My girlfriend is having an identity CRISIS… and it’s straining our relationship!-r/relationships | Reddit Stories | EP2320 - ok storytime

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is John. This is your og Okay Storytime podcast hosts, and.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
We have some rocking stories for you coming up. But
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keeping the show rocking and rolling.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
My girlfriend is having an identity crisis and it's straining
our relationship.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
She thinks she's all that, but she's not.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
Me twenty eight male and Sarah twenty eight female met
in undergraduate school about ten years ago. Back then, we
weren't really friends, but the times I met her, I
always found her extremely attractive and super intelligent. After college,
I lost contact with her, although we were Facebook friends.
But two years ago, when I moved across the country
for business school, I found out she was finishing her

(00:44):
doctoral degree at the same university. So I contacted her
and as we were both single, we hit it off
and started dating soon after.

Speaker 4 (00:53):
By the way this comes from It's been Bean and if.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
You want to submit your own stories, go to the
r slash Okay Storytime Separate it.

Speaker 5 (00:59):
So.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
Sarah is originally from Iran. She immigrated to the States
when she was fifteen with her family. Because her family
belongs to a religion that is heavily persecuted there. Although
English is her second language, she speaks it like a
native and has no hint of a foreign accent. Sarah
is also naturally blonde, with fair skin and blue eyes.
Her features are extremely Northern European looking, except for her

(01:20):
thick eyebrows, full black eyelashes, and lips. Because of her
perfect American accent and her very blond and fair features,
nobody believes that she is Middle Eastern. When we first
started dating, she wasn't bothered by her European looks and
made jokes of it.

Speaker 4 (01:35):
The rest of her.

Speaker 3 (01:36):
Family aren't blonde, and some of them look typically Middle Eastern.
She never discussed race and ethnicity before and didn't react
when people didn't believe that she was from Iran.

Speaker 4 (01:44):
However, six months ago, she went for.

Speaker 3 (01:47):
A postdoctoral training in Europe, and when she came back
her attitude changed drastically. She kept complaining about white people
and how they try to wipe out the West from
people of color like her. She gets annoyed that Pele
refer to her as white because of her features. She
said that she's not white, and it annoys her when
people don't believe that she's Iranian. She keeps making jokes

(02:08):
about white people and typical white things people do, and
when I tell her it's ridiculous of her making those
jokes while she's as white as it comes, she gets
pissed and snaps at me. Now, aside from those comments,
I think she's going a bit crazy with this non
white identity thing, getting fed up with people assuming that
she's of European descent. She dyed her hair completely black,
put on dark contact lenses, and started using these tanning products,

(02:29):
which look completely awful. She also started using a fake
accent to sound more foreign. I find these behaviors completely
out of character. She's always been logical, intelligent, and never
acted like this before. She's almost thirty, and it seems
crazy to have this identity rebellion while not a teenager.
When I try to talk to her about the behavior,
she says that I'm just being typical white, high class

(02:50):
I don't know what to do. I'm just hoping it's
a phase and she'll return to normal. She's the most beautiful, intelligent,
and nicest girl I've met, and I'm afraid of this
behavior being a deal breaker. And there is update, But yeah,
I mean, I feel like that could be something that
you need to reflect on and yourself of not like
how you think about her race or anything, but just
like how you would go about her own issues, because

(03:12):
it kind of feels like, you know, saying that she's
being ridiculous saying this, She's like crazy.

Speaker 4 (03:18):
Those aren't things that you want to.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
Say to your girlfriend who's going through some problems, especially
when they're problems that.

Speaker 5 (03:22):
Like you couldn't understand identity crisis.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, Like and he even acknowledged that, like
he even called it that, and he's still kind of
like still disregarding it in a way. So it's like
if he really has a problem with it, like I
feel like subconsciously probably comes from a supportive spot for him,
just like you don't have to change yourself.

Speaker 4 (03:45):
I don't understand like the feeling of needing.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
To change yourself to like a appear differently to others.
But you know, I feel like that would just be
more of a conversation. He should just be a little
bit more understanding about that. So hopefully this doesn't become
a deal breaker.

Speaker 4 (03:59):
But we do have date.

Speaker 3 (04:00):
So I was going to give a long detailed update
on what Sarah told me after we had a long
heart to heart discussion which cleared up a lot of things. However,
a lot has happened since the last week, which I
need advice on, so I will try to shortly summarize
our talk the day after the post and then come
to current events. When I posted my original post, I
got a variety of responses, ranging on how I'm not

(04:23):
acknowledging her identity to how she's white because Iranian means
belonging to the Aryan race and therefore her being white.
So I decided to approach her by not confronting her
on her behavior and ask what happened in Europe and
that I would like to understand her feelings in pob better.
She told me, as a kid in Iran, the concept
of race was different. Everyone was considered Iranian and generally

(04:45):
speaking white, no matter how dark or white you were,
but it didn't have the same meaning of being white
in the States.

Speaker 4 (04:52):
She said.

Speaker 3 (04:52):
However, the prejudice people face there was never because of
ethnicity or of skin color, but because but it was
due to religion or a political position, and faced by
the government and not people in general. However, her family
belonged to a religion that was treated badly, and she
was scared of people finding out, and that sometimes she
would pretend to be Muslim in school because she was

(05:14):
scared of her friends finding out and treating her differently. Now,
when she moved to the States, she had a vision
of living in a place that everyone is treated equally,
with equal opportunities, and she would no longer have to
hide that part of her identity.

Speaker 6 (05:27):
And then you have people just assuming that that part
of her identity.

Speaker 5 (05:31):
Doesn't even exist.

Speaker 3 (05:33):
Yeah, yeah, So unfortunately she learned that that wasn't the case.
She moved right after the nine to eleven tax, where
people started fearing Middle Eastern people and discriminating against them.
She witnessed a lot of rape when she would tell
people where she was from. She said, a lot of
people she knew in the Persian community started hiding their
origins and would lie about.

Speaker 4 (05:53):
Where they were from, fearing for their safety.

Speaker 3 (05:55):
After a while, she managed to further americanize her accent
and given her very blog features, she managed to blend
in and would lie about her origins when people asked her.
When people asked about her exotic name and last name,
she says she feels like a hypocrite since the day
she started lying about her religion to her friends when
she was in Iran. While people of her religion would
sacrifice their lives not to hide it, and then hiding

(06:18):
her ancestry and culture in order not to face discrimination,
going to Europe made things worse. She was mocked by
a lot of Europeans for her American culture. She was
liked by a lot of neo Nazis who basically wanted
to wipe Middle Easterns from Europe, telling her things not
knowing she was Iranian as well.

Speaker 4 (06:36):
Yeah, that's got to be so difficult.

Speaker 6 (06:40):
It's just like the feeling of guilt that she must
feel as like a woman who can assimilate effectively, you know.

Speaker 4 (06:46):
And then the fear too, of like fear.

Speaker 5 (06:49):
Yes, absolutely so.

Speaker 3 (06:51):
A lot of her Middle Eastern friends would accuse her
of faking a white European look and would not believe
her that she naturally looks like that. She said, a
lot of emotions were brought up, and lots of other
examples from her past. She told me so. Now she
wants to make up for the times that she hid
her identity. She thinks by looking like a traditional looking Persian,
she could make a statement about who she is.

Speaker 4 (07:12):
I asked about her fake accent.

Speaker 3 (07:13):
She said she's not trying to fake a Persian accent
because that's not how her new accent sounds like. She
said she hated how her friends in Europe made fun
of American accents and told her that she sounds like
a valley girl. She said, she's just trying to sound
less valley like and go back to what was once
her normal accent, which she's not sure anymore.

Speaker 4 (07:32):
How it sounded like.

Speaker 6 (07:33):
That's so heartbreaking, like again have to assimbl or feel
like you have to assimilate your safety and lose your
accent and then people are now telling you all like
why do you sound like that?

Speaker 5 (07:47):
You have to try and get back but you don't
even remember what it was.

Speaker 3 (07:50):
Yeah, literally, like everywhere she goes, which are incredibly different
places in the whole world, she's being told that she
has to act different because of her race.

Speaker 5 (07:59):
Or Yeah, she's like so complicated. Yikes.

Speaker 3 (08:03):
That night, I did empathize with what she told me,
although I wasn't convinced of the passive aggression she'd been
showing towards white people. I tried to address it, and
she denied any animosity and said that she's only stating
the fact about white culture and how the majority of
white people in Western world are acting, and that she's
not being hateful at all. I decided not to argue
about it because I saw how it made her upset

(08:24):
and stir up things. I just noticed that she would
get so touchy about the subject anyway.

Speaker 4 (08:28):
I decided to just.

