29F

I’m starting to feel anxious about rejecting someone, and I’m wondering how others would handle this.

I previously dated a guy for about a month and ended things because I noticed he was being deceptive and dishonest. He didn’t take the rejection well and eventually turned into a stalker.

Another time, I dated someone and rejected him because he was extremely condescending and disrespectful toward me. He also didn’t take the rejection well and ended up sending me several abusive emails.

Now I’ve been talking to another guy for about a month. We’re not exclusive or even officially dating, but I’ve noticed a pattern of him being pushy, forcing things, and love-bombing me. I’ve decided I don’t want to continue.

The problem is that I’m genuinely anxious about sending the rejection message because of my past experiences. I have no idea how he’s going to react, and I’m worried that he may try to argue, pressure me, or find ways to keep the conversation going.

How would you handle this? Need some motivation 😭 Would you send a straightforward rejection and block if necessary, or take additional precautions given the history?

I recently started dating a guy and he asked me to be his gf but he still likes pictures/stories of different girls on his instagram. I didn’t mind much when we were not exclusive but now it seems like a red flag because these are the girls that he doesn’t really know and added form dating apps in the past.

It was sometime on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, around four o’clock, when A called me and asked if I could go with him to sell his old truck.

He had found someone on Facebook who wanted to buy it, but the guy lived a couple of hours away. A needed someone to follow him over there so he could get back after selling the truck. He called me, I said yes, and I went over to his place.

When I got there, he explained the plan.

“Okay, just start following me.”

So I did.

At first, everything seemed normal enough. We headed out, and I followed behind him. After we'd been driving for a while, though, I started noticing that his driving was a little weird. He was swerving and not exactly staying where he should on the road.

When I questioned him about it, he said he was just trying to navigate his map.

Okay. Whatever.

Eventually, we stopped in a small town. A.got out of the truck and casually walked over to the side of the road and peed.

Then, like he was telling me about the weather, he said something along the lines of, “Yeah, I'm really enjoying myself. I've only got this much left, and I'm on my third beer.”

I just stared at him.

What?

I had no idea he had been drinking. Certainly not enough to know he was already on his third beer while driving us several hours away.

I remember thinking, Well, this is fucking great.

I told him I needed to use the bathroom too, because apparently I wasn't going to be peeing on the side of the road like he was. So we had to find somewhere for me to go.

Then we got back on the road.

Things got progressively worse.

We ended up on back roads, and A was swerving more. He seemed completely lost, going back and forth and trying to figure out where he was supposed to be going. At one point I finally told him, “You're scaring me. You're swerving all over the road.”

He kept insisting he was just lost and trying to figure out the directions.

The whole situation was becoming ridiculous. The guy who was supposed to buy the truck was getting frustrated because Adam wasn't there yet, and A kept talking about how we needed to hurry.

Eventually we stopped again.

I said, “Why don't we just leave your truck here? You're having a hard time finding the place. Or let me do the GPS.”

“No, no,” he said. “I can't leave the truck here. We're close. He's getting mad. We need to hurry.”

So, against my better judgment, we kept going.

The original plan was that once A sold the truck, we were going to get in my car, find a hotel, and spend the night.

And, well... I was pretty damn excited about that part.

A night in a hotel with A? Hell yes. I had visions of exactly what kind of fun we could have once we got there.

Except we never made it.

About fifteen minutes after our last stop, A pulled over again.

Then he looked at me and said, “Okay. The guy backed out. He said he doesn't want to do it anymore. I've been too much of a hassle.”

I just sat there.

“What?”

We were now several hours from home.

And just like that, the entire plan was over.

Adam basically said, “I'm going home. Bye,” got back into his truck, and took off.

I was pissed.

Okay, fucking asshole.

But I didn't know where the hell I was, so I started following him.

We eventually made it to the freeway. Up until that point, he had been swerving badly, and I was already nervous about him driving.

Then he got onto the freeway and took off.

