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Hi guys and girls, Tl;DR I've been in a relationship for the past 2 months. We use RTR to communicate constantly and this makes our conversations very emotionally intense. Some hurts and red flags have come up (I think on both ends) but she brought up some of hers after we had already started dating and having sex, and due to the nature of the hurts and the fact that she didn't tell me upfront (misled me for one of them) it's been very difficult emotionally for me to recover from that hurt. Specifically, the worst red flag/hurt was around the recency of her breakup with her ex. We started talking (we met online on a dating website) in the first week of December and she had told me that she broke up with her ex in November, but that she had essentially started grieving the end of the relationship back in September and it was just a protracted breakup. Even then I thought 2 months was way too short for a 1.5 year relationship, but I was more or less okay with it. 5 weeks into the relationship, around the end of January, it came out that she had broken up with her ex just one week before we started talking, and that she had been having sex with him until the last day of the relationship. Clearly she could not have been getting over him in any sense of the word. After some talking she admitted and took responsibility for the misleading. We're not sure it was a conscious effort at the time. She understands why I'd naturally assume that if someone is "getting over" a relationship they're not actively having sex with the person. There was also no other reason for her to cite September except to make it seem as though the breakup period was longer. Is this a dealbreaker-level red flag? Should I break up? There are tremendously good things about her and this relationship that probably more than balance things out, but sometimes I feel like the red flag is something I should break up over. For more (and a summary of the good and bad) please read more. There are also many confounding variables, like that I find intimacy and relationships difficult and often terrifying, and I could be looking for reasons to break up because of that, also. Or that I recently deFOO'ed. I would greatly appreciate if people read as much of the story as possible. I know it's long but I'm also afraid that people will comment and judge without full information. Introduction I've recently entered into a new relationship (December of 2015) and there are some red flags and issues that have been coming up which I really want some advice or just a third party perspective on. Normally I would go to my friends (who all live abroad), but partly through my fault for neglecting them because of the time I've spent with my girlfriend, it's been very hard to actually get to any Skype calls. Hopefully I'll have one this weekend with one of my friends though. My friends have not been very successful with relationships and so taking relationship advise from them feels a bit like reading a diet book written by a fat man. Primarily though I feel like I've been avoiding them as a way of avoiding important information about this relationship. A part of me fears that they'd tell me I should break up if they knew everything. Having said which, my girlfriend has been supportive of me contacting them, and when I told her just now that I wanted to post on this forum she was encouraging of that, too! She said that either way I need more information and a third perspective and she too was curious what people would say. I think a part of me is also scared of people telling me that the red flags and hurts aren't that big of a deal, because then all of my triggers around intimacy and closeness with another human being would set off. I'm going to try and be balanced and fair to both the good and bad aspects of the relationship. Backstory We met online through a dating site in the first week of December. After about a week of texting we moved to texting on Skype and then maybe within a week after that we had our first Skype video call. It lasted 8 hours. I've never spoken to someone for so long in my life! I easily get bored of people in general and being an introvert I reach social exhaustion levels very quickly, but this was different, I didn't want the conversation to end. Since then we've been communicating a LOT. The logistical complication is that I live in the UK and she lives in the US. We decided the Christmas holidays were a good opportunity for both of us to meet in person, especially as I was getting furloughed and had a few extra holiday days, so we both flew to NY (a "neutral" location). We decided to save on costs by getting a shared AirBnB and also because we didn't want to say goodbye to each other at night. We had decided that sleeping together (I mean literally sleeping, not sex) was a possibility but if either of us didn't feel comfortable there was a couch as an option. We setup some sexual boundaries: we could basically do anything except actual intercourse but we'd only do what both of us felt comfortable with. Bottom line is that by night 3 we had failed, there was way too much sexual tension and we both have pretty high sex drives, so we had sex. From then until the end of the trip we probably had sex averaging 2-3 times a day. I think on some level we both kind of hoped it would happen. We saw each other again last week. My girlfriend came to the UK this time to visit me and we spent 9 whole days together. Right now our tentative plan is for her to move here in March or more likely April as she wants to quit her job and not live with her parents anymore and I'm bound by a contract that doesn't expire until 14 months from now (breaking it costs a ridiculous sum of money...). The Good I'll start with the great things about this relationship and my girlfriend: We constantly communicate with RTR and have done since day one. Actually since before we were committed to each other. This was largely my doing - I introduced the concept and constantly communicated my feelings and asked her about hers, and she reciprocated and loved the idea. She's ordered the book and is reading it. We split all of our costs half-half. When I came to NY and my flight was more expensive than hers, she paid for the AirBnB in its entirety to help balance that cost out. She wears little to no makeup. She also doesn't wear high heels to make her butt stick out. She's a minimalist, constantly downsizes, doesn't buy useless crap, and saves a very large portion of her paycheck every month. She embodies all the virtues I seek in others and strive for in myself: honesty, curiosity, compassion, kindness, integrity, and courage. She's not perfect