here's a three minute ad break from our sponsors. My
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: parents want to give me 40K as a gift, but
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: I don't want it.
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: I'll take it.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: My wife and I got married a couple of weeks ago.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: We're mid to late 30s. No kids.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: Own our home.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: Both earn well and have plenty saved. Money is not
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: an issue for us. Well, why don't you just brag
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: about it?
• 36:28
  Speaker 6: I think they just did.
• 36:29
  Speaker 7: I have a genuinely good relationship with my parents. I
• 36:32
  Speaker 7: talk to them for about an hour every single week.
• 36:35
  Speaker 7: The one rough patch was leading up to the wedding.
• 36:38
  Speaker 7: My dad threatened not to attend if I wouldn't invite
• 36:41
  Speaker 7: my estranged brother. I told him I'd love to have
• 36:43
  Speaker 7: him there, but I wasn't inviting my brother.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: Full stop. He eventually backed down and came. And at
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: the wedding, my parents were nothing but pleasant.
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: Okay. Where does the term full stop come from? Is
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: that just about... Didn't they do that on the Titanic?
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: Why do people say that? Full stop. Maybe they were
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: trying to say, fool, stop. But it got misconstrued, and
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: the guy was nervous about it. He's like, I don't
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: want to correct anybody.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: I'm spacing out on this entire conversation.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just saying, I'm spacing out on this story
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: because it was like, he wants me to bring my
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: straight brother, and then they showed up anyway. Story over.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder where this is going to go.
• 37:22
  Speaker 7: Then they handed us a check for about $ 40, 000.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: As a wedding gift.
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: Let me guess. That's going to bounce, huh?
• 37:30
  Speaker 6: Why don't you just brag about it?
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: Some context, my parents are well off.
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: No, really.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: My dad is a doctor who owns his practice.
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: Uh-huh.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: So this isn't a life-changing amount for them, and it
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: isn't for us either. I would like to move on
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: to a different story.
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: My father owns his own doctor's practice. So $ 40, 000 is
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: not really a life-changing amount of money for them, nor
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: would it be a life-changing amount for us.
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: However.
• 38:06
  Speaker 7: But I haven't taken money from my parents since I
• 38:08
  Speaker 7: was 21. Every year, they'd send birthday checks and I'd
• 38:12
  Speaker 7: just never cash them. My mom eventually caught on and
• 38:15
  Speaker 7: started sending gift cards from brands she knew I liked,
• 38:18
  Speaker 7: because those are already spent and I couldn't quite quietly
• 38:22
  Speaker 7: decline them. So this dynamic isn't new. It's been going
• 38:25
  Speaker 7: on for 15 plus years. By the way, this comes
• 38:29
  Speaker 7: from Discount Low, 7147. And if you want to submit
• 38:32
  Speaker 7: your own stories, go to the r slash OK Storytime subreddit.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: I'm Savannah.
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: I'm Dakota.
• 38:36
  Speaker 6: I'm Keon.
• 38:37
  Speaker 7: And we are here to talk about some stuff, give
• 38:39
  Speaker 7: some advice, but we don't know everything.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: We're only going to tell you what we know. Let
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: us know what you know down in the comments, because
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: I'm going to read each and every one of them
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: before I go to sleep tonight. Thank you. That's what
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: he says.
• 38:52
  Speaker 7: The reason I don't take their money is simple. I
• 38:55
  Speaker 7: don't want to feel obligated. Right now, when they ask
• 38:58
  Speaker 7: me for something, visit more often, go on a trip
• 39:00
  Speaker 7: with them and my brother or whatever, I can say
• 39:03
  Speaker 7: yes or no purely based on what I actually want.
• 39:06
  Speaker 7: There's no transactional element. Taking 40k changes that. Even if
• 39:12
  Speaker 7: they'd never say it out loud, I'd feel it. I
• 39:15
  Speaker 7: like our relationship being between equals, not one where I'm
• 39:19
  Speaker 7: accepting resources and then feeling like I owe compliance. I
• 39:22
  Speaker 7: feel like that might just be in your head. Have
• 39:24
  Speaker 7: you talked to them about it?
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: Like, do they act like that?
• 39:27
  Speaker 7: Like, do they act like your relationship is very transactional?
• 39:30
  Speaker 7: Because I haven't, we haven't been given any.
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: Give me the $ 40, 000.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: I would greatly benefit from that. Truly benefit.
• 39:40
  Speaker 6: Call OP the cranberries how he's in his head.
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you're overthinking a gift for your own wedding.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: Hey, but it's a check. Maybe it'll bounce. Who knows?
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: That's my theory. I don't know.
• 39:52
  Speaker 7: My wife is completely fine with declining the money. Her
• 39:55
  Speaker 7: only concern is that we keep a good relationship with
• 39:57
  Speaker 7: my parents and that they don't blame her.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: But they know this is 100% between me and them.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: This is my thing, not hers.
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: I'm confused. What strings are attached to this $ 40, 000? Did
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: I miss something? No. There's like, it's a gift for
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: the wedding. It's a happy, hey, congratulations. Here's a little
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: quarter I found in the couch cushions to help the newlyweds, huh?
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: Wait, Maybear might have a point. Like, hey, I gave
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: you that money. You have to invite your brother. I
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: gave you that money.
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: The wedding already happened.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: You have to come on vacation. I gave you the money.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: You have to do what I say.
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: Then you just go, no, I don't. And what happens?
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: I could just be like, here's the money back.
• 40:41
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: You know, put it in your savings account. And then
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: if they ever go, well, well, you have to because
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: of the $ 40, 000. Then you can take the $ 40, 000 and
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: give it back because it's in savings.
• 40:54
  Speaker 7: My mom has been texting asking when we are going
• 40:57
  Speaker 7: to cash the check. And I can tell she's getting
• 40:59
  Speaker 7: a bit annoyed. Probably partially because she doesn't like the
• 41:02
  Speaker 7: money sitting there in a checking account while it could
• 41:05
  Speaker 7: be bearing interest. And also because what the F, why
• 41:09
  Speaker 7: won't my.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: Wiener head son take our generous wedding gift? For what
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: it's worth, we thanked.
