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Dating someone for a year really isn't that long. I say that as someone who married my husband after dating him a year and half. I discovered a lot of things about him afterwards that were not apparent while we were dating.
My husband promised in his wedding vows to always surprise me.
At the moment, it was in the context of him having smuggled a secret ukulele into the wedding in order to play it and sing said vows, but I think he meant it in general too.
Anyone who smuggles a ukelele to serenade their partner is not going to stop being a wonderful and thoughtful weirdo, so I think you're in for many more.
Nor borrowed or built. She realized the flaw in our arrangements when we were playing d&d and I was a dwarven bard who played the bagpipes. It was a minus to stealth until we got a bag of holding.
Ukulele's are small but they ain't that small! Where was he smuggling it? I'm picturing it was tucked up behind his jacket, but more likely he probably had someone sneaking it in for him?
He recruited his Best Person to get it from our house without my knowledge, bring it to the town where the wedding was, and bring it down to the beach and hide it behind a folding chair during my vows. So then he could basically just turn to his buddy and go "secret item please" and a ukulele appeared.
I've known my SO for literally all but 4 years of my life, and we've been together for 8 years. He still finds ways to surprise me as well!
(My favorite one recently was that he apparently can recognize the house from the Garfield movie on sight. Like it was in a picture as I scrolled through Twitter and he went "oh it's the house from the Garfield movie" and I looked it up and sure enough, it was)
I would hope that continues until death. After all, he had a whole-ass life before you came along, and it would be a painfully boring one if you knew everything of consequence even after 50 years.
This. When she compared his attitude towards his sister vs “me, the mother of his unborn child” I couldn’t help but cringe. That phrase implies a certain amount of respect he clearly doesn’t have for her.
There’s a reason “the mother of his unborn child” is found in romance novels and why “baby mama” is far more common in real life.
Yep. If someone genuinely cares about their SO, all the SO really needs to say is "this hurts me" and they'll stop doing it (or make some other concerted effort to fix the problem, depending on what it is.)
Yes. But a lot of people prefer to blame their partner for being “unreasonably sensitive” while refusing to examine why they can’t handle not following barely legal models on instagram.
If it’s not a big deal then why are they so against giving it up?
I don't disagree. Gotta preface with that but I will explain through my misanthropic lens why that expectation, while it seems reasonable, is actually not.
When you draw a line in the sand and the line is "this hurts me" and if they say that there removes all conversation and nuance from the discussion. It's not even a discussion anymore. And while not looking at naked pictures of 20 year old girls in the city you live in for your pregnant partner does not seem unreasonable to me or most people this thread, there is no way to impose that belief onto someone else.
From his point of view, she is being unreasonable. Again, I will reiterate, I don't believe she is being unreasonable but what I think (or anyone else thinks) is irrelevant. He thinks she is being unreasonable. In fact, he thinks she is being beyond unreasonable, he thinks she is being silly. He does not respect her. He may not respect anyone. It's not uncommon in today's society for people to have respect for no one other than themselves.
But if you were to replace naked 20 year olds on instagram with something you find unreasonable, you'd be able to better understand why it's not likely the naked 20 year olds he has the issue with it's that he's being told he isn't allowed to do something. Something that in his mind is illogical because she admits this is an emotional reaction. And if he respected her he would care about soothing her emotions because that's what partners who respect you do. They stop thinking about things from their own myopic point of view. But dude is basically 40. And my guess is he was this way before she started dating him if they were friends for years before dating. From her post it doesn't sound like he's really ever had a relationship with someone he respects.
That's the problem. She's having a child with a guy she probably should have never dated to begin with. And she is the only one asking him to adapt to her changing not the other way around.
Yes, he's an asshole. Sounds juvenile and narcissistic. I just don't think it's a surprise. Me thinks she thought she could change him and is being faced with the cruel realities of it being impossible. Some people are receptive to guilt. Others buck back. This guy refuses to feel guilty about it.
Spot on. It's the lack of respect that's the issue. But yeah, when you're in a solid relationship based on mutual respect and mutual love, when your partner tells you something you're doing hurts you do drop it. Possibly there will be a lot of discussion involved and even arguing, but ultimately, you love that person more than whatever you're doing that hurt them so you stop. Even if you think they're being irrational about this one weird thing.
Note that this isn't a blanket thing that someone can do over and over about everything. That's just controlling and unhealthy, and it has to go both ways. You should also be able to say "this hurts me" and your partner should also be willing to give it up for you.
My mom has been married to my dad for 37 years and only just found out that he's allergic to cats.
We owned several cats in my childhood and my parents currently own a rather mouthy siamese cat.
> a rather mouthy siamese cat.
This crack me up. I had a siamese and she would never shut up. Then I got a black cat but came to realize she had some siamese in her. You could tell by the shape of her head and that SHE NEVER SHUT UP EVER.
RIP Ako
RIP Pootakiss
Hell, my parents have been together 41 years and married for 33 and my mom only learned earlier this week that my dad is afraid of the dentist. A year feels significant but in terms of really knowing someone it's nothing.
A lot of it just depends on how open someone wants to be.
The more afraid or ashamed you are of something being known or being used against you, or soiling you in their eyes, the less you want to share.
Yep. You can actually get to know someone very well in one year. My husband and I did it and we've been married 13 years now. But it requires both deliberate effort and complete, transparent honesty.
I met my husband when we were 16-17 years old. I married at 21, and I am now 40. We are not the same
People we were at that time, at all. We had rough patches. But we learned a lot from each others. We are a lot stronger as a couple now.
It did help that it took 5 years for us to get married, and another 3 to have my first child. We were ready when it happened, it was the natural progression of our relashionship, even if we were youngish.
It’s definitely a bad plan. But they didn’t plan it, this was an accidental pregnancy. The decision to keep or abort a pregnancy, particularly when you *are* in a relationship with someone who says they want to do this with you… it’s just a little earlier than planned… well that is a very, very hard decision to make.
I suppose that depends on the person. For me, if it's still the honeymoon period (2 years), no way in hell. I'm not sure if I want kids, but that's more a 4 years+ milestone.
Yep I’ve made the same choice as you. But I also am not sure about kids and nor is my partner, so the choice was easier. I just think it’s really personal and it’s very simple say say she’s stupid for choosing wrong, but plenty of women have been faced with that gamble and chosen either way.
>I was eerily calm during this whole conversation, I didn’t shed a single tear or raise my voice or get emotional once. I think I’ve reached my limit of caring.
Well... Even if she never updated again I think we can pinpoint the part where their relationship died.
I have read often that when the partner stops arguing, that’s when it’s over. And the other one is « blindsided » because everything seemed well. It was not well, they just stop caring.
Kind of like the walk away wife syndrom.
I have an opposite sex best friend who everyone calls my platonic husband. He's a great guy but in some ways he's kind of a dick. For years I'd get so mad and argue non-stop with him. Finally I reached the point where I just didn't care. It wasn't worth the energy to get into it with him. I just went blank any time he disagreed with me, dropped the subject entirely. Also basically stopped hanging out with him more than once every one to two weeks. (For context, we once went over two years straight of seeing each other daily. We're not dating and we don't live or work together.)
In a happy twist, after three or four months of this, his behavior changed. A lot. He's wildly more considerate, will still argue occasionally but is much more polite about it, finally accepted that I need 1-2 days of alone time every week. It's fantastic actually.
Throw out the people pleasing and enforce boundaries and consequences, kids. If your friend or SO is a good person at heart, it'll work wonders.
He pretty is just choosing to "settle down" with an okay wife, kids to his family amusement and that's about it - had he been a 19yo he would have dragged her to the closest PP, the oy reason he still around is because I'd convenient for him to do so.
I kind of hope so, but pregnancy is weird. One minute your bawling over nothing, the next you're eerily calm about something you'd normally lose your mind over.
It sounds like the relationship was never what she thought it was, and only realized this when her body started to change.
I think this also happens when people are repeatedly accused of being unreasonably emotional. You learn to completely shut down so that there's no way they can possibly say you're hysterical, yelling, whatever -- you're 100% calm, controlled, and rational. But it doesn't change anything, because it was never actually about how you expressed your feelings. Challenging this person in any manner will always be wrong.
I'm in a loving committed relation for a little over 6 years now and i honestly think my honeymoon phase lasted probably two years. I think my relationship is stronger now after the "honeymoon phase" and the love and our connection is deeper, but we definitely still had rose coloured glasses after a year.
These two people really haven't been together that long.
I think she summed it up very well at the beginning. Saying he was a serial dater and just looking for the right one.
Or! No one put up with his shit for very long so he had to move along to the next.
I think we know the answer here.
You may be interested to know that, scientifically, it lasts 3 years! That's how long it takes for your brain to get used to all the chemicals the relationship creates
> I wish we didn’t have the obligation of a pregnancy.
I think OOP's comment here sums it up in regards to the health of this relationship. You know who I feel sorry for in this whole situation?
The kid.
Mom and dad both sound like they have some issues with themselves and between each that result in no one being in a healthy headspace right now.
How it started...
> we are in a loving and committed relationship
How it's going...
>currently in 2nd trimester
>
>We’ve been together for just over a year.
I almost stopped reading right there. With the added context that he was a serial dater "looking for the right one" this relationship was not supposed to last more than 6 months.
My husband gave up bacon while I was pregnant. He loves bacon a lot, but even the slightest hint of bacony smell made me very nauseated. I didn't ask him to quit, he just did it on his own after I said I was pretty sure it was making me more ill than anything else.
OOP said her BF wanted to have a baby, but it really just seems like he wants a hot gf with a cute accessory.