of course and sometimes falls short, as do I, but she really strives towards them. She doesn't drink alcohol, smoke, or take drugs. A complete teetotaler, just like me. People like that are rare, even within the FDR community. She loves the idea of peaceful parenting! I'm not sure if she knew the terminology but from the beginning she came into the relationship with the idea that she'd never hit her (our) kids. That we should be respectful of their needs, treat them like people with feelings, etc. She's agnostic/atheist after being brought up very religious in Texas. She de-converted 2 years ago. I hadn't felt safe crying with another human being since I was 10. I haven't just felt safe crying with my girlfriend, I've felt safe weeping with her, and she handled it beautifully. This was trust she built up. If you had asked me 3 months ago when I thought I might feel safe crying in front of another person, I would have said 10 years to never. Following my example (and because of some of the revelations/realizations in the next section), she has actually committed to doing therapy. She's done two sessions and has another one booked for next week. She's listened to some podcasts and videos by Stef, read "On Truth", and generally done a lot of wisdom-gaining and self-knowledge since we've been together. We're incredibly open and honest in our communication, with very few exceptions (see below). She's the first and only person I've ever enjoyed having sex with (not that I have much experience - 2 other women). We're constantly curious about each others' feelings and are empathetic towards each other. When we're feeling disconnected or not empathetic we both tell the truth about it, we don't pretend to feel things we're not feeling and we admit/recognize when we're intellectualizing. We look out for each others' needs and highlight when the other person could be self-sacrificing (e.g. me staying up late to talk to her due to time zone differences and therefore losing sleep). She's very intelligent. I feel like she's my equal and this makes our conversations endlessly engaging and interesting. She's painfully aware of the discrimination boys face growing up in terms of emotional acceptance and abuse, and that men face in courts, in the media, etc. Moreover, she first broached this topic, not me. I would feel safe marrying and having children with her and knowing she'd never abuse the system in case of a divorce for money or custody. She's fit and healthy, and does a good amount of exercise. I do a fair bit too, and we have some good exercise plans together! The Bad There have been a number of hurtful things that she's done. The first to come up were mean or cruel "joke"-like comments, except they weren't funny to me and they were hurtful. I'm a sensitive person and do not at all have a thick skin, nor do I want to, least of all in an intimate relationship. These were not intentional or conscious and when I pointed them out to her, sometimes after some convincing, she realized why they were hurtful and has since made a lot of effort (and success) in stopping or at least greatly reducing the frequency of these comments. I think in time they will stop completely. Verbal abuse can be very triggering for me and still now I feel anxious in conversations because I don't know when an attack might be coming. It's completely random and not on purpose from her end. This is the environment she grew up in and I'm challenging it. But it's getting better. One time I was punished for my empathy. When I expressed a great deal of empathy for the pain she felt during a medical procedure in the past, she lashed out and said "Well maybe you shouldn't be in the same room when I give birth to a child then". This was tremendously hurtful because she was both threatening to deprive me of that opportunity and punishing me for empathizing with her. Later on we realized and it was confirmed in therapy that she was basically pushing me away because she felt uncomfortable with how much I cared about her. She has since apologized many times for this, recognized how hurtful it was, brought it up in her first therapy session, etc. Moreover since then (there was another medical procedure recently that I went with her to) she has felt very comfortable with me being there for her and her pain. She has a very dissociated relationship with her pain in general because of her history of child abuse. But she's actually actively working on it now. The recency of her breakup with her ex. It's in the TL;dr above. She's had just one week to process and grieve over her previous breakup and she misled me about how long that was and presented the relationship as basically over 2 months earlier, when really she was still having sex with her ex of 1.5 years until the last day. This feels like a dealbreaker type of red flag. For more information, this is the only ex she's had that she's had a sexual relationship with. The last few times they had sex she actually cried during and suspects her ex never even noticed. They were not emotionally connected at all and yet she was the one who pushed for the sex more than him. Perhaps the worst thing is that she never thought these two details (the recency of the sex and the crying during sex) were red flags and bad experiences worth mentioning. She never hid them directly, I found out just by asking, but she never came forward because she didn't realize how much of a problem that is. A few weeks ago, her ex texted her and asked if she wanted to meet up (as they had vaguely agreed on before their breakup), and her response was hurtful. She told him she had a new boyfriend and didn't want to meet up right now. The "right now" made me feel even more like a rebound or replacement as if she were trying to line him up for a possible future meeting if we broke up. This was especially hurtful because she knew how hurt I was by the recency of the breakup. Because of this text incident, I felt even more used as a rebound and insecure in our relationship and commitment. Afterwards, she blocked all communication with him, but closure is something she should have given all three people involved upfront, and not after a long discussion with me. I suspect this was an attempt to self-sabotage in the relationship. She's withheld information about another ex which she didn't even really see as an ex because they had dated but never committed to each other and so weren't "official". That relationship lasted half a year and had the disturbing element of him encroaching on her sexually, groping, etc. They saw each other maybe a dozen times alone. Unfortunately, after the first time it happened she kept seeing him, and of course it happened another two times before she finally stopped seeing him. The fact that she had completely blanked on the worst of those encounters until she really thought about it is quite disturbing and scary, as there was physical violence involved. This was a few years ago now but she clearly hasn't processed or fully understood and felt what happened. It's on her to-discuss list with her therapist. 