• 41:15
  Speaker 7: Them profusely and also told them we didn't plan to
• 41:18
  Speaker 7: cash the check. So it's not like I've left my
• 41:21
  Speaker 7: mom wondering what's going on. Am I the a-hole for
• 41:24
  Speaker 7: not wanting to take the money? I mean, no, you
• 41:27
  Speaker 7: don't have to take the money, but it seems like
• 41:32
  Speaker 7: they want you to take it. But I don't know
• 41:35
  Speaker 7: if that's out of cause. But you never said, like,
• 41:38
  Speaker 7: I don't know if you've, like, have you ever taken
• 41:41
  Speaker 7: money from them? And then it's been, like, a whole mess.
• 41:45
  Speaker 7: Because if that is it, then I understand why you
• 41:48
  Speaker 7: wouldn't want to take the money. But if you're just
• 41:50
  Speaker 7: not taking it because you're afraid of that, but it's
• 41:52
  Speaker 7: never happened, then it's like, I don't know. Maybe they're
• 41:56
  Speaker 7: taking it because Carrie Owen says, why are they so
• 41:59
  Speaker 7: insistent that Opie take their money? I'm thinking because it
• 42:01
  Speaker 7: was a gift. And why don't they ever, like, it's
• 42:04
  Speaker 7: weird that he never accepts their gifts. You know, they
• 42:06
  Speaker 7: always send a check. They always send this and that
• 42:08
  Speaker 7: and the other thing. And it's like, but, and he
• 42:11
  Speaker 7: just doesn't like cash. The checks doesn't do anything.
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I can't imagine, you know, I mean,
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: if it really is this nefarious thing, like, okay. But
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: if it's not, it's like, yeah, you're being like, I
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: don't know. I don't know why you would be that
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: way when you could just cash the money and put
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: it in savings and never touch it. And then whatever.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: And if they do try to control you with it,
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: you just give it right back. And you say, that's
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: why I don't like taking money from you.
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: Boom.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: End of story.
• 42:43
  Speaker 8: And that's the end of this story. We're going to
• 42:45
  Speaker 8: go to the next one.
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: My wife joked that I never cook. So I stopped
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: feeding her.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: You can starve for all I care.
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: I work at a nice restaurant as a cook. And
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: every day when I get off from work, I always
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: cook dinner for my wife and our two kids. We're
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: eight and six. at the restaurant before coming home. The
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: only time I don't cook for them are on weekends
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: when I'm off, and that's when my wife does the cooking.
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: We usually trade off who makes breakfast and lunch for
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: the kids every other day, but for the week, I'm
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: always the one bringing home dinner. Weekends, we sometimes get
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: together with friends, and they come over to the house.
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: My wife usually cooks, and I help set the table
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: and clean afterwards. One of her friends, Stessa... Asked how
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: come I never do any of the cooking. And is
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: it always on my wife all the time making meals
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: for the kids, especially when I'm a cook myself? Instead
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: of correcting her, she sort of laughed and went along
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: with it, making jokes about, you know how it is, Stacy.
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: Shoot.
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: She doesn't, though. That's why she asked. Right?
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: Who is this girl to stick her nose in anyone's business?
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: Stacy laughed because her ex-husband was the same way. And
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: then sort of ripped on me in a joking way
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: how I better buck up before I become an ex too.
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: My wife just said, well, let's see if he actually
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: listens and starts cooking for once. Joking about all the
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: time I spend in the kitchen at work but won't
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: do the same at home.
• 44:20
  Speaker 6: That really peeved me off.
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: I'm not the husband that just doesn't do anything after
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: I'm home from work. By the way, this comes from
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: Throwaway Dinner Strike. And if you want to submit your
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: own stories, go to the r slash okay story time subreddit.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: I'm Dakota.
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: I'm Savannah.
• 44:38
  Speaker 6: I'm Riley.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: And we are here to.
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: Read stories and give our good advice goofily, but we
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: don't have all the answers. We only know what we know,
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: so let us know what you know in the comments. Okay.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: And Opie says, I cook food for her and the
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: kids at work, and on top of that I make
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: separate dishes for each of them, which is what she
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: wants and what the kids want. All that after standing
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: on my feet all day. We talked about it once
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: they left because I don't appreciate being told I'm not
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: doing something she knows for a fact I do. She
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: didn't want to apologize for it because it was all
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: just supposed to be a funny joke. Even after telling
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: her about how it hurt my feelings being put down
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: like that. My wife said she felt like she has
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: to go along with the joke, so there wouldn't be
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: any awkward vibes, whatever that means.
• 45:29
  Speaker 6: No, there are awkward vibes. You went along with a
• 45:31
  Speaker 6: joke that's a blatant lie. It made fun of me.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: And putting down your husband, for what? To make your
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: friend who's divorced feel better?
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, I didn't want to remind my
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: friend that she divorced her husband.
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I don't care.
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: She remembers, actually. She still remembers that.
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: I'm sure that's all she remembers.
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: Would have been so easy to be like, oh my god,
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: he cooks dinner every night.
• 45:55
  Speaker 4: What? Yeah.
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: No, your husband sucked, not mine. Sorry, I'm just joking, right?
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: But I said, fine. If she can't apologize for something
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: that was mean just so she could laugh along with
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: her friends, then I won't keep doing something she claims
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: I don't do. For the past week, I've only brought
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: home dinner for our kids and she's had to make
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: her own food. She's mad that I'm refusing to feed
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: her over what happened instead of letting it go. But
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: I can't help but feel mad about being made fun
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: of like that when I'm busting my butt to provide
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: for my family and still making sure they have food
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: on the table every evening. She just thinks I'm an
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: a-hole for how I'm reacting when she's already tired at
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: the end of the day, but still having to make
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: her food for herself. So am I the a-hole? And
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: there's an update. Let me ask you this. Are you 12?
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: Is this your wife? Shouldn't you just be like, yeah, whatever.
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: Don't do that again. I will continue to feed you,
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: my wife.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: My wife. I don't know. I'd be a little peeved.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: I'd be like, okay, then I'm not cooking for you.
• 47:05
  Speaker 6: I wouldn't bring home food for a while. Like a
• 47:09
  Speaker 6: couple days.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, until she apologizes. Like, you know what? Learned my lesson.
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: Probably shouldn't have said that. I apologize. I will defend
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: you next time.
• 47:18
  Speaker 8: Yeah, I beg.
• 47:19
  Speaker 6: It's a little awkward, isn't it?
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: I would just keep cooking for her, but every time
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: I brought her the food, I'd go, surprise! I decided
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: to cook for you.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: Isn't that crazy?
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: What a change.
