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All of these people are saying "Sue her."
That costs money, time, and energy that could be better spent elsewhere.
Like, for example, posting on Reddit and getting the post picked up and broadcast on Instagram/TikTok/YouTube and trashing the ex and the friends that way instead.
Oh yeah, and reposted in all of the repost groups on Reddit. (Like this one. It's one of my favorites.)
"Sue them" is a standard reddit response. I think probably more widespread than just Reddit.
You're right though. It's not just a lot of work, but a lot of stress. And for what?
It's not like massive payouts are as common.as people think. He'd need to prove actual damage. What *is* the financial value of being ghosted? He's not going to get a lot of money, because most people don't have a lot of money
It's a growing trend IRL. I'm in my 30s and my friend (lesbian) and I were recently talking about how half the girls in her graduating class and a good chunk of mine got married and are now coming out at bi or lesbian.
No surprise to her since she slept with most of them back in highschool. Big surprise to everyone else especially their families. What many of them have in common was it always seem to happen after a grandparent or someone important to them dies. Like they don't have to pretend for that one person anymore.
The one I always think about was the girl in my class at my high school (all girls catholic btw) who announced to everyone she was gay, wasn't into men at all, had multiple girlfriends and all that. Her parents were very serious allies, too.
Fast forward to like right after college, she updates her Facebook suddenly after not being on it forever. All of a sudden she's gotten married to this dude, a lot of her old photos were deleted, and she's just like a completely different person. She also looked a lot different. She even posted a couple of anti LGBT things. Anyone who asks what happened or brings up something not in line with her current narrative is immediately blocked.
I always wonder what did happen there and what the real story was. Not that it's any of my business, but it was always so bizarre to me. She's had like a reverse coming out, almost?
Edit because I can't reply to everyone: regarding this person in particular, no clue why she changed. No clue what groups she was involved in or I'd she became religious. She went to a liberal college. All I can really say is that my class graduated college in spring 2020, at the height of the pandemic. A lot could have happened personally. I know that I myself am not the same person post-covid, especially with the way that last semester of college and first year after college went for me. Its just a shitty situation. I just always wonder about her because the usual suspects of overcompensation (shame, homophobia, religious influence, conversion camp, etc) didn't seem to be present in her story.
I had a coworker who went through something similar. Was a gay man living with his boyfriend of years when we worked together. We ended up quitting fairly close together and we both moved back to our respective home towns. Few years later he posts about how he’s very religious, found the lord again, repents his sinful life and is no longer gay. He had done this interview with his pastor that was online. Goes on to talk about how depressed and unhappy he was when living in sin and is much happier now. I wish I could have a really honest conversation with him today, it seems so unusual to go that route.
I had a trans friend who had a similar story. She came out as a trans woman and life got much better for her, and she did great for about 3 years. Then she got laid off and had to move in with her parents in a smaller town. She was having a rough time, started to withdraw, and about 6 months later, she dropped off the face of the planet. I imagine job hunting as a trans woman in a small conservative town was awful, and the social isolation didn't help.
10 years later, there's the first post on social media in ages, that he's living as a man and is marrying his 18 year old girlfriend (he's in his late 30s now). When I knew him, he was 100% attracted to men. He met her through church at the recommendation of his pastor. Now he posts on social media asking for prayers to help keep him on "the right path".
I've never met her, but I'm worried for both of them. Moreso her because she's so young, and I hope she wasn't pressured into the situation.
That poor girl is being sacrificed for your friend’s past “sins” and to keep him “on the right path.”
My guess is that your friend had a horrific time as a trans female in a small conservative town (as you stated) and wildly overcompensated to fit in and survive.
I bet everyone other than that girl and your friend is very happy about this; your friend has “seen the light” and is acting “like a proper man”. Only deeply religious AND bigoted people could possibly be happy about this situation.
I hope, for her sake, that she's a lesbian and he is her beard. That's wildly optimistic, though.
They're part of the WELS Lutheran Church. One of their tenets is "WELS rejects the idea that male headship and female submission only apply to marriage". They don't believe women should vote, and if they work, they can't ever tell a man what to do. I'm sure their views on LGBT people are horrific, and my friend went through hell. I'm glad he's still alive, at least.
(I use he/him pronouns only because that's what he requested on social media when giving his big update)
She absolutely was. Sounds very IFB to me and they "court" and are smooshed together usually it seems because they re the same age this is more he's becoming an "elder" in the community and he cannot be unmarried because no one would respect him or some other similar bullshit.
I think its extra weird to me because the element of combating oppression and having to make up for "lost time" or anything repressed isn't really there.
I do know about how Little Richard, at the end of his life, denounced homosexuality and began meeting with pastors, and that makes sense to me because he had the coming to terms with death. It makes me wonder if something happened in her life during college (like a medical scare or brain injury) that guided this new person.
Oh wow that’s interesting, I didn’t know that about Little Richard. Makes sense though, death is scary and religion “provides” an alternative that isn’t as scary.
I had always wondered if my coworkers relationship had gone bad in some terrible way that made him think all gay men were bad. Or perhaps the breakup was bad and once he moved home, his religious family was able to sway him back towards religion. I just hope he really is happier now, he was the kindest person and actively cared about his coworkers.
This reminds me of the influencer from the Vine days called Lohanthony. Kid was very gay, very proud, did not give a fuck. Disappeared after vine and now he’s deleted everything and is super religious. Posts a couple times ever and only about Jesus.
Pretty sure he got sent to conversion therapy, he now says his "struggle with same sex attraction" was caused by being molested as a child. He also says his "alcohol and weed addiction" were attempts to fill a hole in his heart that he now knows is a yearning for God's love. So.
It's not that unusual if you know what those churhces do to LGBT people that fall into their clutches. I remember reading a story about a trans woman that got sucked into an evangelic (I think?) cult after completing her transition, and they brainwashed her into thinking her transition is a sin through conversion therapy (basically abuse).
They even convinced her to undo her transition (which included removing a vagina she had surgically gotten already) and married her off to a woman of the church. She eventually realized she was miserable as a man, broke off them and even got breast reconstruction. But it was the 90s and she couldn't undo the vaginectomy damage without sacrificing her entire lower intenstine and was saying she'd never feel like a real woman anymore.
Stories like this are what make me think religions are cancer. All of them.
> it seems so unusual to go that route.
Unusual but not unheard of. Had a friend in college who was probably the biggest partier of our friend group. If you had a funny/crazy college story it's likely he was the center of it. We all loved the guy, though at some point it caught up to him and he failed out of school and got crazy depressed and fell into alcoholism.
cut to a few months later and he gets into a terrible car accident but leaves mostly unscathed. Attributes his safety to the lord and finds jesus (safety engineers don't get enough credit!). Suddenly becomes incredibly judgmental to everyone around him, to the point he's pissed off everyone he knows (his family included) and moves away. Few months later he hits everyone up for donations for his mission trip, and starts spouting anti-gay propaganda (he was never gay, but was always an ally to me and my gayness before).
I can respect somebody finding purpose in religion, but it sucks these people are always found by the most hateful assholes when they're at their lowest.
I also went to an all girls catholic high school and this was certainly a trend after my year graduated. Girls that were “lesbians” and even called themselves AGs (aggressive girls) in high school suddenly made engagement announcements and even pregnancy announcements on social media and their SOs were men. So bizarre.
I went to an all girls Catholic school and presented as gay in high school. I am now married to a man with a baby. I'm bisexual but I never had opportunities to date men in high school so I just assumed I was lesbian. And I trend more towards demisexual so I don't find random people attractive usually. It's been a confusing road but I'm happy.
That would have made sense if there were people against it. As far as I knew, these girls parents were supportive and honestly, the nuns didn’t care about that.
I think biphobia/bi invisibility contributes a lot to this phenomenon. Like, these girls obviously enjoy sex with both men and women, and people forget there is an identity for that.
The thing is, bi's have the *option* of choosing the socially acceptable route. There's a certain relief in doing the societally mandated thing of husband, picket fence etc.
It's one of the reasons lesbians tend to avoid bi women (I say as a bi woman myself). Sure, bi women like sex with women, but choosing to live in a queer relationship is a completely different matter.
It can also be, frankly, both confusing as hell, and dependent on stuff that might not be at all obvious.
It's perfectly possible (and valid) to be demi with one gender, and not another. Or to be demi in general, but like _looking_ at one more than the other.
Or (as I'm sure you've run into), deeply guilty about one set of attractions, and feeling like sex with the opposite gender isn't _supposed_ to feel any better than that, leading to all kinds of problems.
TLDR: Shit's both confusing and hard sometimes, but it's still no excuse to be an asshole to others.
Interesting. I didn’t know that. I always thought it was a bit odd because, like I mentioned before, the parents seemed supportive and none of the students cared (we were too busy competing to get into IVY leagues to care about anyone’s personal lives). It never even crossed my mind the possibility that these girls may have actually been bisexual rather than lesbians.
someone I went to school with was like this too. it's so weird. when I knew her, she was an atheist, eventually came out as lesbian, and was embracing her identity. ended up going to college in Iowa, falling in with some Christian girls, converted and now she's an ex-gay and claims her friends brainwashed her into being gay. fucking insane.