Speaker 3 (08:29):
Change subjects and asked her to introduce me more to
Persian culture and that we could go to some cultural
events together. She seemed enthusiastic about the idea.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
That's a great idea.

Speaker 3 (08:39):
However, things took some severe turns in the past few days.
This Friday, we got invited to a friend's birthday party.
We had both planned in advance to go and had
picked up a different and had picked up a gift
from both of us. I called her while I was
at work if she could come to my place and
we could go together. She tells me that she can't
go because she needs to work on her resume to
apply for a new job. She's currently very stressed about

(09:01):
finding new jobs, but it's nothing out of the ordinary
for her. I got angry and told her that she
can't just cancel last minute like that, and she then
just explodes and starts rambling about one hundred different things
that she's mad at me about. She spoke so fast
and aggrieved that I couldn't follow what she was talking about.
She told me not to pick her up and that
she's not coming to the party. I was pissed and
confused and went to the party without her. I expected

(09:24):
a text or a call later that she would apologize
to me and the friends, but I didn't hear anything
from her. I didn't hear anything on Sunday either, and
was tempted to text to check up on her, but
didn't because she should be the one contacting me. On Monday,
not hearing anything for two days, I got worried and
gave up and called and texted her, but got no reply.
I'm thinking she's acting like a little kid with unfounded aggression.

(09:46):
But then on Monday I got a call from her
parents that they haven't heard anything about her and are
asking me about her whereabouts.

Speaker 4 (09:53):
This is getting a little scary now.

Speaker 3 (09:56):
They live in West Coast and we are in the
East Coast currently, so I became really worried. I went
to her place Monday night, but no one was there.
Now I'm starting to panic and have no idea what's happening.
I've contacted everyone she knows in our city, and no
one knows where she is. I'm worried like crazy. I
don't know what I should do, if I should call
the police or just wait for her contact. If her

(10:18):
parents didn't call to ask, I would have assumed that
she was just angry at me. But now I don't
know what to think. And we do have an updates,
but oh my gosh, I'm scared too now.

Speaker 4 (10:27):
So this is a completely different problem than what we
had before.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
Things have progressed. Yeah, yikes.

Speaker 3 (10:34):
I kind of want to just go into the update
because I really need to know I'm worried.

Speaker 4 (10:38):
So update number two.

Speaker 3 (10:39):
I texted and emailed Sarah again with a message that
I'm just extremely worried about her, and so are her parents,
and I just want to know if she's safe. Many
suggested to call the police, but I thought I would
wait a little bit more before doing it. A few
hours ago, Sarah called me crying and said that she's
in the hospital. She went to a clinic on Saturday
to ask if she could get some pills to calm
her down because she was panicking and stressed about some

(11:01):
job decision and had an extreme headache. She said that
she had a lot of headaches and it wouldn't stop,
so she took about six to eight exadrons in a
few hours and it wasn't helping. Six to eight anything
in a few hours not good, So she went to
a clinic and they told her that the amount of
cedamnifin could be toxic for her liver and told her

(11:23):
to go to the er. Yeah, because oh my gosh.
At the hospital, they tested her for and her blood
result was totally fine, but decided to commit her into
the psych unit involuntarily to further evaluate her. She told
me that she thought she would be released the day after,
but they're not letting her until they're sure that she's safe.
She refused to call me, her family or any other

(11:45):
friend because she was too embarrassed to being in a
psych unit. However, she learned that they would probably not
let her out soon until they're sure that she has
a support unit. And seeing my message how everyone is
worried and looking for her, she decided to tell me
the hospital told me that I could is it her
during the visiting hours later today, so I will go
then and see what I can do. She told me
to just make something up to her parents for now

(12:07):
and see what happens when she gets out. I'm just
glad that she's safe and we'll find out more later
in the morning when I visit her. Thanks Reddit for
your support. And that's it.

Speaker 4 (12:16):
Oh my gosh, Wow, that was crazy.

Speaker 7 (12:19):
It was wild.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (12:21):
I mean, I mean I don't feel like taking like
eight etcrin is like a oh well, clearly this person
is like a risk to their own safety. It's like
more like that's just like one of that. This is
like a very dumb brain like I'm not I don't
understand how medications work.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
Thing to do.

Speaker 8 (12:35):
Yeah, And it's like clearly her liver levels were fine.
It's like she she didn't take anywhere near enough to
like severely like hurt her. Whoever told her that was
just being safe better safe than sorry.

Speaker 1 (12:45):
Yeah, but like you know, clearly, I mean, that's four
hundred milligrams of caffeine.

Speaker 4 (12:50):
It's a lot.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
It's you know, a lot.

Speaker 8 (12:52):
It's not gonna and that's not gonna hear anything, but
it's a lot.

Speaker 3 (12:56):
Yeah, because I mean, yeah, it probably is just that,
like they like want to make sure she's okay, and
they don't know her, so they probably are like, you
don't know if this is like a normal occurrence that
she usually does. So yeah, hopefully things will turn out
and she's and the boyfriend can op he can vouch
for her and explain that, like, no, this isn't normal.

Speaker 8 (13:18):
My boyfriend dislikes dogs, Should I break up with him?

Speaker 6 (13:23):
Yes?

Speaker 8 (13:24):
My boyfriend Paul twenty five male, and I twenty two female,
met in college at a seminar and hit it off
right away. We were really obnoxiously sappy and had a
lot of fun together. I let him know right off
the bat that I loved dogs and had two big dogs,
bub a Mastiff mix, and Read a German Shepherd. I

(13:45):
also let him know that I regularly fostered, volunteered, and
did basic obedient slash behavioral training for various agencies.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
By the way, this comes from throw.

Speaker 8 (13:54):
It Away three and if you want to submit your
own stories, go to our slash Okay story time I'm
sub Reddit.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
So he told me that he loved dogs.

Speaker 8 (14:04):
He even offered to go to dog parks, training seminars,
and jogging with me bub and Red. I was over
the moon because now I could spend time with my
favorite person and my little bodies. I began notice that
sometimes Paul would be stand office around dogs when he
thought I wasn't paying attention, and Bub and Red never
took to him.

Speaker 1 (14:24):
I later found out it was because he'd.

Speaker 8 (14:26):
Only touch or play with them while I was around,
and he'd ignore them when I wasn't. I chalked it
up to the fact that he had small dogs as
a child and wasn't used to the large ones. Also,
they can be somewhat intimidating when you meet them due
to their size. More red flags appeared when we'd spend
most of the time at my place because it was
really big and I lived by myself while he lived

(14:48):
with three roommates. He started dropping hints about us moving
in together a year ago, but I told him I
wasn't comfortable with that until he was financially responsible. He
has over one hundred thousand dollars in debt and being
in grad school kept that number climbing, and we wouldn't
be moving in together until he could pay his portion
of the rent. I rent quote unquote from my dad

(15:09):
for around two thousand a month and he can barely
pay the three hundred for his current place. This made
him mad, and he'd make passive aggressive comments about bub
Red and my free loading foster dogs. So that's when
you break up with him.

Speaker 1 (15:22):
Right there. Your dogs aren't even paying rent.

Speaker 4 (15:25):
This is crazy.

Speaker 1 (15:27):
These dogs need jobs. He was also insanely jealous of Max,
the dog trainer and sitter.

Speaker 5 (15:35):
I use oh boy.

Speaker 8 (15:36):
I knew Max when he first opened his business with
his best friend and have always been and I've always
used their services for bub and Red mainly because they
have seriously good credentials, give me great training, demonstrations and
advice for free. Their training methods are compatible with my dogs,
and I receive half off for being their first slash
longtime customer. Paul would make rude comments about him, really jealous,

(16:01):
and when I pick up my dogs from their office,
he'd complain about the office smelling like crap. It doesn't
They've housetrained all the dogs they sit and keep it spotless.
Then he would tell me to go myself, but if
I stay for more than five minutes, he'd barge in
and make a big deal about taking forever, even though
I tell him I'm going to take ten minutes to
go over their training and their day. I guess what
made me break it off nice is that Red is

(16:24):
a dog I fostered than adopted after I left my parents'
home for college. When I first got him, he was
a horribly behaved, skinny dog with human and dog aggression.
I worked for a year to getting him used to
other people and dogs to curb his aggression, plus constant
obedience training, a strict diet, and exercise so he'd become

(16:44):
the perfect.

Speaker 1 (16:45):
Angel he is today lovely.

Speaker 8 (16:48):
He's around six years old and is a pure bred
German Shepherd of dubious origin, meaning that there might be
a host of genetic problems that I don't know about
and can't even track his pedigree to find out. The
last month, he's not as active, is losing his appetite,
and has lost a lot of weight. No. I have
paid thousands to have every test done and have gone
to numerous vets and specialists, but they still.