• 47:33
  Speaker 5: Huh?
• 47:34
  Speaker 7: Yeah, the other thing is she's not apologizing for it.
• 47:36
  Speaker 7: She's trying to make excuses of why. Like, well, it
• 47:39
  Speaker 7: would just be easier if we just went along with
• 47:40
  Speaker 7: what she said.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: No, now guess what? It's caused a rift in our marriage.
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: For what reason?
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I'd just be like, let's get into
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: that a little bit.
• 47:49
  Speaker 6: If she did say she was sorry, great. But she's
• 47:52
  Speaker 6: standing on, she's like on that hill, man.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: She's like, no, no, it would have been, it's so
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: much easier this way to just say that you're a
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: bad husband.
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 48:01
  Speaker 8: All right, cool.
• 48:03
  Speaker 4: That's awesome.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: At first, I wasn't going to.
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: Post another update, but since things have gotten better, why not?
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: I didn't show my wife this post like some suggested
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: until a few days later. But before that, she wanted
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: to talk before bed, and she apologized for how she's
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: been behaving with me. When she made those jokes and
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: let her friends say things about me, and then how
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: she was acting afterwards. And in reality, she knew she
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: did wrong, but when I called her out, it made
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: her defensive, and she realizes how she was acting like
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: a child after knowing how much I do for our family.
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: That's when I showed her the post, and opened up
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: about something that was mentioned by me in the comments,
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: How it really hit a nerve for me, making it
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: seem like I'm a lousy father or husband when my
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: dad was exactly that. He abandoned me and my mom.
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: She knows how important it is for me to be
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: as involved as possible when our kids were born because
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: I never wanted to be like him. So her making
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: it seem like that's how I am brought up some feelings. Um, yeah.
• 49:08
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I would have talked about that like right away.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: I would have been like, hey, that really hurt because
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: my dad was like that.
• 49:18
  Speaker 5: And I'm not.
• 49:20
  Speaker 7: Yeah basically she just opened up a wound that was
• 49:22
  Speaker 7: never healed and that hit you more than you thought
• 49:27
  Speaker 7: it would and that's like I don't know it's really
• 49:32
  Speaker 7: annoying that she even had to like agree with her
• 49:34
  Speaker 7: in the first place just to like keep the peace
• 49:36
  Speaker 7: but then now the peace is not kept between us So,
• 49:40
  Speaker 7: I don't know, think before you do things.
• 49:44
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I guess. Yeah. You know, but I would have
• 49:49
  Speaker 5: liked to see more about why she felt the need
• 49:52
  Speaker 5: to not correct her friend. Maybe she was just worried
• 49:57
  Speaker 5: that it would make her cry. If she found out
• 50:00
  Speaker 5: that your husband was a good dad and a good
• 50:03
  Speaker 5: partner who cooked and helped around, she would weep tears.
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: And it would ruin the party.
• 50:09
  Speaker 6: It'd make things awkward.
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: It would have really made the vibe weird, wouldn't it?
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: OP continues. Telling her this really made her feel like
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: she effed up big time. She wouldn't stop apologizing. She
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: promised she'd never put me down that way. And honestly,
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: I think she's shown that she meant it. For a week,
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: she wanted to be the one making dinner for everyone
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: so I'd have some time to relax after work. It
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: was nice, but also I missed making meals for my family.
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: Cooking for my kids is my own way of expressing
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: my love for them, so we're back to that as well.
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: I feel like my wife has more than shown how
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: sorry she is, and appreciates what I also do for
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: this family. Last time we had lunch with her friend
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: a few days ago, on my day off, she even
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: brought it up. As mad as I was when it happened,
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: it's nice to see she's made an effort to make amends.
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: The support I got from here was very sweet. Appreciate
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: feeling heard when it felt like my wife wasn't hearing
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: me at the time.
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: And that's the end of that story.
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: Well, good.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: I'm glad that it got better. And hopefully she doesn't
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: do it again because it obviously struck a big chord
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: in you.
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: She learned a lesson. It explains why you reacted that
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: way and stopped cooking because of the, you know, your
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: dad not, you know.
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: And now she's allowed to have all the sweet treats
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: she wants.
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: Well, she should have known that. But I still stand
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: on like, dude, it's like, the last thing you should
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: do is to do what she said you do do.
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: It's the churlish thing.
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: It's like, oh, is that what you want me to do?
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: I can do that. You don't want me to?
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: Okay, yeah.
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: You're being churlish.
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, it is a little childish, but it's childish
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: that she just, like, kind of went along with it
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: and put down her husband for no reason at all.
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: Just be like, no, no.
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, I gotta say, let me beam myself
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: into the situation. I go, what are you talking about?
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: I cook you dinner every night. Problem solved. Were you just, like,
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: standing off to the side, like.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: Well, he was probably taking care of the kids.
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like, come on. You could have just chimed in.
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 52:16
  Speaker 8: And that's the end of this story. We're going to
• 52:18
  Speaker 8: go to the next one.
• 52:20
  Speaker 7: My daughters got free tuition.
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: My husband demanded I end it. It's not fair. I
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: had to walk uphill both ways.
• 52:28
  Speaker 7: My ex and I, 44 female, divorced when our daughters, Stacy,
• 52:32
  Speaker 7: 17 female, and Emily, 14 female.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: We're young.
• 52:35
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: Give it up for the nice little family. That's so sweet.
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: They also indulged the girls every whim.
• 53:12
  Speaker 7: Stacy loved horses when she was little, so Uncle John
• 53:16
  Speaker 7: paid for her lessons and riding fees. Emily thought she
• 53:19
  Speaker 7: wanted to play the piano, so Uncle Jeff paid for
• 53:22
  Speaker 7: her lessons and bought her a piano. When the girls
• 53:25
  Speaker 7: grew out of those phases and got interested in something else,
• 53:28
  Speaker 7: their uncles were there ready to indulge them. I tried
• 53:32
  Speaker 7: talking to the uncles about not spoiling my girls, but
• 53:34
  Speaker 7: they said that their nieces needed to explore their own interests,
• 53:38
  Speaker 7: and those explorations will help their brain developments. I disagree,
• 53:41
  Speaker 7: but was not in a financial situation to push too
• 53:44
  Speaker 7: hard because they were paying so much for the girls,
• 53:46
  Speaker 7: so I was basically responsible for only the rent. By
• 53:51
  Speaker 7: the way, this comes from Northstar8378, and if you want
• 53:54
  Speaker 7: to submit your own stories, go to the r slash
• 53:56
  Speaker 7: okay story time subreddit.