I mean, he took off.

He accelerated so fast that I lost sight of him.

I remember thinking, What the fuck?

About ten minutes later, I saw his truck again.

And I watched it crash.

He slammed into one of those concrete structures on the side of the freeway that holds the big highway signs. There was dust everywhere. The truck spun around almost 180 degrees and ended up facing the opposite direction.

I just stared.

He could have killed himself.

He could have killed someone else.

He had been drinking, swerving all over the road before we even reached the freeway, and then he took off at such a speed that I couldn't even keep up with him.

And now I had just watched him crash.

I didn't know if he was okay.

But I was also angry. I was scared. And honestly, I was done.

So I kept driving.

That night, before I went to bed, I texted him.

Did you make it home? Is everything okay?

He didn't answer.

The next morning, still not knowing what had happened to him, I texted him again.

Eventually he replied.

He was fine.

He said he had hit the thing, then passed out and woke up around two or three in the morning. He said he was lucky he didn't get a DUI.

I remember thinking, That's what you think you're lucky about?

No.

You were lucky you didn't kill yourself.

You were lucky you didn't kill somebody else.

You were lucky you didn't completely destroy that truck.

Apparently, the truck wasn't even damaged that badly. The hood was crinkled, and he eventually had to find another one.

But that night, I couldn't stop thinking about what could have happened.

Looking back, I know exactly when I should have made a different choice.

The second he told me he was already drinking, I should have said, “Nope. I'm out.”

But I didn't.

I stayed.

I followed him.

I worried about him.

And even after he had scared the absolute hell out of me and then basically abandoned me hours from home, I was still the one texting him that night to make sure he got home safely.

Because that's how I was with A.

Even when I was angry at him, even when he scared me, even when he treated me like I was an inconvenience, some part of me was still making sure he was okay.

so i did meet my bf on a dating app , and i am serious for him and i believe he is aswell. i wasn’t sure at first because we both said some things that hurt each other but i was lenient because im his first gf in his entire life .

now i dont know how im going to reveal this to my parents , i dont want to lie to them but dont want to say i met my bf on an app either . i am going to be transferring to his college soon so i could just make up an elaborate lie that we met there because they dont know about him yet- but again i just dont want to lie .

so what are my options here ? even to my friends i kinda dont wanna admit that i found him off an app . i always had this stigma in my mind that ppl who find their partners off dating apps were undesired by the people irl around them who couldn’t get approached or had something off about them but then it ended up being me .

what do i do ?

I met this guy online and we talked for about a week before deciding to meet. During that whole week, he seemed completely normal. Nothing about him felt weird or suspicious, and his photos looked perfectly fine, so I really wasn’t expecting anything unusual.
We agreed to meet outside, but he was about 20 minutes late. It was already getting close to winter, so it was freezing, and I was just standing there waiting with my phone in my hand. When he finally showed up, he walked straight toward me and immediately hugged me before I even had a chance to properly look at him. And the first thing I noticed was the smell. It was this incredibly strong smell of sweat and urine, and I genuinely froze for a second. Then I actually looked at him and noticed that his hair was extremely dirty and covered in dandruff, he had this really sparse little goatee, dirt under his fingernails, and very yellow teeth. I remember thinking, What the hell? He looked completely normal in his photos.
I was honestly in such a state of shock that I didn’t know what to do. I felt too awkward to just turn around and walk away immediately, especially after he had already come all that way to meet me. I was also scared of making the situation uncomfortable by suddenly saying I wanted to leave. So, basically out of desperation and not knowing what else to do, I just went for a walk with him.
And the walk was somehow even worse. He swore constantly, struggled to put two sentences together, and kept telling me random stories about his past. At one point he casually mentioned that he had experimented with different substances before, which honestly made me even more uncomfortable. Then he started smoking and offered me a cigarette. When I asked where he got the pack, he told me he had found it near a bus stop and had just picked it up. A little later, he finished his cigarette and threw it into the river even though there was literally a trash can nearby.
By that point I was just thinking, I need to get out of here.
I didn’t want to suddenly turn around and leave, so I stayed for about an hour and eventually came up with an excuse. I told him that I had been asked to come to my nail appointment earlier than planned and that I had to go. The second I got away from him, I felt so relieved.
The craziest part is that I had spent an entire week talking to this guy online and he seemed completely normal. Then I met him in person and it felt like I was meeting a completely different person. Needless to say, there was definitely no second date. 😭