Speaker 1 (17:10):
Don't know the problem.

Speaker 8 (17:12):
I'm watching my baby boy wither away in front of me,
but all Paul has done is insult me for wasting
money on a lost car.

Speaker 3 (17:19):
Oh my gosh, you can't be in you can't you.
You can't be insulting the dog and against the dog
in any case, but you especially can't be doing that
when the dog is going through this hard time. That

(17:39):
is the worst time to talk about that.

Speaker 6 (17:42):
Ugh.

Speaker 8 (17:43):
So he made a comment yesterday about how I've never
lent him that much money and when.

Speaker 1 (17:48):
He bites the dust, that'll free up some space. Oooh,
I hate this man.

Speaker 8 (17:57):
Oh, he says, I hate showing extreme emotions and prefer
to have calm discussions. But I blew up and we
got into our first screaming match, and it should be
your last, where I basically asked what his problem was,
and he admitted that he lied about loving dogs because
he thought a girl like me would never date him
unless he did, and that he hates slash, is jealous
of my dogs, thinks dogs are disgusting and can't wait

(18:19):
until my dogs pass away because then he can finally
move in and they'll be out of our lives.

Speaker 4 (18:24):
That is incredibly pathetic. It's pathetic you're jealous of dogs.

Speaker 3 (18:31):
I had a man once say that I couldn't call
my dogs cutie because I called him that Wow, it's
so so pathetic, and especially what this guy is saying
of like, like, oh, I just I had to lie
about myself for a girl like you to love me.
You had to lie about who you are and what

(18:53):
you like and keep up that lie around her just
so that she can love you.

Speaker 4 (18:59):
Like, dude, that's so stupid.

Speaker 8 (19:02):
Guys like this that make me understand why women would
pick the bear. So this all ended with me screaming
for him to get out. He refused to leave it first,
but eventually left after I threatened to call the cops.
After he was gone, I texted that we were done.
I ended up sitting on the floor crying and hugging
my babies.

Speaker 1 (19:19):
Yeah, he's been.

Speaker 8 (19:20):
Teetering between texting insults and apologies. I blocked his number,
but I guess he told all our friends that I'm
crazy and I broke up with him out of the
blue over a mutt. Some have message to me about
what my effing problem is. I'm a psycho loser for
dumping him. It's just an effing mut. Well, yeah, and
you can just block all those people.

Speaker 5 (19:40):
Anyone who texts you.

Speaker 6 (19:41):
It's just an efing mutt, I would say, I hate
you don't talk to me.

Speaker 4 (19:45):
I would say, let's look at your ancestry.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (19:48):
I broke up after an argument with him during an
emotionally charged situation, something I'm not used to. He's really
passive aggressive sometimes, but that was the first time he
said anything like that. My question is should I contact
him to talk now that we both had time to
calm down?

Speaker 1 (20:03):
No? No, what's there to talk about?

Speaker 8 (20:10):
It was really fun spending time with him, even though
the whole thing was built on a lie the whole time. Plus,
I'm not sure if he really feels that way about
bub and Red, because he's never been cruel to them
or mistreated them.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
I think it might be.

Speaker 8 (20:22):
Because he's frustrated I refuse to let him move in. No,
he just told you the truth and you need to
hear it and believe it. Also, how do I handle
the friend's situation? Our friends seem to have developed an
extremely negative opinion of me and won't stop sending me
texts about my how I was being see you next Tuesday?
You just say, this guy was telling me he can't

(20:42):
wait for my dog to Yeah.

Speaker 4 (20:45):
Like, let me inform you a little bit from my perspective.

Speaker 8 (20:48):
What do you think about that? And if they still
are like you're wrong? Bye, Goodbye, not my friend anymore.
Thank you for all your advice and concern. When this
was posted, I hadn't slept and my thoughts were all
over the place. Honestly, besides Paul, I don't interact with
anyone in a friendly setting besides my dogs and Max,
which is why I think he hates them so much.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
Date Max.

Speaker 8 (21:10):
Rereading my post and every reply and personal message, I
feel disgusted with myself for even thinking about contacting him
or subjecting my babies to his presence. Yay. He has
taken to texting and calling me from different numbers, so
I just sent him one message via Facebook telling him
not to contact me and blocked him. I've decided to
cut off all of his friends. I don't need that
in my life. I've also set an appointment with my

(21:30):
vet to discuss the possibility that Red may have been
poisoned or slowly poisoned.

Speaker 3 (21:35):
Oh my gosh, can you imagine jail straight to jail?

Speaker 4 (21:39):
Honestly, I feel like you could do something.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
You know that's animal abuse. You send him to jail.

Speaker 8 (21:44):
Someone messaged me asking why I really liked him, and
I'll address that here. He's the first guy besides Max
to approach me without flirting or an ulterior motive. I
grew up my whole life being told that my looks
were most important. My goal in life should be marrying
someone who was at least as wealthy as my dad.

Speaker 1 (22:04):
Funny story. When my mom paid attention to me, it was.

Speaker 8 (22:07):
To share life advice, like, sweetie, you better hope you
grow into your nose because doctor John her plastic surgery
might retire by the time your face figures out if
it wants to be ugly.

Speaker 3 (22:16):
Oh my god, that kept getting so much worse statement.

Speaker 8 (22:21):
It sounds like that mom who just likes to drink
red wine and takes annex. His apparent disinterest regarding my
physical appearance made me really happy, and the fact that
he didn't fit into the grand plan my parents set
made me feel like I was making my own choice.
Right now, my dogs are ignoring me because I got
there fur all wet Nah. I'm getting them a squeaky
toy today to make up for it. Oh, and there

(22:42):
is an important update here. Do we have any thoughts before?
I mean, clearly, yeah, you've left the man that's great.

Speaker 4 (22:49):
Yeah, I think those are like those are understandable.

Speaker 3 (22:52):
It you know, reasons to kind of stay with someone
and to to it's unastandable to think those things. But
hopefully after this you'll learn that, like, that's not the
only requirement. There's a lot more boxes that someone needs
to check off and that doesn't mean that they're like
the best person to stay with, you know, And I'm
sure she'll learn that.

Speaker 1 (23:11):
Update. Most important update, Red is doing better.

Speaker 8 (23:14):
I went to a holistic vet and took their advice
on switching him from a conventional kibble diet to a
raw diet with supplements, and it was like a miracle.
He ate everything and has been putting on weight. Plus,
his activity levels shot through the roof, and he's happier
because he can go on small hikes and go swimming again.

Speaker 1 (23:31):
It's only been two.

Speaker 8 (23:31):
Weeks since the change, but bub and I have our
buddy back and it's the best. I've done a lot
of thinking and they say hindsight is twenty twenty, but
I still feel bad. I had this realization that I
clung onto Paul because I've spent years isolating myself from everyone.
It was easier to rely on him than to put
myself out there and interact. When we first met, he
made the effort to hang out when he.

Speaker 1 (23:52):
Wanted to date.

Speaker 8 (23:53):
I agreed because I was lonely and he was fun
and sweet. He'd talk so I didn't have to, and
he dictated the standards of our relationship. I also think
that he liked me because of that. He didn't need
to worry about other people talking to me because I
didn't have anyone else.

Speaker 1 (24:08):
Maybe in the beginning he put up with.

Speaker 8 (24:09):
My dogs because they were the lesser of two evils,
but he still hated them because they were something I
loved and cared about that wasn't him. I also think
that's the same reason he hated Max, because I could
actually talk to him like a friend, and Paul felt thereat.
I'm also at fault for the problems in our relationship.
I used Paul as an outlet for human interaction. Well,

(24:31):
he's your boyfriend, so that's fair, and an excuse not
to need to get to know people. Well, that's just codependency.
I always made excuses for issues that arose during our
relationship because addressing them scared me. I never told him
if I didn't like something, and I just smiled at everything.
I think that's why he thought that without my dogs,
our life would be picture perfect. I'd always concede to

(24:52):
whatever he wanted, except when it came to them and finances.
The finance part is mainly because I lent him money
in the beginning of our relationship and he never paid
me back back. Sweetie, I feel like you've found a
guy who just like saw you as a target. He's like, oh,
here's a woman who will do whatever I say. Plus,
my money is from my dad and inheritance from my grandpa,

(25:12):
and I feel like a leech if I spend it frivolously.
I didn't contact Paul, but I did reach out to
his best friend, James, who didn't bother me after the breakup,
and asked if he could stop by my place to
pick up Paul's things. I asked him if he could
come alone because I didn't want to see Paul, and
he agreed. But when he came, I saw Paul with him,
but standing behind a pillar. I asked the security guard

(25:33):
to take the box out to them and went back
to my condo.

