Me (13 years old at the time): Dad, Mom’s cheating on you. I saw her making out with this man.
Dad: Listen here, princess. The guy’s filthy rich, and when you have money, it’s normal to have a hot mistress like your mom.
Me: But aren’t you jealous?
Dad: laughs
I was flabbergasted, lmao.
When I was 16 my mom got drunk and told me that she was waiting until I graduated high school to leave my father. It’s worth noting that I’m the oldest child, I’d been playing therapist for both parents since I was young, and somehow mom wasn’t the parent that ruined that vacation.
One of the saddest aspects of my life is that she never got to actually leave (cancer diagnosis right before leaving)
You should have told your dad what she said so that he could leave her with no guilt. Or if he chose to stay it would show true character.
I own a bar and before we opened I reached out to one of those novelty vending machine companies that sells weird stuff and gags. The guy came down to meet to discuss the design of the machine etc, super nice guy. His daughter came too, she was an artist and was going to paint the machine. They sent mockups and got to work, everything seemed good to go ahead of our opening.
A week before we open, I reach out to see when they want to install it and I get no reply. I try again a few days later and get a very formal message to the effect of “we’re super sorry but we’re not going to be able to pursue this opportunity at this time, best of luck”. I’m pissed that time was wasted, the machine was finished, I had seen final pictures with our logo and design etc. I figured maybe they got some bigger offer from like the local stadium to install a machine that they couldn’t pass up.
Months go by, I’ve found another company that’s working on a new machine for us. Original guy texts me “hey, are you at the bar, I’d love to stop by and explain what happened.” I start to tell a customer at the bar about what happened and I’m like, I don’t wanna talk to this guy in my mind, and I look up, and he’s standing outside the bar in the rain. He comes in, and he looks like he’s been to hell and back.
He’s so different this time, very soft spoken, tail between his legs vibes. He apologizes and said they had a family issue that prevented them from moving forward, but they working on getting back on track. I feel bad and trying to be empathetic, and then the guy goes, “I’m sorry, but my wife just didn’t want me working with you because of David.”
“Who the fuck is David?” I reply. “David Devolla” he says. I have no idea who he’s talking about. I’ve never met his wife, or this David person. Then he goes “wait, can I ask you a weird question? Are you straight?” “Yeah man…”
“GOD DAMNT, SHE DID IT AGAIN” he said. I’m so confused right now. He then proceeds to tell me that his wife has been battling psychosis and having major mental issues. Apparently, this David guy was her former boss that fired her, and even though I’ve never met her, or David, and am straight, she was convinced I was having a secret gay affair with David and told her husband he wasn’t allowed to do business with me. What the actual fuck. Dude started creeping me out big time. He came in again a week later and told me he was driving to Vegas the next morning to marry his wife because even though he said they were married, they never actually were, and he believed doing so would fix her mental state. I follow them on Instagram still and I can tell you, it did not. She posts the absolute weirdest nonsensical things and it’s honestly entertaining to watch but also sad as hell. Bullet dodged, the new company is so so much better, but yikes all around. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
Marrying someone to fix their issues is a lot like having a kid to save a marriage.
I had a psychologist tell me at 13 that boys my age shouldn’t be interested in sex.
This is second hand but I have a sister who I dunno post partem and other things she kinda went off the deep end and was eventually divorced and just generally messed up. She called my wife and told her how I was going to cheat on her and my wife laughed so then she is like. Oh your going to cheat on him. Her issues had stuff revolving around cheating and stuff. Again I heard it from her second hand later but it was kinda funny. I compared it to the monty python sketch about the guy tring to sell very small lengths of string. water resistant. no its not! water absorbent. Super Water Absorbent!
An acquaintance went through the long history of cell phones with detailed proof that the technology was brought here by aliens.
Lol out of all the technologies to choose… i think the idea of aliens building the pyramids is more convincing.
Christmas about 4 years ago, my brother went completely around the bend.
His house was the place for our family, my sister-in-law’s family and some family friends to meet for Christmas. Just before Christmas that year he started texting me about Rittenhouse and how he admire the guy for defending himself. Fast forward to when we were at his house, he would only talk about how important the 2nd amendment was, how he admired Rittenhouse, and to top off the shit cake he admitted to being member of the Oathfuckers, breakers… Whatever those fucking idiots call themselves.