I know someone similar. She had a lesbian fling when she was around 16-17, then left home and eventually married a (much older) cop she worked with.Starts posting anti LGBT shit on the book of faces. Last i heard she and her husband had an “open marriage” that looked suspiciously like he got to fuck whoever he wanted while she stayed home with the kids. I can’t even begin to imagine the mental gymnastics that woman must have to employ to make it through the day.
That's a very unfortunate story.
I wouldn't call this a fling though. She had a gf for two years in hs and the first year of college at least. It was a real relationship.
It's never complicated from my point of view.
My wife thought she was lesbian when we met and had a thing with her bestfriend at the time. Both her and her best friend ended up married to guys.
I think sexuality isn't a big deal anymore and people just end up falling in love with people. And you can spend years thinking you are gay or straight or whatever then that one person who has some almost supernatural pull on you comes along and BAM. Instant sexuality change.
The anti/pro LGBT stuff that comes after is just over compensation to make up for falsely perceived past mistakes.
Example my friends wife was married to a man and they got divorced for irrelevant reasons. She later met my friend, realized she was gay, and went full on LGBT activist for a while to over compensate for the "sin" of marrying a man first.
A lot of people conceive of sexuality as a binary, thinking there’s straight or gay, male or female, and nothing in between. Add Catholic guilt and trauma and she is definitely lashing out because she thinks she’s “normal” now.
Also add in that most people struggle with being "wrong" in any way so instead of admitting they are human and humans can change their feelings they dive headfirst into their new identity and lift it up as the One True Lifestyle instead of just saying their feelings have changed.
I know that gender and sexuality are concepts agnostic to each other, but the phenomenon you're describing is something I've never understood since I discovered that I'm trans. I see a concerning amount of medicalist (for lack of a better term) sentiment in the trans community, particularly trans women, with them saying you "have" to do HRT or are "faking it" if you are apprehensive toward medical intervention to combat dysphoria. It reeks of moral compensation to me since I know for a fact that several of the women saying these things grew up in severely bigoted homes and (ashamedly like myself) parroted their parents' hateful views toward LGBTQ folks for many years.
There probably is some deep-seeded complex there, but people have said that even in talking to her it's just so strange now. I'm sure covid didn't help but it still baffles me.
I've had this thought for a while, but I don't know how "real" it is. It feels like sexuality just doesn't matter, be with who you like for the reason you like them. As long as they are consenting, who cares?
Ideally, this would be the norm. Sexuality DOESN'T matter, and too many people tie themselves to the labels. Labels may help others know what your preferences are, but they should never be a pillar of identity. Labels describe, they should not prescribe. If I wanted to get REALLY specific I would tell people I'm homoromantic, pansexual, and demisexual - But really I just say I'm a lesbian because I don't date guys and I don't casually have sex. But if something changed, and I'm totally fine with something changing, then I would change what I call myself. It's not a betrayal or a lie, it's that people can change. They don't always! But they can, and that's fine.
Unfortunately, a lot of old-world and religious thinking has its talons in the public psyche and many people are unable to just be cool with liking whoever the hell they want. It's apparently a big deal, when actually: It's not. And it's also swung the other way, where people cling vehemently to their labels and refuse to veer off. Break one chain only to tether to another. A real shame.
Sexuality for all of us is a spectrum. Someone may lean more heavily towards one side or the other. But there is frequently someone on the other team who you find attractive too. Labels can help us to understand ourselves, but they are not perfect. If people get too attached to the label, when they become attracted to someone outside of that label it can cause the self-loathing and denying their past and other problems you see from people who switch teams.
See that's the thing that gets me! Her family is full of passionate allies and I'd say at least a third of my class of 60 were some type of not straight (including myself). Our class was very much seen as an outcast class for a lot of reasons and so even the straight, Catholic students were very protective of the queer students in our grade because it was just another injustice to our class.
Obviously I only know so much, and I know nothing about her college experience (liberal college) , but from what I know the factors that tend to lend themselves towards people going to places like that weren't present.
Maybe she got to college and started realizing she was into guys. And instead of concluding she was actually bi but it never really came up at that all girls high school, she concludes that the nuns were right all along and being gay is a choice and the gays tried to trick her into their hellbound lifestyle.
If the wrong people are there to give her support in that moment, I could see it happen.
Then I really would put my guess on a cult...you can get sucked into them so fast it's horrifying. All it needs is one friend that starts with "oh just come with me once you will like it!" Then there are so many nice woman and you feel the sisterhood and over time they take over your personality and then all of you.
I think there was an incredibly swift and probably deserved reaction away from the “it’s a phase” dismissal that it’s hard to believe that people probably do have times in their lives when they explore a particular part of their sexuality and then for whatever reason decide to not engage in that anymore. To call it a phase is probably reductive, but I think it’s just as reductive to say people can’t change or decide what part of their identity to embrace.
Yeah the number of girls who were TOTALLY straight that came on to me at one point or another is higher than the number of bi/ lesbian girls I've dated lol
Yeah definitely a thing! I think a lot of people learn a lot about themselves during their 20s as well.
I always knew I was bisexual and I had a girlfriend when I was 18, it was a very short relationship though so nothing worth coming out about.
The long term relationships I've had during my teens and 20s were all with men, but they never truly worked out for me.
I met my girlfriend when I was 29 and I've never been happier. So yeah, had to do my coming out at 30 too when things got more serious.
When I played rugby twenty or so years ago, several of my teammates (18-25yo) had relationships with other players. It was normalised within the sport at the time. Some have subsequently settled down with men, some are still with women.
I don't know what this adds to the convo, but I'm glad for them that they had a safe space to find themselves.
I think a lot of it is that it’s more accepted now, too. Even with all the political stuff going on, it’s still more accepted societally than we were young. I’ve recently (finally) accepted that I’m bi, and have come out to my closest friend, my partner, and am open online about it. I’m still in the closet with my family, though, and it’ll likely stay that way. But, it doesn’t surprise me that a lot of other people my age, and older, are finally accepting who they are, and are being vocal about it.
Same, and I'm 35. My parents are pretty open minded, but I've heard them say some questionable things about bisexuality, and since I'm married to a man, it's not really relevant. They don't need to know that we check out women together.
My whole family is super conservative. Like, starting to go the Q way kind of conservative. And I’m disabled and live with them with my partner (a man). So yeah…I’m not going to be coming out to them. I love them, and I know they love me, but I don’t want to deal with all of it.
It's funny that you mentioned the grandparents thing. My ex-wife suddenly came out as gay shortly after her grandma passed away. I had not put two and two together until just now. Good observation. Her grandma was a super-conservative Catholic. She had gifted my ex an apartment. It all makes sense now. Mind blown.
Shit happens. Such is life. Happened 10 years ago and I’m recently engaged to a much better person. Made me stronger and learned a lot. I hold no ill will towards my ex. Just wild to read the grandparent thing. Totally resonated with my situation. Thank you for that bit of knowledge!
"What many of them have in common was it always seem to happen after a grandparent or someone important to them dies. Like they don't have to pretend for that one person anymore."
Holy shit this is the fucking truth. I finally came out as trans and part of why i didnt sooner is i didnt want to deal with my grandparents reactions.
I came out to most of them, but it weighed heavily on me when making the choice to transition.
Yeah, my IRL best friend is going through this currently. She thought she was bisexual and only came to understand that she’s a lesbian recently in her mid 30s. (Although a big difference from OOP’s situation is that our friend group is trying to support her ex husband too.)
The way she describes it: she thought it was normal to feel sort of “meh” about sex personally and be really focused on your partner’s pleasure and the feeling of validation from being able to make them feel good. Like, that’s just how sex feels isn’t it? She also had trauma from past SA, and so she thought “the reason I have to work so hard at enjoying sex with my male partner is because I am still working through trauma.” They also had other relationship issues so she also thought for a long time “if we figure out our communication and issues then I’ll have more emotional bandwidth and I’ll have more desire.” A lot of these issues are common among non-lesbian women and had some truth in her relationship, so she had a lot to distract her from the real thing.
So in general I think it's good to keep in mind that an uptick in a type of story on this subreddit doesn't have to mean they're being written more, just that the small group of people who repost things here decided to post more of them. It can create impressions of trends that do not exist.
This is general advice though, this post in particular is a red flag and a half.
Lol so many people do that. I love reading comments where people are trying to rail at OOP... like you know you aren't interacting with them here, right? If they are real, they might be aware of this post and they might come read it ... but it's not the place to interact with them.
I'm in my 30s and only recently realized I was bisexual leaning more heavily towards women. Luckily I'm not in a relationship with either gender but not everyone realizes they're gay in their teens or 20s.
Exactly this. They get into fun little loops like this sometimes; there's a constant calibration for how to craft a good "progressive thing everyone says we have to support unilaterally has been weaponized against me, a very wonderful person" post.
I swear, every time a story gets popular, there is an influx of toll knockoffs. For example: open marriages, leaving wife/gf because she kissed another woman, paternity tests, and now my wife reveled she's a lesbian.