Speaker 4 (25:36):
Smart. That was very smart what Paul was hiding.

Speaker 1 (25:40):
I was told by the front desk.

Speaker 8 (25:41):
Later that day that Paul tried to get inside but
was stopped by security and he ended up causing some
damage to the lobby. My dad found out and he
doesn't want me living there anymore, so I'll be moving
in April.

Speaker 5 (25:51):
Good.

Speaker 8 (25:52):
I've started trying to meet new people and make some friends.
It's been somewhat hard, but Max is helping new boyfriend.
He set up a group dog high with all his clients.
Nothing breaks the ice as well as a group of dogs.
Bub and his greyhound girlfriend spent the entire time ignoring
everyone in noodling.

Speaker 5 (26:08):
Which was so cute.

Speaker 8 (26:09):
I met a lot of nice people and we planned
some playdates, and a nice couple invited me to lunch.
I find out Max has never watched a single Marvel movie,
so we're going to marathon them all at my place.

Speaker 5 (26:21):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (26:23):
I like where this is going.

Speaker 8 (26:30):
I also went to a board game night with some
people I volunteer with. We played Settlers of Catan, Monopoly
and Forbidden Island.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
Board games are fun. We have a little bit left here.
I think let's just finish it off.

Speaker 5 (26:44):
Huh, suet go ahead.

Speaker 8 (26:46):
My sister called me up asking if I could convince
our dad to let her stay at his beach house
for spring break. She didn't want to ask him herself
because last year she and her friends trashed it. I
offered to let her and her boyfriend's stay with me instead.
She asked about Paul, and I told her about our breakup.
She was very sympathetic and sweet until I finished, and
then she laughed at me, told me I was dumb

(27:06):
and that she's telling Mom.

Speaker 1 (27:07):
Later Mom called to gloat.

Speaker 8 (27:09):
About how she was right about Paul being crappy and
the consequences of not listening to her, and to tell
me she's setting me up with her friend's sons because
I'll fail if I do anything myself.

Speaker 7 (27:19):
Oh my god.

Speaker 8 (27:21):
I told her, don't set me up, but she gave
my number to a bunch of people and set updates
without asking.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
Guess what, you don't have to go to him.

Speaker 5 (27:27):
True.

Speaker 8 (27:27):
I'm trying to power through and focus on myself and
my babies. Thank you everyone for your advice. Whenever I
have moments of weakness, I just reread the entire threat.
It's been very helpful, and I'm working hard to apply
a lot of the comments to my life.

Speaker 3 (27:39):
Our neighbor is flirting with my boyfriend, but he doesn't
think it's a problem.

Speaker 1 (27:44):
Yeah, because I don't like her.

Speaker 3 (27:46):
I'll start this off by saying that I, twenty six female,
trust my boyfriend thirty one male and his bond with me.
We've been together for five years. I just don't trust
his judgment when it comes to minimizing situations and setting boundaries.
And I don't like that this situation is making me
feel gas lit and crazy. I feel like there's no
way to deal with this situation without coming off as controlling,
and I don't know what to do. By the way,

(28:07):
this comes from a throwaway flirty to boyfriend, and if
you want to submit your own stories, go to the
hour slash Okay storytime Separate it. So, an important piece
of context to the story is that my boyfriend is Asian.
I'll refer to my boyfriend as Alex and his neighbor
as June. This story starts off in early December, when
Alex and I were in the mood for some spicy
Korean food and met up after work at a restaurant.

(28:29):
It was a regular food outing with nothing out of
the ordinary. The waitress didn't treat us in any suspicious
way at all and didn't seem overly familiar with us either.
Nothing suspicious to report about. A week after that outing,
Alex sends me a message that reads, You'll never guess
who lives in my apartment complex. The waitress from that
Korean restaurant and I chatted to her. Her name is June.

(28:50):
I think you and her would be good friends. Okay,
this is honestly starting out.

Speaker 1 (28:54):
Not bad, not bad.

Speaker 3 (28:56):
I laughed at the coincidence and thought so too happy
that Alex and I am I have a new friend.
The next day, I asked Alex about how he and
June started chatting.

Speaker 4 (29:05):
Alex explained that while he was getting into the.

Speaker 3 (29:06):
Elevator, he was joined by this girl who was chatting
on the phone with someone. He said that when she
saw him, her reaction was to make a strange sound
between a gasp and a squeal, and she immediately put
the person on.

Speaker 5 (29:17):
Phone on hold.

Speaker 3 (29:19):
She immediately started chatting with Alex, explaining that she was
our waitress at the Korean restaurant, introduced herself as June,
and that she'd seen him around the apartment building for
weeks now and always wanted to talk to him.

Speaker 4 (29:29):
Okay, Getting into suspicious territory right.

Speaker 1 (29:32):
Immediately not chill at all? Yeah, bigle and squeal and
say I've been waving to Joy.

Speaker 5 (29:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
And then actually he introduce you to my girlfriend right.

Speaker 3 (29:45):
Finally, after seeing him at the Korean restaurant with me,
she decided to chat to him. June mentioned seeing his
car coming and going, and how much she loves k pop,
Asian customs and snacks, et cetera. Apparently, she was talking
like a runaway train about any and everything, mostly about
how much she likes Asian things. During this ambient conversation,
they walked into her apartment door so that she could

(30:08):
offload her bags. Alex said that he got off on
her floor as to not be rude by holding the elevator.
So the conversation turned to the apartment building and the
units themselves. My boyfriend's apartment is a two bedroom place
while hers is a single bedroom place, so at that
point they started talking about how the layout of the
two apartments differ. June invited herself to come look at
Alex's apartment, and him, being so kind, allowed her to

(30:31):
come and see it. It was at this point that
she mentioned that the person she put on hold in
the elevator was her mom, and that she just needed
to quickly end the call with her before coming over
to look at the apartment only after she was their
waitress where he saw him, she saw him with his girlfriend.
Did she think, Okay, now it's my time to eventually

(30:52):
find him in the apartment building and start talking to him.
It's not that she just kind of like saw him
and thought that they would be friends or something like that,
just like she probably would have kept holding herself back
if they didn't have this conversation starter.

Speaker 4 (31:05):
This is weird. It's very weird.

Speaker 8 (31:07):
This is weird, dude, It's very very It's weird, undeniably weird.

Speaker 3 (31:11):
Alex said that June showed up ten minutes later with
some snacks in her phone charger, asking if asking him
if he'd mind if she charged her phone while they chat.
This chat turned into a two hour long conversation. I'm
like worried for his safety, not even just their relationship.

Speaker 1 (31:27):
About everything.

Speaker 8 (31:27):
I'd be like, oh my god, someone could just walk
down the street and next thing you know, he'd be like, hey, babe,
can I borrow some money? I accidentally drained my entire
bank account for somebody, just because they asked me to.

Speaker 1 (31:38):
I guess, I don't know. I was talking to them
for forty five minutes.

Speaker 8 (31:41):
The next thing I knew, I had signed them onto
all of my bank accounts.

Speaker 3 (31:45):
Yeah, like, can you, uh, can you help me look
for a new place because this girl, like, we were
chatting and she just brought over a sleeping bag and said, oh,
can I stay here for a little bit now?

Speaker 5 (31:53):
She won't leave.

Speaker 3 (31:54):
So in this conversation, Alex discovered that June had recently
broken up with her ex boyfriend, who was also Asian.
Alex told me that during this conversation, he constantly mentioned
that he has a girlfriend and brought me and my
interests up constantly. He says that he kept telling her
how well she and I would get along as friends.
She only mentioned that she wants to be friends with him. However,

(32:15):
I was shocked by this situation, especially because it seemed
like June had no concept of boundaries since she'd been
watching him for weeks, invited herself over to his place
and hung up on her mom to talk to him,
and also because he only told me about the extent
of their conversation the next day.

Speaker 4 (32:31):
But I didn't get angry.

Speaker 3 (32:32):
I just had a conversation with Alex that this situation
is extremely uncomfortable and bit and a bit stockersh if
she'd been watching him for weeks. He wholeheartedly assured me
that it was innocent and that June just wanted to
be friends. I also told him that I'm happy for
him to make friends, and I'd give her a shot
at being friends as well, so long as the next

(32:53):
time they met up in person it was all of
us together, so that I could also get a feel
of her. The next time Alex told me about June
was to tell me that she had asked him out
on a date. This girl, this girl, clueless, clueless. So
to clarify, Alex doesn't see it as a date and
is playing it down. But the situation is as follows.

