After three long years of telling myself my relationship with my ex-fiancée was fine, it was finally coming to an end. I was only in my 20s at the time, but I swear that relationship aged me. I thought I could fix her, carry her, save her — even if it meant swallowing the verbal and emotional abuse she hurled at me like it was my duty to endure it. Things were stuck in this strange limbo. She said she wanted to “work things out,” and yet one afternoon, while I was at work, she showed up under the guise of grabbing a few things. Instead, she hauled every last piece of her life out of my apartment — right down to the damn bed. All she left behind was a ragged old chair and a quiet kind of humiliation. Thankfully, she didn’t touch anything that was truly mine. A week later, I was visiting my alma mater when she finally officially ended it. And she didn’t even call. She broke off a three-year relationship over text — and somehow still had the irony to call me a coward for not ending it fi...
I don't think I'll ever recover from this. My soul has left my body and is currently applying for jobs in another dimension. For context, I (25M) have been at this new job for about three months. My boss, Mark (50s, very serious, ex-military), is a great guy but incredibly formal and intimidating. I'm still in the "desperately want to impress him" phase. So, we're on this end-of-day Teams call. There are about ten of us. The call is wrapping up, and my dog, a giant, lovable Golden Retriever named Bear, starts whining by the door. He needs to go out, and he's getting impatient. I'm trying to be professional, so I mute my mic and whisper to him, "Okay, okay, hold on, daddy's almost done." Or at least I thought I was muted. In reality, I had just UNMUTED myself to say "Thanks everyone, have a good evening." The second I finished that sentence, my voice, now in a sickeningly sweet baby-talk tone, rang out crystal clear across the e...