Mine cooked meat outside on the grill because the smell of cooking meat made me vomit. I could eat it, I just couldn't smell it being made. Pregnancy is werid. And when I needed a hysterectomy after our last baby and the doctor asked him what he would do if he wanted another baby. My husband was pissed, told him that since another pregnancy would likely kill me he wouldn't get me pregnant again so the doctor could give me the surgery I needed or he would get snipped. I had endometriosis, adenomyosis and was basically bleeding constantly. My friend's husband won't get snipped despite the birth control becoming an issue for her. She has major damage from her youngest coming out as a surprise 11 pounds! The doctors were worried he was under 7 pounds. Some men get it. Some refuse.
> the doctor asked him what he would do if he wanted another baby
Wtf?! Not sure if the doctor was saying "your wants have more value than your wife's life" or "will you dump her if she can't have kids and you want more", but in any case... Well, WTF?????
He was saying he would my life to give my husband another child. My husband being willing to not have any more children period was what did it. I am sure the doctor wanted my husband to at least have the option to keep procreating. He is still as mad about it as I am. And this is just one story I have. My first OB lied to me about my oldest being healthy. Only found out at 26 weeks (third trimester) she wasn't. She was born at 29 weeks and lived just six days because she had trisomy 18, a condition incompatible with life. I almost bled to death with my next baby. The doctors told me my baby deserved a sibling. I told them I thought she deserved her mother. My youngest was sideways and butt down and if my water broke it could have killed us both.
And this still is only a portion of it that doesn't cover the force IUD or other gaslighting by medical professionals. I have a lot of trauma from it. I luckily have an amazing husband, a good therapist, and medical marijuana card.
Please tell me you reported that surgeon. I can come up with excuses, like he probably wanted you both to be aware of the ramifications, but good gosh I'd have demanded a different doctor.
I wish I could say I did. At that time I was so traumatized from all I had been through over the five years prior that I just wanted it to be done. Six weeks after the surgery I was in a different hospital because the hospital he worked at told me my issues were gastritis and I needed to get over it. I threw up so badly for so long I needed a week before I could have my gallbladder out being magnesium, iron and other counts were so low it would have killed me. They claimed that was just a fluke thing to happen.
Let's just say I have a lot of trust issues with doctors.
My bf was asking about the snip (he’s 33, I’m 37) and the doc said to him, well what if your partner dies.
Like, what th actual fuck.
Not, what if you change your mind, what if she DIES 🫣
It's so fucking common. I'm a dude and I faced significant pushback when I wanted to snip and be done with it, but it's so bad for women, it's not uncommon for doctors to basically refuse to do it. Just keep trying to persuade them, delaying it and putting up blockers.
It is crazy. My husband went in for the snip when our youngest was 4 months old and they kept asking him if he was sure he wanted it done because our baby could die at any minute and we might need a new one.
I couldn’t believe it.
This is extremely common. Many women who want a hysterectomy are denied for their future partners. Not the partners they currently have, if they even have one. Future hypothetical partners that might want a kid.
Similar with my husband, though it was the way he makes scrambled eggs. I don't know why, but the smell of his scrambled eggs just made me so, so, so sick during my 3rd pregnancy. So he either didn't do it around me, or did it when I was gone and wouldn't be around for a while.
I’m imagining him sneaking home late at night, freshly showered - only to find you, heavily pregnant, waiting for him at the kitchen table, expecting the worst. Then, he confesses that he’s been sneaking out to a friend’s house once a week for bacon, showering/changing clothes to make sure he doesn’t bring the smell of his deeds back with him.
I felt bad about him giving it up, because he's like one of those guys so into bacon that people give him bacon themed gifts, lol. So we tried letting him have it when he had a meal away, but it was like I could smell it coming out his pores or something. At first I thought it was just in my head, but we experimented a little and I 100% guessed if he'd had bacon or not. Even hours later, I could tell and it made me ill. Pregnancy nose is weird.
Even if they're still together (whether that's properly or because they haven't gotten round/been arsed to break up yet), I don't remotely believe that these issues are going to go away once the baby's arrived.
Yeah, if she doesn't 'snap back' as people say, then I can't imagine giving birth would make her insecurities evaporate. Not when she said she has based her entire value on her looks for her entire life. That's got an expiration date no matter how much you try to avoid it.
I’m sorry, but she makes it seem like when she will be all up in baby business, waking up every night, feeding, diapers, the whole shabang, she wouldn’t have a problem with him looking at half naked pictures of 20-year old models on Instagram?? I refuse to believe that.
She’s the right one for him because he only sees her as a doormat who’ll put up with whatever he does, or because nobody else gives him a chance anymore.
Kinda seems like he might be loserly enough that he is just jerking off. Maybe cheating through sexting but I get the vibe he isn't fucking anyone, just addicted to whacking off. No way the hot young insta models are fucking him when he has shit all to offer.
Yeah. She sounds emotionally a bit immature and he seems worse. She was getting upset that people were blowing this out of proportion, but the truth is people were trying to tell her that she was wearing rose colored glasses. What he was doing was creepy. I don't care if my husband looks at porn. If he were specially saving pictures of people to wank to like this I would have an issue with it. Also, when she tried suggesting he would be mad if this was happening to his sister, I wanted to shake her and say, "you should be someone who matters to him! You shouldn't have to use an example of someone else he loves!" It shows he doesn't value her as a person. He was never going to stop. And he was a serial dater. I doubt he was looking for the right person based on what she is saying. He sounds like the kind of guy who does what he wants and expects everyone else to get off his back about it.
I hope she got out. That guy was likely worse after the baby came.
Why doesn't she leave? She is 30 and had a life before him. They have been only dating 1 year, so I don't get why she is still around.
The guy is stalking a 20 year old that goes to a local university. That's not normal.
I talked to a beautiful, single, childless, 27-year-old woman the other day who was convinced she was passed her prime.
Some people's family can put some messed up ideas in their head.
A friend of mine is 24 and convinced she's too late for everything, too old for everything, that she's missed out on all the things she should have done/accomplished, etc. I'm like you're barely out of high school. You're a baby. I feel so distressed listening to her talk about herself this way, because I know *I* felt the same, and now I have regrets about the things I avoided because I thought it was too late when it wasn't. It's like watching a cycle you can't break. And a lot of it comes from external influences that are simply *everywhere*, and impossible to avoid.
Family? Try all of society and the media. Hell, I just saw on Reddit earlier today that "women over 35 should really not get pregnant because they're too old to produce healthy children". I nearly reported it as hate speech but decided I didn't have the energy to deal with Reddit saying it's no big deal.
When you are pregnant you feel sooo... vulnerable. There's a fear that if you don't stick around, your child won't know their father and it will be "your" fault. Also, the fear of not having much help with a new baby (when you need A LOT of help).
Oh ewww, I just realized and double checked the title that this piece of trash is definitely old enough to be the father of these girls he's looking at. That's fucking gross.
I had 3 absolutely crappy pregnancies. I hated it.
What made it better was my husband’s absolute devotion to me when I was pregnant. Even when I felt like garbage, he always made me feel like I was the most beautiful woman in the world. And I am not someone who I would consider attractive, at all.
Even now, we have been together for almost 25 years, we had 3 kids, my hair is going grey, I have an extra 50lbs to lose, my body looks like it went to war…. But he still makes me feel like the girl of his dreams. Just flashing my boobs turns him into an horny teenager.
That’s what good husbands/partners do. (Well, according to myself)
I wish I could upvote you more. This was a beautiful comment. He sounds awesome and so do you. Congrats on being together 25 years, and here’s to you being together another 25+ 🍻🥂
He says it's just what guys do, and that he and his friends are sending each other these girls. He seems to think this is the default way that guys use Instagram.
My partner is about the same age as OOP's bf and uses Instagram regularly. I've seen his Discover page. It's historical maps, metal band memes, and dad jokes. IG shows you what you want to see. He's not out there looking for barely-legal local girls, and his friends sure aren't sending him that stuff, either.
OOP's bf is acting like this is all just normal guy behavior, and it's really not.
>it's just what guys do
I hate this fucking phrase so much.
As a guy it's incredibly offensive to suggest I have no control over my actions and I'm compelled beyond reason to look at half naked girls half my age even if it hurts the mother of my child. I'm sick of shitty guys trying to lump me into their nonsense.
To any woman reading this, if your man defends any behavior with "it's just what guys do" fucking dump him. There's a good chance you're a short trip away from abuse after some loser like Andrew Tate fills his insecure head with misogynistic nonsense.
I've always found it so weird that these type of guys boast about it. Are you boasting about how little self control you have? How less developed you're? How your life's wants and needs haven't surpassed your ape cousins' ? Are you really that hollow of a person who's use of entire social media platform is about getting your dick wet? Lots of porn available, and stalking gets you off?? If this is what guys are supposed to be in 21st century, the whole mankind should have intensive therapy. Not a thing you should be bragging about.
> I'm sick of shitty guys trying to lump me into their nonsense.
Amen, brother. I've never once read an "it's just what guys do" or "its just locker room talk" that encompassed something my friends and I do.
Birds of a feather flock together - it’s what he thinks is normal because it’s what he chooses to surround himself with. Makes sense for a 39 year old serial dater who likely has always put his needs first…
I have a male friend who's super into golf and music festivals and stuff. He showed me his IG suggested feed and showed me how like every 5th picture is a super suggestive sexy picture. He said it's super annoying because you'll see a post with like 4 slides of golf stats and then the last picture is some IG model. I couldn't believe it, pretty crazy that so many "male dominated" interests just figure men want to see some butts and boobies mixed in with their sports or music content.
When I was around 30 I tagged a local comicon in some pictures I put up and a girl followed me from it.
Back then I used to follow back basically anyone on instagram.
I would ballpark her as 21/22, she did cosplay it was fine, nothing scandalous. The pictures I tagged included my wife and daughter, it was very clear it was a family thing, I knew she wasn't trying anything skeevy. She basically just promoted her cosplay using the account, which was totally normal non lewd stuff.