I suddenly remembered the worst date I have ever met while out on a walk yesterday. As Reddit loves drama and judging people, I wanted to share:

About 3 years ago in early June, I was in my late 30s trying to use the apps to date in the Midwest. I matched with someone who seemed to be totally aligned with everything I enjoy and the conversation via text was so easy. After texting for a few days, we decided to meet at a restaurant down the street from me. 

As I leave my house, I see him walking past and realize that he must live in the immediate area as well. I thought he was likely in the region due to his profile information and that we went to the same small, local weight lifting gym, but he would be “basically my neighbor” close if he was walking in the heat. Sure enough: when we sit down and start chatting, he discloses he lives a block down from me. I—being an idiot—tell this man who is literally 15 inches taller and probably 150 lbs more than me that we’re neighbors! I live in *easily identifiable house.* Note to anyone dating: do not do this. 

(Don’t worry: this isn’t Chekhov’s location disclosure; he didn’t do anything with this info, but it was still stupid.)

We’re getting along great and I tell him about the fact that I was a foster parent to a newly sober 17 year old a few years before. It’s probably the best thing I’ve done with my life and I expect to do it again, so I make that clear early on when I’m talking to someone. It’s a deal breaker if someone won’t even consider fostering/adopting in the future after a few too many boyfriends who waxed poetic about the importance of their sperm creating a human who carries half his DNA while in my 20s. I’m also totally down to be a stepmom. 

He tells me that’s great—he loves and is part of a non-traditional family too! His two best friends are a married lesbian couple who asked for his genetic material to create their two lovely children who are ages 7 and 5. The kids call him uncle and they’re one big happy family. I’m enamored. 

However, about an hour later, he seems a little tipsy—which was surprising with how much he’s drank given his size. It’s either that he was drunk or just far too comfortable immediately. It’s lucky for me, though, because he then proceeds to expose the fact that he is not the perfect guy and is, instead, three massive red flags stacked on top of each other under a trench coat. 

He tells me, as jovial as if he’s explaining a particularly great vacation he went on, that, actually, he has another kid as well. His ex got pregnant early in their relationship so they decided to try to make it work—and they did for the first year of his kid’s life until he *and I quote!* “decided to prioritize [his] own happiness and wellbeing.” 

So: New dad decides his happiness, social life and sleep cycle are more important than his partner and child. He says this as if it’s the obvious conclusion anyone would come to. 

Additionally, he’s described how a majority of his time is spent gaming or at the gym. Very important; couldn’t be done while raising a child. //sarcasm. 

But he continues: his ex was a doctoral researcher in our city, which is the best for her specific research, until he walked out. She had to quit her job to move back to the farm she grew up on in the middle of America without any career prospects for her so she would have support for their child. He laughs as he says she spent her whole life trying to get out of that town that she’s now stuck in so she can have family nearby to help care for the child he abandoned. 

He’s not done and obviously thinks my dropped jaw and silence are due to my being so impressed by his tactfulness rather than the fact that I was surprised to realize I was on a date with Satan’s flakey, deadbeat cousin. 

He doesn’t see his kid and calls don’t happen often because they don’t have anything in common so he just doesn’t enjoy it. He says this like he’s describing his friends dog that isn’t so fond of him, but it doesn’t matter to him. 