(33:13):
It was a Friday evening and she called him to
ask if he wanted to go to a fancy restaurant
with her, since she has a reservation for two and
the other person can't make it. Alex and I already
had our own dinner plans, so he declined. When Alex
told me about this, I was upset. You don't pay
for a reservation. There was no reason why she couldn't
go alone, cancel or postpone the reservation, or ask one

(33:33):
of her friends to go with. And the fact that
it was a reservation for two people on a Friday
night at a fancy restaurant set off alarm bells to me.

Speaker 8 (33:42):
Yeah, she definitely made that reservation for the two of you.

Speaker 3 (33:45):
My god, absolutely if she schemed this whole thing of like, oh,
like I'm I'm gonna hang up to talk to you,
but secretly to like go to your apartment. So of
course she can scheme with this thing.

Speaker 4 (33:59):
It's such an easier scheme to do.

Speaker 3 (34:01):
My goodness, So this situation upset me because Alex kept
trying to play it down as a friendly gesture and
told me that I'm wrong for labeling it as a date.

Speaker 4 (34:10):
He kept saying that he already.

Speaker 3 (34:11):
Told her that he has a girlfriend multiple times and
that she wouldn't make moves on him because he has
a girlfriend. I asked him to tell June that I
was uncomfortable with the situation and set a boundary with her.

Speaker 4 (34:22):
He told me that he didn't want to.

Speaker 3 (34:23):
Cause a scene or create drama, but that he won't
talk to her or befriend her. That upset me more
as well, because I feel like he's making me into
the barrier of not being able to be friends with
this girl, while my actual request was to set a
boundary que to This Friday, Alex and I were on
a short weekend vacation to the beach with some friends
of his. I'm quite tired, so I'm relaxing in the

(34:45):
room with the door open. Alex mentioned earlier that he
was posting some of the pictures to Instagram, and from
the room, I heard him chatting with his friend about
who had commented on his story since they have many
mutual friends. Then I hear Alex tell his friend it
feels like half our city is also hear this weekend.
His voice dropped to a whisper, but I still heard him.
There's a girl from my apartment complex here too, but

(35:07):
OP doesn't like her.

Speaker 5 (35:08):
Uh oh, you're.

Speaker 1 (35:09):
Being followed around my guy? Uh Oh, it is this
rage bait? Is there any man out there who's this oblivious?

Speaker 3 (35:18):
At that moment, it felt like the fury of a
thousand suns entered my blood and I shot up to
enter the conversation. There's only one person in Alex's apartment
complex that he would describe as me not liking I
didn't even know that Alex had added her on Instagram,
and even more awful that it felt like he was
telling his friend my dislike of her was unwarranted. So
I entered the room and loudly said, that's because she

(35:40):
asked you out on a date. She had a date
reservation for two at a fancy restaurant and asked you.
He tried to downplay it again and said, no, it's
only because the other person couldn't come, and I reatter,
and I retaliated by saying, so she asked you. His
friend made a grimace, gave a chuckle, clearly not about
to take sides, and slid backwards into their room. I

(36:02):
asked Alex to explain, and apparently June had seen his
story and spoke to him about how she was also
in the area. It sounds innocent, but I didn't look
at the messages, so I don't know if she asked
him to meet up or anything.

Speaker 4 (36:15):
The title was literally like, oh, she's just flirting with
my boyfriend. She's stocking him.

Speaker 3 (36:20):
Yeah, she's watching his car come in and out of
the apartment, like talking to him about Asian culture and stuff.
When we don't necessarily know her racial background, but I'm
kind of assuming from how it was written that she's
not Asian, and she's just being really weird about that.

Speaker 4 (36:37):
And then she's.

Speaker 3 (36:39):
You guys go away for a weekend vacation and oh coincidentally,
oh my gosh, she's there too. The way I'm in town,
we should hang out, says a little bit more into
the story. So, because we were on vacation and I
didn't want to ruin the trip because of a seemingly
innocent Instagram DM, I decided to not press any further.
My modus operandi is to let things like this go.

(37:00):
But it's been days and I'm still super upset. I'm
upset that I'm not being taken seriously, and then I'm
being painted as the villain. I feel humiliated that I
needed to defend myself in front of his friend. I
feel like I'm being made into the problem, and I
don't know what to do about it. I feel like
I'm going crazy and blowing this up more than it
needs to be. How do I get my boyfriend to

(37:20):
take this more seriously? There are some comments coming. Number
one says, well, your boyfriend certainly is stretching your patience.
He sounds like a nice guy who likes attention and
is excusing it with I just like to make new friends.
What he is ignoring is you feel threatened and uncomfortable,
and that is just as respectful. I'm not saying my
boyfriend can have girlfriends, but I would definitely feel the

(37:41):
same way as you if it happened this way. I'm
not sure what you can do, because if he's not
willing to realize what he is doing is sketchy, he
will make you look like a bad guy and controlling
and OPI responds, he definitely has other girlfriends, some I'm
also friends with and some not who I don't have
problems with because they are genuinely friend. June's behavior doesn't

(38:01):
feel friendly to me, but I don't want to force
my decisions on my boyfriend of who he can and
can't associate with. I just want to talk. I just
want him to maybe set a boundary. I think currently
he's slipped into the mindset that if he leaves it alone,
the issue will go away. Coming number two says he
likes the attention, he knows she likes him. Just tell
him to set a boundary. If he doesn't tell him

(38:23):
that that's okay, and you'll just have your own guy
friends who only want to be friends with you, and
you'll have them over for hours at a time at
your place and that's the end of that story.

Speaker 4 (38:32):
Well, yeah, what do you think of pe should do
in this situation?

Speaker 8 (38:36):
I would be like, there's only two options here, Like
you're either so blind that you can't see this, or
you see it and you don't care, yeah, and you
like it. So either one of those gives me concern
about the future of our relationship, because if you are
so blind to something like this, what's the other thing
you're going to be blind about?

Speaker 7 (38:57):
Right?

Speaker 6 (38:58):
Like?

Speaker 1 (38:58):
Where does this end?

Speaker 8 (38:59):
Because this is just a common sense level of like
interaction with somebody.

Speaker 4 (39:05):
Hm hmm.

Speaker 8 (39:06):
It's like clearly not no, like come on, yeah, oh
can I see your apartment?

Speaker 1 (39:13):
Yeah?

Speaker 8 (39:13):
And then she's there for two hours? Why are you
talking to her for two hours?

Speaker 1 (39:16):
You have a Girlfriendly, you're like, oh, he told her
I have a girlfriend.

Speaker 8 (39:19):
It's like yeah, but shouldn't you feel weird that there's
some strange girl who went like as soon as she
found out you wanted to talk to her.

Speaker 1 (39:26):
By the way, that was.

Speaker 3 (39:27):
She cuts you alone in an elevator and she was
able to talk to you finally and.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
Is following you around wherever you're going on this trip.
It's like, it's.

Speaker 4 (39:34):
Crazy, it brings Yeah.

Speaker 8 (39:37):
So if you can't, and if you can't, just respect
the fact that I your girlfriend.

Speaker 1 (39:40):
I'm uncomfortable by this dynamic you have. It's like, oh,
my girlfriend doesn't like her.

Speaker 8 (39:46):
Yeah, it's like I'm breaking up with you just because you're.

Speaker 1 (39:48):
Dumb, right right, Sorry, Hey it's Sam. We're gonna get
back to these stories.

Speaker 8 (39:52):
But here's three of bits of bads from our sponsors
that keep the show alive.

Speaker 7 (39:55):
I'm suspicious of my brother's girlfriend, so I started investing
gating her.

Speaker 5 (40:00):
Is she part of the FBI?

Speaker 7 (40:03):
My younger brother, Adam, had a rough childhood to say
the least. Our father passed away when he was under
ten from our mother. Is likely bipolar, but definitely has
self absorbed tendencies. I'm older by a decade and did
what I could when I could for him, but basically
I failed to protect him and didn't understand what he needed.

(40:23):
All that to say that his decent into heavy drinking
wasn't surprised. It was expected. A couple of years ago,
he had an incident that caused him to be hospitalized. Oh,
and he began his recovery in sobriety. By the way,
this comes from Recognition Dry sixty six and if you
want to some of your own stories, go to the
art slash okay stories on Subreddit.

Speaker 4 (40:43):
I'm Riley, I'm Sophia, and I'm Angie.

Speaker 7 (40:45):
He's over two years clean. Now let's go hugely due
to the new relationship he started months after his incident
with a kind hearted, lovely woman, I'll collor Eve. He
brought Eve over to meet us shortly after they met,
and she's been a welcome part of our family. She
makes gifts for my kids in treats. She's always fun

(41:05):
to speak to, and her quirkiness fits in beautifully are
As we've gotten to know her, we've learned about her
traumatic her life has been. They're kind of trauma bonded,
but she's so understanding and empathetic. She told us about
her twin who passed away in high school, how her
siblings and parents loved him more and treated her badly
as the survivor was always less than no.