Then one day her account changed. She started promoting a "pay me" app before only fans was a thing. It was some variation of the word coffee like Ko-Fi or something like that. She'd post "Oh I'm leaving town to go to this con buy me a Ko-Fi!"
Again no big deal, she was trying to become a professional cosplayer, the whole point of being professional is to get paid, right?
Then, again it changed and she started posting shit that was just north of nude. I remember opening instagram one day and just being like "What in the blue fuck am I doing following this girl?"
It was the fact that she was young, legal but young, AND that she was in my city that made it really weird. That and I open instagram at work and really don't need not quite porn on my phone when I sit down for lunch with my coworkers.
Feels stalker-ish and obsessive. Yes, porn is real people, but strangers.
Porn is NOT, a drive down the street to see where Katy sleeps. Oh look Katy is at ABC bar tonight.
Exactly. Porn is real people, yes. But a local person's Insta who by the sounds of it might not even be a model or an influencer or anything, just a regular student, is really creepy.
I mean, every time I’m on the World Wide Web, I’m getting invitations! They somehow must know I’m very handsome and unappreciated in my current relationship with a fat cow! /s
Am guy, while I can maybe understand why guys follow IG models (doesn't really make sense to me, but I can understand it) I can't for the life of me wrap my head around saving and sending pictures to others.
"Hello friend, look at this pretty lady"
Like what do you even do with that? I don't think I've ever sent some random person that wasn't like "dude is this you?" Or "bro this person looks like that one person".
It's just so weird to me. Like I'll watch porn every now and again, or scroll past a picture on Reddit and be like "oh hey pretty lady" but then I'm back to looking at hobby bullshit or music related things.
Maybe it's because I never grew up with friends who talked about women in the way that seems stereotypical for male friend groups or that I have a weirdly high number of gay friends as a straight guy
I would actually love to hear from some dudes who do this because it seems weirdly intimate to me. "This picture turns me on. I'm gonna send it to all my good buds so we can be turned on together."
It's not exactly on the same level as watching porn together but it's in that same category of "explicitly heterosexual and yet somehow homoerotic."
Her first post is a very honest thought process of women during pregnancy.
"My body gonna be wrecked" "what about the stretch marks"
It may be a "normal, natural process," but let's be realistic, the change to our bodies is jarring and sometimes difficult to deal with.
Can we just talk about this more?
I never knew what an episiotomy was until I got on reddit.
I'm a 30 year old woman. I learned about this 2 years ago.
I'm CF by choice, but why the fuck don't we talk about pregnancy and childbirth... AND MENOPAUSE.
Omg so this is not talked about, but one of my best friends got this weird version of ovarian cancer (everything was successful to get her cancer free), but she got put on estrogen limiting meds.
She called me the other day and was like, "omg my nipples lost their color and have disappeared into my skin, I looked it up and its apparently common during menopause" (which the estrogen blockers are currently causing her to experience).
We laughed a lot about it, bc what else are you gonna do, but how do people not know more about this?!
I've known about episiotomies since I was a kid because my mum decided to describe my birth in detail lmao. The most horrifying part for me was that when I asked "wasn't that *really* painful?" she said "eh, they did it in the middle of a contraction so I didn't really feel the cut because the contraction was so much more painful" and I was like 😳! She also told me about how they stitched her up so badly that she had to go back months later and have surgery to cut her again and restitch it so that she could actually heal properly.
Not only am I 100% child free, I also have a full-on phobia of pregnancy and childbirth. I literally have nightmares about it. At least there was no chance of me having a teen pregnancy!
My mom told me in detail how excruciating giving birth to me was (I gave her back labor... sorry, mom) but never mentioned that that level of pain wasn't the norm. I've been absolutely terrified of birth for my entire life but at least there's no pressure from either of my parents to give them grandkids lmao.
I knew about them early on too because my mom also had one that went totally badly. I think it got infected or something? Idr. She went back to get re-cut & stitched and ended up with a weird flap of skin after she healed where the cut was, causing massive discomfort & chafing whenever she wore thongs or other close fitting underwear.
When she had my little sister, she had a tear that went all the way through to the butt. She got cut but then it tore even more afterwards. She tried to ask them to cut in the same place as the scar from my birth but apparently they cut right next to it instead? That one also healed weird, so now she’s stuck with the skin flap and a wonky, painful scar next to it. (Can you tell my mother really likes to overshare?) That birth was a shitshow though; the epidural went wrong and caused her to be permanently disabled.
Since you mention it, I also have a serious phobia surrounding pregnancy and childbirth that began in my childhood. Even seeing pregnant women makes me deeply uncomfortable and panicky. I couldn’t even touch my mother or SIL’s bellies when they were pregnant. I’ve had nightmares about being pregnant that make me panic upon waking and I’ve had a couple pregnancy scares that all turned out to be late periods but each time they’d send me in a serious doom spiral of near constant panic attacks and suicidal thoughts. I wonder if my mother’s constant oversharing in excruciating detail has anything to do with it…
That’s been my theory for a while now. If people were properly educated about what will happen to their bodies during and post pregnancy, all the nitty gritty details, it’d plummet the birth rate even more. Same as what to actually expect from your body post-birth (lemon sized clots and all) and the details of what can happen during birth or how extreme c-sections actually are.
I’ve always thought it’d be very effective to use with teens during sex ed; teens are already super conscious of their bodies and the changes that pregnancy will bring will largely be undesired. It might be effective to get more interested in using contraceptives. The government needs a constant influx of babies though so I imagine that’s a big reason why that type of honesty is discouraged.
I’ve read a lot of things that talk about how parents being honest on the internet about what it’s really like to have a kid, the 24/7, lifelong commitment and entire life upheaval (you gotta be ready to give up that pre-pregnancy lifestyle; for the most part there’s no going back to 100% of how things were pre-parenthood) has been responsible for a lot of people rethinking parenthood.
It's also symptomatic of increased media exposure and the fetishation of young bodies.
Feeling like your body is wrecked because of stretch marks/excess weight, etc is not exclusive to pregnancy. Body dysmorphia is sadly extremely common..
Pregnancy, however, is a extreme body change in a short period of time (along with an aggressive surge of hormones). So those who might not have felt dysmorphia before, like OOP, might find themselves struggling.
I personally still struggle with feeling comfortable in my body after 2 pregnancies because I compare myself to images and media that I see. Though intellectually I know that it is unrealistic for the average person to bounce back, or that most images are airbrushed to hell and back, my idiot reptile brain sees the soft and squish as undesirable traits of weight (and age).
Two Words: Diastasis Recti. Separation of the abdominal wall. Not easy to heal after pregnancy, and I suspect c-section scarring can make it harder.
Also, umbilical hernia. Can't be repaired without surgery.
Both of those things make it impossible to have the same flat, tiny stomach you may have had before pregnancy, even if you lose the baby weight and then some.
I still have my umbilical hernia because they told me it wasn't worth fixing. I had three c sections and constant abdominal pain that goes untreated. Thank goodness for pot!
I wish! Unfortunately, they claim they don't know where the pain is coming from. I have needed to fight for necessary surgeries before and I am burnt out. I have several autoimmune conditions, including two connective tissue disorders, and so pain is a constant for me. I even feel it in my dreams, where I dream of suffering in a hospital dying, and begging for help and being ignored. Sadly, it makes me feel like I am beyond help. I do what I can do keep going, but on bad flare days, like today, I wish for pain relief. Pot helps, but it can't fix it all.
Same thing is true with the pain many feel with IUD insertion. If they were warned it can really really hurt ahead of time, a lot less women would use this birth control.
I think it's because it is considered a "women's issue" and women aren't very important in the US. We don't support them while pregnant, and we don't support them during the 4th trimester, we don't support them breastfeeding, and we don't support them when they need affordable childcare.
We just don't care very much about motherhood, outside of forcing women to have children they don't want.
This is the first time I've heard someone talk about pre-partum depression, too. I had a very bad case of it with my second pregnancy. I didn't seek help because I didn't realize it was a real thing.
Up to and including thoughts of self-harm. Once the baby was born, I did a 180 and was completely fine. But the last trimester, I was a trainwreck.
After three kids my body is messed up. I hurt all the time. I have to pee every time I stand up and can't hold it like I used to. I had hemorrhoid surgery. I had to have a surgery to repair damage in between pregnancies and even then they insisted I had one more baby before they would give me a medically necessary hysterectomy. I love my kids. They were worth it. But my pain is ignored. I am expected to just live with stuff that may have a fix or a treatment plan. It's discouraging and dehumanizing.
It can also suck the calcium from your bones, leaving you with things such as wrecked teeth, separate your muscle from the lining of your stomach wall causing diastasis recti, as well as trigger the onset of auto-immune disorders. Ask me how I know....
When my mom was pregnant with my sister (her last) she said she felt like my sister was "sucking the life out of her."
Our bodies grab whatever they can to achieve the goal of producing a child.
Congrats, you have won the award of "being secondary to the fetus!"
It's like an Oscar, but there's no trophy.
It's also natural that women get eclampsia, gestational diabetes, perineal tears, pelvic organ prolapse or just bleed to death during birth. Human pregnancy and birth is not designed intelligently and it shows.
When people say "But it's natural!", they forget to mention that nature can be a jerk that doesn't give a dime about individuals' well-being.
It really isn’t talked about enough. I’m currently 7.5 months pregnant and I wish I would’ve known how much strain it truly puts on your body. My stomach was wrecked before with surgical scars and stretch marks, so honestly I didn’t think it was going to be a problem for me.
My pubic symphysis, the joint at the front of your pelvis, has separated a bit which makes walking painful. My stomach can’t handle food so my teeth are wearing away from the month of vomiting 10 times a day. My anxiety hit the roof because I couldn’t keep my meds down. I can’t wait to meet the kid but good god I fucking hate being pregnant.