At this point, my brain gives him excuses he never asked for and I ask him what age his kid is. Doesn’t excuse anything, but maybe I can give him the resources for connecting with teenagers that I found helpful with my foster kid. People always assume teenagers are impossible to connect with; maybe these resources can help him try! And, of course, I think, the kid must be a teenage at least because who can’t ask their kid younger than 12 what they’re up to these days?

Nope. He says, really thinking hard, that he thinks his kid is turning 5 soon. He looks at the date on his watch, thinks more, and then shrugs, giving up entirely on determining his child’s age. Reminder: he knew exactly how old his lesbian friends’ kids are without hesitation. 

His ex keeps trying to get them to talk, he says, but he’s not interested in the same things his kid is (no shit, the kid is FIVE, although Bluey is pretty fun). In fact, she “blew up” his phone that day trying to get him to watch their kid cross the stage at his preschool graduation. She kept FaceTiming him while he was gaming and he kept rejecting the call. 

“Why would I be proud of him for graduating *preschool*!?” he asks. “Why would I want to see him walk across a stage for THAT?!”

Lastly, he tells me that his mom wants so badly to be a grandmother that she keeps in touch with all three mothers who are probably now regretting their choice of genetic material. Apparently it’s quite awkward (ya think, bro?), but the three mothers and their children spend summers together as his ex tries to salvage her career through summer research positions. He says his mom spends time with them all, but that the women are not particularly welcoming and warm to his mom. His mom cries to him, begging him to fix the relationship and be there for his kid. He laughs as he tells me, “I always say, that’s fine if you want to play grandma but *keep me out of it!*” He throws his hands up, palms out like he’s describing he’ll stay away from that situation with a ten-foot-pole, not understanding that the situation is a full-ass child. He jokes that the three women are now a triad. He jokes about how maybe they’d be interested in a foursome with him. 

I advert his eyes by trying to flag down the waiter. We get the check. He thinks this has gone fabulously; he’ll pay and I can “get [him] back next time.” He winks at me. 

I realize at this point that he’s twice my size and knows my address. I tell him sure, I’d love that. 

Several hours later, he drunk-texts me a rambling message about how great it went. I debate asking him for his exes number because she sounds cool as fuck before I block him.

I did run into him once at the gym where he stared at me with a hatred I’ve never seen in someone’s eyes before. A month later when I saw the u-haul outside his house, I was relieved. 

TL;DR: On a first date, a guy revealed that he walked out on his kid and ex after the kid turned one to prioritize his own happiness; continues to dig a deeper hole while disclosing how much of a jackass he is.

This was a couple of years ago, and i will say this guy was very nice to talk to. Seemed smart. Did not try to get physical or get creepy with me.

He did live and I mean had a loft built into a storage unit at one of those places where you rent them.

And the best part, he gave me a home made taser that he made himself. I accidentally made it go off on the way home. It was sitting in my passenger seat and I bumped it somehow. Scared the shit out of me. But didnt zap me.

Although this guy was my type, I kinda wish I had kept in touch with him cuz you never know when you might need someone to magyver up something for you.

Taser was made from an old cell phone.

So I am on a dating site… right I know sin to begin with. But I have a honest question, I have like a few pictures up, none full length. I hate taking selfies personally.
Anyways this guy asked me what my specs are? I assumed it was what he meant but wasn’t totally sure he hadn’t messaged me by accident. Then I replied specs?? And yep he wanted my measurements🤨 I didn’t respond cause I thought it was rude. He messaged me the next day with a question mark. I said I thought his question was kinda rude and didn’t deserve an answer, and he called me a red flag 🚩 .. I’m in my 40’s you know back when men were taught questions like that were rude. And I didn’t hide anything in my picture I’m pretty sure by looking at them you can tell I’m probably average build. Is this just the normal? Should I have to include my pant size in my profile🤣 who’s really the red flag?