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: I'm Savannah.
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: I'm Dakota.
• 54:00
  Speaker 6: I'm Keon.
• 54:01
  Speaker 7: And to give you some advice and talk about some stories,
• 54:05
  Speaker 7: but we don't know everything. We're only going to tell
• 54:08
  Speaker 7: you what we know, but let us know what you
• 54:09
  Speaker 7: know in the comments. As OP says, I later remarried
• 54:14
  Speaker 7: a wonderful man who brought two kids into the family.
• 54:18
  Speaker 7: We had one more kid together and things are good
• 54:20
  Speaker 7: for the most part. So that's five kids right now.
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: Woo, that's a lot.
• 54:26
  Speaker 7: However, kids are smart. So my daughter's step and half
• 54:29
  Speaker 7: siblings started to notice their sisters having more experiences and
• 54:32
  Speaker 7: things than they do. My husband didn't like the situation
• 54:36
  Speaker 7: and we had some arguments about it over the years.
• 54:39
  Speaker 7: Things came to a boiling point recently when we were
• 54:42
  Speaker 7: discussing how to pay for our two oldest kids' colleges,
• 54:46
  Speaker 7: Stacy and her stepbrother Rick, 18 male. Both are good
• 54:51
  Speaker 7: students and while they haven't gotten their acceptance letters, I
• 54:54
  Speaker 7: have no doubt they'll get into good schools. My husband
• 54:56
  Speaker 7: and I make enough money to live a middle-class lifestyle
• 54:59
  Speaker 7: with five kids, but not enough to put them through college.
• 55:03
  Speaker 7: The reality is that they'll have to take out school loans.
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: We talked to both of them about loans, and this
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: is when I found out Stacy had already talked to
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: her uncles, and they're paying for her tuition and cost
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: of living wherever she wants to go. This floored us.
• 55:18
  Speaker 7: And made my husband extremely mad. He got red and
• 55:21
  Speaker 7: started to scream how it's not fair Stacey and Emily
• 55:24
  Speaker 7: will get to go to expensive colleges and graduate with
• 55:26
  Speaker 7: no loans while our other kids will have to go
• 55:29
  Speaker 7: to state schools and take out loans. He wanted me
• 55:32
  Speaker 7: to call John and Jeff to tell them to stop
• 55:34
  Speaker 7: spoiling the girls. On one hand, I agree 100% with
• 55:38
  Speaker 7: my husband that it's not fair to my other kids,
• 55:41
  Speaker 7: but on the other hand, I can't hold my daughters
• 55:43
  Speaker 7: back from something so wonderful. In the end, I told
• 55:47
  Speaker 7: my husband I'm not going to tell my ex-brother-in-law's To
• 55:50
  Speaker 7: stop spoiling our daughters. Was I wrong to tell him that?
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: And there is an upgrade. Or update.
• 55:56
  Speaker 6: Yeah, upgrade.
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: There's an upgrade.
• 55:59
  Speaker 6: I don't know, man. That's like, yeah, it's blatant favoritism.
• 56:05
  Speaker 6: But makes sense. Why are you upset that your daughters
• 56:09
  Speaker 6: are getting a free ride to college?
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: Because they're not mine.
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: They are not of my seed. Yeah, I don't.
• 56:18
  Speaker 7: This is more so just like a projection of jealousy
• 56:22
  Speaker 7: because he wants his kids to succeed as well as
• 56:25
  Speaker 7: the other kids. But the thing is, it doesn't matter what.
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: School you go to.
• 56:29
  Speaker 7: It's how you actually are and how like you, you know,
• 56:34
  Speaker 7: choose to spend your time in school.
• 56:36
  Speaker 6: That's a golden opportunity. And I get like, yeah, that's
• 56:39
  Speaker 6: those are their uncles. Those are the uncles that came
• 56:42
  Speaker 6: place as a father figure for them. I don't know.
• 56:48
  Speaker 7: And also, why would you, like, that's, not only would
• 56:51
  Speaker 7: that put, like, the kids in debt, like, if, you know,
• 56:54
  Speaker 7: the brother-in-laws didn't pay for it, but it would also,
• 56:57
  Speaker 7: I'm sure, put, you know, some stress on the, you know,
• 57:01
  Speaker 7: parents as well. Because now they have to pay for that.
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I just, I don't know. I don't think that
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: it needs to be this big of a deal.
• 57:10
  Speaker 7: Obviously, you know, I would even ask the kids if
• 57:13
  Speaker 7: they even want to go to prestigious, like, you know,
• 57:16
  Speaker 7: big time schools.
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: Like, this is just all in their heads. Like, oh, I,
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: you know, I know one day they're going to go and,
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: you know, half of them have free tuition. The other
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: half doesn't. But yeah, it is. It's truthfully, it's just jealousy.
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: I don't think it really matters. Yeah, everyone in the
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: comments being like, well, now they can just focus on
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: paying for the other three kids.
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Like, I don't know.
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: Is that bad?
• 57:40
  Speaker 6: Yeah, this is, like, I would be like, I'd talk
• 57:45
  Speaker 6: to the uncles and be like, if I were the husband,
• 57:47
  Speaker 6: I'd be like, you guys don't have to do that,
• 57:49
  Speaker 6: but that's very generous of you, and I'd be grateful.
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: The update is things have gone downhill, and I'm now crushed. Oh, God.
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: Somebody call the ambulance.
• 58:01
  Speaker 7: I was at work, and without my knowledge, my husband
• 58:04
  Speaker 7: called John and and yelled at him to mind his
• 58:06
  Speaker 7: own business, told him we don't want their money, and
• 58:09
  Speaker 7: to stay out of our lives. My husband then went
• 58:12
  Speaker 7: and yelled at the girls as they packed their bags,
• 58:15
  Speaker 7: and as they were leaving for their uncle's. When I
• 58:18
  Speaker 7: got home, my husband wanted to call the police to
• 58:20
  Speaker 7: report them as runaways, but I talked him out of it.
• 58:23
  Speaker 6: What is going on?
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: He just wants control, and that's crazy.
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: I think there might be something going on with his brain.
• 58:29
  Speaker 6: He really thinks that the uncles are showing him up,
• 58:33
  Speaker 6: or like.
