I start dating a guy in high school, and we really hit it off. However, once we graduate, we go to different colleges in two different states. We begin a long-distance relationship. Our first year of college, it’s fine. We call a lot, talk over Skype, email frequently, and still manage to spend time together when we visit our hometown.

At the beginning of our second year of college, his parents divorce. It really hits him hard. I try to be as supportive as I can, but he begins to withdraw. We schedule times to Skype, but he begins to log in less and less often. Longer time passes between emails. Whenever he digitally stands me up, he always apologizes and gives me his reason: “I was so tired, I just had to nap,” “I was feeling really fried from finals and couldn’t talk,” “Stuff was going down at home, and I just don’t want to talk about it.”

As this goes on for months with communication between us becoming increasingly infrequent, I begin to voice that I feel neglected and that it hurts whenever he goes for weeks without talking to me. As always, he apologizes, but nothing ever changes. He says if I “just pick a date and time,” he’ll do his best to Skype with me. I do, but he always winds up canceling or not logging in. I can see the signs of the relationship failing right there, but I really like this guy. When we do talk, he has a great sense of humor. We also share the same quirky interests in some really niche stuff.

Into our third year of college — yes, I did wait two years for him to come to terms with his parents’ divorce — it becomes months between contact. I send emails and texts and leave voicemails when I can. I even agree to watch his favorite television show with him in its entirety — well over 100 episodes — just to spend time with him. We have simultaneously streamed shows before and talked over Skype while we watched them. It is something we enjoyed doing together. However, even that doesn’t change how infrequently he contacts me.

He apologizes again and insists that if I “just pick a date and time” he will do better this time. At this point, I tell him any time is fine as I will clear my schedule just to talk to him. It’s now two weeks until my birthday. He makes a promise: “I absolutely promise that I will be online before your birthday so we can talk.” He makes it sound like this will be a long conversation, possibly streaming a television show, and that we’ll be able to catch up on lost time. However, he doesn’t give me a date or time.

For the next two weeks, I spend as much time as I can on my computer because I want to talk to him as long as possible — as he made it sound. It eats my life. As soon as I’m done with dinner on campus, usually 7:00 pm, I’m online. I stay online until midnight or 1:00 am, just to see if he’ll speak with me. Some nights, I’m online as early as 5:00 am. Yes, I’m the fool who waited for six hours a day for my boyfriend to Skype me.

It’s the night before my birthday at 11:30 pm. At this point, I am so frustrated and sleep deprived that I’m sobbing. I move my mouse over to click on “Log Out” as I figure he has completely flaked again. It’s at that exact moment the notification pops up and he logs in. He gives me a huge string of smiley emojis and says, “See, I told you I’d be on before your birthday!” He has no idea why I am mad at him. After all, he made it “just in time” for my birthday even though we can’t talk for more than half an hour because of classes.

His birthday is the following month. I wait until 1:30 am the night after his birthday ends and send him an email breaking up with him — it’s not like I can even get a hold of him face to face anymore. He replies back, furious, “How dare you ruin my birthday like that?!” I reply with, “It wasn’t technically your birthday anymore.”

And that is the last I’ve ever heard from him. I have no regrets about how I broke up with him.

(I am sharing an apartment with a now ex-friend. We get along well until one day, without warning, she ends up taking around $200 worth of my stuff and selling it off so she can have some pocket money. I am, naturally, really upset with this. The police get called, and we recover about two-thirds of the stuff, and she ends up being required to pay the difference. Among the stuff we manage to recover are a few older books that were a gift from my late grandfather, which were the things that I was most afraid to lose. After this, I cut ties with that friend very thoroughly. However, we have mutual friends that still are in contact with each other. I never tried to force them to cut ties with her or anything, but I likewise never shied away from being up-front about what she had done.)

Mutual Friend: *via text* “Hey, [My Name]. Do you have a copy of [Book]?”

Me: “Yeah. I have the whole series.”

Mutual Friend: “It’s a series?”