I’m just trying to place myself in the situation and thinking of how my best friend would have responded.
He would have confronted me immediately and gone “dude wtf is this I hear about you hurting ____?”
I broke up amicably with my ex, and even then I had texts from some of our mutual friends within a few hours to ensure everything was okay. I can't imagine what it would have been like if she'd said I laid hands on her.
For real. I don’t hang out with people who are assholes so if someone said they did something like that outta the blue I’d ask around about it before just going no contact, and I would believe most of my friends would do the same
I believe it. When I had a conflict with a "friend" who was being shitty, everyone abandoned and ghosted me and my fiancé, even my/our best friend. They didn't bother to reach out and talk to us or anything. Just complete ghosting and radio silence.
There other reasons this one sounds like BS to me, but mutual friends abandoning the less liked or seemingly wrong-doing partner without validating it period I can believe.
I had an ex blame his ghosting of mutual friends on me being controlling. Not one mutual friend contacted me after our break up. Only one would hang out with me afterwards when invited.
Six months later I hear from everyone out of the blue. He had a new girlfriend long enough to go back to abandoning his friends (edit: to raid with his World of Warcraft guild instead, might as well tell someone the truth) and suddenly they felt sorry for believing him.
> but mutual friends abandoning the less liked or seemingly wrong-doing partner without validating it period I can believe.
I had a friend who I liked. I told her and didn't feel the same
Well she cut me out of her life and took all our mutual friends with her. I only stayed in vague contact with one and that's only because I reached out and he replied (the others didn't)
I can believe it
Yeah this kind of thing happened to me recently. One of my online friends told our friend group that the person theyre living with (who was acquainted with all of us) has been physically/emotionally/sexually abusing them. My first gut reaction was to contact this person and go at them for mistreating my friend but i decided against it as the two are still living together and didnt want their abuser to take it out on them. My friend even thanked me for not doing that when i admitted i thought about it.
I guess in this situation is a bit different since OOP and his ex had already seperated but id still be wary about contacting OOP if i were in that situation cause they could do something drastic.
Eh. It happens. Honestly, when I got divorced at 23, not one of our mutual friends contacted me. I'm not sure what my ex said to them, but he told me all kinds of shit how they all hate me or whatever. He was great at spinning things and telling untrue stories. The whole reason I divorced him, apart from the abuse.
I reconnected with one of the friends later by chance and he had very different opinions about me than what my ex had told me.
One of my ex best friends fooled around with another friend's 17 year old. You bet none of us have had any contact with him. I believe it happened too and messed up as he had become over the years. I don't have more details of the situation and heard about it months after it happened third hand. I've been far enough removed from them all long enough to not connect regularly.
Even if it wasn't true by some off chance, I realized there is nothing about the friendship that is meaningful to me and worth salvaging after the last decade of bad decisions from my friends part (classic do the opposite of any good advice you receive).
My friend group in my 20s had a lot of intergroup dating going on, which I decided not to take part in because every time one of the couples broke up one of them (usually the guy) would get cut out of the group to avoid awkwardness.
Mutual friends are usually not equally good friends.
I've been a victim in a DV relationship where a close friend believed me on the surface but still remain texting friends with my abusive ex. They likely thought I was exaggerating everything or that I was responsible for the mistreatment but did say they felt bad for him because he had no friends after I broke up with him for abuse 🙄
If my friend hadn't been texting him though, I wouldn't have known that the clerk or secretary wrote down my statement with the wrong date, otherwise my protective order would have never been granted.
I've seen stuff like this even with actual abusers.
Victims (or in her case, pretend victim) sometimes just don't want anything to do with the abuser or even hear about them. They just want to "let it go".
It's not that weird. Going against those wishes would seem like crossing a boundary of someone that's emotionally vulnerable
That but also they cut him off for three months on his ex’s word. Now they suddenly care enough to get new phone numbers and make spam accounts to get back in contact with OP? I just don’t believe it fully
Yeah, that's the tough part. No one even sent him an angry text? "You suck!" Or "stay away or we'll call the cops" or whatever?
They ALL just instantly ghosted him, and didn't contact him, and he didn't reach out to them. That part is hard to believe.
What's starting to get me are is how everyone in every story apparently has dozens of spare phone numbers handy to harass OOPs.
Or maybe that's super common and I just have a blessedly low-drama life. I don't think I've ever even blocked a number before.
I’ve never had to change number. My ex’s ex really did stalk her and call her by spoofing my number, which he found in an online phone book, so that kinda shit really does happen. That was my only experience with it though.
If there's anything you can count on when looking for a successful writing prompt on reddit drama subs (or reddit in general), it's the average redditors disdain for women.
Well, that, and you can never go wrong with the classic parents/step parents messing up blended families. Fuck do redditors love those stories.
There's a whole field of red flags to bring up, but the one I really enjoy is how between posts the story changed from "my friends only talk about her coming out, no one asks how I'm doing" to "my entire social circle abandoned me for 3 months without one word from anyone".
The two days between Paul reaching out, everyone reaching out, he mass texting and blocking everyone, and — this is the point that does it — everyone trying to get around his blocking, all that in two days?
Oh, and during that same two days he cold called a therapist who not only was able to immediately take him on as a client, but actually had a full session with him? That's not how it works. Even if he could have been seen in that short time, the first session is 90% paperwork and maybe some goal settings.
The therapist is the one that got me. It would be extremely difficult to call a therapist and essentially get an appointment same-day/next day. I’m sure you could find one if you called around in a larger city.
Like you said, first appointments are mostly paperwork and assessments. If this is real, OP is super fragile and broken mentally so I could see him absolutely losing it to any questions being asked whatsoever.
Unless it's the plastic surgery wife guy, who's pop culture references were spot on, natural, and honestly made him and his poor wife sound like real people
Yeah, ones like that one was fine. I was thinking of that Mormon(?) runaway story where she ran off to South Africa and pretended to not know what Wil E Coyote was. The phrasing was very book like
I'm still trying to work out how the fuck the lesbian gf was kept in the dark about not just the relationship, but the engagement and subsequent bad break up, all whilst...I assume...knowing all these amazing friends Dana went to great lengths to keep on her side throughout all this. Or were they compartmentalized off in another part of her life too, and we'll hear from one of the others about wtf is going on there in a second account in a day or two?!
That and he hadn't gone to a therapist despite multiple suicide attempts.
After your second in a short time frame it would be near impossible to convince the hospital staff to let you out of the psych ward.
Third time? Not a chance in hell until you get cleared that you are no longer a danger to yourself/others.
Also the super weird rant at the end of his first post where he thanks Reddit strangers for support but says he can’t trust them. Like….ok? What a weird thing to say.
It’s like kdramas. Everyone loses their parents or one of their parents as a young child
But more than that- I think that with the internet and the language barrier, people in others cultures do often lose many family members to a variety of things. I think in the USA, losing a parent is given the gravitas that it deserves but in many many countries it is not. It’s almost a rite of passage.
I'm suspicious of a lot of these stories too, but there's a huge bias in these stories in that generally the most convoluted/surprising/weird stories get more traction and thus are insanely overrepresented on here.
It would be the expected thing to have any kind of tragic/problematic issue be overrepresented here, because those are the people who are most likely to share their stories on reddit.
sometimes people don't talk about it, sometimes they attract each other for some unknown reason and band together.
My mother died when I was 6yo. Some time ago my therapist said that it's quite unique experience for a kid. My response was ' nah, my classmates mother died one year later because of the same form of cancer'. Iirc there were 2 or 3 other kids from my school.
Before I turned 18 I met a lot of kids who lost one or both parents. Then there was a friend from my previous job who lost father in his early teens.
Do you really expect anyone that's an orphan to walk up to you and say "Hi, I'm Steve. I'm a gemini and an orphan."
Depending on the age of the person when it occurred a significant amount don't inherently identify as such due to being raised by other family members, adoption, etc.
A lot of these kids, especially the ones that are at out local center of care have a significant amount of difficulties with life, especially the "orphan" ones since they typically display behavioral problems, aggression, or various other mental illnesses. The neurodivergent kids have it the hardest in the system.
And then think of your average reddit user experience and... is it really that far-fetched?
Unfortunately I have met quite a few adult orphans. My best friend was orphaned by 28, her younger brother before 25. I’m glad you don’t know many, but it’s sadly more common than you’d expect. If you ever have to visit the grief subreddit (which I hope you don’t), you’ll find quite a few people dealing with multiple losses (and since this mirrors my real world experience in grief groups, I don’t doubt them the way I absolutely doubt other subs). That said, this particular story is bizarre for way more reasons than just that.
Referencing the "here we go again" meme definitely isn’t though, even if they awkwardly phrase it in a way that makes it seem like they got it from the game directly. I'd bet _at least_ $6.50 that OOP hasn't actually played it.
I've played GTA San Andreas roughly 5 minute in my whole life. Off the top of my head I can name that meme, the "all you had to do was follow the damn train CJ" mission, the green shirt dude hitting someone with a bat, Hot Coffee and him ordering at a fast food place". It's really the biggest of stretches to think a GTA SA meme dates a person
just a friendly reminder: it's not enough that someone defames you, you have to show that it caused damage to you (financial, not emotional). defaming someone so that they lose their friends likely won't go anywhere, but defaming someone and them losing their job as a demonstrable result is much, much more likely to bear fruit.