• 58:35
  Speaker 7: dude he's taking it as an attack and it actually
• 58:38
  Speaker 7: has nothing to do with him it's just we have
• 58:41
  Speaker 7: money and we want to provide for our nieces sorry
• 58:47
  Speaker 7: call me insane but you know their dad passed away
• 58:52
  Speaker 7: and i feel like it's i'm obligated to do stuff
• 58:54
  Speaker 7: for them i like it's really not that big of
• 58:56
  Speaker 7: a deal yeah.
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: I'd be uh i'd be i'd be shuffling him out
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: the door i'd say hey Kyle Polk, don't let the
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: door hit you on the way out of the saloon.
• 59:08
  Speaker 7: I went over to John's house and his wife led
• 59:10
  Speaker 7: me to the kitchen where we stood in silence watching
• 59:14
  Speaker 7: John holding my girls while they cried. For a moment,
• 59:18
  Speaker 7: I pictured their father holding them. Stacey and Emily refused
• 59:21
  Speaker 7: to talk to me when they walked past me on
• 59:23
  Speaker 7: their way upstairs to their room. John and I had
• 59:26
  Speaker 7: a long conversation about the whole situation. He basically told
• 59:29
  Speaker 7: me he's doing what his brother couldn't, and both me
• 59:32
  Speaker 7: and my husband can go to heck if we don't
• 59:34
  Speaker 7: like it. He said the girl should stay with him
• 59:37
  Speaker 7: and his family until things calm down, and I agreed.
• 59:41
  Speaker 7: So this is where we are for now. Also, to
• 59:44
  Speaker 7: answer some common questions, my husband makes less money than
• 59:47
  Speaker 7: I do, so he's been unable to save up college tuition.
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: I don't know. If you're not ready to immediately, like,
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: end things with your husband for this, you're actually trash.
• 59:59
  Speaker 6: You make more money than him. You want what's best
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 6: for your daughter, the daughters.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: Well, they also have one kid together. She has two kids,
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: he has two kids, and then they have one kid together.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 5: Pathetic.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: So I don't know if that's, yeah, no, it truly
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: is pathetic to.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 7: Be like, ugh, like, I have to hate these people
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 7: because they have more than me and I was never
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 7: given that opportunity. It's like, why don't you just, I
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 7: don't know, kind of be happy for them. Be like, yeah,
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 7: I can work my way up and you know, do
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 7: all these things, but nope, you're going to just take
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 7: it as an insult towards you. Didn't you, like, I
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 7: don't know, like, do vows and stuff?
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: I don't know. It just doesn't seem like this guy
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: really is in it for the right things.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: He's like, I promise to be an all right guy,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: I guess.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: His ex is still in the picture. Oh, and has
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: visitation rights.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 7: She makes less money than him, so they have nothing
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 7: saved up, much less tuition.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: Oh, and that's it. That's all.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 7: So, yeah, he's just mad that he doesn't have as
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 7: much money as you, which technically, like, if it wasn't
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 7: for the, you know, the brother-in-laws, then you guys would
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 7: also be in shambles, not being able to afford anything
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 7: and you know.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 7: Why are you so mad? What are you mad about? Like, truly,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 7: what are you mad about? Because I know it's not
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 7: the kids.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: This reminds me that that was not my child. I'm
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: reminded of the existence of other men.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: It's just really, it's so childish. What? Are you an adult?
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: If your ex-husband came back as a ghost, would you
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: leave me for him? If your ex, if your husband
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: came back in Patrick Swayze, would you leave me for him?
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 6: People are asking if there's an update. I'm going to check.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the story can end like that.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: I'm sure it can, because I'm sure everyone went, yo, idiot,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: you're failing your kids, and they went, oh, no, and
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: then they never posted again.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 6: No update. No update, none of that, unfortunately.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: I'm with Christine on this. He's bitter and didn't get
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: the free ride he was expecting.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: He was expecting? Why would he expect a free ride?
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 7: She probably has said, oh, I don't have a lot
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 7: of money, but my brother-in-laws or my ex-brother-in-laws pay for it.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 7: a lot of this stuff, blah, blah. And now he's like, oh,
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 7: so I'm going to get some of that cut. And
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 7: it's like, no, actually, it's just the girls.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: Are you going to get cut?
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: Are you about to get cut?
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 6: Yeah, that's crazy.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 8: And that's the end of this story. We're going to
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 8: go to the next one.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: My wife travels without us. I'm home alone with the
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: baby again.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 4: Ooh, man. Somebody got a babysitter.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: So here goes. My 39 male wife, 34 female, is
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: a very active person. with time-consuming hobbies and likes to
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: spend time on those hobbies with her friends. This means
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: sometimes she's gone for most of a weekend or a
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: whole day every now and then. She also likes to
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: help her friends, one in particular, with all of their
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: problems any time of day or sometimes night. She also
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: works pretty late, so I usually pick her daughter, one female, up.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: It's worth mentioning that I have two kids from a
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: previous marriage, 12 female and 10 male. A lot of
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: kids to look after.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: Before we had our daughter and when we were discussing
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: the possibility, I mentioned that it wouldn't work with her
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: busy schedule and she would have to make huge changes
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: if we were going to have a child together. She
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: assured me she was on board with that and it
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be a problem. Seems like it's maybe a problem.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, just a little bit of a problem.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: I'm getting the hint.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 4: The tiniest smidge that something's going to be up.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: That year, she went on three trips abroad without me.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 4: Those are names. Oh, folks. Come on.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: But I again mentioned this would not be possible once
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: we have a child. Fast forward to us having a
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: six-month-old now. Now she wants to go on a hobby-related
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: trip with her friends for five days. And wouldn't it
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: be terrible if she was left out? So long story short,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: I was guilted into letting her go. She, of course,
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: doesn't miss any of those weekends either. And unfortunately, they
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: usually happen when I have my other kids. I have
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: them every other week. I feel it's really difficult to
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: take good care of them when I'm alone with them
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: and their baby sister, as she requires almost all of
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: my time and attention. By the way, this comes from
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: Dazed and Out of Control. And if you want to
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: submit your own stories, go to the r slash showcase
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: story time subreddit.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: I'm Sophia.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 4: I'm Mike.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 6: I'm Keon.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: And we're here to give good advice goofily, but we
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: don't have all the answers. So if you've got answers,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: put them down below. I think Katie Paladin is right.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: I think she might have lied to you about how
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: committed she was towards raising this child.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 6: How about y'all do like a family vacation?
