Somebody's Keeping Score
Thirty photographs of other women taped all over his bedroom wall, and he thinks that is completely normal.
0:00 / 10:32
Somebody's Keeping Score
Episode guide
Four stories this morning, and one tally running through all of them. Somebody is counting — photographs, minutes, years, days a week — and every one of them is completely certain that they are the reasonable one in the room.
These are anonymous posters' accounts, paraphrased to protect identifying details. A Reddit post is one person's version of events rather than proof of every claim in it, and a comment section is a crowd of readers reacting, not a verdict. Where a poster reports what somebody else said, thought, or felt, this piece repeats it as the poster's account. Three of the four stories surfaced on 12 October 2026; the fourth is a r/BestofRedditorUpdates arc whose original went up in r/Advice in late September 2026.
Thirty photographs, one bedroom
She is 30, he is 30, and it is the first time she has been to his apartment. They order takeout and she has a look around, and then she sees the bedroom. The wall is covered in photographs — thirty-plus of them, taped up across more than one wall of the room, and over 90% of the faces in them are women. 1
He tells her they are just his friends from grad school. Most of the women are married or have partners, but the partners are not in a single one of the pictures, and neither, mostly, is he. There are no family photographs anywhere, and none of her. He is a nurse practitioner, so most of his classmates were women — but he had male friends in that program too, and not one of them is on the wall.
117 upvotes and 367 comments. He told her it was completely normal, and asked why she was making it weird. The top replies call it a wall of a man who is very clear about where he is looking. No update; she is still deciding whether she is going back.
The friend with the stopwatch
The poster drove three hours to visit a friend she had not seen in eight months, and met the friend's new baby for the first time. She held the baby, asked how her friend was coping with work and parenthood, and danced around during tummy time. Months later, during an unrelated disagreement, the friend revealed that she had gone back and watched the nanny-cam footage from that visit — and timed her. 2
The charge: too long talking about her own life and job, not enough asking about the baby. That conversation happened while the baby was asleep, and the friend had asked her the questions herself. The poster says she does not want to go back into the house, because she would spend the whole visit counting her own minutes.
2,496 upvotes and 561 comments. Readers noted that parents review that footage to see who came near the child, not to see how long a guest talked about herself. No update.
The pendant that went missing
She is 28, and she has a small silver heart on a chain that her best friend, Max, gave her when she was 15, with a number 12 engraved on the back — a lucky number the two of them share. It has gone everywhere with her for thirteen years, and she has never once lost it. Her boyfriend Tom, who has been in her life for eight years and with her for two, has always hated it. He says it does not go with her outfit, or that it looks old and cheap; whenever he sees it lying around he picks it up and hands it back to her, telling her to look after it. 3
Last month the pendant disappeared. She has torn the flat apart, had the cleaner watch for it, and paid to have her car deep-cleaned. Nothing. She says Tom has been oddly smug: suggesting other jewellery, asking whether she has told Max it is gone, and observing that parents take plushies off children who get too attached — probably a sign she needs to let go. She also says he has never once been cruel to her, never raised his voice, never made her feel small.
287 upvotes and 146 comments. The poster is explicit that she has no proof and that she may simply have lost it. Half the comment section tells her to search again; the other half tells her she already knows. No update — she has not asked him, because she does not know how you ask that and stay together.
The soulmates
She is 24, with a boyfriend she adores and a best friend, Katie, she has known since they were 14. She introduced them, and that is where it started: same humour, same communication style, same hobbies, same nerdy obsessions — two people so alike that she said she had never met their equal. They are at the same university and together five days a week, six if the three of them meet at the weekend; she sees her boyfriend twice a week. 4
When the three of them got together it became the two of them, playing a game she did not know the lore of while he remarked how amazing it was to have someone with everything in common with him. She also noticed her best friend repeating things she had said in confidence, and that Katie had appeared on his Snapchat.
She did not snoop. She told her boyfriend she felt like a third wheel in her own relationship; he handed over his phone, and it was clean — no flirting, nothing deleted, every message saved. He said Katie had added him, claiming she liked a guy in his course and wanted his help. So the poster called Katie with him sitting there. Katie burst into tears, said it was not meant to happen, admitted it, apologised — and then said she was a much better fit for him than the poster is.
2,771 upvotes and 245 comments. The poster says the two of them will stay civil because they share a friend group, but she is finished being the third wheel. She adds that this friend was her rock since she was 14, and that she does not think she can cut her off completely, even though she probably should. That is the last update: the boyfriend stayed, the friend stayed sorry, and the friendship is now kept at arm's length, permanently.
Your group chat this morning
Thirty photographs of other women, and a man who cannot work out what the problem is. Three hours of driving, one napping baby, and a friend reviewing the footage like a manager doing a performance review. Thirteen years of never losing a pendant, and a boyfriend who thinks it is time to let go. And ten years of best friendship, ended with four words — I am a better fit.
In every one of them, the person holding the stopwatch, the camera, the count, the tally is completely sure that they are the reasonable one in the room.
So here is your question for the group chat today: when did you find out that you were being measured — and what was your number?
References
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