2-3 weeks ago I had a couple of panic attacks, for the first time in my life. I think those were shortly after the birthing room comment. I had never had these before in my life, and it was very scary. I can suspect what was going on for me emotionally but this post is already growing very long. I haven't had any since then and things have been better. Also, during these attacks my girlfriend answered a call to be with me in the middle of the night for her (timezone differences) to be there for me and asked me to call her whenever something like this happened again regardless of the time. Still, this is a worrying thing and shows how difficult it's been for me emotionally. I feel a lot of emotional turmoil in this relationship. Anxiety, fear of impending doom, and feeling overwhelmed are some of the "negative" (I know they're not really negative) emotions that come up a lot, both because of the closeness and triggers and because of the hurts. Especially since the birthing comment and then finding out more about her exes, it's been harder for me to enjoy our time together. I get triggered and think about these hurts pretty frequently and it really interferes with my enjoyment of the relationship. I also frequently feel disconnected and like I can't fully be there for or empathize with her. Some of these negatives are red flags from her past, and others are hurtful things she's done. Those that are red flags from her past that she did not share upfront were also hurtful. For instance, had I known that she had had sex so recently with her ex and that she cried during it, I would have never went with shared accommodation on our first trip together. In a sense I did not give informed consent to sex because I did not know all that I should have known. Can these hurts be recovered from (on my end)? Are they objectively that bad? The one I feel the worst about is the recency of her breakup with her ex and that she waited only a week before dating again after the end of a 1.5 year relationship, and the text she sent him. Should I (like my therapist said) try to focus more on how my girlfriend acts in our relationship rather than on her past? Is this going to get better over time? A lot of these hurts are very recent. A part of me feels like her efforts to change are "too little, too late", but is that true? I have a rule against dating people I'm not comfortable spending the rest of my life with as they are now. This rule is there to protect me from treating people as projects or from unrealistically hoping that they will change, because in my experience the vast majority of people have no desire to change and never do. However, my girlfriend is actually changing and growing and working on herself. She's taken on some serious commitments to therapy and self-work, there are clear improvements as the weeks go by in terms of reduced hurtful comments and improved empathy and curiosity, etc. Confounding Variables There is a bunch of stuff in my life both in my past and that's going on now that is complicating things, and I think it's important to do a brief overview: I have an ACE score of 6. I begun my path to self-knowledge just over 2 years ago but it's been rather iffy in some parts where I spent a lot of my time dissociating, especially after the breakup with my ex over 1.5 years ago. I have self-sabotaging parts of me (sorry for using the Internal Family Systems terminology) that are really uncomfortable with me being in a relationship. My original plan was: I'm 25 now. Wait till I'm 26 and have some more money saved up and can afford regular therapy. Do therapy for a couple of years. Hopefully find someone I want to be in a relationship with by the time I'm 30. I never expected things to turn out like this. Now I've accelerated my plans and I'm doing weekly therapy sessions (sometimes twice a week, sometimes I skip a week) and it's terrifying because of all my traumas. I've forsaken all of my coping mechanisms. I used to spend most of my free time watching movies and TV shows, playing video games, and watching porn. I no longer do any of these. I've lost interest completely. The only thing I've done is watch 2 movies and those were with my girlfriend because it was on our to-watch list. I've stopped talking to my parents around the beginning of January. I had been blocking their calls and mostly ignoring them for months before, until I got down to just emails. And then I've stopped replying to those and they haven't tried to contact me again in over a month. Stressful work. Finally, I thought I'd share a text exchange we just had about this forum post: Me: Do you mind me saying when we had sex? I mean when we first had sex? On the forum Me: I feel like it's important Her: No, baby. Tell all the truth that you think is relevant! Her: I’m really eager what people will say! Me: It's going to be a long post :/ Me: I hope someone bothers to read it Her: I’m sure the people who bother to read longer posts will have more valuable advice

So, in my online dating hunt I see something that disturbs me over and over.. It's worded differently every time, but the sentiment is the same.. I love animals more than people. Why do so many young women feel this way? It doesn't make sense to me. There is simply no way that one can connect with an animal with the full range of emotional intimacy, honesty, curiosity, empathy, and authenticity as you can with another person. And yet, there seems to be a large number of young women who really feel as though they love their precious pets with all of their heart, and that this love can't be rivaled in a relationship with another man. This is deeply troubling if that is even remotely true. To me, that signifies a damaged emotional apparatus and an inability to genuinely connect with people. And don't get me wrong - relationships with pets can be deeply rewarding, affectionate, and enjoyable. Nonetheless, I find it disturbing when I read a Tinder or OKCupid profile which has this red flag waving on it. What are the causes of this strange phenomenon? Why does it seem to happen primarily to women? It's quite possible that it happens with similar frequency to men, but men remain less vocal about their preference. I'm almost positive that this is not healthy, but am open to correction if I'm missing something. What are your thoughts?