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what if we all left together?
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 6: When's your, you know, what hobbies do you like, Opie?
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: Has Opie gotten any vacations?
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 6: His vacations are taking care of the kids.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: Right, right, of course.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: A joy.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: Oh, another thing. She has never taken a summer vacation
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: with me because she's always too busy. This is okay,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: but not ideal, as I am really bad at finding
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: fun things to do with the kids on vacation. However,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: now she actually wants to go abroad for another hobby-related
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: thing during my summer vacation with the kids.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 4: What are these hobbies?
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 6: I need to know what these hobbies are.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 4: They're not telling you what these hobbies are.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: What are the hobbies?
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 4: We're living in Vagueville right now.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 6: The hobbies are just girl strips. Girl strips.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: I like my hobby is drinking.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: Not only do I find this unfair to me, but
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: to the kids as well. And she is pressuring me
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: with guilt about how important this is to her And
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: that her mother can take care of our daughter. I
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: don't want to leave her with her grandmother for a week.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: I'm writing this on Easter Sunday alone with our daughter
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: because she's on a road trip with her friend all day.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: She went on a road trip on Easter Sunday.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 4: I've done. I have done crazy stuff like that. I
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 4: went to Vegas on Christmas Day.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: That's crazy.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: I was like, was it fun?
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 4: Oh, it was so fun. It was so fun. Well,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 4: fun as in I went in with 300 and I
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 4: left negative 900.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: Well, and that's Vegas. And that is Vegas.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 4: Don't gamble, kids. Unless you're gambling with us. Unless you're
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 4: gambling with us, then it's okay.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: She notified me of this, didn't ask me or discuss it,
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: just let me know. This same friend wanted her to
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: take a drive with her at 3 a.m. a few
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: weeks ago. They apparently had to take someone to the airport.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 6: Who is this friend? At 3 a.m.? Who is this friend?
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 6: I need pics. Because this is no longer, this is
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 6: a dude.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 4: There needs to be name dropping going on right now.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: That's an ICU. You think it's a man?
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 6: Yeah. I think it's a man.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: I said, forget it. You have a baby. Her friend
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: is not, and I'm sick of this. She relented, but
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: calls me controlling for interfering. She was complaining about being
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: sleepy all day the next day. I wonder how tired
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: she would have been. So I guess what I'm looking
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: for is, am I really being controlling or am I right?
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: And this is just not acceptable behavior for a family.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: I sometimes feel like we're just roommates who sleep together
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: and have a child together rather than an actual family.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, how roommates do. How normal roommates are like.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, normal roommates with a child and who sleep together.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: We do have an update, but what do you think
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: Opie should do?
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 4: I mean, they're not spending time together. She just doesn't
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 4: want to spend time together. Yeah, this is just like
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 4: single people LARPing in a relationship. Yes, exactly.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: She's like, I just wanted the label, but I don't
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: actually want to do any of the things.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 4: If this story does not end up in we broke up,
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 4: I don't know what else. This will be shocking if
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 4: they're still together.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: I agree. I don't have a lot of hope for them.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: But update. Since this has come up so many times,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: her hobbies are mostly dogs and horseback riding. She breeds
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: dogs and, to a much smaller extent, horses. Oh, she's
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: a breeder.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 6: Oh, she's breeding, that's for sure.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: These hobbies do not generate income except barely to cover
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: the cost of doing them, and therefore I call them hobbies.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: And more importantly, she agrees with this assessment. Which brings
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: me to the next point. She found this post and
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: understandably got a bit upset about all the negativity here,
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: And felt that I had painted an unfair look at
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: the picture. She is probably right because I was writing
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: the original post while my youngest daughter was still awake
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: and I was feeling upset myself. Let me try to
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: rectify that. We've got a little bit left to the story.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: Do you think she can rectify that?
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 4: Oh, wait.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: Well, I guess he's trying to rectify. I wonder what
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: he's saying he left out.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 4: Well, it's the... Okay, it's the... Not only is it the, like,
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 4: we're not spending time with each other.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the huge issue, I think.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you know? But also, too, it's like... Why can't,
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 4: you guys should have some hobbies together.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there should be some sort of mutual thing you
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: like to do and spend time together.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, right.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: Why did you get together?
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, if these guys aren't doing that, then I'm just like,
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 4: why are we still, why are we even together in
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 4: the first place? Yeah, do you have.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: Anything in common?
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: OP continues, she does take care of our daughter a lot.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: On weekdays, I go to work in the morning, but
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: she usually doesn't go until after 12. So she takes
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: care of the mornings. She's also taken the brunt of
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: the nights when problems occur because I simply couldn't function
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: at work if I did. And she has done a
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: remarkable job at this. She also very often puts her
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: to bed in the evening. So saying nasty things about
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: her neglecting her daughter is not true. Also, I do
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: not want to force her to quit her hobbies. That
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: is not the issue and never has been. I guess
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: what I want is consensus about things like suddenly going
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: out for all of Easter Sunday to take pictures of
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: dogs in nature. not just being informed about it with
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: little advance notice. Discussing things, making plans together, that is
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: what a family should do. And that's the end of
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: the story.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 4: Wow, that's it?
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: That's it. We don't even know if there's any sort
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: of conclusion.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 4: What do we think is going to happen? They're breaking up, right?
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 4: You think that they're making it work?
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: Well, okay, they have three kids. Well, technically one kid,
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: but they kind of have three kids together.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah, kind of, sort of.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: Kind of, sort of. But I think unless she makes
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: an active effort to spend time with him, I don't
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: know how they would make that work.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 4: No, it's insane. There's not enough horseback riding.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: In the world that would save this relationship.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that would save this relationship. That would keep us together.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 8: And that's the end of this story. We're going to
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 8: go to the next one.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: Hey, it's Dakota, your favorite goofball host here.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: And we're going to get back to the stories.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 6: But here's three minutes of ads from our sponsors.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 4: My fiance lied about who she was meeting, so I
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 4: walked in.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: Who are you meeting?
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 4: My partner, 41 female, and I, 44 male, have been
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 4: together eight years and have lived together the whole time.