Speaker 5 (41:28):
This is next to normal.

Speaker 7 (41:30):
She also had another brother who passed away in war
in Iraq, who became the golden child. After twin past,
she couldn't seem to gain her mother's approval or attention,
and we bonded over those feelings of not being wanted
or good enough. She told us she was originally from Scotland.
Her father was a sheep farmer who moved to America
to buy a cattle farm because of the Cowboy movies,

(41:52):
so she has Doyle citizenship siick. She also said because
of this, she spoke sixteen languages, worked at a college,
and had multiple degrees too. Overall, she was incredibly nice
and took care of Adam and seems super well educated
and proper. Sometimes she had her Scottish accent to because
she's been around her family. Then she started to tell

(42:14):
us about her past relationships. Three divorces.

Speaker 5 (42:18):
How old is this girl?

Speaker 7 (42:19):
Dude? I don't even know?

Speaker 6 (42:21):
Okay, Oh, Angela Connolly has lies? I bet all lies.

Speaker 1 (42:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (42:27):
Also, if someone has like this many divorces, where's the
common denominator?

Speaker 8 (42:31):
Like?

Speaker 7 (42:32):
Is it the people she's choosing or is it her
kind of thing?

Speaker 6 (42:34):
I don't imagine that. She does have some a lot
of trauma.

Speaker 7 (42:39):
And she goes after a certain type of person.

Speaker 5 (42:41):
And maybe seeks a lot of you.

Speaker 7 (42:44):
Know, blighty issues.

Speaker 6 (42:46):
Yeah, she's looking for like people to tell her that,
you know what's the.

Speaker 7 (42:49):
Word, She's important, She's loved, I guess.

Speaker 1 (42:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (42:53):
One was from a person who had gender reassignment surgery,
the other passed away, and the last is another awful
dude felt like after two years of knowing her, she
was a great fit. So last week, when they had
a bad argument, I tried to reassure Adam had come
over to talk to him, and he told me that
she had lied to him about not speaking to a

(43:15):
friend of hers anymore, some guy who is apparently a
popular guy in high school. She lied because she didn't
want to believe he wasn't a good guy, because she's
had so much bad luck with men. Adam was struggling
to move past the line, but wanted to work it out,
and I supported him in whatever he does. I talked
to my husband about it, and he asked the most

(43:35):
basic question, how does she have a high school popular
kid here in town if she was raised in Oklahoma
on a cattle farm.

Speaker 6 (43:44):
It was it Angela Connolly who said all eyes was
it angela' connell. Has she ever actually said Do we
have any proof that she actually knows sixteen languages?

Speaker 1 (43:53):
Is she faking a Skylish accent?

Speaker 6 (43:56):
Is this o Pa saying that this is talking about
his brother and his brother's partner.

Speaker 7 (44:01):
Okay, honestly, I have PTSD, so my brain sometimes gets
mixed up. I assume I was wrong. It turned over
and over in my head though, for a couple of days.
I finally caved while my husband played video games and
began with casual search into her. I googled her name
and her address came up. Then I realized her history
of addresses were all in America, all going back pretty far.

(44:21):
So I checked her parents and their address went back
in America to before she was born.

Speaker 6 (44:27):
Insane that she was putting on a fake Scottish accent.

Speaker 4 (44:31):
That's crazy, insane. She's doing like a whole genealogy.

Speaker 5 (44:35):
Was it a good accent?

Speaker 4 (44:37):
Get this girl out of here.

Speaker 6 (44:39):
I need to know if you guys were just gollible.
But also if someone came up to me and started
doing an accent and they're like, yeah, I'm you know,
I'm from Scotland from Glass School, and it was like.

Speaker 5 (44:49):
Kind of bad.

Speaker 6 (44:49):
I wouldn't be like you faking it. I would kind
of give them the benefit of the doubts.

Speaker 7 (44:55):
So yeah, I was so confused. I googled them and
found recent obituaries of her grandparents on both sides. They're
all from America, and they only mention three kids by
her parents. Ever, obituaries usually list proceeding in passing, and
these do. But no grandkids in that list, no additional
brothers of hers. Not only that, but she lived at

(45:19):
the same address her whole life in Kansas. I looked
it up on a map and found the high school
nearby and searched the yearbook. Found her twelfth grade, no twin,
but he passed away. So I checked ninth grade, also
no twin.

Speaker 5 (45:34):
Dang, no twin? Did you ever?

Speaker 7 (45:36):
I dug the more proof of lies. What do we
do at this point?

Speaker 6 (45:40):
So we get I don't know what language she knows.
I'm gonna assume French, Spanish. Get a French person. You
could probably find a person who speaks French.

Speaker 5 (45:47):
Oh yeah, comes over. You invite them over for dinner.

Speaker 4 (45:50):
You're like, hey, my friend knows French.

Speaker 6 (45:52):
They start speaking French, blancue, blue.

Speaker 5 (45:58):
Et cetera. And then you but you drive it home.

Speaker 7 (46:02):
You also invited someone that speaks German.

Speaker 6 (46:04):
I hate you because I was about to say that literally,
and then you time out and finished exactly what I
was saying to say.

Speaker 7 (46:09):
Maybe I just knew what you were about to say.

Speaker 5 (46:10):
Okay, I'll take that.

Speaker 7 (46:12):
Only two marriages on record, still both alive. One did
change names for mel in the marriage to female and
the divorce, but that seems to be the only true
thing she's ever said. It's absolutely shocking. Finally, my husband
said I had to tell Adam I wasn't against it,
and then as the pile got larger, I said it
was an in person conversation. He insisted it needed to
be done, so I put it all together into a

(46:34):
document and message Adham. I asked a few clarifying questions
about the twin and the ex husbands. I apologize and
provided the information to him and hoped I was wrong.
Within ten minutes of sending it to him, he said
that she admitted everything to him. He's absolutely lost now,
two whole years, so many many lies. I'm just baffled.
Wine like, if they ever got married, would it have

(46:56):
been revealed so quickly as it stands, she's been able
to keep him away from her family by allowing them
to disrespect their age gap. He's noticeably more younger than her.
She refused that I never got ages. Okay. She refused
to go to an uncle's funeral earlier this year because
she claimed he was awful. I hate questioning that, but

(47:16):
maybe she just didn't want Adam to find out that
her uncle was born and raised in Kansas, not Scotland,
and so was her dad. She was here with my
kids having them fill a wound scarf from an incident
that never happened. There's no criminal records for either of
the exes. There's none for her either, thankfully, but good lord,

(47:38):
I wish I could have put the cat back and
the bag on this one. Why lie, Why didn't I
check her background sooner? I literally checked the kids, my
kids day in high school, to make sure their parents
aren't on a registry or anything. I should have checked
with her much sooner. Now the life and family they
were building is in ruins, and I'm terrified of him
losing his sobriety. I'm feeling really guilt for looking it

(48:01):
up and telling him too. Not sure I did the
right thing. Because he's heartbroken.

Speaker 1 (48:06):
An update thing, What do you mean?

Speaker 5 (48:08):
What are you talking about, Opie?

Speaker 6 (48:10):
Your brother's girlfriend learned about everything about herself.

Speaker 7 (48:14):
She kind of does a little update, but I'm just
gonna geto it. We have an update, so to catch up.
Brother's girlfriend of two years was lying about her past
from the traumatic passing of made up twin, made up
older brother, two ex husbands who are still very much alive,
a made up ex fiance, to inventing having multiple degrees
and speaking sixteen.

Speaker 5 (48:32):
Languages about the first one. Though that was the truth,
but she.

Speaker 7 (48:35):
Was probably like, Oh, I can get away with this,
so I'm gonna keep making lies up like this. When
I posted, I had uncovered some of the lies and
forward the proof to my brother Adam. She had come
clean immediately and taken him to visit her parents to
explain it. She has an untreated borderline personality disorder apparently.

Speaker 5 (48:51):
Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 4 (48:53):
Okay, I feel like we could tell you that.

Speaker 5 (48:55):
I yeah, I could have diagnosed you.

Speaker 7 (48:57):
Oh boy, I couldn't have. My brother, who I call
Adam for this is a recovering heavy drinker with a
huge art. He was absolutely determined to stay with her
and not toss her aside for being human. He thought
this was the righteous and noble thing to do, not
to discard someone who is struggling or damaged in their
time of need. Okay, but like they fabricated everything that

(49:17):
you know about them.

Speaker 5 (49:19):
She lied to you. You don't know her, you know
her zero amount.

Speaker 4 (49:24):
It's crazy.

Speaker 3 (49:25):
She had to lie about every single detail in her
life just to get you to love.