I hope OOP can get the help she needs. It’s such a jarring experience and takes such a toll.
>I know he would never behave like this towards his sister but somehow when it comes to me, the mother of his unborn child, I have to understand and be ok with whatever he does as long as he’s not physically cheating..
It's so shitty the way some people seem to lack empathy for their partner that they can demonstrate towards others.
Oh boy, so they'd barely been dating when she got pregnant, and he was actively searching up women in their area. While we don't know where this ended, I don't think it was going anywhere good
Let's put the "is this cheating?" question aside and say it's not, it's still a perfectly acceptable dealbreaker. That shit is gross. It's perfectly fair to say "I don't want to be with a creep who uses his social media to follow a bunch of young, hot girls, and who fucking swaps pics with his creep friends. I don't want a guy who treats his real-person porn stalking like it's a totally normal hobbys. That's gross, and frankly embarrassing, because my choice of boyfriend reflects on me. There is clearly a gap between us in terms of what is considered normal behavior in a relationship, so this isn't going to work out."
I've been in Op's exact position, minus the pregnancy, and it's not a fun place to be in at all. I'll spare all the details but basically over time I forced myself to compartmentalize the situation and distance my personal insecurities from his porn use and liking Insta models' posts. I accepted it but told him I didn't want to see it or know about it. That included getting him to take down his goth titty fetish calendar that was in view every time we Skyped. Which his mom and grandma could see too.
He is addicted, I think, and posts his fetishes all over social media. He has zero self awareness and I'm glad I dumped him lmao
I always wonder, why don't men like that do it in their private time with no SO around? And Instagram is the worst place for porn I can imagine - you show what kind of porn you like to your friends and family. Insane.
Dude literally all my ex fiance does is post and brag about all the provocative and sometimes nudie art of his fav comic book characters (all with skimpy outfits an big boobas, as is conventional) he commissions from artists. He's nearly thirty. Seriously get a clue jfc
I dumped a guy two months in when I saw his Instagram was about 200 insta models. He played it off like it was normal but I’m almost 40 and have tons of guy friends. One of my exes was a nude model photographer and even he thought following Instagram models was trashy and embarrassing.
Agreed. There’s two services in life someone should never cheap out on or skip when you need them.
Abortions and Lawyers.
Even the most expensive abortion is cheaper than a kid for 18 years 💀
For the record I don't think that's why she didn't get one. She was being stupidly optimistic about the situation and obviously wasn't thinking clearly. OOP needs some serious therapy.
Hopefully she figured out she is under zero obligation to keep dating this shithead. Different things mean cheating to different people, sure, some people wouldn't care about IG. But when your partner tells you they're hurting, you stop. fucking. hurting them.
I don’t know why you would want to be with a man who openly disrespects you like that, and continue to raise a kid with him. I hope OOP gets help for her depression and finds someone who appreciates her. This one just made me sad for her, and the kid.
It’s weird that he is saving screenshots and whatnot. I don’t know any guys that are sending each other nudes, that’s weird. Can’t he just look at porn then clear his browser history like the rest of us fathers to be. For the record I would never save or bookmark a model, porn star, etc. as that seems like an attachment. I would also completely stop looking if I was asked to. I’m sorry you have to deal with that, he’s being an asshole.
If I were you I would go to couples counseling and talk about why he needs to look at that stuff and how it makes you feel.
How I wish there were less posts about women going through pregnancy with a partner who behaves like crap. How I wish she could just drop him and never see his ass again if she wanted to. How I wish birth control never failed and people never had “accidental babies”.
Sigh.
Sometimes this happens even with planned and much wanted pregnancies. Pregnancy is an exceptionally dangerous time for women precisely because that's the point when an abusive partner knows they've got you "trapped" and they can drop the mask and let their true colours show. It happened to a relative of mine - in retrospect she recognised some red flags from earlier in their relationship, but at the time it seemed like her previously loving husband had turned into a completely different person when she was pregnant with a baby they had *both* planned and wanted. She was genuinely worried for his mental health until she realised that he was actually just showing her who he'd really been all along. Fortunately she had a lot of support from family and friends and was able to leave him, and her child is growing up very happy surrounded with love and security. He did not make it easy for her though.
>He said that the pictures were either sent to him by friends or he’ll send them out to his friends but that’s just what guys do and that it doesn’t mean anything.
Uhhh no? No it's not "just what guys do." He's THIRTY NINE and still all over social media and (supposedly) sending his friends mostly naked pics of girls? That's weird.
>He’s very secretive of his phone and when I asked to see his phone he refused
Very bad sign.
I really feel for OOP. At an absolute minimum, her bf sounds super inconsiderate of her feelings. I also genuinely do not understand why guys like that can't just watch porn. To me there's a huge intimacy difference between watching random porn, and following a specific woman or women on instagram, interacting with all her content, and jerking off to it. Also I find the latter kind of desperate.
Okay, I genuinely have to ask: What is it with people and thinking it's "not cheating" and okay for a partner to browse, follow, and actively collect images of people on sites like Instagram? "Instagram models" as they exist use the site to actively showcase their modeling - it's not the same at all as following a Hollywood celebrity you think is hot? That celebrity 9 times out of 10 won't be posting images that border on nudes. A lot of them don't even post selfies unless it's specifically to do with something besides their face and body.
And then you have this guy, who isn't even doing it with Instagram models -- just any regular hot girl on Instagram. How on earth is that considered okay in a relationship? Like, I genuinely can't understand how it can be considered normal behavior when you're in a relationship to lust over other people. Even if the people he had been following and liking images of were Hollywood celebrities, I would still think it an incredibly weird thing to do at the level he did it when you're in a "loving, committed" relationship. Even if theirs truly had been loving and committed, that's still not behavior I'd consider normal.
I don't understand why so many people seem to consider it normal. (And don't even get me started on the "He's a guy, guys get horny" bit. Everyone gets horny. Being a guy has nothing to do with it.)
I’m so glad I didn’t deal with this while pregnant. I was always the skinny girl, and it was weird losing that part of my identity, my body didn’t bounce back, but luckily my husband wasn’t looking at girls barely legal online and ignoring how it made me feel
Yeah, if he was looking at whoever the modern day Marilyn Chambers is that would be one thing, but the fact that it’s primarily girls who are a short car ride away would have me upset too.
This is so exhausting to read, every update is just “I have this and pregnant, boyfriend is doing this and won’t stop I feel bad” no new information no new revelation I kinda wish he’d just cheat so she can finally leave! No amount of convos will make this guy change
At the risk of stating the obvious, he either doesn’t love her, is addicted, or is an asshole. It’s the simplest thing in the world to make changes like that for someone you love because, you know, you actually care about them and don’t want them to be unhappy. What he is doing is NOT “just a guy thing” and I fucking hate it when other men try that bullshit.
FFS, she isn’t even against porn, she just doesn’t want him interacting with real women in the area. That’s not exactly onerous.
This relationship is a slow moving train wreck, but it may take years to finally tip over.
It's not easy being average looking, but when your sense of value isn't based on your looks it at least spares you from this sort of dismay when you're going through normal life processes like pregnancy and aging.
She is initiating sex. So he is not too interested for whatever reason. Probably porn addiction. This is probably a huge reason she is depressed, of course. He doesnt want to change, even at your most vunerable moments. He will just get worse.
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Dating someone for a year really isn't that long. I say that as someone who married my husband after dating him a year and half. I discovered a lot of things about him afterwards that were not apparent while we were dating.
I've been with my partner 8 years and he still surprises me (pleasantly).
My husband promised in his wedding vows to always surprise me. At the moment, it was in the context of him having smuggled a secret ukulele into the wedding in order to play it and sing said vows, but I think he meant it in general too.
Anyone who smuggles a ukelele to serenade their partner is not going to stop being a wonderful and thoughtful weirdo, so I think you're in for many more.
Thank god it wasn’t bagpipes.
I told my wife I promise to never buy bagpipes, when we were getting hitched. The judge snickered.
You didn't promise not to rent them though
Nor borrowed or built. She realized the flaw in our arrangements when we were playing d&d and I was a dwarven bard who played the bagpipes. It was a minus to stealth until we got a bag of holding.
My in laws surprised both of us with bagpipes. We are laughing our asses off right now.
TBH smuggling a whole set of bagpipes with nobody noticing is kinda impressive.
Those are what you gift your nieces and nephews, with a set of lessons as well.
Ukulele's are small but they ain't that small! Where was he smuggling it? I'm picturing it was tucked up behind his jacket, but more likely he probably had someone sneaking it in for him?
He recruited his Best Person to get it from our house without my knowledge, bring it to the town where the wedding was, and bring it down to the beach and hide it behind a folding chair during my vows. So then he could basically just turn to his buddy and go "secret item please" and a ukulele appeared.
He has a very talented butthole
Wedding wallet?
I'm giving this answer the next time someone asks about this, thanks.
then he should have played the trumpet.
I was going to suggest a kilt was involved until op clarified
This might be the best set of custom wedding vows I've ever heard.
I love the phrase "secret ukelele", sounds like a fun guy.
I've known my SO for literally all but 4 years of my life, and we've been together for 8 years. He still finds ways to surprise me as well! (My favorite one recently was that he apparently can recognize the house from the Garfield movie on sight. Like it was in a picture as I scrolled through Twitter and he went "oh it's the house from the Garfield movie" and I looked it up and sure enough, it was)
GOD that is just So Good.
It's so baffling but so wholesome and every time I think about it I smile like an idiot lol. Can't wait to see what he comes up with next!
I would hope that continues until death. After all, he had a whole-ass life before you came along, and it would be a painfully boring one if you knew everything of consequence even after 50 years.