He was aggressive about how his worldview was correct and that I did not know what I was talking about. He had been ramping up his power plays over me the past couple of years and I just let it go to wait to see what his “big” play was going to be. Apparently this was it. He even attempted to rewrite family history as well. We had a paternal uncle that died in the Battle of Leyte gulf and I knew well the family history and did a bit of research on my own to discover what really happened to him. World War II records are not exactly state secrets any longer. Well, because my brother was a big wig at the Veteran’s Administration and had all kinds of government clearances yada yada yada, HE had the real scoop, which conflicted somewhat with what I had read.
My god you would have thought I shot his dog he was so pissed when I attempted to speak about what I had learned. To this day I don’t know what his play there was, it was just utterly bizarre.
His final power play was he TOLD me, not asked, but TOLD me he was going to teach my two boys about guns and how to shoot. I had to tell him FOUR FUCKING TIMES that NO, HE wasn’t teaching my kids shit about weapons.
My wife works in Pediatrics… That’s not going to fly. Not to mention I’ve already given them instruction on how to handle firearms in case they come across them for what ever reason. They can pick a gun up, check the safety and clear the chamber of both automatics and revolvers. Sure, they may not be able to shoot the dick off a fly at 400 billion yards, or strip clean and reassemble a 1911 in under 3 seconds blind folded, under water with depth charges going off less than 6 inches away while humming the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”. But they can keep themselves and those around them safe.
Needless to say that was when I punched the big red button and went nuclear on our relationship. Our father died about 2 years after the above event and I had not been in contact with my brother, or my Dad. Dad was being taken care of by this brother, so when I cut that relationship, so did my relationship with my Dad… Which honestly his attitude was going much the same direction anyway. I didn’t even go to Dad’s funeral… Which was completely bizarre.
You see our Dad was in the Navy for 4 years back in the 1950’s. Dad talked about that time and he seemed to have liked his time in the Navy, but it just something he did to get out of his small hometown in West Virginia. It was never a career goal and he spent his entire time as a medic. To see my Dad’s funeral you would have thought that his entire life was spent in the military. My brother made it an entirely military funeral with troops, 21 shots and the whole thing. I understand the military does this for all veterans and I don’t have a problem with it, except my Dad didn’t identify as being a military person AT ALL. He was in the Navy 70 years prior and while he would tell stories and use his medic training on occasion, it was never a part of his personality.
Needless to say I’m very glad I live 400 miles away from what is left of my original immediate family. I miss my sister-in-law as she is a very sweet and caring person and their son. I really wanted my boys to know their cousin… Oh well.
Probably not the most unhinged but a few weeks ago a coworker told me that Trump is the only president in history whose net worth went down after becoming president.
He’s not FAR right so I usually hear him out and use kid gloves to counter his arguments but I involuntarily replied, “are you out of your fucking mind?!”
Sympathies. That tightrope walk of dealing with someone who is misinformed but not malicious is tough. It’s important to challenge them, but not so stridently as to teach them not to engage with you, as you don’t want them to retreat further into that space. I wish I were more successful at it, but my mouth tends to outrun my brain. How did your colleague react to that reality check?
I actually find it quite rewarding. Not to give myself too much credit but multiple people on the right have told me I’m very easy to talk politics because I’m not outwardly judgemental when I disagree. As for this specific reality check, both of us were on our way to meetings so we shelved it. We talk politics every once in awhile and I’ve been able to change his mind on a lot of things.
Here are some tips for talking with the “soft right” (or anyone you disagree with, really):
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Understand their concern before you talk about the solution, you will probably find common ground to start from.
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LISTEN TO THEM. Ask questions! It’s not a lecture, you’re having a conversation.
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Be smart about how you disagree. “You are wrong because of X Y Z” makes you sound like an asshole, “I’m not so sure I agree with X Y Z” shows that you’re at least considering their opinion.
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You don’t know everything so be honest. “I don’t know enough to speak on it confidently” or “I can’t remember where I heard this so take it with a grain of salt…” AND if you later find out you were wrong, follow up. “Hey yesterday I told you X, it’s actually Y [link]”
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If they want to back out of the conversation, let them. Maybe you’ve given them enough to think about for the day.
At the very least, be the person that makes them think, “the left isn’t all bad”
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My bio father just passed away. I was talking to his best friend of 45 years, basically his brother, and he casually dropped he was raped as a boy. I had asked about my fathers sister, because a lot of that family is scattered and a mess, the daughter of the sister “something happened” is all I know. And he said molestation, and then that he too, was molested by a man as a boy. I was really proud of the 68 year old mam telling me that.
