Years ago, I met a girl in a writing group. She was smart enough to attract me, and she reciprocated, so for a time we were in a relationship, and at one point, she moved into my apartment.

It was at that point that things got sour. Why? You see, I outright hate dogs, while over time, my girlfriend began to desperately want one to keep in our apartment. At first, she asked me many times, trying various tactics to get me to change my mind, such as promising to buy me a new laptop if I accepted or offering to pay for it entirely, but to no avail.

It all crumbled on my birthday. [Girlfriend] first gave me a “decoy gift”: a new electric razor. Then, to surprise me, she said she was going to take me out to have dinner at a fancy place in a nearby city. In actuality, she had decided to take me to an animal shelter where she had adopted a puppy and also had arranged to have a “care package” to keep it alive.

After a moment of being flabbergasted, I told her:

Me: “I am not taking that thing home.”

First, [Girlfriend] tried to guilt me into accepting it.

Girlfriend: “But it cost me so much to set all this up! And the volunteers will be so crushed to see you reject this puppy.”

Then, she changed tactics.

Girlfriend: “I’ll leave you here without a ride if you don’t go along with this!”

Since telling her that I was never going to love it wasn’t working, I decided that, actually, 70€ of taxi versus thousands spent in maintaining an animal I had no intention whatsoever of keeping sounded good.

Me: “Either you leave everything here and come back home with me, or you go back to your parents’ house with the dog while I take a taxi back to the apartment.”

Girlfriend: “Fine! Take the taxi!”

Then, she demanded that the shelter’s workers help her load up the car while I went out to the roadside to call the taxi. She arrived at our apartment earlier than I did, and she was about to unload a dog bed when I came back. She had already dropped a sack of dog food in the living room.

Me: “Put that stuff back in the car.”

Girlfriend: *Shouting* “I can’t believe you don’t want this puppy! What a cold, heartless [profanity]! If you don’t let me keep it, I’m breaking up with you.”

I was taken aback and stunned, but I was too determined: she clearly care more about an animal than she did about me. After several minutes of standing there in silence while she slowly started to sport a s***-eating grin, I told her:

Me: “Pick up your stuff and don’t come back. I’ll give you enough money to stay in a hotel room tonight.”

Her parents were four hours of car away and it was getting too late to reach them. 

She rejected that. Instead, shrieking and crying incoherently, she started to brusquely rip away everything she owned to stuff it in an old suitcase, while also trying but failing to destroy my stuff as I intervened to snatch those away from her.

She did call me a few times the next day, but it was over.

I found more compatible love later, to be sure. And this time, I haven’t gotten gifted pets yet!

My brother and I inherited my grandfather’s farm, and while these days the farm isn’t big or modern enough to earn a living off of, it’s a beautiful part of the world. Since my brother and I both worked tech jobs that we could do remotely, get along well, and love the land, we decided to build houses on either end of the property with a workshop/garage in the middle. It’s worked great.

The downside of our setup is that we aren’t particularly close to town. So, if one of us goes into town for some reason, we ask the other if they need anything and often end up picking up some groceries or whatever else for each other. And since we both make decent money and it’s pretty even who goes into town, we’ve never kept track of the money. We just figure it will all come out in the wash.

My brother has been dating a great woman for a while and she recently moved in with him. Since they’ve gotten more serious, she’s decided they should be more organized, and her current project is getting their finances in order. One day, she asks me to come over for dinner. We eat, and then she says that my brother and I need to balance out who owes who what.

Me: “Sure, that makes sense. Well, I think the last trip was you picking up a load of groceries for me. That was probably about $100.”

Brother: “Sounds about right, but before that, you picked up the hardware for when I was fixing the plumbing. That was like $60, right?” 

Me: “Yeah, but I also picked up that Scotch for you on that trip.”

Brother: “Oh, yeah. So, now I owe you…”

This conversation goes back and forth as far as we can remember. By the end of things, the grand total we come up with is that I owe my brother $15. I pull out my wallet and pay him, and then I get up to leave to walk back home. 

Me: “Oh, by the way, I’m going to be in town tomorrow to see [Friend]. Need anything?” 

Brother: “Actually, yeah. Could you pick me up some [Beer]?” 

He then handed the $15 back to me. At that point, his girlfriend started laughing at how pointless the whole exchange had been.