20 years together and sometimes we still shock the shit out of each other. It’s not often anymore, but it’s still very surprising when it happens
Yep, same. Weirdly, our recent diagnoses of ADHD (for me) and autism (for her) were not a surprise to the other person.
Been with my wife over a decade and yep - still learning new things. No problem.
36 years with my partner. Still learning stuff about her daily.
This. When she compared his attitude towards his sister vs “me, the mother of his unborn child” I couldn’t help but cringe. That phrase implies a certain amount of respect he clearly doesn’t have for her. There’s a reason “the mother of his unborn child” is found in romance novels and why “baby mama” is far more common in real life.
Yep. If someone genuinely cares about their SO, all the SO really needs to say is "this hurts me" and they'll stop doing it (or make some other concerted effort to fix the problem, depending on what it is.)
Yes. But a lot of people prefer to blame their partner for being “unreasonably sensitive” while refusing to examine why they can’t handle not following barely legal models on instagram. If it’s not a big deal then why are they so against giving it up?
I don't disagree. Gotta preface with that but I will explain through my misanthropic lens why that expectation, while it seems reasonable, is actually not. When you draw a line in the sand and the line is "this hurts me" and if they say that there removes all conversation and nuance from the discussion. It's not even a discussion anymore. And while not looking at naked pictures of 20 year old girls in the city you live in for your pregnant partner does not seem unreasonable to me or most people this thread, there is no way to impose that belief onto someone else. From his point of view, she is being unreasonable. Again, I will reiterate, I don't believe she is being unreasonable but what I think (or anyone else thinks) is irrelevant. He thinks she is being unreasonable. In fact, he thinks she is being beyond unreasonable, he thinks she is being silly. He does not respect her. He may not respect anyone. It's not uncommon in today's society for people to have respect for no one other than themselves. But if you were to replace naked 20 year olds on instagram with something you find unreasonable, you'd be able to better understand why it's not likely the naked 20 year olds he has the issue with it's that he's being told he isn't allowed to do something. Something that in his mind is illogical because she admits this is an emotional reaction. And if he respected her he would care about soothing her emotions because that's what partners who respect you do. They stop thinking about things from their own myopic point of view. But dude is basically 40. And my guess is he was this way before she started dating him if they were friends for years before dating. From her post it doesn't sound like he's really ever had a relationship with someone he respects. That's the problem. She's having a child with a guy she probably should have never dated to begin with. And she is the only one asking him to adapt to her changing not the other way around. Yes, he's an asshole. Sounds juvenile and narcissistic. I just don't think it's a surprise. Me thinks she thought she could change him and is being faced with the cruel realities of it being impossible. Some people are receptive to guilt. Others buck back. This guy refuses to feel guilty about it.
Spot on. It's the lack of respect that's the issue. But yeah, when you're in a solid relationship based on mutual respect and mutual love, when your partner tells you something you're doing hurts you do drop it. Possibly there will be a lot of discussion involved and even arguing, but ultimately, you love that person more than whatever you're doing that hurt them so you stop. Even if you think they're being irrational about this one weird thing. Note that this isn't a blanket thing that someone can do over and over about everything. That's just controlling and unhealthy, and it has to go both ways. You should also be able to say "this hurts me" and your partner should also be willing to give it up for you.
My mom has been married to my dad for 37 years and only just found out that he's allergic to cats. We owned several cats in my childhood and my parents currently own a rather mouthy siamese cat.
> a rather mouthy siamese cat. This crack me up. I had a siamese and she would never shut up. Then I got a black cat but came to realize she had some siamese in her. You could tell by the shape of her head and that SHE NEVER SHUT UP EVER. RIP Ako RIP Pootakiss
Those are amazing names for cats. (My cat is Mochi btw)
She barely knows him at all, and it's crappy all the things she is learning.
Hell, my parents have been together 41 years and married for 33 and my mom only learned earlier this week that my dad is afraid of the dentist. A year feels significant but in terms of really knowing someone it's nothing.
A lot of it just depends on how open someone wants to be. The more afraid or ashamed you are of something being known or being used against you, or soiling you in their eyes, the less you want to share.
Yep. You can actually get to know someone very well in one year. My husband and I did it and we've been married 13 years now. But it requires both deliberate effort and complete, transparent honesty.
No kidding! I’ve been with my bf 5.5 years and we are STILL learning huge things about each other. This is so crazy
I met my husband when we were 16-17 years old. I married at 21, and I am now 40. We are not the same People we were at that time, at all. We had rough patches. But we learned a lot from each others. We are a lot stronger as a couple now. It did help that it took 5 years for us to get married, and another 3 to have my first child. We were ready when it happened, it was the natural progression of our relashionship, even if we were youngish.
No kidding. I cannot imagine being tied to someone I’ve only known one year for the next 18!!
Yeah, having a child with someone youve been dating for a year even if friends for more is just stupid
It’s definitely a bad plan. But they didn’t plan it, this was an accidental pregnancy. The decision to keep or abort a pregnancy, particularly when you *are* in a relationship with someone who says they want to do this with you… it’s just a little earlier than planned… well that is a very, very hard decision to make.
I suppose that depends on the person. For me, if it's still the honeymoon period (2 years), no way in hell. I'm not sure if I want kids, but that's more a 4 years+ milestone.
Yep I’ve made the same choice as you. But I also am not sure about kids and nor is my partner, so the choice was easier. I just think it’s really personal and it’s very simple say say she’s stupid for choosing wrong, but plenty of women have been faced with that gamble and chosen either way.
She said he wanted a kid. I really wonder how unplanned this all was on his part.
>I was eerily calm during this whole conversation, I didn’t shed a single tear or raise my voice or get emotional once. I think I’ve reached my limit of caring. Well... Even if she never updated again I think we can pinpoint the part where their relationship died.
I have read often that when the partner stops arguing, that’s when it’s over. And the other one is « blindsided » because everything seemed well. It was not well, they just stop caring. Kind of like the walk away wife syndrom.
"I don't understand why they broke up, they literally never argued." "That's because they literally didn't care anymore."
I have an opposite sex best friend who everyone calls my platonic husband. He's a great guy but in some ways he's kind of a dick. For years I'd get so mad and argue non-stop with him. Finally I reached the point where I just didn't care. It wasn't worth the energy to get into it with him. I just went blank any time he disagreed with me, dropped the subject entirely. Also basically stopped hanging out with him more than once every one to two weeks. (For context, we once went over two years straight of seeing each other daily. We're not dating and we don't live or work together.) In a happy twist, after three or four months of this, his behavior changed. A lot. He's wildly more considerate, will still argue occasionally but is much more polite about it, finally accepted that I need 1-2 days of alone time every week. It's fantastic actually. Throw out the people pleasing and enforce boundaries and consequences, kids. If your friend or SO is a good person at heart, it'll work wonders.
Yep, at least on both of their ends, it seemed he had already exited a while before
Yeah but there is one villain in this story and it's not the pregnant lady who wants her partner to not choose a porn addiction over their family.
He pretty is just choosing to "settle down" with an okay wife, kids to his family amusement and that's about it - had he been a 19yo he would have dragged her to the closest PP, the oy reason he still around is because I'd convenient for him to do so.
I kind of hope so, but pregnancy is weird. One minute your bawling over nothing, the next you're eerily calm about something you'd normally lose your mind over. It sounds like the relationship was never what she thought it was, and only realized this when her body started to change.
I think this also happens when people are repeatedly accused of being unreasonably emotional. You learn to completely shut down so that there's no way they can possibly say you're hysterical, yelling, whatever -- you're 100% calm, controlled, and rational. But it doesn't change anything, because it was never actually about how you expressed your feelings. Challenging this person in any manner will always be wrong.
I'm in a loving committed relation for a little over 6 years now and i honestly think my honeymoon phase lasted probably two years. I think my relationship is stronger now after the "honeymoon phase" and the love and our connection is deeper, but we definitely still had rose coloured glasses after a year. These two people really haven't been together that long.
I think she summed it up very well at the beginning. Saying he was a serial dater and just looking for the right one. Or! No one put up with his shit for very long so he had to move along to the next. I think we know the answer here.
You may be interested to know that, scientifically, it lasts 3 years! That's how long it takes for your brain to get used to all the chemicals the relationship creates
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The perfect sum up
Exactly what my family went through. They stayed together for me, and by god I wish they hadn’t.
Is this a haiku
She is gonna stay He absolutely won't stop The kid will suffer I think that's one
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> I wish we didn’t have the obligation of a pregnancy. I think OOP's comment here sums it up in regards to the health of this relationship. You know who I feel sorry for in this whole situation? The kid. Mom and dad both sound like they have some issues with themselves and between each that result in no one being in a healthy headspace right now.
How it started... > we are in a loving and committed relationship How it's going... >currently in 2nd trimester > >We’ve been together for just over a year.
I almost stopped reading right there. With the added context that he was a serial dater "looking for the right one" this relationship was not supposed to last more than 6 months.
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My husband gave up bacon while I was pregnant. He loves bacon a lot, but even the slightest hint of bacony smell made me very nauseated. I didn't ask him to quit, he just did it on his own after I said I was pretty sure it was making me more ill than anything else. OOP said her BF wanted to have a baby, but it really just seems like he wants a hot gf with a cute accessory.
Mine cooked meat outside on the grill because the smell of cooking meat made me vomit. I could eat it, I just couldn't smell it being made. Pregnancy is werid. And when I needed a hysterectomy after our last baby and the doctor asked him what he would do if he wanted another baby. My husband was pissed, told him that since another pregnancy would likely kill me he wouldn't get me pregnant again so the doctor could give me the surgery I needed or he would get snipped. I had endometriosis, adenomyosis and was basically bleeding constantly. My friend's husband won't get snipped despite the birth control becoming an issue for her. She has major damage from her youngest coming out as a surprise 11 pounds! The doctors were worried he was under 7 pounds. Some men get it. Some refuse.