Speaker 7 (49:30):
Her, and then within that had to throw in a
Scottish accent.

Speaker 4 (49:33):
Yes, you don't even know what she said.

Speaker 6 (49:35):
She canonically threw in a Scottish accent that was in
the story.

Speaker 7 (49:40):
Around your kids.

Speaker 8 (49:41):
Opeach.

Speaker 5 (49:42):
She said she would.

Speaker 6 (49:43):
Go home to her family and come back with a
Scottish accent.

Speaker 3 (49:47):
Crazy.

Speaker 5 (49:48):
That's insane.

Speaker 4 (49:49):
Oh my god, that's insane.

Speaker 5 (49:52):
This is like everyone makes mistakes. She fundamentally lied about everything.

Speaker 7 (49:56):
Yes, it's sort of like degrease of murder. You have
third de We're like, oh, what happened on accident?

Speaker 8 (50:01):
Right?

Speaker 5 (50:01):
Was premeditated?

Speaker 7 (50:03):
Yeah, this is premeditated. My Husan and I were determined
to support him regardless of his choice, because we love him.
She told him she could never be around us again
and was scared of us.

Speaker 4 (50:13):
I'm scared, don't bring them around me.

Speaker 7 (50:15):
We assured him that we would never be rude to
anyone he dated, and that we were more than capable
of being around her. I genuinely think when she realized
that we weren't going to let her isolate him by
pretending like she had a reason to fear us, it
was over for her. It lasted only a week after
our dinner with him, where we showed him unconditional support
and reminded him that he was a victim repeatedly. Following week,

(50:39):
she went out with friends to a bar. He asked
where she went and with who, since this whole thing
started because she was lying about not hanging out with
some knucklehead that didn't respect my brother or their relationship.
She said that since she didn't have to show Adam
anything to prove where she had been and that she
can't heal like this, she expected to play the victim

(51:02):
to him. Of course she did, as if him asking
for accountability and transparency was him being controlling.

Speaker 6 (51:08):
But at that point like breakup. You know, like, I
don't think Adam is at all unreasonable, but if you
do have to ask for that level of things, it's
like just break up, break up, dude, Like, you don't
know anything about this woman.

Speaker 7 (51:20):
Then he said that he can't be in a relationship
where he can't trust someone. She was clearly hiding who
she was and was with yes, all right. In response,
she gave him thirty days to move out, and guys,
there's a little bit left here any other thoughts.

Speaker 6 (51:35):
I mean, it just really feels like this guy went
to her.

Speaker 5 (51:39):
And he's like, I just feel like I don't even
know you.

Speaker 6 (51:42):
Yeah, And if I were there, if I were watching
the TV, I'd be throwing things. I'd be throwing the remote,
I'd be throwing popworn at him, being like, oh.

Speaker 4 (51:49):
God, you don't know, you never knew.

Speaker 5 (51:53):
Yeah, she lied about everything.

Speaker 7 (51:57):
So this weekend we are moving him into his own place. He's,
of course, still reeling from the whiplash of whatever the
heck the last two years of lies have been with
a woman he thought he would marry. He has a
strong support system, though, and he's absolutely going to get
through this. He's even quit smoking during that. Wow, holy count,
I thought you'd start drinking, which I could not imagine

(52:18):
trying to do in this level of chaos. But he
is determined.

Speaker 6 (52:21):
Ah Yeah, He's like, I don't know anything about her,
so maybe I don't know anything about myself.

Speaker 5 (52:26):
Yeah, and I can reinvent myself exactly.

Speaker 7 (52:29):
Thank you to everyone for the device and support. Please
don't be gullible like we were. And if something sounds
too good to be true, probably is.

Speaker 6 (52:38):
No someone ever tells you that they know sixteen languages,
ask them to prove it.

Speaker 7 (52:43):
Prove it.

Speaker 1 (52:44):
Hey, it's John here.

Speaker 7 (52:44):
We're gonna get back to the stories.

Speaker 8 (52:45):
Put a quick three minute ad break from our sponsors
that keep the show going. My previous boss was a terror,
but now I'm finally free. Ah h Twenty seven females
started working for a small one attorney law office three
years ago. I was very excited to work there because
I believed in the cause. I immediately noticed the vibe was

(53:06):
off about my boss thirty seven female, but I didn't
take the opportunity to run right away. By the way,
this comes from user No Frosting two fifty five, and
you can submit your own stories on the r slash
Okay storytime subredit.

Speaker 1 (53:18):
And let's see what ops to say.

Speaker 8 (53:20):
She said in the interview that the office was big
on training, but I soon learned that wasn't true. Instead,
I was very quickly given a high case load with
no instructions on what to do with them. She knew
I was new to the industry and would need help
understanding complicated legal stuff. But instead of the promised training,
I was snapped at for asking questions and making mistakes,

(53:42):
and for not asking questions before making mistakes.

Speaker 7 (53:44):
Oh man.

Speaker 8 (53:45):
She also told me on my first day that I'd
need to learn a new language, which was a complete shock.
It didn't take long to see that every employee was
scared of her. Her passive aggressiveness and unreasonable expectations took
a serious toll on their mental health. When I had
been there seven months, three of her five employees gave
notice on the same day. Suddenly all that was left

(54:07):
was her, me and a freshly hired twenty one year
old former frat boy who was an absolute idiot. I
was the most senior paralegal there. She needed so much
extra help that I ended up asking my mom to
come help, a huge mistake. But I was younger and
dumber then. I dreaded going to work. I felt sick
every Sunday, knowing what the week would bring. Employee retention

(54:31):
was terrible. By the end of my employment, twenty one
employees had come and gone just within my time there,
excluding the people who were there when I started.

Speaker 1 (54:40):
That is a lot of turnover.

Speaker 8 (54:42):
She once hired a friend of hers as an attorney
after really pressuring her, and by the end of her
employment the friendship was finny doo, gone, scramoosed, got obliterated.

Speaker 2 (54:57):
Yeah, there you go, now you're getting it.

Speaker 8 (54:59):
Another employee was so scared of her that she quit
while the boss was in surgery, like.

Speaker 7 (55:04):
A oh my gosh op okay.

Speaker 1 (55:07):
Like a spouse fleeing while there was at work.

Speaker 8 (55:11):
I frequently compared working for her to a harmful relationship,
because there was no better way to describe the psychological torture.
She used the same playbook as snap at you one
minute and then be super sickly sweet the next. I
have a list on my phone of some of the
craziest stuff she's done. She took every opportunity to be mean.

(55:32):
She ran a background check on my sister in law
when she saw my brother was engaged on my mom's Facebook,
then just casually told me she did it with no prompting.
She offered to run a background check on someone I
dated while working there. I think she would have just
done it on her own, but luckily my ex was
non binary and the name I used talking about them

(55:53):
wasn't their legal name.

Speaker 1 (55:55):
She invited us to sleep over at her apartment.

Speaker 8 (55:58):
What. I walked upstairs at my house one day and
she was just there because she texted my mom asking
if she could bring me something. She made lots of
comments about me living with my parents. The bizarre behavior
was endless. She got advice from a pet psychic about
whether she should put her dog down. She told a

(56:18):
new employee that she had a vision of her very hispanic,
recently deceased grandmother.

Speaker 1 (56:25):
The grandmother is white, she told another.

Speaker 8 (56:28):
Only air ball, just like just like crazy.

Speaker 2 (56:33):
No no, no, no, no, no, no no no, he's Hispanic.

Speaker 1 (56:37):
Uh what? Oh my god.

Speaker 8 (56:40):
She told another employee that she had a vision of
a blonde man and thought it was her boyfriend. The
boyfriend is black. She told her the air ball again.

Speaker 1 (56:48):
Yeah, just only airball.

Speaker 8 (56:50):
She told me her entire dating history disgusting, including when
she cheated on her girlfriend, not that she would consider
it cheating because her girlfriend kept accusing her her of cheating.

Speaker 1 (57:01):
She told my wait, what.

Speaker 8 (57:04):
So because your girlfriend accused you of cheating, you're not gonna.

Speaker 1 (57:09):
You're like, well, I guess I got a cheat because
she accused me.

Speaker 7 (57:12):
I was already doing it.

Speaker 8 (57:13):
It's like somebody being like, are you on and you're
being like, I am now thanks to you? Do you
want me to be Yeah, it's time Yep, the time
is now. Well because you said that.

Speaker 1 (57:23):
What is this woman? She told my mom.