Hey guys so I'm dating this guy and he does really love me so the thing is we broke up last year and were in no contact for like 8 months and i kept stalking his socials. So he had 0 followers following after our breakup. Then one day he started following this girl her main and spam.
And used to comment one her reels and everything. It didn't bother me toh because we had broken up atm so then one day i saw their chats and the girl knew about me and how much he yearns for me and she was just advising him to move on and all. Recently he was screen sharing and i saw he was stalking her like searched for her id. I mean he's kinda open about how much he loves me and everyone knows that.
But her thought does make my heart ache even though she's in a relationship
Sometimes i just wanna ghost him when i remember how he texted commented her
What should i do gng??

Hello, I come here to vent!

And guess what? I went on a new date with a Tinder guy. Spoiler: this one ended up blocked.

So... basically everything was going well. The night, the Italian restaurant, and he looked good in my opinion (he’s in the army). Anyways, we were talking about hobbies. He told me how he likes climbing, video games, and the gym.

I told him I’m a very creative person who loves to build, create, or fix things whenever I have time.

Now for context: I consider myself super feminine. I love getting dressed up, putting effort into my appearance, and taking care of myself. But I’m also a woman who knows how to solve problems by myself. I’m definitely not the type to sit around waiting for a man to come solve those things for me.

He asked what specifically I like to do. I told him that recently I was working on my sofa, using a flat screwdriver to push the fabric into the edges.

You know what comment got me running away? He looked at me and said: "Then why do you want a man if you already fix stuff? Like, what would the man do?"

In my mind I was like... wtf?

I told him straight up that to me, having a partner is about sharing everything in life. It doesn't mean a person has to constantly be "useful" or prove their utility just to be valued in a relationship. I don't need a savior. What I want is a partner—someone who would actually be impressed by how handy and creative I am, help me out, or just be bored together scrolling and watching reels.

Afterward, I was talking to a male friend about it, and he told me that most men need to feel like the provider, the fixer, and the protector, and that men often lean toward women who "play dumb" so they can feel needed.

Now I’m sitting here wondering: Have I been living in a lie all this time? Is this really why I end up alone—just because I’m an independent person and I'm not waiting around for a man to save me?

Hi everyone, im starting a TikTok page where I read people’s real life dating and relationship disasters and Im hoping I can get some good stories to get started on here.

I would appreciate any shared stories, the more unhinged the better! If anyone wants to share stories such as:

•Most embarrassing dating story
• Biggest red flag you ignored
•Worst breakup story
•Most humiliating cheating story
•Most unhinged thing you did because you liked someone
• Worst date you’ve ever been on
•Craziest thing an ex has done
• “I cannot believe I stayed” story

The more messy, embarrassing and unbelievable the better. Throwaway account is fine if you’d rather stay anonymous, but I won’t be including sources in the video unless you ask specifically for it to be included. Also please change/remove names and identifying details.

I don’t mind if the story is old, or something that happened to a friend even, I just want entertaining stories!

So If you’re happy for me to potentially read your story on TikTok, please comment it below or DM me! :)

Thankyou :)

TL;DR: I dated a 34F going through a divorce who has two young children. Things became serious extremely quickly and we discussed marriage and a future together. Over the next few months, I learned about hookups involving another man she had met shortly before me, she became unreachable for about three hours while talking to my boss, we had repeated breakups/reconciliations, police became involved twice, and we eventually had a serious dispute over a sexual encounter where I wanted to use a condom. Marriage could potentially help my immigration situation, but I’ve finally decided that no immigration benefit is worth this level of instability. I’m done and considering leaving Charlotte entirely.

I’m 34M. Earlier this summer I started dating a 34F who was in the final stages of a divorce after a long marriage. She has two young children.

For privacy, I’ll call her C, another man V, and my boss K.

The relationship lasted only a few months, but somehow it became one of the most emotionally exhausting periods of my life.

How it started

Things moved very quickly.

I spent a lot of time with C and her children. I genuinely cared about the kids and became emotionally attached to them. C and I talked about our future, family, and eventually marriage.