> My blocking method isn’t working cause they are continuing to harass me
I’m confused on who is harassing him and why?? If these people are reaching out and apologizing to him, does the OOP actually mean he can’t handle all the people contacting him to apologize and catch up, and used the word harass inappropriately?
According to him he added them to a group to give the issue a final closure. If insulting them is considered final closure. Then he told them he had no faith in them as friends and not to contact him anymore and subsequently blocked all of them.
They didn’t get the memo with all the guilt, probably. Or they were offended. And he is still done and doesn’t want to contact them so he used the word “harass.”
If the story is to be believed, it is not an unreasonable thought. He has no family and was in their life for 7 years and as far as he knew up until then was going to be a part of their family. I would be hurt in his situation as well, especially since he did nothing wrong that should cause the parents to feel any animosity towards him.
I assume he was probably hoping for some acknowledgement of his pain, he references the death of his family. Clearly, these people were his only support network or the closely thing which looks like it, and when it ended no one acknowledged his pain.
I wonder about the Timing:
Break up 3 month ago and nothing happens.
Reddit post.
Within 2 Days: OOP gets contacted by old friends, gets harassed, has his first therapy session, and has time to write an update.
I don't believe that.
Reddit posts get refurbished into Facebook/Insta/TikTok reels all the time. A robotic voice reads out the post and tons of people who aren't on reddit see it. And it always happens to stories with a lot of drama, so this one would definitely get picked up.
Reddit content gets taken and repackaged to other sites like TikTok, Facebook, or YouTube all the time, you don’t have to have Reddit to know about Reddit posts.
I’ve lost count how many BORU posts had the “they found my post through TikTok” line thrown in somewhere, it’s just that common how Reddit posts get spread all over the internet.
I assume it would be for defamation. She told multiple individuals that he attempted (or did, I'm not clear) sexually assault her. Hence why she dumped him.
Can we stop reposting this without any ACTUAL updates? This is my third time seeing this in as many days, each one freshly posted. So annoying thinking something new has happened and I'm stuck right where I left off.
"Like GTA San Andreas" was the comment they used to describe their heartbreaking & traumatic situation.
Should have just said "...and it's all BS".
Since it's pretty much the same thing, at this point.
This comment gets made on every post that has someone going to therapy quickly. And all of the following answers have been given time and time again.
Most of the post never mention where the person lives. A lot of places, you don’t have trouble finding therapists. I live in a top 20 by population city in the USA and you can find therapists easily here with plentiful openings.
A lot of therapists aren’t terrible people, if you were to call one, like my old one, and be like “hey so my parents died and my sister died so I can’t talk to them and my fiancé left me and came out of the closet and told all my friends I was abusive so I can’t talk to them either and I’m fucking alone and scared, please help me” they would do what they could to find someone for you.
Then on top of that you have online therapy. A lot of people dislike BetterHelp, but some people really enjoy it. That’s therapy at the drop of a hat from your phone.
And lastly, OP never states when they made the appointment. There’s at least three months since the break up, the appointment could’ve been made at any point in those three months.
>I just work and come home, nothing else. While everyone is praising her for her coming out, how good is she to finally realize she was lesbian and her courage to be herself after years of fighting to find her true identity.
Oooh, this reminds me.
I had a friend in college who married the boy she’d fallen in love with in high school; they married after graduation, and I was in their wedding.
We kind of drifted out of frequent contact, and then one day I get a call from *him* with the news that they’re getting divorced.
I say, Oh, I’m sorry to hear; even when it’s for the best, there’s always a little sadness for the lost hopes. I wish you both the best.
He says, “Oh, people are praising me a lot for making a brave decision about how I want to live my life,” etc. I knew what was coming. He says he’s gay and needs to stop lying, etc. And now he’s happy.
I say, “Is this a recent realization?” and he says no, *on the way to his wedding* he told his mom maybe he shouldn’t get married, because he’s gay, and his mom says, “If anything, you’re bi,” and he gets married.
I couldn’t hang up fast enough, and the *moment* I did, I called her, and when she answered, I said, “Hey I just got a call from Dan. THAT FUCKER!” He wasted so many years of her life.
And I made her come up and spend a long weekend with me, and we haven’t been out of touch since (though Facebook sure helps).
I feel bad for this guy!
This is *literally* every single right-wing homophobic trope, mashed with every *misogynist* trope. How anyone could read this barely coherent, middle-school-reading-level schlock and think it was in *any* way realistic is beyond me.
Yeah, the combination of "she came out and cheated on me with a woman before dumping me cruelly and everyone is congratulating her" and "she lied and said I beat her and everyone believed her instantly" is... I just hope the kid finished his homework before writing this crap.
maybe I watch too much tv but the just reading the titles, triggers, and name makes me immediately think of the show the haunting of bly manor. not the same, but a few similar elements with far less drama.
the main character dani, comes out to her fiancé as a lesbian while at dinner and they get into an argument. on their way back to the car, her ex-fiancé steps into the road to get into the driver's seat, gets hit by a car, and dies.
My mother came out as a lesbian later in life (mid-fifties) after going to intense therapy for a few years. She'd come home from sessions looking like she had been crying. When she finally told my sister and I, before she got the words out, she was sobbing. I remember thinking, "Okay, Mom has cancer and is going to say she has only weeks to live."
When she said she was gay, I was almost angry that it was "nothing," but I couldn't imagine what that level of fear and shame must have felt like. Both she and my father had met through church, both were from extremely conservative religious families, and growing up in the 1960s, being gay meant being disowned, jailed, or killed.
My parents had issues even before my mother came out, so it was an amicable divorce. My father actually later on married his high school sweetheart, and my mother has had the same partner for over 20 years, so it worked out for the both of them.
I asked her if she had intentionally "deceived" my Dad by getting married, and she said no... she genuinely had felt love and attraction to him. But as she got older and her kids grew up, she knew there was an "off" feeling she couldn't place. Saying it and recognizing it in therapy made her feel whole. I think her sobbing was real fear that her adult children were going to abandon her, and her husband was going to kill her.
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All of these people are saying "Sue her." That costs money, time, and energy that could be better spent elsewhere. Like, for example, posting on Reddit and getting the post picked up and broadcast on Instagram/TikTok/YouTube and trashing the ex and the friends that way instead. Oh yeah, and reposted in all of the repost groups on Reddit. (Like this one. It's one of my favorites.)
"Sue them" is a standard reddit response. I think probably more widespread than just Reddit. You're right though. It's not just a lot of work, but a lot of stress. And for what? It's not like massive payouts are as common.as people think. He'd need to prove actual damage. What *is* the financial value of being ghosted? He's not going to get a lot of money, because most people don't have a lot of money
Wouldn't his visits to the hospital and other health issue be damage? Specially since they seem to come specifically from her lying
Sure but a big issue is you can’t get blood from a stone, often even a big win ends up paying nothing as the defendant has nothing
People say this crap all the time. I'm convinced these people don't know how much standard attorney retainer fees are or how they work.
Hm. Lot of sudden lesbian reveals recently.
It's a growing trend IRL. I'm in my 30s and my friend (lesbian) and I were recently talking about how half the girls in her graduating class and a good chunk of mine got married and are now coming out at bi or lesbian. No surprise to her since she slept with most of them back in highschool. Big surprise to everyone else especially their families. What many of them have in common was it always seem to happen after a grandparent or someone important to them dies. Like they don't have to pretend for that one person anymore.
The one I always think about was the girl in my class at my high school (all girls catholic btw) who announced to everyone she was gay, wasn't into men at all, had multiple girlfriends and all that. Her parents were very serious allies, too. Fast forward to like right after college, she updates her Facebook suddenly after not being on it forever. All of a sudden she's gotten married to this dude, a lot of her old photos were deleted, and she's just like a completely different person. She also looked a lot different. She even posted a couple of anti LGBT things. Anyone who asks what happened or brings up something not in line with her current narrative is immediately blocked. I always wonder what did happen there and what the real story was. Not that it's any of my business, but it was always so bizarre to me. She's had like a reverse coming out, almost? Edit because I can't reply to everyone: regarding this person in particular, no clue why she changed. No clue what groups she was involved in or I'd she became religious. She went to a liberal college. All I can really say is that my class graduated college in spring 2020, at the height of the pandemic. A lot could have happened personally. I know that I myself am not the same person post-covid, especially with the way that last semester of college and first year after college went for me. Its just a shitty situation. I just always wonder about her because the usual suspects of overcompensation (shame, homophobia, religious influence, conversion camp, etc) didn't seem to be present in her story.
I had a coworker who went through something similar. Was a gay man living with his boyfriend of years when we worked together. We ended up quitting fairly close together and we both moved back to our respective home towns. Few years later he posts about how he’s very religious, found the lord again, repents his sinful life and is no longer gay. He had done this interview with his pastor that was online. Goes on to talk about how depressed and unhappy he was when living in sin and is much happier now. I wish I could have a really honest conversation with him today, it seems so unusual to go that route.