Speaker 8 (57:26):
That she left her ex wife shortly after the ex
gave birth because she wasn't attracted to her anymore, and
that they hadn't slept together for years before she left.
She told me I should stop dating men and non
binary people and went on a rant about how end
buys and gender diverse people as a whole just have
too much baggage. She used my spicy sleep orientation as

(57:50):
a pitch to new clients to show how LGBTQ the
office was. To be clear, I'm very much out and proud,
and I have no problem with clients knowing that. It
was the fact that my identity was being used as
a tool for capitalism that I had an issue with.
She bragged about helping campaign for harsher anti working claws,

(58:17):
which only made spicy sleepwork less safe for the spicy
sleep workers. She says plants are her friends and she
wouldn't stop buying them, which caused a gnat infestation. Is
who is this person she's having this conversation with your mom?

Speaker 7 (58:36):
No, these are all the crazy things that she's done.

Speaker 1 (58:38):
Okay, I hope that this is crazy.

Speaker 8 (58:41):
Some of this was had with Op's mom, though, yeah,
I guess not.

Speaker 7 (58:45):
Yeah, okay, gosh.

Speaker 8 (58:47):
She asked a random lady who was related to a
client if she could take her picture and paint her.
She says she's basically African, she's white. When an employee
who held an admin position to become a nanny, she
lectured her about wasting her potential and how she was
too smart to be a nanny. We're shaming nannies now,
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 7 (59:08):
Okay, straight people and nanny's.

Speaker 8 (59:10):
She called all her adult employees kids. She said, Brazilians
aren't trustworthy.

Speaker 1 (59:16):
I'm done, I'm done.

Speaker 7 (59:17):
No, you will never talk about my Brazilian men this way.

Speaker 2 (59:21):
They are hot?

Speaker 1 (59:22):
Are they are good? Wait?

Speaker 2 (59:23):
Are you saying Brazilian men are not trustworthy?

Speaker 7 (59:26):
They are trustworthy?

Speaker 1 (59:27):
Do you know how hot they are?

Speaker 7 (59:28):
Do not even give me on this now, do you
just drop them?

Speaker 1 (59:31):
I don't trust the Brazilian. She just pick a lay lady.
She gave me a is that bookmark?

Speaker 8 (59:38):
She dropped her dirty underwear on the floor and mentioned
her huge front air bags multiple times.

Speaker 2 (59:43):
Why else does it underwear dirty?

Speaker 1 (59:45):
Where was that? The work? At work?

Speaker 7 (59:48):
Is there a launder machineer?

Speaker 1 (59:49):
What is going on?

Speaker 8 (59:52):
She interrogated one of my coworkers about where I went
when I left the office at five pm on a Friday.
One of her guesses was that I was going on
a date. It was actually a boudoir shoot, but also
none of her business.

Speaker 7 (01:00:07):
She wants to see those photos anyways, go on.

Speaker 8 (01:00:10):
She was basically offended when an employee said that his
personal time was for him and his wife and did
not text his personal phone about work. She texted me
at ten thirty pm on a Sunday to see if
an employee had blocked her.

Speaker 1 (01:00:24):
She had. She didn't tell me her dog.

Speaker 8 (01:00:26):
Was dog aggressive when I brought my dog to the office,
and she didn't think to put the dog food out
of reach when there were two dogs present. The unprofessional
behavior continued. Her lipstick application looked like a clown's. Now
I know this is mean, but I've earned the right
to be mean about her.

Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
She did manic reorganizing.

Speaker 8 (01:00:46):
She called her partner dream Crusher to everyone but her heckya.
She showed PDA with her partner, including public booty grabs.
She told people she was sworn into the Supreme Court,
when the reality is she was sworn into being able
to argue in front of the Supreme Court. She put
a shrimp in the fridge and got mad at everyone

(01:01:06):
for having left shrimp in the fridge. She routinely stole
food from employees. She read an employee's personal notebook. She
had us go to her apartment frequently enough that I
could find my way from the lobby. That's also where
I eventually resigned. She walked around barefoot. She asked my
zodiac sign during my interview.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
I love how this is just the list. I love this.

Speaker 8 (01:01:29):
Despite being a Saffic, she was gus heck. She claimed
to be an LGBTQ advocate, but she had microaggressions to
spare for everyone but the L and the ge. She
misjendered her high school X because that's what she identified
as at the time. She said, I'm an mpath when
she doesn't know what empathy is. She told me my
coworker's immigration status without permission. She texted me Happy Birthday

(01:01:52):
three months late after I quit, meaning it for her
former intern, who also hates her.

Speaker 7 (01:02:00):
I wouldn't beat this woman.

Speaker 1 (01:02:02):
No, we've got more.

Speaker 2 (01:02:03):
We got so much, we have more. I love this.
This is a lie.

Speaker 7 (01:02:05):
I just want to meet this person. I know they
live in LA.

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
This is a shopping list.

Speaker 8 (01:02:09):
She told her non white employees, both in their twenties,
that it was probably too late to bother going back
to school and that they should just stay paralegals.

Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
She never said the same to me.

Speaker 8 (01:02:19):
Oh my, I absolutely could go on, but you get
the picture.

Speaker 7 (01:02:23):
You did go on.

Speaker 8 (01:02:24):
After years of dealing with this, I decided to go
back to school starting in August twenty twenty four. I
realized I had enough save for a down payment on
a condo and that my mortgage payments would be the
same as renting. I bought a condo near my school
and moved in a few days before classes began. I
stayed on in my job for a while after starting
part time school, but eventually realized I needed to cut
back on hours.

Speaker 1 (01:02:44):
To balance it all. After I cut back on hours.

Speaker 8 (01:02:47):
I kept getting assigned new cases even though my workload
was already over one hundred and thirty cases.

Speaker 1 (01:02:53):
Then the checks started bouncing.

Speaker 8 (01:02:55):
Maybe started is the wrong word, since the first time
was in March twenty twenty four, but that's seems like
a one time thing at first. Then it happened again
in October of the same year, and not just to me.
I tried to meet with her to come up with
a plan to prevent it from happening again, but by
then I was managing paralegal and was often the voice
of reasoning in business and staffing decisions. Her plan was

(01:03:17):
to quote get more money, which is literally not a plan.
That is a goal that could only be reached with
an actual plan. Then the third paycheck bounced, I handed
her my letter of resignation. When I went to her
apartment for her to write the makeup check. She didn't
fight me on it and assumed it was because law
school is hard. It is, but obviously I quit over money.

(01:03:40):
That was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. My notice had my
last day as January third, since it was right before
second semester started. Flash forward to Monday, I get a
notification from Rocket money about an abnormally large payment being made,
my check bouncing for the fourth time. I texted her
that night it bounced again, and she did it reply.

(01:04:01):
I tried to reach her all day the next day,
and she kept saying she was busy or fully ignoring
the texts. I finally got her on the phone at
almost five o'clock. She said that she didn't have the
money to pay me, and I said that I can't
work if I'm not getting paid.

Speaker 1 (01:04:15):
She said, okay.

Speaker 8 (01:04:16):
I dropped my work from home stuff off at the
office the next day and left a sticky note threatening
to report her to Department of Labor.

Speaker 1 (01:04:23):
She venmowed me the money the next day.

Speaker 7 (01:04:24):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 8 (01:04:25):
I still had to nag her after that to get
a correct W two and to get her contribution to
my four oh one K, which was supposed to come
as a lump sum at the end of the calendar
year but didn't. All that got wrapped up in mid February.
Now I'm finally free of her. Ooh huzzah, And after

(01:04:45):
a bout of initial depression, I'm doing better than I
had in years. I got what I needed out of
that job, a law school recommendation letter at work experience
and enough money to become a homeowner at twenty six.
Oh my god, I took a break from working so
I can focus on school. Unfortunately, had to take out
student loans, but it's fine. Nearly all my peers have them,
and for a lot more money, so we have a

(01:05:07):
little bit more story left. I learned a lot from
that experience about the law, but I also learned what
I don't want in a career.

Speaker 1 (01:05:15):
I think the latter will benefit me more in the
long run.

Speaker 8 (01:05:17):
I don't think I'll ever want to work for a
company without NHR department again, and next time I won't
endure it at the cost of my mental health. I'd
be fine taking a lower salary in a legal field
less appealing to me if it meant having peace of mind.

Speaker 1 (01:05:33):
MS.

Speaker 8 (01:05:34):
If you somehow happen across this post, I don't give
an air.

Speaker 1 (01:05:38):
I never want to hear from you a kame.

Speaker 8 (01:05:40):
Reading this finally tells you how I felt since twenty
twenty two. Before you make contact or in other ways
try to retaliate, remember that I attend the school where
you are an adjunct professor, and remember how much I
know about you. I'm finding peace by not having you
in my life, but if you disrupt it, then I
have no qualms about going to the Dean of students

(01:06:01):
and telling them everything I wrote here and everything I didn't.

Speaker 1 (01:06:05):
Yes, that's what But a me

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