But fucking, add it to the list. Men need a fucking ‘me too’ because I know so, so, many.
Men need to learn to talk about their issues in general. My pops was brutal when I was a kid. It wasn’t until I grew up that I finally understood that he was made that way. His own dad basically destroyed him.That didn’t excuse all the terrible things he did but it did explain it. It was hard to be angry with him after that. I felt sad for him. That’s a heavy load to carry all alone.
Yeah. My father’s an angry narcissist, but he was good at telling me that part of what really fucked him up was his mom being a violent alcoholic until right around when I was born. That and how he’d been bullied for being small for a long time as a kid and teenager because he was a late bloomer (he’s a very large man). That insight into him gave him a lot more willingness from me to keep him in my life than he’d ever know, and it helped me as a teenager to pick friends who could talk about their feelings. To this day I still see that angry sob as a small kid who never got taught to control his emotions healthily or how to feel love outside of a self or status focused lens.
Not one particular thing, but had a friend of a few years suddenly turn evangelical christian after being a pretty chill gamer dude and often hilarious troll online.
Just one day does an about face and now every single fucking conversation comes back to “The Lord” and his faith and Jesus and prayer and do I want to join his church and please let’s talk more about the Kingdom of Heaven and also Trump isn’t that bad, he means well, the people at church say so.
Just no, fuck off totally. I can’t deal with someone always trying to push some utterly delusional moral superiority on me, It’s literally like having someone you know die.
I also had a sibling go full Qanon, which seemed to pivot to just spiritual shit and talking to aliens as of late. No contact, so I don’t know the details or what happened to the shadowy cabal of pedophiles since they were actually found.
I know online keyboard warrior armchair expert types always jump to mental health diagnoses but that sounds a lot like someone I know who has poorly regulated BPD/schizophrenia
I go the other direction and have just assumed now that everyone has a crippling undiagnosed mental health problem.
Equality for all.
Dad likes money, and might be poly.
IRL I feel like I’ve had people talk to me about things that I don’t understand and which clearly aren’t happening outside their mind, and it’s hard to beat that for WTF. Online, there’s so many contenders I can’t really pick one.
Yeah that laugh comes off as one of “she may enjoy his money and even his company, but his hot girlfriend is my hot wife and she’ll keep coming back to me”
My ex was married with kids, and their main reaction to me coming around was the one being super excited that their mom was queer too
I met a real life Aryan Brotherhood nazi one time. I was somewhere between 10 and 12 at the time. I have a whole post about it (it was in this community about if you’ve ever met a truly evil person) . But anyway, he preached a sermon to my friend and I about all the things you might expect. The best part was the 5 minute section on evil catholics (I was/am catholic). I sure as shit didn’t tell him I was or that I’m half Syrian.
Fuck, I had one as an apartment neighbor not too long ago.
He got evicted though.
But not after taking some power tools to the door and trying to … very poorly, either break or replace the lock.
Maintenance just said ‘fuck it’, drilled their own hole into the door, and frame, ran a steel chain with a padlock through it.
He’d try coming back at 2 am every other night for a week or two, just cussed and cried for an hour every time.
But yeah the few times I randomly encountered him in the hallway… basicslly imagine Lester from GTA V, but not crippled, in cargo shorts and a wifebeater, damn near every inch of his body covered in prison quality tier nazi / white supremacist / aryan brotherhood tattoos.
Not someone you want to run in to.
I worked with a guy that told me that he would start shooting Democratic politicians if his wife left him. He was a hardcore Republican Mormon from Orange County, CA.
“Abraham Lincoln was a fascist.” when debating politics with a friend.
I didn’t take the bait. I didn’t delve into why he felt this way but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious, but I wasn’t going down that road with him so he could justify his authoritarian views.
The usual route is “fascism is when the state takes your freedom, freedom means freedom to own, abolishing slavery was de facto taking away property, so abolitionism is fascism.”
The Aunt that never finished elementary school once told me:
“I don’t believe in evolution, because I didn’t believe a baby could be born smarter than its parents”
I was 10-13 years old at the time and just didn’t have the patience to deal with that level of stupid.
My coworker once started a conversation by casually asking if I’d ever “done anything” with a cousin. Obviously the conversation ended with him revealing he’d fucked his cousin and me saying WTF progressively louder and louder for at least a minute. I work from home now.
And you live with your cousin, right?
You work with Rudy Giuliani?