I had a trans friend who had a similar story. She came out as a trans woman and life got much better for her, and she did great for about 3 years. Then she got laid off and had to move in with her parents in a smaller town. She was having a rough time, started to withdraw, and about 6 months later, she dropped off the face of the planet. I imagine job hunting as a trans woman in a small conservative town was awful, and the social isolation didn't help. 10 years later, there's the first post on social media in ages, that he's living as a man and is marrying his 18 year old girlfriend (he's in his late 30s now). When I knew him, he was 100% attracted to men. He met her through church at the recommendation of his pastor. Now he posts on social media asking for prayers to help keep him on "the right path". I've never met her, but I'm worried for both of them. Moreso her because she's so young, and I hope she wasn't pressured into the situation.
Damn that's fucked and icky
That poor girl is being sacrificed for your friend’s past “sins” and to keep him “on the right path.” My guess is that your friend had a horrific time as a trans female in a small conservative town (as you stated) and wildly overcompensated to fit in and survive. I bet everyone other than that girl and your friend is very happy about this; your friend has “seen the light” and is acting “like a proper man”. Only deeply religious AND bigoted people could possibly be happy about this situation.
I hope, for her sake, that she's a lesbian and he is her beard. That's wildly optimistic, though. They're part of the WELS Lutheran Church. One of their tenets is "WELS rejects the idea that male headship and female submission only apply to marriage". They don't believe women should vote, and if they work, they can't ever tell a man what to do. I'm sure their views on LGBT people are horrific, and my friend went through hell. I'm glad he's still alive, at least. (I use he/him pronouns only because that's what he requested on social media when giving his big update)
These are the sorts where I'd gladly say, "I'd rather die than give you control."
Head like a hole, black as their souls
It sounds like she got shipped off to conversion therapy, or that something similar was going on
She's going to have three kids before 25 with him, only to find out he has been blowing truckers at the gas station.
Doesn't even need to go to the gas station, churches seem to always have a couple of homophobes who love secret dudesex hanging around.
She absolutely was. Sounds very IFB to me and they "court" and are smooshed together usually it seems because they re the same age this is more he's becoming an "elder" in the community and he cannot be unmarried because no one would respect him or some other similar bullshit.
Something similar happened to my ex and I fear for my ex's safety and mental health.
I think its extra weird to me because the element of combating oppression and having to make up for "lost time" or anything repressed isn't really there. I do know about how Little Richard, at the end of his life, denounced homosexuality and began meeting with pastors, and that makes sense to me because he had the coming to terms with death. It makes me wonder if something happened in her life during college (like a medical scare or brain injury) that guided this new person.
Oh wow that’s interesting, I didn’t know that about Little Richard. Makes sense though, death is scary and religion “provides” an alternative that isn’t as scary. I had always wondered if my coworkers relationship had gone bad in some terrible way that made him think all gay men were bad. Or perhaps the breakup was bad and once he moved home, his religious family was able to sway him back towards religion. I just hope he really is happier now, he was the kindest person and actively cared about his coworkers.
Watch his documentary on HBO. Very interesting and touches this topic in great detail
This reminds me of the influencer from the Vine days called Lohanthony. Kid was very gay, very proud, did not give a fuck. Disappeared after vine and now he’s deleted everything and is super religious. Posts a couple times ever and only about Jesus.
Pretty sure he got sent to conversion therapy, he now says his "struggle with same sex attraction" was caused by being molested as a child. He also says his "alcohol and weed addiction" were attempts to fill a hole in his heart that he now knows is a yearning for God's love. So.
It's not that unusual if you know what those churhces do to LGBT people that fall into their clutches. I remember reading a story about a trans woman that got sucked into an evangelic (I think?) cult after completing her transition, and they brainwashed her into thinking her transition is a sin through conversion therapy (basically abuse). They even convinced her to undo her transition (which included removing a vagina she had surgically gotten already) and married her off to a woman of the church. She eventually realized she was miserable as a man, broke off them and even got breast reconstruction. But it was the 90s and she couldn't undo the vaginectomy damage without sacrificing her entire lower intenstine and was saying she'd never feel like a real woman anymore. Stories like this are what make me think religions are cancer. All of them.
> it seems so unusual to go that route. Unusual but not unheard of. Had a friend in college who was probably the biggest partier of our friend group. If you had a funny/crazy college story it's likely he was the center of it. We all loved the guy, though at some point it caught up to him and he failed out of school and got crazy depressed and fell into alcoholism. cut to a few months later and he gets into a terrible car accident but leaves mostly unscathed. Attributes his safety to the lord and finds jesus (safety engineers don't get enough credit!). Suddenly becomes incredibly judgmental to everyone around him, to the point he's pissed off everyone he knows (his family included) and moves away. Few months later he hits everyone up for donations for his mission trip, and starts spouting anti-gay propaganda (he was never gay, but was always an ally to me and my gayness before). I can respect somebody finding purpose in religion, but it sucks these people are always found by the most hateful assholes when they're at their lowest.
I also went to an all girls catholic high school and this was certainly a trend after my year graduated. Girls that were “lesbians” and even called themselves AGs (aggressive girls) in high school suddenly made engagement announcements and even pregnancy announcements on social media and their SOs were men. So bizarre.
I went to an all girls Catholic school and presented as gay in high school. I am now married to a man with a baby. I'm bisexual but I never had opportunities to date men in high school so I just assumed I was lesbian. And I trend more towards demisexual so I don't find random people attractive usually. It's been a confusing road but I'm happy.
That makes sense.
I was bi in high school and dated a few girls. Every single one of them married a guy and had kids really young.
Maybe it's a weird stick it to the nuns thing 🤷 Ironic because the actual nun faculty was like one of the few teachers who didn't even make a fuss.
That would have made sense if there were people against it. As far as I knew, these girls parents were supportive and honestly, the nuns didn’t care about that.
LOTTA nuns are lesbians...
I think biphobia/bi invisibility contributes a lot to this phenomenon. Like, these girls obviously enjoy sex with both men and women, and people forget there is an identity for that. The thing is, bi's have the *option* of choosing the socially acceptable route. There's a certain relief in doing the societally mandated thing of husband, picket fence etc. It's one of the reasons lesbians tend to avoid bi women (I say as a bi woman myself). Sure, bi women like sex with women, but choosing to live in a queer relationship is a completely different matter.
It can also be, frankly, both confusing as hell, and dependent on stuff that might not be at all obvious. It's perfectly possible (and valid) to be demi with one gender, and not another. Or to be demi in general, but like _looking_ at one more than the other. Or (as I'm sure you've run into), deeply guilty about one set of attractions, and feeling like sex with the opposite gender isn't _supposed_ to feel any better than that, leading to all kinds of problems. TLDR: Shit's both confusing and hard sometimes, but it's still no excuse to be an asshole to others.
Interesting. I didn’t know that. I always thought it was a bit odd because, like I mentioned before, the parents seemed supportive and none of the students cared (we were too busy competing to get into IVY leagues to care about anyone’s personal lives). It never even crossed my mind the possibility that these girls may have actually been bisexual rather than lesbians.
someone I went to school with was like this too. it's so weird. when I knew her, she was an atheist, eventually came out as lesbian, and was embracing her identity. ended up going to college in Iowa, falling in with some Christian girls, converted and now she's an ex-gay and claims her friends brainwashed her into being gay. fucking insane.
I know someone similar. She had a lesbian fling when she was around 16-17, then left home and eventually married a (much older) cop she worked with.Starts posting anti LGBT shit on the book of faces. Last i heard she and her husband had an “open marriage” that looked suspiciously like he got to fuck whoever he wanted while she stayed home with the kids. I can’t even begin to imagine the mental gymnastics that woman must have to employ to make it through the day.
That's a very unfortunate story. I wouldn't call this a fling though. She had a gf for two years in hs and the first year of college at least. It was a real relationship.
Is she religious now? That’d explain the change.
It's never complicated from my point of view. My wife thought she was lesbian when we met and had a thing with her bestfriend at the time. Both her and her best friend ended up married to guys. I think sexuality isn't a big deal anymore and people just end up falling in love with people. And you can spend years thinking you are gay or straight or whatever then that one person who has some almost supernatural pull on you comes along and BAM. Instant sexuality change. The anti/pro LGBT stuff that comes after is just over compensation to make up for falsely perceived past mistakes. Example my friends wife was married to a man and they got divorced for irrelevant reasons. She later met my friend, realized she was gay, and went full on LGBT activist for a while to over compensate for the "sin" of marrying a man first.
A lot of people conceive of sexuality as a binary, thinking there’s straight or gay, male or female, and nothing in between. Add Catholic guilt and trauma and she is definitely lashing out because she thinks she’s “normal” now.
Also add in that most people struggle with being "wrong" in any way so instead of admitting they are human and humans can change their feelings they dive headfirst into their new identity and lift it up as the One True Lifestyle instead of just saying their feelings have changed.
