Two Different Relationships
She is eighteen, she has never met him in person, and she has just spent most of her savings on a plane ticket to Europe.
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Two Different Relationships
Episode guide
Four stories this morning, and one thing running through every one of them. Two people, in the same relationship, who turn out to be living in two completely different ones.
A girl of eighteen who has never met the man she is flying to Europe to see, and how her parents found out. A woman who went for dinner with a coworker and slowly understood that only one of them thought it was dinner. A boyfriend who called his girlfriend to tell her, honestly, that he had been skinny dipping with somebody else. And a man who has told his wife out loud that he wants a divorce, and got asked what kind of necklace he is bringing back from his work trip.
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, and a comment section is a crowd of readers reacting, not a verdict. All four stories surfaced on 8 October 2026, on r/AmItheAsshole, r/tifu, r/relationship_advice and r/TrueOffMyChest. Where a poster reports what somebody else said or thought, this piece repeats it as the poster's account.
The plane ticket
She is eighteen, and she lives with her parents in Ohio. She worked all summer and saved up nine hundred dollars. Last week she spent seven hundred of it on a non-refundable plane ticket to go and see a man she has been dating long distance for a few months. He lives in Europe. She has never met him in person. She booked it without telling her parents. 1
When they found out, they lost it. Their three points: she has never met him, she is flying abroad alone, and she spent almost her whole savings without asking. Her dad has a name for it — he keeps calling it flying to a stranger. What they want is for her to cancel and eat the cost, or to let them come too.
Her position is short. She is eighteen, the money came from her job, and if she waited for their approval she would never leave Ohio.
Nine hundred and thirty seven upvotes, and more than two thousand comments, on a post from an eighteen-year-old about a plane ticket. The top comment is not on her side: not an asshole, but you are naive, and your parents are right to be concerned. One reader answers with a single word, girl, stretched out across about eleven i's.
The comment that lands hardest is a plain confession: I flew out to meet my internet boyfriend, and he did not even answer the door. Others push at the practical thing she has not answered. If you video chatted, that can be faked too, so where is she staying, and is she meeting him somewhere public. The last one I read was the bluntest of them all: you may be a legal adult, but you are not showing adult judgment.
No update. She still has the ticket, and the trip is still in her calendar.
The dinner
She is twenty-five, her coworker is thirty-three, and a couple of months ago there was a work event that started drinking at two in the afternoon and finished at eleven at night. Eight people started it. Two people finished it. Her and him — and he, she notes, is sober. 2
She spent the evening ranting about work, telling him how annoying he is to work with, and also, she admits, throwing in some flirty remarks. She was drunk enough that she did not remember what she said. He remembered all of it, and he told her later. The next week he came in and announced that he had broken up with his on-again, off-again girlfriend of three years. His reason, in his own words: somebody reminded him that he deserves love.
Last Wednesday they went for dinner after work. In her head this is just dinner, because she hangs out one-on-one with coworkers all the time. He opened the meal by saying he had been wanting to tell her something for months, and then carried on with ordinary conversation. Then it went, in no particular order:
- He wants to marry and settle down with the next person he dates.
- He knew she had daddy issues, because she would not let him take her hand to help her out of the car.
- If she could just forgive her father, maybe she could open up to other men and have a real, intimate relationship.
- He wants to take her anywhere she wants to go and show her what it feels like to be a princess and be taken care of.
- He wants to drill her self-worth into her head until she believes it too.
- He had already spoken to his friends about her, and they all agreed the two of them should go to upper management and say they want to explore a relationship.
At one point he took both of her hands across the table and stared into her eyes without saying anything. When she looked uncomfortable, he took that as further proof that she has issues with vulnerability.
Five hundred and thirty two upvotes, and a hundred and fifty eight comments. The top one says what I was thinking: I assumed this was going to be a cute story about accidentally falling into a relationship, and that he was crazy in love with her. Nope, he is just crazy. Another reader gives her the practical version — put it in writing, I am not interested in anything romantic, so she has proof. Her therapist said run, fast. No update, and he is still asking her when they are hanging out again.
The lake
She is twenty-four, he is twenty-five, and they have been together almost eight months, long distance since the middle of June. Two weeks ago he told her that a coworker had been very flirty with him — physical, even — and that he had to tell her so that he could hold himself accountable. Which is a real thing that people say. Hold on to it. 3
Then tonight he called, and he said there had been a few instances where he thought they were blurring the cheating lines. First, he found the coworker interesting. Then he told his girlfriend that the two of them had a power imbalance, because he knows more about the world than she does — and she agreed with him. Then the piano: he was playing, and the coworker said to him, kiss me, or tell me you are never going to. He did not kiss her. He was tempted. He is not physically attracted to her. And after a long conversation, the two of them decided that all of it was really just because he is insecure about making friends. She says her I-should-break-up-with-him thoughts were going quiet around then.
And then he told her the rest. They had gone skinny dipping in the lake by the job, just the two of them. She says she knew immediately, so she broke up with him, and he clarified that nothing physical happened.
Four hundred and ninety eight upvotes, and a hundred and fifty comments, and that comment section has no doubt at all. You do not go skinny dipping with a girl if you are in a relationship. The one I would have framed is the shortest: who plays piano for someone who is just a coworker. And then a reader asks the question I cannot answer — is the wind going to blow this man over.
No update, except her own question at the end of the post, which I will leave you with: am I exaggerating. Because she says she is already starting to regret how fast she ended it.
The necklace
He says he keeps telling his wife that he wants a divorce, and she keeps treating it like a joke. They live in Korea, they own an apartment together, and in his words he needs her to work with him on the divorce, unless the two of them want to start pursuing charges against each other. It took him years, he says, to realise how abusive she really was. 4
So he told her, out loud, that he wants a divorce. And she asked him what kind of necklace he was going to buy her on his work trip.
He came home and told her again. She was nice to him for the rest of the day, and then went back to it. He says he is not asking for advice, that he just needed to say it somewhere — and then the line that is the whole post: I did not know that I could just be trapped in a relationship.
Four hundred and twenty five upvotes, and a hundred and nine comments, and almost every comment is one single instruction. Do not tell her. Tell your lawyer. One reader writes that divorce is not a two-way street, that one person does it, and in his case it has to be him. Another says that waiting for her to agree is building his own prison. And then the one that made me laugh: have you considered, you know, filing for divorce.
He says the next step is a family lawyer, and an ugly fight he did not want to have. No update — and that is the whole post. He is still telling her, and she is still hearing something else entirely.
Your group chat this morning
Look at the shape of all four. She thinks she booked a trip; her parents think she booked a flight to a stranger. He thinks he booked a date; she thinks she booked dinner. He thinks he is being honest; she thinks the relationship is over. He thinks the marriage is finished; she is upstairs looking at necklaces.
Not one of them is lying. They are all just completely certain, and completely wrong, about the person sitting across from them. Two people can be in the same room, on the same night, in the same relationship, and be living in two different stories about it — and you find out which story the other person was in when they finally say it out loud.
So here is your question for the group chat this morning. What did you think was happening, while somebody else thought something completely different? And how long did it take you to find out?
References
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