When I see someone with a tattoo, I wonder if they thought of the long term when they got it. I wonder what their capacity was to understand the long term was when they got that tattoo? I think that by definition, to get a tattoo means to destroy cells somewhere on someone's body to replace it with something "better." I do not think this is a moral question, but a question of functionality and evaluation of compatibility between myself and other people. I am a single male, 25, who is trying to see the virtue through the boobs. I want to know, and come to understand what causes such a degree of self destruction, and I imagine that all the people around were condoning you doing it to some degree, or are the specific reason that you regretfully had so much pain, from a bad choice that you chose. It may come off as judgmental, and it certainly isn't a moral argument, or even a moral question to be sure. I apologize if this seems offensive, as I'm sure it will. I really think this is an important question, and shows us that we should pay attention to what we see, to empirical facts, reason, logic and evidence of behavior. This is just my thoughts and I would love to be shown I'm wrong. Don't give me the exceptions though, I want to know if you think I should not pay attention to this symbol that they have created, this idea that was so powerful they needed it on their body. I want to understand the air that they breathe, that is if they are the mother of my children.

Hi Everyone. I have recently gone on a couple of dates with a girl I met on an online dating site. We really hit it off within the first two dates, and have been really able to communicate at a high level of honesty. There was a little red flag that popped up on the first date though that I recognized and said that I would investigate it a little more thoroughly. I do plan on having a conversation about this subject with this girl to see where she stands, but I was hoping to get some clarity before I have this discussion. Here's the issue: She is fiercely loyal to her friends and will back her friends up even if they are making a bad decision. I disagree with this. I would do anything in my power to protect my friends from making bad decisions, even if this meant that I don't take their side. She told me of how her best friend fell in love with a local cuban man while on vacation at a cuban resort. Her friend has never had any luck with men in Canada. When I saw a picture of her friend, I could safely say that she wasn't very physically attractive. But granted, I have not met this woman. I was then showed a picture of the man who she has fallen in love with in Cuba, and heck, although I'm straight, I'd fall for this guy! My initial reaction was to question the motives of this relationship and bring up the possibility of being manipulated to escape an oppressive country. I was told that everyone brings this up, but her friend is madly in love. The cuban man has proposed to this girl, although they have only spent 5 days together in person. If this was my friend, I'd make it clear that there was some hormonal blinding taking place here. I wouldn't let my friend make this decision based on some skype conversations and one trip to a resort. This woman's parents are completely against this union. If I did this, my parents would also be completely against this union because they would want to protect me from this blinding. The fact that her parents are not supportive is causing her a great deal of emotional angst. Personally, she's not my friend. I don't have any information about this woman other than what I've told you here. I also don't feel I have any relationship built with either parties to express my opinion in a way that would matter. That's fine. I had the weekend open this past weekend and had planned to hang out with this new girl. I was really looking forward to it. She bailed on me to be there for her friend who was upset with her parents for not supporting her engagement. She texted me part way through the day just because she was a little bored. Her friend just wanted company while she wallowed in front of the TV on a beautiful sunny sunday summer day. Because this was what the friend wanted, she was going to do it. She could have chosen a day on the beach with a picnic lunch with me, which was the original plan. I felt fine originally about the bailing on the date, but after this text, felt highly annoyed that I was put on the backburner for a TV date. So two things going on here. She is supporting her friend in making a rash decision. She is bailing on me to do this. I plan on having a conversation with this new girl in my life. But I don't know if this is a huge warning sign, or if I should just let this go. My concern is that I will invest the time in getting to know this girl, but any instability her friends experience, will become her instability, in which I am going to have to hear about. Who wants that in their life? Any advice would be hugely appreciated.