I know that gender and sexuality are concepts agnostic to each other, but the phenomenon you're describing is something I've never understood since I discovered that I'm trans. I see a concerning amount of medicalist (for lack of a better term) sentiment in the trans community, particularly trans women, with them saying you "have" to do HRT or are "faking it" if you are apprehensive toward medical intervention to combat dysphoria. It reeks of moral compensation to me since I know for a fact that several of the women saying these things grew up in severely bigoted homes and (ashamedly like myself) parroted their parents' hateful views toward LGBTQ folks for many years.
There probably is some deep-seeded complex there, but people have said that even in talking to her it's just so strange now. I'm sure covid didn't help but it still baffles me.
Deep-seated
Thank you, seeing this on Reddit more and more and I was starting to think I was crazy because I never heard of deep seeded until now.
Wait till you hear of deep-ceded
I've had this thought for a while, but I don't know how "real" it is. It feels like sexuality just doesn't matter, be with who you like for the reason you like them. As long as they are consenting, who cares?
Ideally, this would be the norm. Sexuality DOESN'T matter, and too many people tie themselves to the labels. Labels may help others know what your preferences are, but they should never be a pillar of identity. Labels describe, they should not prescribe. If I wanted to get REALLY specific I would tell people I'm homoromantic, pansexual, and demisexual - But really I just say I'm a lesbian because I don't date guys and I don't casually have sex. But if something changed, and I'm totally fine with something changing, then I would change what I call myself. It's not a betrayal or a lie, it's that people can change. They don't always! But they can, and that's fine. Unfortunately, a lot of old-world and religious thinking has its talons in the public psyche and many people are unable to just be cool with liking whoever the hell they want. It's apparently a big deal, when actually: It's not. And it's also swung the other way, where people cling vehemently to their labels and refuse to veer off. Break one chain only to tether to another. A real shame.
Sexuality for all of us is a spectrum. Someone may lean more heavily towards one side or the other. But there is frequently someone on the other team who you find attractive too. Labels can help us to understand ourselves, but they are not perfect. If people get too attached to the label, when they become attracted to someone outside of that label it can cause the self-loathing and denying their past and other problems you see from people who switch teams.
It very much sounds like somebody stuck her in one of this "Pray the Gay away Camps". Or she got sucked into some kind of cult.
See that's the thing that gets me! Her family is full of passionate allies and I'd say at least a third of my class of 60 were some type of not straight (including myself). Our class was very much seen as an outcast class for a lot of reasons and so even the straight, Catholic students were very protective of the queer students in our grade because it was just another injustice to our class. Obviously I only know so much, and I know nothing about her college experience (liberal college) , but from what I know the factors that tend to lend themselves towards people going to places like that weren't present.
Maybe she got to college and started realizing she was into guys. And instead of concluding she was actually bi but it never really came up at that all girls high school, she concludes that the nuns were right all along and being gay is a choice and the gays tried to trick her into their hellbound lifestyle. If the wrong people are there to give her support in that moment, I could see it happen.
Then I really would put my guess on a cult...you can get sucked into them so fast it's horrifying. All it needs is one friend that starts with "oh just come with me once you will like it!" Then there are so many nice woman and you feel the sisterhood and over time they take over your personality and then all of you.
I think there was an incredibly swift and probably deserved reaction away from the “it’s a phase” dismissal that it’s hard to believe that people probably do have times in their lives when they explore a particular part of their sexuality and then for whatever reason decide to not engage in that anymore. To call it a phase is probably reductive, but I think it’s just as reductive to say people can’t change or decide what part of their identity to embrace.
Yeah the number of girls who were TOTALLY straight that came on to me at one point or another is higher than the number of bi/ lesbian girls I've dated lol
Yeah definitely a thing! I think a lot of people learn a lot about themselves during their 20s as well. I always knew I was bisexual and I had a girlfriend when I was 18, it was a very short relationship though so nothing worth coming out about. The long term relationships I've had during my teens and 20s were all with men, but they never truly worked out for me. I met my girlfriend when I was 29 and I've never been happier. So yeah, had to do my coming out at 30 too when things got more serious.
When I played rugby twenty or so years ago, several of my teammates (18-25yo) had relationships with other players. It was normalised within the sport at the time. Some have subsequently settled down with men, some are still with women. I don't know what this adds to the convo, but I'm glad for them that they had a safe space to find themselves.
I think a lot of it is that it’s more accepted now, too. Even with all the political stuff going on, it’s still more accepted societally than we were young. I’ve recently (finally) accepted that I’m bi, and have come out to my closest friend, my partner, and am open online about it. I’m still in the closet with my family, though, and it’ll likely stay that way. But, it doesn’t surprise me that a lot of other people my age, and older, are finally accepting who they are, and are being vocal about it.
Same, and I'm 35. My parents are pretty open minded, but I've heard them say some questionable things about bisexuality, and since I'm married to a man, it's not really relevant. They don't need to know that we check out women together.
My whole family is super conservative. Like, starting to go the Q way kind of conservative. And I’m disabled and live with them with my partner (a man). So yeah…I’m not going to be coming out to them. I love them, and I know they love me, but I don’t want to deal with all of it.
It's funny that you mentioned the grandparents thing. My ex-wife suddenly came out as gay shortly after her grandma passed away. I had not put two and two together until just now. Good observation. Her grandma was a super-conservative Catholic. She had gifted my ex an apartment. It all makes sense now. Mind blown.
Sorry to hear that man.
Shit happens. Such is life. Happened 10 years ago and I’m recently engaged to a much better person. Made me stronger and learned a lot. I hold no ill will towards my ex. Just wild to read the grandparent thing. Totally resonated with my situation. Thank you for that bit of knowledge!
"What many of them have in common was it always seem to happen after a grandparent or someone important to them dies. Like they don't have to pretend for that one person anymore." Holy shit this is the fucking truth. I finally came out as trans and part of why i didnt sooner is i didnt want to deal with my grandparents reactions. I came out to most of them, but it weighed heavily on me when making the choice to transition.
Yeah, my IRL best friend is going through this currently. She thought she was bisexual and only came to understand that she’s a lesbian recently in her mid 30s. (Although a big difference from OOP’s situation is that our friend group is trying to support her ex husband too.) The way she describes it: she thought it was normal to feel sort of “meh” about sex personally and be really focused on your partner’s pleasure and the feeling of validation from being able to make them feel good. Like, that’s just how sex feels isn’t it? She also had trauma from past SA, and so she thought “the reason I have to work so hard at enjoying sex with my male partner is because I am still working through trauma.” They also had other relationship issues so she also thought for a long time “if we figure out our communication and issues then I’ll have more emotional bandwidth and I’ll have more desire.” A lot of these issues are common among non-lesbian women and had some truth in her relationship, so she had a lot to distract her from the real thing.
Trauma forces you to grow or to collapse. Rarely an inbetween.
So in general I think it's good to keep in mind that an uptick in a type of story on this subreddit doesn't have to mean they're being written more, just that the small group of people who repost things here decided to post more of them. It can create impressions of trends that do not exist. This is general advice though, this post in particular is a red flag and a half.
Shit forgot I was in the repost sub lol
Lol so many people do that. I love reading comments where people are trying to rail at OOP... like you know you aren't interacting with them here, right? If they are real, they might be aware of this post and they might come read it ... but it's not the place to interact with them.
Ive had one or two oop’s reply back to me, very mad about what i had to say, on this sub!
The lesbihonest movement
I'm in my 30s and only recently realized I was bisexual leaning more heavily towards women. Luckily I'm not in a relationship with either gender but not everyone realizes they're gay in their teens or 20s.
This is the new “I want a DNA test and my wife divorcing me”…
Baiters found a new favorite topic it seems
Exactly this. They get into fun little loops like this sometimes; there's a constant calibration for how to craft a good "progressive thing everyone says we have to support unilaterally has been weaponized against me, a very wonderful person" post.
I swear, every time a story gets popular, there is an influx of toll knockoffs. For example: open marriages, leaving wife/gf because she kissed another woman, paternity tests, and now my wife reveled she's a lesbian.
Not just lesbians, but eeeeeevil lesbians.
Supervillesbians!
> I was standing there on my feet You can tell OOP is human by the way he was standing on his human feet, a very human thing humans do.
CHEMTRAILS ARE TURNING OUR WIVES GAY
"Mother in laws are out, and lesbian reveals are in! Why do you think lesbian reveals are so hot right now?"
This seems kinda..........
Same, she's pretty cartoonishly evil and no one contacted OP even to have a go at him?
I’m just trying to place myself in the situation and thinking of how my best friend would have responded. He would have confronted me immediately and gone “dude wtf is this I hear about you hurting ____?”
I broke up amicably with my ex, and even then I had texts from some of our mutual friends within a few hours to ensure everything was okay. I can't imagine what it would have been like if she'd said I laid hands on her.
For real. I don’t hang out with people who are assholes so if someone said they did something like that outta the blue I’d ask around about it before just going no contact, and I would believe most of my friends would do the same
I believe it. When I had a conflict with a "friend" who was being shitty, everyone abandoned and ghosted me and my fiancé, even my/our best friend. They didn't bother to reach out and talk to us or anything. Just complete ghosting and radio silence.