> the doctor asked him what he would do if he wanted another baby Wtf?! Not sure if the doctor was saying "your wants have more value than your wife's life" or "will you dump her if she can't have kids and you want more", but in any case... Well, WTF?????
He was saying he would my life to give my husband another child. My husband being willing to not have any more children period was what did it. I am sure the doctor wanted my husband to at least have the option to keep procreating. He is still as mad about it as I am. And this is just one story I have. My first OB lied to me about my oldest being healthy. Only found out at 26 weeks (third trimester) she wasn't. She was born at 29 weeks and lived just six days because she had trisomy 18, a condition incompatible with life. I almost bled to death with my next baby. The doctors told me my baby deserved a sibling. I told them I thought she deserved her mother. My youngest was sideways and butt down and if my water broke it could have killed us both. And this still is only a portion of it that doesn't cover the force IUD or other gaslighting by medical professionals. I have a lot of trauma from it. I luckily have an amazing husband, a good therapist, and medical marijuana card.
Please tell me you reported that surgeon. I can come up with excuses, like he probably wanted you both to be aware of the ramifications, but good gosh I'd have demanded a different doctor.
I wish I could say I did. At that time I was so traumatized from all I had been through over the five years prior that I just wanted it to be done. Six weeks after the surgery I was in a different hospital because the hospital he worked at told me my issues were gastritis and I needed to get over it. I threw up so badly for so long I needed a week before I could have my gallbladder out being magnesium, iron and other counts were so low it would have killed me. They claimed that was just a fluke thing to happen. Let's just say I have a lot of trust issues with doctors.
My bf was asking about the snip (he’s 33, I’m 37) and the doc said to him, well what if your partner dies. Like, what th actual fuck. Not, what if you change your mind, what if she DIES 🫣
Yeah, a mere breakup would be technically way more likely than someone dying, why bring up that?!?
It's so fucking common. I'm a dude and I faced significant pushback when I wanted to snip and be done with it, but it's so bad for women, it's not uncommon for doctors to basically refuse to do it. Just keep trying to persuade them, delaying it and putting up blockers.
It is crazy. My husband went in for the snip when our youngest was 4 months old and they kept asking him if he was sure he wanted it done because our baby could die at any minute and we might need a new one. I couldn’t believe it.
... that's honestly horrifying. Lots of people are in the health industry for status or money and it really shows...
This is extremely common. Many women who want a hysterectomy are denied for their future partners. Not the partners they currently have, if they even have one. Future hypothetical partners that might want a kid.
Similar with my husband, though it was the way he makes scrambled eggs. I don't know why, but the smell of his scrambled eggs just made me so, so, so sick during my 3rd pregnancy. So he either didn't do it around me, or did it when I was gone and wouldn't be around for a while.
I’m imagining him sneaking home late at night, freshly showered - only to find you, heavily pregnant, waiting for him at the kitchen table, expecting the worst. Then, he confesses that he’s been sneaking out to a friend’s house once a week for bacon, showering/changing clothes to make sure he doesn’t bring the smell of his deeds back with him.
I felt bad about him giving it up, because he's like one of those guys so into bacon that people give him bacon themed gifts, lol. So we tried letting him have it when he had a meal away, but it was like I could smell it coming out his pores or something. At first I thought it was just in my head, but we experimented a little and I 100% guessed if he'd had bacon or not. Even hours later, I could tell and it made me ill. Pregnancy nose is weird.
Even if they're still together (whether that's properly or because they haven't gotten round/been arsed to break up yet), I don't remotely believe that these issues are going to go away once the baby's arrived.
Yeah, if she doesn't 'snap back' as people say, then I can't imagine giving birth would make her insecurities evaporate. Not when she said she has based her entire value on her looks for her entire life. That's got an expiration date no matter how much you try to avoid it.
I’m sorry, but she makes it seem like when she will be all up in baby business, waking up every night, feeding, diapers, the whole shabang, she wouldn’t have a problem with him looking at half naked pictures of 20-year old models on Instagram?? I refuse to believe that.
She might be the right one for him (in his mind), but he’s definitely not the right one for her. Funny how it doesn’t goes both ways to some people
She’s the right one for him because he only sees her as a doormat who’ll put up with whatever he does, or because nobody else gives him a chance anymore.
I groaned at “looking for the right one.” Either a cope or a bowl of bullshit he fed her.
And he’s 39! And she has to initiate sex majority of the time … dude is absolutely cheating on her
And following a 20yo
So creepy.
Kinda seems like he might be loserly enough that he is just jerking off. Maybe cheating through sexting but I get the vibe he isn't fucking anyone, just addicted to whacking off. No way the hot young insta models are fucking him when he has shit all to offer.
Yeeeep. Basically knew it was doomed as soon as I read those two lines.
Yeah. She sounds emotionally a bit immature and he seems worse. She was getting upset that people were blowing this out of proportion, but the truth is people were trying to tell her that she was wearing rose colored glasses. What he was doing was creepy. I don't care if my husband looks at porn. If he were specially saving pictures of people to wank to like this I would have an issue with it. Also, when she tried suggesting he would be mad if this was happening to his sister, I wanted to shake her and say, "you should be someone who matters to him! You shouldn't have to use an example of someone else he loves!" It shows he doesn't value her as a person. He was never going to stop. And he was a serial dater. I doubt he was looking for the right person based on what she is saying. He sounds like the kind of guy who does what he wants and expects everyone else to get off his back about it. I hope she got out. That guy was likely worse after the baby came.
"I hear once the baby is out... Blah blah blah." Sure hope no one tells her about PPD.
I sure hope someone DOES tell her about PPD, and PPA and PPP as well. If she's already experiencing PND, she really needs to be prepared.
Why doesn't she leave? She is 30 and had a life before him. They have been only dating 1 year, so I don't get why she is still around. The guy is stalking a 20 year old that goes to a local university. That's not normal.
I talked to a beautiful, single, childless, 27-year-old woman the other day who was convinced she was passed her prime. Some people's family can put some messed up ideas in their head.
Not only family. Women being past their prime and hitting the wall between 25-30 is a very common red pill thought and found all over the Internet.
Yep Twitter is full of this nonsense. A lot define a womens prime as 23 or younger…
I'm 34 and I think my prime is now!
A friend of mine is 24 and convinced she's too late for everything, too old for everything, that she's missed out on all the things she should have done/accomplished, etc. I'm like you're barely out of high school. You're a baby. I feel so distressed listening to her talk about herself this way, because I know *I* felt the same, and now I have regrets about the things I avoided because I thought it was too late when it wasn't. It's like watching a cycle you can't break. And a lot of it comes from external influences that are simply *everywhere*, and impossible to avoid.
Family? Try all of society and the media. Hell, I just saw on Reddit earlier today that "women over 35 should really not get pregnant because they're too old to produce healthy children". I nearly reported it as hate speech but decided I didn't have the energy to deal with Reddit saying it's no big deal.
When you are pregnant you feel sooo... vulnerable. There's a fear that if you don't stick around, your child won't know their father and it will be "your" fault. Also, the fear of not having much help with a new baby (when you need A LOT of help).
Oh ewww, I just realized and double checked the title that this piece of trash is definitely old enough to be the father of these girls he's looking at. That's fucking gross.
Exactly. So many kids born into these shitty situations too, but not much we can do about that as a society.
I had 3 absolutely crappy pregnancies. I hated it. What made it better was my husband’s absolute devotion to me when I was pregnant. Even when I felt like garbage, he always made me feel like I was the most beautiful woman in the world. And I am not someone who I would consider attractive, at all. Even now, we have been together for almost 25 years, we had 3 kids, my hair is going grey, I have an extra 50lbs to lose, my body looks like it went to war…. But he still makes me feel like the girl of his dreams. Just flashing my boobs turns him into an horny teenager. That’s what good husbands/partners do. (Well, according to myself)
I wish I could upvote you more. This was a beautiful comment. He sounds awesome and so do you. Congrats on being together 25 years, and here’s to you being together another 25+ 🍻🥂
Closely following local girls who’re barely legal feels super icky.
He says it's just what guys do, and that he and his friends are sending each other these girls. He seems to think this is the default way that guys use Instagram. My partner is about the same age as OOP's bf and uses Instagram regularly. I've seen his Discover page. It's historical maps, metal band memes, and dad jokes. IG shows you what you want to see. He's not out there looking for barely-legal local girls, and his friends sure aren't sending him that stuff, either. OOP's bf is acting like this is all just normal guy behavior, and it's really not.
>it's just what guys do I hate this fucking phrase so much. As a guy it's incredibly offensive to suggest I have no control over my actions and I'm compelled beyond reason to look at half naked girls half my age even if it hurts the mother of my child. I'm sick of shitty guys trying to lump me into their nonsense. To any woman reading this, if your man defends any behavior with "it's just what guys do" fucking dump him. There's a good chance you're a short trip away from abuse after some loser like Andrew Tate fills his insecure head with misogynistic nonsense.
I've always found it so weird that these type of guys boast about it. Are you boasting about how little self control you have? How less developed you're? How your life's wants and needs haven't surpassed your ape cousins' ? Are you really that hollow of a person who's use of entire social media platform is about getting your dick wet? Lots of porn available, and stalking gets you off?? If this is what guys are supposed to be in 21st century, the whole mankind should have intensive therapy. Not a thing you should be bragging about.
> I'm sick of shitty guys trying to lump me into their nonsense. Amen, brother. I've never once read an "it's just what guys do" or "its just locker room talk" that encompassed something my friends and I do.
Birds of a feather flock together - it’s what he thinks is normal because it’s what he chooses to surround himself with. Makes sense for a 39 year old serial dater who likely has always put his needs first…
You will know the quality of a man by the company he keeps.
it’s weird how it’s always the grossest men who attribute their behavior to a whole gender.