CONTENT WARNING: Emotional Abuse

My boyfriend was always on his own time. If he wanted to do something that started at 2:00, we were there at 1:45. If he didn’t want to do it, we were there when we got there.

One time, I went to his house to go to an event that was $100 a ticket. I paid for both of our tickets, and he was going to drive. When I got there, he was sitting in the living room in his underwear, playing video games.

Me: “Are you ready?”

Boyfriend: “Yeah, just about.”

Me: “Okay… We need to leave in like ten minutes.”

Boyfriend: “Okay! I said yes!”

Me: “I’ll go start the car.”

Boyfriend: “Don’t waste my gas!”

Me: “Then you’d better hurry up.”

I sat in the car for half an hour — never actually turning it on — before going back inside. He was still playing video games.

Me: “What are you doing?! Let’s go!”

Boyfriend: “I f****** am! I told you—”

Me: “You know I’ve been sitting out there for half an hour?”

Boyfriend: “Fine! I’ll go!”

He slammed the remote control down and got dressed in record time. On the way to the event, he pulled into a gas station.

Boyfriend: “You’re buying me gas.”

Me: “I didn’t even—”

Boyfriend: “I said fill the f****** tank or I’ll leave you here. You think I’m playing?”

Me: “No, I believe you.”

I walked into the gas station and called my friend to come pick me up. [Boyfriend] sat at the pump waiting for me to come back out.

My friend showed up, I got in her car, and she used his ticket for the event. Since he never paid me for it, she was happy to cover the cost and drive us. We had a great time, and I never picked up the phone for him again.

A guest comes down asking for my assistance in her room due to a disagreement between herself and her boyfriend.

Guest: “[Boyfriend] has caused some property damage and I just want someone there in the room with me while I pack a bag to leave so nothing else is damaged.”

I grab the cordless and head up as there are two of us on the desk today. I get to the room with her, and I just chill in the living room while the guy is in the bedroom packing his bag and speaking quietly on the phone.

I don’t go near him as he isn’t doing anything to cause alarm and is packing a bag to leave. I can’t hear a single thing he is saying and just make small talk with the guest and her kids.

Ten minutes into waiting up there, a woman barges in as the door was not completely shut and she starts going off on the other lady and myself.

Woman: “I heard my son tell you multiple times to get out of the room and you’re just being rude and talking s*** back to him!”

The man comes out of the bedroom with his bag packed and starts getting on me too.

Man: “That’s right! You need to leave the room!”

I’m bewildered how this went from me quietly being there to make sure no damage happens to hotel property to getting yelled and screamed at.

At this point, I have officially called the cops. I stay in the room still, as I have noticed some hotel items damaged in the room earlier. I stay on the line with the police, while this woman still yells and screams in my face until a policeman finally appears in the doorway.

He enters, I get off the phone, and ask to be let out of the room since there are police there now to make sure no damage happens to the room. He lets me out, and another officer comes up and asks me for my side of what happened. 

I explain everything to him and let him know that the woman is not allowed on our premises after she leaves with her son. I get on the elevator which so happens to have my coworker on it as she was coming up to see if I was alright, as thirty minutes have passed by this time!

I look at her and just break down: straight-up panic attack. It takes me a good two hours to fully be okay again.

Not even two months later, the guy hits me up on a dating app. I told him to go check on his momma, see if she has yelled at any more front desk assistants since me, and blocked him.

CONTENT WARNING: Domestic Violence

I am in my mid-twenties and have been with my boyfriend since my teens. My relationship with him has gradually deteriorated, escalating from him cheating to verbally and physically abusing me. I’ve stupidly stayed with him, believing it’s my fault, and that he’ll change.

While camping late at night at a music festival, I catch him talking on the phone to yet another girl he’s cheating on me with. We argue, he clocks me in the face for “being nosy,” and then he storms off to get drunk for the night. I sob myself to sleep.

In the morning, I find a note in my shoe outside our tent. I’m filled with dread, assuming it’s from one of our angry neighbors who was kept awake by the fight. Then I read this:

“I’m so sorry for what you’re going through. I want you to know that nobody who claims to love you would ever talk to you or treat you the way you were treated last night. You have a beautiful soul, and this is not your fault. Please leave him, and find someone who truly deserves you.”

I immediately packed up and left, leaving him stranded, and never spoke to him again. To the writer of the note: you will never know what you did for me that day. Thank you for saving my life.

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