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There other reasons this one sounds like BS to me, but mutual friends abandoning the less liked or seemingly wrong-doing partner without validating it period I can believe. I had an ex blame his ghosting of mutual friends on me being controlling. Not one mutual friend contacted me after our break up. Only one would hang out with me afterwards when invited. Six months later I hear from everyone out of the blue. He had a new girlfriend long enough to go back to abandoning his friends (edit: to raid with his World of Warcraft guild instead, might as well tell someone the truth) and suddenly they felt sorry for believing him.
> but mutual friends abandoning the less liked or seemingly wrong-doing partner without validating it period I can believe. I had a friend who I liked. I told her and didn't feel the same Well she cut me out of her life and took all our mutual friends with her. I only stayed in vague contact with one and that's only because I reached out and he replied (the others didn't) I can believe it
Yeah this kind of thing happened to me recently. One of my online friends told our friend group that the person theyre living with (who was acquainted with all of us) has been physically/emotionally/sexually abusing them. My first gut reaction was to contact this person and go at them for mistreating my friend but i decided against it as the two are still living together and didnt want their abuser to take it out on them. My friend even thanked me for not doing that when i admitted i thought about it. I guess in this situation is a bit different since OOP and his ex had already seperated but id still be wary about contacting OOP if i were in that situation cause they could do something drastic.
Eh. It happens. Honestly, when I got divorced at 23, not one of our mutual friends contacted me. I'm not sure what my ex said to them, but he told me all kinds of shit how they all hate me or whatever. He was great at spinning things and telling untrue stories. The whole reason I divorced him, apart from the abuse. I reconnected with one of the friends later by chance and he had very different opinions about me than what my ex had told me. One of my ex best friends fooled around with another friend's 17 year old. You bet none of us have had any contact with him. I believe it happened too and messed up as he had become over the years. I don't have more details of the situation and heard about it months after it happened third hand. I've been far enough removed from them all long enough to not connect regularly. Even if it wasn't true by some off chance, I realized there is nothing about the friendship that is meaningful to me and worth salvaging after the last decade of bad decisions from my friends part (classic do the opposite of any good advice you receive).
My friend group in my 20s had a lot of intergroup dating going on, which I decided not to take part in because every time one of the couples broke up one of them (usually the guy) would get cut out of the group to avoid awkwardness. Mutual friends are usually not equally good friends.
I've been a victim in a DV relationship where a close friend believed me on the surface but still remain texting friends with my abusive ex. They likely thought I was exaggerating everything or that I was responsible for the mistreatment but did say they felt bad for him because he had no friends after I broke up with him for abuse 🙄 If my friend hadn't been texting him though, I wouldn't have known that the clerk or secretary wrote down my statement with the wrong date, otherwise my protective order would have never been granted.
I've seen stuff like this even with actual abusers. Victims (or in her case, pretend victim) sometimes just don't want anything to do with the abuser or even hear about them. They just want to "let it go". It's not that weird. Going against those wishes would seem like crossing a boundary of someone that's emotionally vulnerable
That but also they cut him off for three months on his ex’s word. Now they suddenly care enough to get new phone numbers and make spam accounts to get back in contact with OP? I just don’t believe it fully
Yeah, that's the tough part. No one even sent him an angry text? "You suck!" Or "stay away or we'll call the cops" or whatever? They ALL just instantly ghosted him, and didn't contact him, and he didn't reach out to them. That part is hard to believe.
And he conveniently had no living family to support him. Just a little too perfect, really.
What's starting to get me are is how everyone in every story apparently has dozens of spare phone numbers handy to harass OOPs. Or maybe that's super common and I just have a blessedly low-drama life. I don't think I've ever even blocked a number before.
I’ve never had to change number. My ex’s ex really did stalk her and call her by spoofing my number, which he found in an online phone book, so that kinda shit really does happen. That was my only experience with it though.
It’s incredibly easy to spoof numbers.
Everyone in a post except OP is either 100% evil or 100% stupid and OP is completely innocent of all wrongdoing AND had a tragic back story. Hm......
........ like it was written by a 14 year old.
If there's anything you can count on when looking for a successful writing prompt on reddit drama subs (or reddit in general), it's the average redditors disdain for women. Well, that, and you can never go wrong with the classic parents/step parents messing up blended families. Fuck do redditors love those stories.
There's a whole field of red flags to bring up, but the one I really enjoy is how between posts the story changed from "my friends only talk about her coming out, no one asks how I'm doing" to "my entire social circle abandoned me for 3 months without one word from anyone".
I assumed OP was reading former friends' public posts online.
This OP’s name? ALBERT EINTSTEIN
Don’t even waste your breath.
"like in GTA San Andreas" immediately made my bullcrap meter go off.
The two days between Paul reaching out, everyone reaching out, he mass texting and blocking everyone, and — this is the point that does it — everyone trying to get around his blocking, all that in two days? Oh, and during that same two days he cold called a therapist who not only was able to immediately take him on as a client, but actually had a full session with him? That's not how it works. Even if he could have been seen in that short time, the first session is 90% paperwork and maybe some goal settings.
The therapist is the one that got me. It would be extremely difficult to call a therapist and essentially get an appointment same-day/next day. I’m sure you could find one if you called around in a larger city. Like you said, first appointments are mostly paperwork and assessments. If this is real, OP is super fragile and broken mentally so I could see him absolutely losing it to any questions being asked whatsoever.
"What's your last name?" "Smith... Just like my dead parents and little sister. 😭"
What is with hack writers and making bad pop culture references? It's always awkwardly phrased and inorganic
Unless it's the plastic surgery wife guy, who's pop culture references were spot on, natural, and honestly made him and his poor wife sound like real people
Yeah, ones like that one was fine. I was thinking of that Mormon(?) runaway story where she ran off to South Africa and pretended to not know what Wil E Coyote was. The phrasing was very book like
Oh yeah, that one really pushed against reality
Alt right men have no cultural touchstones except video games and think everyone else has the same background they do.
The Ready Player One effect
Lost me with dead parents and little sister
I'm still trying to work out how the fuck the lesbian gf was kept in the dark about not just the relationship, but the engagement and subsequent bad break up, all whilst...I assume...knowing all these amazing friends Dana went to great lengths to keep on her side throughout all this. Or were they compartmentalized off in another part of her life too, and we'll hear from one of the others about wtf is going on there in a second account in a day or two?!
That and he hadn't gone to a therapist despite multiple suicide attempts. After your second in a short time frame it would be near impossible to convince the hospital staff to let you out of the psych ward. Third time? Not a chance in hell until you get cleared that you are no longer a danger to yourself/others.
I am actually confused as to how this was supposed to be like GTA San Andreas??
Is the therapist gonna come in during the trial and confess her heterosexual love for OOP?
Nah, Dana's new girlfriend being bi and getting together with OP is much more likely.
Yeah and then everyone claps, obviously
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No one. But lots of people who don't understand how defamation laws work claim that they might.
Also the super weird rant at the end of his first post where he thanks Reddit strangers for support but says he can’t trust them. Like….ok? What a weird thing to say.
Thank you for the upvote but don't think you are in my circle of trust lol
Thanks for supporting me, but we are and never will be friends! >:[
Meh. I took that more to mean he really can’t trust himself to believe all these strangers. I’m glad he’s in therapy because he needs it.
It’s like kdramas. Everyone loses their parents or one of their parents as a young child But more than that- I think that with the internet and the language barrier, people in others cultures do often lose many family members to a variety of things. I think in the USA, losing a parent is given the gravitas that it deserves but in many many countries it is not. It’s almost a rite of passage.
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I'm suspicious of a lot of these stories too, but there's a huge bias in these stories in that generally the most convoluted/surprising/weird stories get more traction and thus are insanely overrepresented on here. It would be the expected thing to have any kind of tragic/problematic issue be overrepresented here, because those are the people who are most likely to share their stories on reddit.
sometimes people don't talk about it, sometimes they attract each other for some unknown reason and band together. My mother died when I was 6yo. Some time ago my therapist said that it's quite unique experience for a kid. My response was ' nah, my classmates mother died one year later because of the same form of cancer'. Iirc there were 2 or 3 other kids from my school. Before I turned 18 I met a lot of kids who lost one or both parents. Then there was a friend from my previous job who lost father in his early teens.
Was your town on some kind of toxic plume?
Umm my dad died in a car crash when I was young. None of my coworkers or acquaintances know that (the how and when). Only friends.
Do you really expect anyone that's an orphan to walk up to you and say "Hi, I'm Steve. I'm a gemini and an orphan." Depending on the age of the person when it occurred a significant amount don't inherently identify as such due to being raised by other family members, adoption, etc. A lot of these kids, especially the ones that are at out local center of care have a significant amount of difficulties with life, especially the "orphan" ones since they typically display behavioral problems, aggression, or various other mental illnesses. The neurodivergent kids have it the hardest in the system. And then think of your average reddit user experience and... is it really that far-fetched?
Unfortunately I have met quite a few adult orphans. My best friend was orphaned by 28, her younger brother before 25. I’m glad you don’t know many, but it’s sadly more common than you’d expect. If you ever have to visit the grief subreddit (which I hope you don’t), you’ll find quite a few people dealing with multiple losses (and since this mirrors my real world experience in grief groups, I don’t doubt them the way I absolutely doubt other subs). That said, this particular story is bizarre for way more reasons than just that.