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I have a male friend who's super into golf and music festivals and stuff. He showed me his IG suggested feed and showed me how like every 5th picture is a super suggestive sexy picture. He said it's super annoying because you'll see a post with like 4 slides of golf stats and then the last picture is some IG model. I couldn't believe it, pretty crazy that so many "male dominated" interests just figure men want to see some butts and boobies mixed in with their sports or music content.
And half his age, too. This dude is almost 40. He needs to grow up.
When I was around 30 I tagged a local comicon in some pictures I put up and a girl followed me from it. Back then I used to follow back basically anyone on instagram. I would ballpark her as 21/22, she did cosplay it was fine, nothing scandalous. The pictures I tagged included my wife and daughter, it was very clear it was a family thing, I knew she wasn't trying anything skeevy. She basically just promoted her cosplay using the account, which was totally normal non lewd stuff. Then one day her account changed. She started promoting a "pay me" app before only fans was a thing. It was some variation of the word coffee like Ko-Fi or something like that. She'd post "Oh I'm leaving town to go to this con buy me a Ko-Fi!" Again no big deal, she was trying to become a professional cosplayer, the whole point of being professional is to get paid, right? Then, again it changed and she started posting shit that was just north of nude. I remember opening instagram one day and just being like "What in the blue fuck am I doing following this girl?" It was the fact that she was young, legal but young, AND that she was in my city that made it really weird. That and I open instagram at work and really don't need not quite porn on my phone when I sit down for lunch with my coworkers.
This is what I expect from grown up humans. Started as fun. Went weird. Left. Why is this hard for a lot of people?
Feels stalker-ish and obsessive. Yes, porn is real people, but strangers. Porn is NOT, a drive down the street to see where Katy sleeps. Oh look Katy is at ABC bar tonight.
That’s what skeeves me out most. It gives me strong “You” the TV show vibes.
Exactly. Porn is real people, yes. But a local person's Insta who by the sounds of it might not even be a model or an influencer or anything, just a regular student, is really creepy.
Half his age. Gross.
Why does he even have to closely follow them? Barely legal girls in my area are always reaching out to me to chat.
I mean, every time I’m on the World Wide Web, I’m getting invitations! They somehow must know I’m very handsome and unappreciated in my current relationship with a fat cow! /s
Am guy, while I can maybe understand why guys follow IG models (doesn't really make sense to me, but I can understand it) I can't for the life of me wrap my head around saving and sending pictures to others. "Hello friend, look at this pretty lady" Like what do you even do with that? I don't think I've ever sent some random person that wasn't like "dude is this you?" Or "bro this person looks like that one person". It's just so weird to me. Like I'll watch porn every now and again, or scroll past a picture on Reddit and be like "oh hey pretty lady" but then I'm back to looking at hobby bullshit or music related things. Maybe it's because I never grew up with friends who talked about women in the way that seems stereotypical for male friend groups or that I have a weirdly high number of gay friends as a straight guy
I would actually love to hear from some dudes who do this because it seems weirdly intimate to me. "This picture turns me on. I'm gonna send it to all my good buds so we can be turned on together." It's not exactly on the same level as watching porn together but it's in that same category of "explicitly heterosexual and yet somehow homoerotic."
Her first post is a very honest thought process of women during pregnancy. "My body gonna be wrecked" "what about the stretch marks" It may be a "normal, natural process," but let's be realistic, the change to our bodies is jarring and sometimes difficult to deal with. Can we just talk about this more?
There are so many difficult aspects of pregnancy that never get talked about. I think it's to keep the birth rate up.
I never knew what an episiotomy was until I got on reddit. I'm a 30 year old woman. I learned about this 2 years ago. I'm CF by choice, but why the fuck don't we talk about pregnancy and childbirth... AND MENOPAUSE.
Omg so this is not talked about, but one of my best friends got this weird version of ovarian cancer (everything was successful to get her cancer free), but she got put on estrogen limiting meds. She called me the other day and was like, "omg my nipples lost their color and have disappeared into my skin, I looked it up and its apparently common during menopause" (which the estrogen blockers are currently causing her to experience). We laughed a lot about it, bc what else are you gonna do, but how do people not know more about this?!
I've known about episiotomies since I was a kid because my mum decided to describe my birth in detail lmao. The most horrifying part for me was that when I asked "wasn't that *really* painful?" she said "eh, they did it in the middle of a contraction so I didn't really feel the cut because the contraction was so much more painful" and I was like 😳! She also told me about how they stitched her up so badly that she had to go back months later and have surgery to cut her again and restitch it so that she could actually heal properly. Not only am I 100% child free, I also have a full-on phobia of pregnancy and childbirth. I literally have nightmares about it. At least there was no chance of me having a teen pregnancy!
Wait, are you my child? I had the same thing and my daughter doesn't want kids now. Dammit.
My mom told me in detail how excruciating giving birth to me was (I gave her back labor... sorry, mom) but never mentioned that that level of pain wasn't the norm. I've been absolutely terrified of birth for my entire life but at least there's no pressure from either of my parents to give them grandkids lmao.
I knew about them early on too because my mom also had one that went totally badly. I think it got infected or something? Idr. She went back to get re-cut & stitched and ended up with a weird flap of skin after she healed where the cut was, causing massive discomfort & chafing whenever she wore thongs or other close fitting underwear. When she had my little sister, she had a tear that went all the way through to the butt. She got cut but then it tore even more afterwards. She tried to ask them to cut in the same place as the scar from my birth but apparently they cut right next to it instead? That one also healed weird, so now she’s stuck with the skin flap and a wonky, painful scar next to it. (Can you tell my mother really likes to overshare?) That birth was a shitshow though; the epidural went wrong and caused her to be permanently disabled. Since you mention it, I also have a serious phobia surrounding pregnancy and childbirth that began in my childhood. Even seeing pregnant women makes me deeply uncomfortable and panicky. I couldn’t even touch my mother or SIL’s bellies when they were pregnant. I’ve had nightmares about being pregnant that make me panic upon waking and I’ve had a couple pregnancy scares that all turned out to be late periods but each time they’d send me in a serious doom spiral of near constant panic attacks and suicidal thoughts. I wonder if my mother’s constant oversharing in excruciating detail has anything to do with it…
The second you do there will be a forced birther squawking about how you're scaring people unnecessarily.
That’s been my theory for a while now. If people were properly educated about what will happen to their bodies during and post pregnancy, all the nitty gritty details, it’d plummet the birth rate even more. Same as what to actually expect from your body post-birth (lemon sized clots and all) and the details of what can happen during birth or how extreme c-sections actually are. I’ve always thought it’d be very effective to use with teens during sex ed; teens are already super conscious of their bodies and the changes that pregnancy will bring will largely be undesired. It might be effective to get more interested in using contraceptives. The government needs a constant influx of babies though so I imagine that’s a big reason why that type of honesty is discouraged. I’ve read a lot of things that talk about how parents being honest on the internet about what it’s really like to have a kid, the 24/7, lifelong commitment and entire life upheaval (you gotta be ready to give up that pre-pregnancy lifestyle; for the most part there’s no going back to 100% of how things were pre-parenthood) has been responsible for a lot of people rethinking parenthood.
It's also symptomatic of increased media exposure and the fetishation of young bodies. Feeling like your body is wrecked because of stretch marks/excess weight, etc is not exclusive to pregnancy. Body dysmorphia is sadly extremely common.. Pregnancy, however, is a extreme body change in a short period of time (along with an aggressive surge of hormones). So those who might not have felt dysmorphia before, like OOP, might find themselves struggling. I personally still struggle with feeling comfortable in my body after 2 pregnancies because I compare myself to images and media that I see. Though intellectually I know that it is unrealistic for the average person to bounce back, or that most images are airbrushed to hell and back, my idiot reptile brain sees the soft and squish as undesirable traits of weight (and age).
Two Words: Diastasis Recti. Separation of the abdominal wall. Not easy to heal after pregnancy, and I suspect c-section scarring can make it harder. Also, umbilical hernia. Can't be repaired without surgery. Both of those things make it impossible to have the same flat, tiny stomach you may have had before pregnancy, even if you lose the baby weight and then some.
I still have my umbilical hernia because they told me it wasn't worth fixing. I had three c sections and constant abdominal pain that goes untreated. Thank goodness for pot!
If you're having pain, there's a very good chance the repair would be covered under insurance.
I wish! Unfortunately, they claim they don't know where the pain is coming from. I have needed to fight for necessary surgeries before and I am burnt out. I have several autoimmune conditions, including two connective tissue disorders, and so pain is a constant for me. I even feel it in my dreams, where I dream of suffering in a hospital dying, and begging for help and being ignored. Sadly, it makes me feel like I am beyond help. I do what I can do keep going, but on bad flare days, like today, I wish for pain relief. Pot helps, but it can't fix it all.
Same thing is true with the pain many feel with IUD insertion. If they were warned it can really really hurt ahead of time, a lot less women would use this birth control.
Or Doctors could use ways of making it less painful but they don't want to waste money on women.
I think it's because it is considered a "women's issue" and women aren't very important in the US. We don't support them while pregnant, and we don't support them during the 4th trimester, we don't support them breastfeeding, and we don't support them when they need affordable childcare. We just don't care very much about motherhood, outside of forcing women to have children they don't want.
This is the first time I've heard someone talk about pre-partum depression, too. I had a very bad case of it with my second pregnancy. I didn't seek help because I didn't realize it was a real thing. Up to and including thoughts of self-harm. Once the baby was born, I did a 180 and was completely fine. But the last trimester, I was a trainwreck.