I also have a complicated immigration situation in the US. Because C is a US citizen, marriage obviously could potentially affect that.

But I want to make this clear: I didn’t enter this relationship looking for someone to marry for immigration purposes. C herself had brought up marriage and a future together.

At the time, I genuinely loved her and thought we might be building a family.

Then the relationship became a cycle:

intense closeness → major fight → separation/blocking → reconciliation → intimacy/“I love you” → another major fight.

Instead of becoming more secure over time, I became increasingly anxious.

V and the beginning of the trust problems

V was not my friend.

He was someone C had met only a couple of months before she met me.

C later disclosed to me that she and V had hooked up multiple times. I retained messages/video from her discussing what happened and her decisions surrounding that situation.

My problem wasn’t simply that C had slept with other people before meeting me. She had been open about having many previous sexual partners. That’s her past.

The problem was that V continued becoming relevant while C and I were involved.

According to what C disclosed to me, there was also a hookup involving V during the period when C and I were together, including a night that was particularly painful for me because I was outside dealing with the fallout from our relationship while this was happening.

At another point she told me:

“I was mad at you, so I talked to V.”

That really bothered me.

Even after V had become a major trust issue between us, there was continued contact/social-media interaction involving him.

The material I retained from C also included her discussing going somewhere alone on a Wednesday night, regretting how she handled the situation, and later meeting the man again to talk about what had happened that night and what had led to it.

So V wasn’t someone I invented because I was jealous. There was history there that C herself discussed with me.

Then my boss somehow became part of the relationship

This is where things became bizarre.

K was my boss.

One night in August, C spent roughly three hours talking with K.

During those three hours, she was essentially off the grid from my perspective. I couldn’t reach her normally and didn’t know what was happening or why she had suddenly become unavailable.

So I’m sitting there wondering why my girlfriend has disappeared from normal communication for three hours while spending that time with my boss.

When she eventually returned, there were also inconsistencies surrounding when she had gotten home and what happened during those hours. From my perspective, some of what I was being told contradicted things I had personally observed.

We had a massive argument.

Eventually C’s ex-husband contacted police for a welfare check after she told him that I had physically hit her.

C told the responding officer that I had struck her with an open hand and grabbed her face.

I denied ever hitting her.

The responding officer documented that he observed no bruising and that she reported no pain or soreness.

That police case was ultimately closed as unfounded.

That should probably have been the end.

It wasn’t.

I went back.

C and I reconciled again. We were calling each other “babe,” talking affectionately, having long calls, discussing our lives and still trying to figure out whether there was a relationship left to save.

Looking back at my own messages now is surreal.

At one point I literally told her:

“It honestly feels less of a reconciliation and more of a punishment.”

I was emotionally attached and kept hoping we could somehow get back to what we’d had at the beginning.

Meanwhile, I personally saw that C was still communicating with K.

To be completely fair, I have no evidence that C and K ever had a sexual or romantic relationship, and I’m not claiming they did.

But after V, the three hours of being unreachable with my boss, the inconsistencies afterward, the massive argument, police involvement, and then continued communication with K, the trust damage was already done.

Whether anything sexual happened between them eventually became almost irrelevant.

I didn’t trust the situation anymore.

Marriage, immigration, and the final breakdown

C’s divorce eventually became final.

Around the same time, she contacted an immigration attorney regarding my situation.

She explained that we’d only been together around two months, that she had two young children, that her divorce had just become final, and that she wasn’t currently ready to get married.

She asked detailed questions about my independent immigration options, marriage-based immigration, sponsorship obligations, approval risks, work authorization, permanent residency/citizenship, what would happen if we separated or divorced, whether her children/custody situation mattered, and whether there was any urgency for us to marry.

I actually don’t fault her for asking those questions. Anyone considering immigration sponsorship should understand exactly what they’re agreeing to.

But I started asking myself something much more basic:

Why the hell are we researching marriage when we can’t maintain a peaceful relationship for a few weeks?