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 4: We can call her Betty. We parent her three kids
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 4: from a previous marriage. We had our own kid together
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 4: in 2020, and we moved across the country and we
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 4: bought a house. Our lives are fully intertwined. We co-parent
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 4: her kids with her ex-husband, and we just got engaged
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 4: this summer. Congratulations. I'll be up front. I have not
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 4: been perfect. When we met, I was coming off the
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 4: passing of my fiancé, so I had grief I was
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 4: working through. Going from zero to four kids was a
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 4: hard adjustment. It was hard for me to read that word.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 4: And I'm a better stepdad now, but there were some
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 4: rough starts.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: Okay?
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 4: There was also a period where I turned to other
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 4: outlets instead of her for intimacy, and I'd consider that
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 4: cheating on my part, and I regret it. I've owned
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 4: all my mistakes, begged for forgiveness, and dealt with them.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 4: She has also been on the edge of leaving me
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 4: several times due to my emotional withdrawals.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 6: Dang, you made her edge several times?
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 4: I was just going to say that. He's probably the
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 4: one that was edging, dude.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: You should probably figure that out, bud.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 4: But it was never a one-sided issue, Sophia. Oh, okay.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: It's both of them.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 4: It is both.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: You both should figure that out.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 4: Work on your marriage, buddy. Work on your marriage. About
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 4: two years ago, I made a conscious decision to pour
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 4: everything into our family and our relationship. Face any and
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 4: all issues head on. Stop letting resentment build and just
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 4: be fully present. It's genuinely helped and we've been closer
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 4: than ever. Good for you. And folks.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 4: We can be closer if you submit your own stories
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 4: to the r slash OK Storytime subreddit. My name is Mike.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: I'm Sophia.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 6: I'm Keon.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 4: And this comes from Here I Go Rippling Again.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: There we go.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 4: Hey, buddy, change your name next time. How about that?
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 4: And we're here to give good advice, but we don't
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 4: know all the answers. We're just here to give them goofily.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 4: That's what we do. And if you guys got advice
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 4: of your own, send it in the comments below. But anyways,
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 4: as Opie says, now the issue. She has a male friend,
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 4: a former coworker. Let's call him Fred, 45 male. Fred
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 4: moved to a state away, but comes back to town
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 4: about four times a year. And they text constantly. His
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 4: ex-wife Wilma, sick name, dude, 40 female, is one of
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 4: Betty's best friends. Are you in a 1920s town right now?
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: Wilma and Betty and Fred.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 4: Is there like Prospector Joe up on the, yeah, Fred Flintstone.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 4: Is that Prospector Joe like waiting for you guys at
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 4: the old watering hole too? What are you guys talking about?
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 6: Where's Bam Bam when you need him?
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: Bam Bam. What is Fred's wife's name? What's her friend's name?
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 4: Betty, yeah.
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay. So this is just.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 6: Did I just shock you with that?
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: No, I just wasn't sure. I'm like, is this just
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: a Flintstones reference?
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 4: If this is literally just a flimsy reference.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 6: Barney? Is it Barney? Oh, my God.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 4: I hope it isn't.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: He's just the blonde one in my mind.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 4: So Fred being around isn't inherently weird because he maintains
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 4: a friendship with Wilma and he's like a lost dog
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 4: to her. Fred, Wilma, and Betty all get coffee or
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 4: food when he's in town, sometimes in a group, sometimes not.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 4: Fred also sends Betty gifts on her birthday.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 4: And he has sent her half a dozen mixtape CDs
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 4: over the years because he loves music.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 6: That's wild. Okay. What a gift.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm sure this is maybe older. I'm sure this
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: was at a time where people were giving mixtape CDs
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: a lot.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 4: Also, who is this guy? Like the corniest man alive?
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: He's like, oh, baby, you need to listen to all
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: these mixtapes I made.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 4: But, bro, okay. No, because I'm going to go in, dude.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 4: The stuff that this dude, this is cornball stuff, dude.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 4: This is cornball activities, bro.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: And that's just who he is.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah, bro.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: That's just who he is.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 6: That was a thing, though, back in the 90s. Yeah,
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 6: making little mixtapes. Making a little mixtape or burning a CD.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 6: This is our love soundtrack.
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 4: Bro, this story isn't from 1992, though.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 6: You know what I'm saying? It's just the Boyz II
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 6: Men album.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: He's going off. He's popping off.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 4: Hashtag pop off. Okay. About a year ago, around six
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 4: months into me really prioritizing us, I noticed how much
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 4: time she spends texting and how often she swipes away
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 4: or puts her phone down when I can see the screen.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 6: All right.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 4: Definitely.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: She's cheating.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 4: Definitely no red flags there.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: No, of course not.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 4: So one night I looked through her texts. She has hundreds,
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 4: if not thousands of messages with Fred. Nothing in them
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 4: explicitly crosses the line. But it's glaringly obvious Fred is
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 4: completely infatuated with her. He's doing everything short of saying,
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 4: I love you, checking in on her constantly, asking about
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 4: her dreams, asking about our kids, sending his favorite songs,
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 4: and always trying to meet up. I confronted her about it.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 4: I pointed out that they clearly have a great friendship,
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 4: but that the amount of attention she is giving him
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 4: while completely overlooking his obvious infatuation qualifies as an emotional affair.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 4: A huge argument unfolded. She agreed to tone it down.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 4: And she then deleted all texting and social media history
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 4: with Fred and with Wilma, oddly. Except she didn't stop texting.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 4: So being trusting of my partner, I let it slide
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 4: until I couldn't anymore. I confronted her again two months later.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 4: Another huge argument. And she agreed more seriously this time.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 4: The texting continued, just slightly less. Then a couple of
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 4: months after that, she told me she was going to
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 4: meet Fred and Wilma for coffee. This is something she
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 4: said at least a dozen times over the years. Fred's
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 4: in town. Wilma's her best friend. They all get together. Fine.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 4: But I happened to be driving past a coffee shop
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 4: near our house that morning and I saw her car.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 4: So I walked in. It was just Fred sitting there
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 4: with Betty. No Wilma. I confronted her immediately after we
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 4: left the coffee shop. She got angry with me. In
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 4: all these confrontations, I am always the bad guy in
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 4: her mind. We are now almost a year into this
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 4: Fred situation. She is still texting him. If it was
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 4: just him reaching out, I could probably let it go.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 4: But she still initiates contact on occasion. She sends him
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 4: a funny meme or shares a story. Hopefully it's okay.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, unless it's us, it's cheating.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, unless it's us, it is cheating. It's all very
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 4: innocuous in her mind, but it's clear he exists in
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 4: some space in her brain. Over the year, I've also
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 4: found selectively deleted texts from both Fred and Wilma in
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 4: the recently deleted folder on Betty's iPhone on more than
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 4: one occasion. I never saw the contents of those texts,
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 4: but in a separate argument about trust last week, she
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 4: brought up that I am jealous and possessive about the
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 4: Fred thing. She also told me I'm playing the victim
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 4: and that I'm just waiting for her to admit something
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 4: that has never happened. I let it go because I'm
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 4: tired of arguing about it. But emotions ran high and
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 4: I brought up my Fred concerns again and a few
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 4: days later because, again, there was more texting. Girl, what
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 4: are you?