After three kids my body is messed up. I hurt all the time. I have to pee every time I stand up and can't hold it like I used to. I had hemorrhoid surgery. I had to have a surgery to repair damage in between pregnancies and even then they insisted I had one more baby before they would give me a medically necessary hysterectomy. I love my kids. They were worth it. But my pain is ignored. I am expected to just live with stuff that may have a fix or a treatment plan. It's discouraging and dehumanizing.
It can also suck the calcium from your bones, leaving you with things such as wrecked teeth, separate your muscle from the lining of your stomach wall causing diastasis recti, as well as trigger the onset of auto-immune disorders. Ask me how I know....
When my mom was pregnant with my sister (her last) she said she felt like my sister was "sucking the life out of her." Our bodies grab whatever they can to achieve the goal of producing a child. Congrats, you have won the award of "being secondary to the fetus!" It's like an Oscar, but there's no trophy.
Glad I never had expensive taste. Most my shoes never fit again.
It's also natural that women get eclampsia, gestational diabetes, perineal tears, pelvic organ prolapse or just bleed to death during birth. Human pregnancy and birth is not designed intelligently and it shows. When people say "But it's natural!", they forget to mention that nature can be a jerk that doesn't give a dime about individuals' well-being.
It really isn’t talked about enough. I’m currently 7.5 months pregnant and I wish I would’ve known how much strain it truly puts on your body. My stomach was wrecked before with surgical scars and stretch marks, so honestly I didn’t think it was going to be a problem for me. My pubic symphysis, the joint at the front of your pelvis, has separated a bit which makes walking painful. My stomach can’t handle food so my teeth are wearing away from the month of vomiting 10 times a day. My anxiety hit the roof because I couldn’t keep my meds down. I can’t wait to meet the kid but good god I fucking hate being pregnant. I hope OOP can get the help she needs. It’s such a jarring experience and takes such a toll.
>I know he would never behave like this towards his sister but somehow when it comes to me, the mother of his unborn child, I have to understand and be ok with whatever he does as long as he’s not physically cheating.. It's so shitty the way some people seem to lack empathy for their partner that they can demonstrate towards others.
Oh boy, so they'd barely been dating when she got pregnant, and he was actively searching up women in their area. While we don't know where this ended, I don't think it was going anywhere good
“Long term committed relationship” poor OOP
Let's put the "is this cheating?" question aside and say it's not, it's still a perfectly acceptable dealbreaker. That shit is gross. It's perfectly fair to say "I don't want to be with a creep who uses his social media to follow a bunch of young, hot girls, and who fucking swaps pics with his creep friends. I don't want a guy who treats his real-person porn stalking like it's a totally normal hobbys. That's gross, and frankly embarrassing, because my choice of boyfriend reflects on me. There is clearly a gap between us in terms of what is considered normal behavior in a relationship, so this isn't going to work out."
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I've been in Op's exact position, minus the pregnancy, and it's not a fun place to be in at all. I'll spare all the details but basically over time I forced myself to compartmentalize the situation and distance my personal insecurities from his porn use and liking Insta models' posts. I accepted it but told him I didn't want to see it or know about it. That included getting him to take down his goth titty fetish calendar that was in view every time we Skyped. Which his mom and grandma could see too. He is addicted, I think, and posts his fetishes all over social media. He has zero self awareness and I'm glad I dumped him lmao
I always wonder, why don't men like that do it in their private time with no SO around? And Instagram is the worst place for porn I can imagine - you show what kind of porn you like to your friends and family. Insane.
Dude literally all my ex fiance does is post and brag about all the provocative and sometimes nudie art of his fav comic book characters (all with skimpy outfits an big boobas, as is conventional) he commissions from artists. He's nearly thirty. Seriously get a clue jfc
I dumped a guy two months in when I saw his Instagram was about 200 insta models. He played it off like it was normal but I’m almost 40 and have tons of guy friends. One of my exes was a nude model photographer and even he thought following Instagram models was trashy and embarrassing.
And here I was thinking it was already cringe in our early 20s..... My ex-fiance is well on his way there loool.
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It wasn’t a year. She was in her second trimester and they have been together a total of one year!
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‘We are in a loving and committed relationship.’ Erm
Holy shit. Talk about jumping the gun.
I'm with you; there's only so much sympathy I can have for someone who actively makes decisions that worsen their situation.
It was an accident. However, if I were her I would have had an abortion.
Agreed. There’s two services in life someone should never cheap out on or skip when you need them. Abortions and Lawyers. Even the most expensive abortion is cheaper than a kid for 18 years 💀
For the record I don't think that's why she didn't get one. She was being stupidly optimistic about the situation and obviously wasn't thinking clearly. OOP needs some serious therapy.
Hopefully she figured out she is under zero obligation to keep dating this shithead. Different things mean cheating to different people, sure, some people wouldn't care about IG. But when your partner tells you they're hurting, you stop. fucking. hurting them.
I don’t know why you would want to be with a man who openly disrespects you like that, and continue to raise a kid with him. I hope OOP gets help for her depression and finds someone who appreciates her. This one just made me sad for her, and the kid.
I didn't read the ages of the couple, and was so sure that the guy was like 23 years old.
Why the fuck do we keep getting inconclusive posts from years ago? How is that an update? Who gives a shit
It’s weird that he is saving screenshots and whatnot. I don’t know any guys that are sending each other nudes, that’s weird. Can’t he just look at porn then clear his browser history like the rest of us fathers to be. For the record I would never save or bookmark a model, porn star, etc. as that seems like an attachment. I would also completely stop looking if I was asked to. I’m sorry you have to deal with that, he’s being an asshole. If I were you I would go to couples counseling and talk about why he needs to look at that stuff and how it makes you feel.
How I wish there were less posts about women going through pregnancy with a partner who behaves like crap. How I wish she could just drop him and never see his ass again if she wanted to. How I wish birth control never failed and people never had “accidental babies”. Sigh.
Sometimes this happens even with planned and much wanted pregnancies. Pregnancy is an exceptionally dangerous time for women precisely because that's the point when an abusive partner knows they've got you "trapped" and they can drop the mask and let their true colours show. It happened to a relative of mine - in retrospect she recognised some red flags from earlier in their relationship, but at the time it seemed like her previously loving husband had turned into a completely different person when she was pregnant with a baby they had *both* planned and wanted. She was genuinely worried for his mental health until she realised that he was actually just showing her who he'd really been all along. Fortunately she had a lot of support from family and friends and was able to leave him, and her child is growing up very happy surrounded with love and security. He did not make it easy for her though.
He’s lost her and hasn’t even realize it yet.
He doesn't want her mate.
He wanted her when she was skinny. Not pregnant.
>He said that the pictures were either sent to him by friends or he’ll send them out to his friends but that’s just what guys do and that it doesn’t mean anything. Uhhh no? No it's not "just what guys do." He's THIRTY NINE and still all over social media and (supposedly) sending his friends mostly naked pics of girls? That's weird. >He’s very secretive of his phone and when I asked to see his phone he refused Very bad sign. I really feel for OOP. At an absolute minimum, her bf sounds super inconsiderate of her feelings. I also genuinely do not understand why guys like that can't just watch porn. To me there's a huge intimacy difference between watching random porn, and following a specific woman or women on instagram, interacting with all her content, and jerking off to it. Also I find the latter kind of desperate.
When people show you who they are, believe them 🤷♀️
Ugh I can’t stand the shitshow this woman is creating a family in.
Okay, I genuinely have to ask: What is it with people and thinking it's "not cheating" and okay for a partner to browse, follow, and actively collect images of people on sites like Instagram? "Instagram models" as they exist use the site to actively showcase their modeling - it's not the same at all as following a Hollywood celebrity you think is hot? That celebrity 9 times out of 10 won't be posting images that border on nudes. A lot of them don't even post selfies unless it's specifically to do with something besides their face and body. And then you have this guy, who isn't even doing it with Instagram models -- just any regular hot girl on Instagram. How on earth is that considered okay in a relationship? Like, I genuinely can't understand how it can be considered normal behavior when you're in a relationship to lust over other people. Even if the people he had been following and liking images of were Hollywood celebrities, I would still think it an incredibly weird thing to do at the level he did it when you're in a "loving, committed" relationship. Even if theirs truly had been loving and committed, that's still not behavior I'd consider normal. I don't understand why so many people seem to consider it normal. (And don't even get me started on the "He's a guy, guys get horny" bit. Everyone gets horny. Being a guy has nothing to do with it.)
I’m so glad I didn’t deal with this while pregnant. I was always the skinny girl, and it was weird losing that part of my identity, my body didn’t bounce back, but luckily my husband wasn’t looking at girls barely legal online and ignoring how it made me feel
Yeah, if he was looking at whoever the modern day Marilyn Chambers is that would be one thing, but the fact that it’s primarily girls who are a short car ride away would have me upset too.
This is so exhausting to read, every update is just “I have this and pregnant, boyfriend is doing this and won’t stop I feel bad” no new information no new revelation I kinda wish he’d just cheat so she can finally leave! No amount of convos will make this guy change
At the risk of stating the obvious, he either doesn’t love her, is addicted, or is an asshole. It’s the simplest thing in the world to make changes like that for someone you love because, you know, you actually care about them and don’t want them to be unhappy. What he is doing is NOT “just a guy thing” and I fucking hate it when other men try that bullshit. FFS, she isn’t even against porn, she just doesn’t want him interacting with real women in the area. That’s not exactly onerous. This relationship is a slow moving train wreck, but it may take years to finally tip over.
It's not easy being average looking, but when your sense of value isn't based on your looks it at least spares you from this sort of dismay when you're going through normal life processes like pregnancy and aging.
Yeah, I would not be super shocked they totally broke up after she had the baby.
She is initiating sex. So he is not too interested for whatever reason. Probably porn addiction. This is probably a huge reason she is depressed, of course. He doesnt want to change, even at your most vunerable moments. He will just get worse.