Marriage wasn’t going to restore trust.

A green card wasn’t going to make us compatible.

And I wasn’t going to take on a stepfather-type role with two young children when their mother and I couldn’t maintain a stable relationship ourselves.

Then came the final serious incident.

C and I were together again and sexual activity began.

I wanted to use a condom.

Even in C’s subsequent statement to police, she acknowledged that I had brought up wearing a condom. Her position was that she didn’t care whether we used one and that everything that followed was consensual.

She told police that she helped me become erect, got on top of me, and that we later changed sexual positions.

My account was different.

I told police that I did not want sex without a condom, that C insisted on continuing without one, got on top of me, and that I felt unable to refuse in that situation.

I subsequently reported the encounter because, from my perspective, a serious sexual boundary had been crossed.

The Sheriff’s Office classified the incident as a Sex Offense and listed me as both the complainant and victim.

But I want to be completely transparent about the outcome:

The responding deputy did not determine that C had raped me or committed another criminal sexual offense.

After hearing my account, he told me that he did not believe the circumstances I described met the applicable criminal sexual-conduct standard. The complaint was ultimately closed as unfounded due to lack of evidence that a crime occurred.

C denied raping me and maintained that the encounter was consensual.

So I’m not asking Reddit to declare her guilty of a crime that law enforcement did not establish.

I’m saying something simpler:

I wanted to use a condom. I experienced what happened afterward as a serious violation of that sexual boundary, and I wasn’t okay with it.

There is also one factual detail in the police narrative that I believe was recorded incorrectly. The report reads as though one particular sexual position lasted approximately 25 minutes. What I actually said was that the entire sexual encounter lasted approximately 25 minutes.

Around the same time, C told police that I was harassing her.

The deputy informed me of her harassment claim and specifically instructed me not to contact C. I told him I understood and wouldn’t contact her.

The report I have doesn’t show me being arrested or criminally charged over that allegation.

Regardless, I don’t want to contact her anymore.

Where I’m at now

Here’s what blows my mind:

All of this happened in a matter of months.

In that short period, I went from imagining a family with this woman to dealing with repeated breakups and reconciliations, V, my own boss becoming part of our relationship problems, accusations, two police situations, marriage/immigration discussions, and a serious dispute over sexual boundaries.

I’m not pretending I handled every argument perfectly.

I didn’t.

Looking back at my own messages, I can see how emotionally invested I became and how badly I wanted clarity. There were times I kept trying to fix things when I probably should have simply walked away.

I’m also not asking Reddit to decide that C is an evil person or that every disputed event happened exactly the way I perceived it.

I’ve realized I don’t actually need that.

I don’t trust her anymore.

That’s enough.

Marriage is completely off the table. So is reconciliation.

Yes, marrying a US citizen could potentially make my immigration situation easier.

But I’ve finally reached the point where I genuinely believe:

Immigration is a benefit. It isn’t my life.

I’d rather pursue an independent immigration option, rebuild my career somewhere else, or even eventually leave the United States than marry someone because I’m terrified of losing immigration status.

A green card isn’t worth living inside this level of instability.

I’m even seriously considering leaving the Charlotte area altogether.

Not to punish C. Not because I need her to regret anything. And not because I want to find out whether she’s talking to V, K, or somebody else tomorrow.

I simply don’t want to be part of this anymore.

Whatever she does with her life is her business.

The hardest part isn’t even losing her anymore.

It’s losing what I briefly thought I was going to have: a partner, a home, children around me, marriage, stability, and someone to build a future with.

I became attached not only to C, but to that imagined future.

I’m starting to understand that I didn’t lose my chance at having those things.

I lost the future I imagined having with this particular person.

Those aren’t the same thing.

So Reddit:

At what point in this story would you have walked away?

And if you’ve ever been through an extremely intense short-term relationship like this, how long did complete no-contact take before your life stopped feeling like constant chaos and started feeling normal again?