The Part Nobody Mentioned
A twenty-six-year-old man finds out his girlfriend of almost seven years has twenty thousand dollars in savings, and he finds out because she bragged about it to his mother.
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The Part Nobody Mentioned
Three stories from yesterday, and in every one of them the same thing is missing: the sentence that would have explained everything. A girlfriend who spent seven years saying she was broke. A boyfriend whose mouth was holding the wrong woman's name. A mother told to end a friendship and given no reason.
These are anonymous posters' accounts, paraphrased so nobody can be identified. A Reddit post is one person's version of events, not 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 or did, this piece repeats it as the poster's account, and no outcome has been added where the source does not provide one.
The savings account
A twenty-six-year-old man writes that he and his girlfriend, twenty-five, have been together almost seven years, since college. For the whole of that relationship, he says, she has told him she is broke, and he believed her, because she has been a student the entire time. He paid for their outings, carried the larger share of the groceries, and bought her presents he describes as an expression of love. 1
She is not without support. Her parents cover her rent, utilities, car payment and phone, and send a weekly allowance for groceries and fuel. But the two of them moved to an expensive state, and the poster says he has been living paycheck to paycheck, twelve hours away from anyone he knows. 1
This month she told his mother that she had saved more than twenty thousand dollars during a year of work-study, and that well over ten thousand of it remained. She did not tell him. 1
When he raised it, in his account, she explained that because she was not working she had to budget her money differently, and that she was lucky to have a great man helping her through school. He says the relationship already has a history of decisions taken without him, and gives one: three years in, she chose her graduate school with her parents, without him in the conversation at any stage, and told him three weeks before she moved, although they were living together with two dogs. 1
He adds that he will not tell his friends, because they already dislike her, and that he does not have the money to start again. No outcome is reported.
The name that slipped out
A twenty-five-year-old woman writes that she and her thirty-year-old boyfriend paused a moment of intimacy because neither of them had a condom. He was about to say something along the lines of, do you want little Aaly babies — Aaly being her nickname — and what came out instead was the first syllable of the name Diana, his best friend's wife, followed by a hurried correction to hers. 2
She sets out his defence and marks two points as confirmed: he had just travelled and had barely slept, and his best friend's marriage is in serious trouble, with Diana staying away and three or four hours of supportive phone calls in two days. She also notes that the two of them had been discussing Diana half an hour earlier. 2
He was, in her account, visibly upset and apologetic, and said repeatedly that he sees Diana as a sister. She calls the slip humiliating and says she cannot decide how to move past it, while also saying he takes care of her and makes an effort. No update is reported.
Two mothers
A mother writes that her son has been married about three years. At the wedding she met her daughter-in-law's mother, the two discovered they had attended the same high school without ever meeting, and they became close friends, seeing each other almost every week. 3
In late October she was invited to that friend's birthday dinner at a restaurant, and went. Her son and daughter-in-law were there too, and she says they were surprised to see her; she had not mentioned the invitation, because, in her words, she had had a crazy month and it did not come up. Afterwards her son called to say he did not want her to be friends with the other woman. The other mother, she says, received the same request. 3
Both women said no. She writes that her son then accused them of ganging up on him, and said that this was exactly why they should not be friends. 3
An edit at the top of the post says she is going to ask her son directly why the friendship is a problem, and that she wonders whether there are marriage problems behind it. She was told of none, but she remembers a serious argument over the summer, after which he attended several family events alone. She had assumed it was resolved. The post gives no reason for the request and no outcome.
Where all three land
A man who paid for years while his girlfriend sat on twenty thousand dollars he was never told about. A boyfriend who borrowed another woman's name in the worst half-second of his week. A mother handed a rule with nothing written on it.
None of them is a villain. There is a woman who treated her savings as her own business, a man too tired to check his own mouth, and a couple who made a decision about two other adults and did not explain it. Each of them knew something and kept it in, and each of them believes they had a reason.
So the question this morning is not who is the asshole. It is this: what is the sentence you have not said, and who is quietly paying for it?
References
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