Me: “Yep. It’s really good.”

Mutual Friend: “Cool. Hey, can [Ex-Friend] borrow it? We were talking, and she mentioned how much she enjoyed it when she was living with you.”

Me: *kind of shocked at what I’m reading* “Are you kidding me?”

Mutual Friend: “What?”

Me: “She stole from me! This was one of the things she tried to steal! Why would I ever lend it or anything to her?”

Mutual Friend: “Oh. Well, that was a while ago, though.”

Me: “No no no no no no no. I am not lending her anything.”

Mutual Friend: *after about twenty minutes of silence* “Could you lend me the book?”

Me: “Are you planning to turn around and hand it to her?”

(Total silence after that, and that particular mutual friend is now looking like another ex-friend, as she has stopped speaking with me. Sooo sorry for being defensive after being burned by a thief in the past.)

I am serving a table of two women for a few hours. They’re having a great time and getting pretty drunk. Nothing unusual, as I work at an Irish pub. 

Eventually, a man sits at the table with them, one of their husbands. I walk over and ask if I can get them any drinks and they order a round. When I come back out, the table is completely silent. I go back to the little staff area outside on the patio a few metres away. I then hear the man at the table absolutely rip into his wife; she has been cheating on him. She starts sobbing. Her sister looks incredibly uncomfortable and comes over to ask me for a lighter so she can go have a smoke.

I have to stand idly by and listen in great discomfort as a marriage dissolves in front of me. The husband accuses her of cheating with her coworker and pulls up the texts to prove it. She says it means nothing; he disagrees. He eventually tells her he will leave her.

They all get up to go, forgetting the $80+ tab they still have running with me. I awkwardly have to ask them to pay it. They tip me poorly, definitely not enough for someone who just waited on their very public and messy divorce.

(I see this unfold while helping at the donation door of my thrift store. A woman is donating what looks like a full camping set for one person: a tent, a sleeping bag, various camping accessories, etc.)

Customer: “I went camping with my boyfriend and came back single.”

Me: “Um…”

(After the customer leaves…)

Coworker: “Yeah, that doesn’t sound suspicious at all!“

(A day later…)

Coworker: “Remember the lady who ‘came back single’?”

Me: “Yes?”

Coworker: “She says she accidentally donated a shovel and pickaxe…. and wants them back.”

Me: *pause* “We’re going to be talking to a police officer who has many, many questions, aren’t we?”

(My coworker did return the shovel and pickaxe to her, after taking care to be the only one to handle them. I’m not even sure whether the lady just phrased it wrong, or whether there’s a shallow grave somewhere nearby. It’s been a few weeks, and no one has come up missing in the local news yet, so I’m hoping it was just bad phrasing.)

A boy I dated in college thought it was great fun to try to get girls to flash him while he and his friends were driving down the highway. He never did it while I was in the car because that was disrespectful to me. But when he was with his buddies, it was okay because that’s what boys do. I tried to explain that it really wasn’t acceptable behavior, but he brushed me off. (Yes, I know, I should have dumped him right there, but I was young and dumb.)

The day after this conversation, he came to my dorm room to study before going out with his buddies. I asked if he intended to play this flash game again, to which he angrily replied that it wasn’t a big deal and I was overreacting. To quote him, “Tits are tits. You have them. So what?”

His friends arrived and crowded into my room, ready to go on their adventure. Before they left, I asked for everyone’s attention and lifted my shirt, showing my breasts to my boyfriend and all of his friends.

They cheered and clapped. He was livid. How could I do something so trashy? Why was I being such a w****? Did I want to bang all of his friends? What was wrong with me?

I stood there calmly waiting for him to run out of air before I replied, “So, you can look at other girls, but other guys can’t look at me?”

He gaped like a fish out of water while his friends stood there in awkward silence. I told him if he thought his game was acceptable, I was going to continue showing off my body to anyone who asked. He stormed out without saying another word.

When he returned that evening, he said he was willing to forgive me if I promised to never act like that again. I shut the door in his face.