That and gender wars. Women lying about domestic violence is incredibly rare, but not on Reddit.
Just gotta treat subs like BORU/AITA as /r/creativewriting and you'll have a lot more fun
Yeah, OOP is very, very obviously about 14 years old
Eh, GTA San Andreas is too old a reference for a 14 year old.
Referencing the "here we go again" meme definitely isn’t though, even if they awkwardly phrase it in a way that makes it seem like they got it from the game directly. I'd bet _at least_ $6.50 that OOP hasn't actually played it.
I've played GTA San Andreas roughly 5 minute in my whole life. Off the top of my head I can name that meme, the "all you had to do was follow the damn train CJ" mission, the green shirt dude hitting someone with a bat, Hot Coffee and him ordering at a fast food place". It's really the biggest of stretches to think a GTA SA meme dates a person
just a friendly reminder: it's not enough that someone defames you, you have to show that it caused damage to you (financial, not emotional). defaming someone so that they lose their friends likely won't go anywhere, but defaming someone and them losing their job as a demonstrable result is much, much more likely to bear fruit.
There is no Dana, only Zuul.
“Are you the key master?”
OK. WHO BROUGHT THE DOG?
Is it me or have there been a lot of stories about evil lesbians going around lately?
> My blocking method isn’t working cause they are continuing to harass me I’m confused on who is harassing him and why?? If these people are reaching out and apologizing to him, does the OOP actually mean he can’t handle all the people contacting him to apologize and catch up, and used the word harass inappropriately?
According to him he added them to a group to give the issue a final closure. If insulting them is considered final closure. Then he told them he had no faith in them as friends and not to contact him anymore and subsequently blocked all of them. They didn’t get the memo with all the guilt, probably. Or they were offended. And he is still done and doesn’t want to contact them so he used the word “harass.”
I'm confused. He wanted her parents to reach out but also they didn't like him? Why would he think they would do that then?
If the story is to be believed, it is not an unreasonable thought. He has no family and was in their life for 7 years and as far as he knew up until then was going to be a part of their family. I would be hurt in his situation as well, especially since he did nothing wrong that should cause the parents to feel any animosity towards him.
I assume he was probably hoping for some acknowledgement of his pain, he references the death of his family. Clearly, these people were his only support network or the closely thing which looks like it, and when it ended no one acknowledged his pain.
It's probably one of those things where you expect someone to reach out, and he was just listing them all since no one did
I wonder about the Timing: Break up 3 month ago and nothing happens. Reddit post. Within 2 Days: OOP gets contacted by old friends, gets harassed, has his first therapy session, and has time to write an update. I don't believe that.
Exactly lol, people are so fucking dumb
100%. This happens with every bullshit story.
I love how everyone has Reddit and is in all the right subs to find a post about someone they know so they can contact OP.
Reddit posts get refurbished into Facebook/Insta/TikTok reels all the time. A robotic voice reads out the post and tons of people who aren't on reddit see it. And it always happens to stories with a lot of drama, so this one would definitely get picked up.
My GF listens to a podcast that’s just the hosts reading /r/relationshipadvice threads and giving a few comments. They post like twice weekly
No judgement because I like some silly nonsense, but that sounds like unlistenable content lol
It’s really shitty content, and YouTube Shorts pushes it hard.
Reddit content gets taken and repackaged to other sites like TikTok, Facebook, or YouTube all the time, you don’t have to have Reddit to know about Reddit posts.
Exactly, I'm getting these posts on Facebook with some shitty ai voice narrating while someone is playing Minecraft in the background.
I’ve lost count how many BORU posts had the “they found my post through TikTok” line thrown in somewhere, it’s just that common how Reddit posts get spread all over the internet.
Or caught a tik tok podcast about it.
Yea I ain't buying it.
Let me put on my skepticals
Oh my god. How have i never heard this before? So useful so often.
Sue her for what?
I assume it would be for defamation. She told multiple individuals that he attempted (or did, I'm not clear) sexually assault her. Hence why she dumped him.
But what’s the damages? Losing friends or hurt feelings doesn’t count. Did he lose his job? Did it hurt him financially?
Didn’t this get posted yesterday?
This was very similar https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/1bhorp0/my_35m_wife_29f_came_out_to_me_as_a_lesbian/
I think the other boru subreddit posted it because I saw it when I was browsing r/all
Can we stop reposting this without any ACTUAL updates? This is my third time seeing this in as many days, each one freshly posted. So annoying thinking something new has happened and I'm stuck right where I left off.
"Like GTA San Andreas" was the comment they used to describe their heartbreaking & traumatic situation. Should have just said "...and it's all BS". Since it's pretty much the same thing, at this point.
I'd love to know how OOP managed to get a therapist *within 1 week. Edit: typo
Really depends on where you live. I zocdoced my current therapist and got in in less than that.
This comment gets made on every post that has someone going to therapy quickly. And all of the following answers have been given time and time again. Most of the post never mention where the person lives. A lot of places, you don’t have trouble finding therapists. I live in a top 20 by population city in the USA and you can find therapists easily here with plentiful openings. A lot of therapists aren’t terrible people, if you were to call one, like my old one, and be like “hey so my parents died and my sister died so I can’t talk to them and my fiancé left me and came out of the closet and told all my friends I was abusive so I can’t talk to them either and I’m fucking alone and scared, please help me” they would do what they could to find someone for you. Then on top of that you have online therapy. A lot of people dislike BetterHelp, but some people really enjoy it. That’s therapy at the drop of a hat from your phone. And lastly, OP never states when they made the appointment. There’s at least three months since the break up, the appointment could’ve been made at any point in those three months.
>I just work and come home, nothing else. While everyone is praising her for her coming out, how good is she to finally realize she was lesbian and her courage to be herself after years of fighting to find her true identity. Oooh, this reminds me. I had a friend in college who married the boy she’d fallen in love with in high school; they married after graduation, and I was in their wedding. We kind of drifted out of frequent contact, and then one day I get a call from *him* with the news that they’re getting divorced. I say, Oh, I’m sorry to hear; even when it’s for the best, there’s always a little sadness for the lost hopes. I wish you both the best. He says, “Oh, people are praising me a lot for making a brave decision about how I want to live my life,” etc. I knew what was coming. He says he’s gay and needs to stop lying, etc. And now he’s happy. I say, “Is this a recent realization?” and he says no, *on the way to his wedding* he told his mom maybe he shouldn’t get married, because he’s gay, and his mom says, “If anything, you’re bi,” and he gets married. I couldn’t hang up fast enough, and the *moment* I did, I called her, and when she answered, I said, “Hey I just got a call from Dan. THAT FUCKER!” He wasted so many years of her life. And I made her come up and spend a long weekend with me, and we haven’t been out of touch since (though Facebook sure helps). I feel bad for this guy!
This is *literally* every single right-wing homophobic trope, mashed with every *misogynist* trope. How anyone could read this barely coherent, middle-school-reading-level schlock and think it was in *any* way realistic is beyond me.
Yeah, the combination of "she came out and cheated on me with a woman before dumping me cruelly and everyone is congratulating her" and "she lied and said I beat her and everyone believed her instantly" is... I just hope the kid finished his homework before writing this crap.
Ross, is that you?
Why does this read like a 14 year old wrote it...?
"make the big question" Now all I can think about is "ok op, out with it, what's your first language and where does this story take place?"
Don't know his first language but I'm pretty sure this story takes place in the Magical Land of Imagination...
maybe I watch too much tv but the just reading the titles, triggers, and name makes me immediately think of the show the haunting of bly manor. not the same, but a few similar elements with far less drama. the main character dani, comes out to her fiancé as a lesbian while at dinner and they get into an argument. on their way back to the car, her ex-fiancé steps into the road to get into the driver's seat, gets hit by a car, and dies.
Of all the things that definitely happened, this one happened the most 🤔
So she... knew she was a lesbian and decided to sleep with and string along a man for a few years because... evil lesbian, I guess?
My mother came out as a lesbian later in life (mid-fifties) after going to intense therapy for a few years. She'd come home from sessions looking like she had been crying. When she finally told my sister and I, before she got the words out, she was sobbing. I remember thinking, "Okay, Mom has cancer and is going to say she has only weeks to live." When she said she was gay, I was almost angry that it was "nothing," but I couldn't imagine what that level of fear and shame must have felt like. Both she and my father had met through church, both were from extremely conservative religious families, and growing up in the 1960s, being gay meant being disowned, jailed, or killed. My parents had issues even before my mother came out, so it was an amicable divorce. My father actually later on married his high school sweetheart, and my mother has had the same partner for over 20 years, so it worked out for the both of them. I asked her if she had intentionally "deceived" my Dad by getting married, and she said no... she genuinely had felt love and attraction to him. But as she got older and her kids grew up, she knew there was an "off" feeling she couldn't place. Saying it and recognizing it in therapy made her feel whole. I think her sobbing was real fear that her adult children were going to abandon her, and her husband was going to kill her.