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: Stop.
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 4: Stop. Literally stop.
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: Stop being so messy.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 4: This would be the fourth or fifth discussion that ends
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 4: in a yelling match. And I want to be very clear.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 4: The yelling and escalation is always on her part. Her
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 4: only concession this time was that she vowed to never
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 4: get coffee with him alone because in her words, sarcastically,
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 4: she made a big mistake by doing that.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: Okay. Why are we still here?
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 4: I'm out.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 5: I'm out.
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: I'm gone.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I'm pissed.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 6: I'm yabba dabba ditching you.
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: I'm yabba dabba ditching you. We're yabba dabba breaking up.
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 4: We're going to yabba dabba find somebody else.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 6: Yes.
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: I don't like this girl.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 4: I also learned she had met with Fred alone on
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 4: other occasions. Again, under the disguise of Fred and Wilma outings.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 4: I think she has completely ruined the whole Fred thing.
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 4: And in doing so, completely lost my trust in our relationship.
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 4: I have asked her to stop or scale back at
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 4: least four times. She lied about who she was meeting.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 4: She's still initiating contact. And now she's framing me as
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 4: the problem for being uncomfortable with it. This all speaks
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 4: to a bigger pattern in our relationship. I have boundaries
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 4: I'm willing to hold in my life and relationships, and
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 4: hers are often much different, non-existent, or so riddled with
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 4: social anxiety that she is unwilling to hold them. That
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 4: gap is what makes the Fred thing so exhausting. I'm
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 4: not asking for anything unreasonable. I'm asking her to respect
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 4: a boundary, and she just won't do it. And when
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 4: I confront her, excuses are always the same. He's awkward
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 4: and weird. He's like this with all his former female coworkers.
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 4: That's it. It's never, he's a really good friend, and
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 4: it would hurt to lose his friendship.
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she's like, oh, why are you hanging out with him?
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: And then she's like, oh, well, he's awkward.
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 4: Babe, babe, babe, babe, it's okay. He always makes out
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 4: with all the girls. He's a little freak. Yeah. He
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 4: always kisses his female friends.
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: He kisses his homies. What's wrong with that? You're overreacting.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 4: Babe, it was one glass of wine that we shared together.
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 4: Get over it.
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: That's it. She's like, oh, I feel so bad.
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 4: It's crazy. It's always a bizarre deflection. Fred's only saving
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 4: grace here is that he's not attractive at all.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: Oh, he's like, okay, well, they couldn't possibly be cheating
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: on me because he's ugly.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 4: Betty is extremely attractive. I am attractive. Okay, brag.
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: Okay, brag.
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 4: And we are a good match. Betty even uses this
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 4: in her arguments, almost as if it's an insult that
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 4: I might be suggesting. That's some like mastermind.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: She's like, he's ugly.
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 4: That's some gaslighting right there.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: He's ugly.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: Why would I be with him? He's ugly.
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 4: Bro. So she's using it as an insult that I
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 4: might be suggesting she is even interested in him. He's unattractive.
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 4: I would never. And so on. She said that if
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 4: I was texting a coworker constantly, she would only care
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 4: if the woman were attractive. Which to me is a
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 4: baseless argument that sidesteps the issue. That is, man, so
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 4: far for the update, I mean, this is like getting pretty,
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 4: this is the messiest relationship I've ever seen.
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 8: I mean, she just keeps.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: Talking to another guy. And then he's like, hey, that
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: makes me uncomfortable.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 4: Stop talking to him.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: He's like, I'm not going to break.
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 4: Up with you. Literally, stop talking. I'm in love with you.
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: I'm in love with you. I'm not going to break
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: up with you. You're very attractive. But please don't. Does
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: that work? Did it work when I said please don't?
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 4: Oh, my God, dude.
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: If I said pretty please.
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: Cherry on top.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 4: Oh, well, now we can do that.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: Now it's okay.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 4: Now it's okay. I knew you'd have some sort of.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 4: I knew you were forgetting something. I knew you were
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 4: forgetting something. You were forgetting the cherry. But as OP
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 4: says in the updates, I want our relationship to work.
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 4: We are engaged as of this summer, which has long overdue.
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 4: My trust is now gone.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: We should unengage. Disengage, if you will.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 4: Disengage, if you must. I feel like the only lever
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 4: left is to simply leave and attempt to reconcile through
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 4: therapy because she isn't getting the message.
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 6: Pull the lever, Cronk.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: I don't want that lever.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 4: Or she doesn't actually care. Or there's something else going
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 4: on altogether. Yeah, it's the something else, buddy.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 6: Yep.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: You're almost there, OP. You're almost there. You're on the cusp.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 4: A couple more clicks and you'll find it.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: I can't put my finger on it.
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 5: I just can't put it.
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 4: What's going on?
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: Just put your finger on it.
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 4: I don't want to break our household or put our
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 4: kids through this. Our youngest has extreme behavioral problems, and
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 4: a split right now would impact him for life. Before
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 4: I act, I need advice on how to handle this.
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 4: Is leaving and forcing the issue through therapy the right
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 4: move or is there something else I should be trying?
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 4: How would you handle this? Find somebody else, dude.
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah. In terms of like the kids, maybe you could
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: have a conversation with her and say, hey, I want
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: to separate. But for our kids, maybe live in the
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: same house.
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 4: But even still, it's kind of just like your kids
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 4: are going to get messed up regardless.
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They'll recognize that y'all are not into each other
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: anymore and they'll see it. They probably notice now that
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: there are issues.
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, of course. You know, so it's literally it's just
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 4: like pick which option is going to hurt the kids less,
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 4: which I feel like is the best advice you can
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 4: give in this scenario.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 8: And that's the end of this story.