An acquaintance of mine hooked up with a woman one night, just a casual one-night stand. They were both the type who slept around often—a little narcissistic, irresponsible, unemployed, and always making bad decisions. She got pregnant. They sat down and decided to try to make a relationship out of it, to try to be parents.
They got married a little after the kid was born. They’ve been together for a long time now. A couple of kids later, they turned out to be a great couple and great parents. He’s got a good job and makes decent money.
Last I heard, she was doing something with children’s books from home. They just needed each other to straighten their crap out. Man, it’s so rare to hear about situations like that working out. And I’m so happy to read about one that did.
I’m happy for your friend. A good friend of mine was a very unattractive, dowdy librarian in her late thirties. Very smart, and could be fun to hang around with, but kind of an inhibited man-hater type. She was set up on a date by a mutual friend with a really nice, down-to-earth country boy in his mid-forties.
He was amicably divorced, a good father, and treated my librarian friend like a princess. They dated for a few months, and she started smiling all the time, wearing makeup, dressing up a lot, even blushing when she talked about him. They only dated a few months, then ran off to Hawaii to get married and surprised us all. They’ve been happily married for years now, and she seems younger and prettier now in her late forties than she did in her twenties and thirties.
They go on fun road trips, out dancing, to movies, all the time. They seem to really adore each other. My brother used to be one of those people who would say things just to pee everyone off. I ended up setting him up with one of my best friends because I didn’t like the guy she was dating at the time.
Ever since, my brother has gotten a lot more tolerable. He’s started to surround himself with people who are responsible and hardworking, and gotten rid of the people from high school who never stopped being jerks. They’re married with a kid now, and she keeps their finances in order and makes sure he sticks to his goals and works toward his future. I had a friend since middle school.
She was always very sweet, quick to make jokes and laugh, a bit chubby but drop-dead gorgeous. She had some self-esteem issues, but she played them off well. That is, until she started dating a forty-seven-year-old homeless man while we were freshmen in high school. She ran away from home, started doing meth, lost eighty pounds, and became a codependent psycho girlfriend trying to keep this dude in line.
Then one day, her boyfriend didn’t come back to the spot they were supposed to meet up. This was after they’d been together for two years. She later got a call from him in jail, saying he was going to be there for a while. She didn’t know what happened until she found out his court date and sat in on it.
The dude had coaxed a fourteen-year-old girl under a bridge with promises of smoking her out. He violently raped her, anally and vaginally. My friend told me this, and I apologized to her, thinking we were on the same page about her boyfriend being a complete psychopath. I asked her how the girl was doing.
She launched into a huge, ranting, screaming thing about how she was going to beat the crap out of the girl, and how dare she make up these lies. She couldn’t accept that at the ripe old age of sixteen, she was too old for her middle-aged boyfriend to be attracted to. I haven’t talked to her since. A friend in college was always in a good mood and just a generally nice person.
She started dating a hyper-religious guy, and the longer they dated, the more she would change. First thing was her dress code. She went from dressing like a normal college person to ankle-length skirts, with the only exposed skin being her hands and face. Then she stopped going out with anyone besides the boyfriend and his religious crowd.
She became a shell of her previous self, never smiled, and always kept to herself. She ended up marrying him. Only strictly religious people were invited, and that was the last time we heard from her. My best friend in high school was very headstrong, independent, and motivated.
She had dreams of going to school to work with animals and traveling all over the world. Men were more of an annoyance to her than anything else. She got married to an army dude a couple years out of high school. His insecurities, anger issues, and drinking problem he denied having led him to be incredibly controlling and manipulative.
He decided where she worked and who she spent time with. He spent all his money on guns, video games, and car upgrades while expecting her to pay the bills. She went to school for a little bit, but he guilted her into dropping out so she could work more. She used to rock the messy bun, big hoodie, no-makeup combo daily, but she started straightening her hair and putting on makeup every day because she was scared he’d cheat on her if she didn’t.
He got her pregnant so she’d have something to keep her busy while he was deployed. Shortly after she gave birth, he complained she wasn’t getting back to her old shape fast enough. The last time I saw her, she told me he gets drunk as soon as he gets home and doesn’t help with the baby at all. I’ve never seen someone with darker bags under her eyes.
She was stick thin from crash dieting to quickly lose the baby weight. She confided in me how she felt like she threw away all of her dreams for someone who didn’t turn out to be worth it. She was just the shell of who she used to be. He broke her, and I’d do anything to have the old her back.
My best friend started dating a man about a year and a half ago. She’s not at all the same person. She used to be so much fun to be around—outgoing, always in a great mood, positive, makes good money. Now she’s always broke because he’s a leech sucking her bank account dry.
She’s always down and depressed thanks to his abusive mind games. He keeps her a nervous wreck. She doesn’t go out at all anymore. If she does, he’s with her.
And god forbid she talks to anyone. He travels for work, but even if he’s out of town, she stays home because he’ll get jealous if she has dinner with me. Really. She doesn’t see him for who he is.
She thinks this is a normal relationship and she should give him money anytime he asks for it. Thinks it’s okay that he’s jealous. I’m at the point where I’m thinking of hiring a private investigator to look into this guy. He’s either married or has someone else in another state.
I think he’s lied about his past. He’s a con artist, no doubt. He tells outrageous stories of why he needs money. Maybe if I present her with evidence, she’ll wake up.
It may end our friendship, but at this point, I just want him away from her. My sister used to be super popular, was tons of fun, and had lots of friends. When she started dating her now-husband, her whole personality changed. She became very critical of everyone, and she’s just not the same happy girl she once was.
She’s also really into conspiracy theories, became an anti-vaxxer, thinks she and her husband are smarter than everyone. I never liked her husband, but I’m surprised he changed her so much. She doesn’t smile or laugh like she used to. Here’s a positive one.
She brought out the best in him without trying to change his fundamental nature. He just naturally wanted to shed some bad habits and negative attitudes, and she was the perfect person to offer positive influence and support. I like to think that’s what my girlfriend and I bring to the table for each other. She says I make her less anxious and more prone to making a decision and taking action rather than being paralyzed by fear.
I say she makes me slow down a bit and consider how my words and actions affect others. We both, without being nags, make each other a better person by our presence. A friend of mine used to read fantasy novel series, play Dungeons and Dragons, and stay up late with RPGs on his PlayStation. He got married and suddenly was into sports and sold all his games.
Then we had this conversation. I said, “Remember that LAN party we had when this funny thing happened? ” He said, “What? No, I wouldn’t have done that.
I would have suggested we go bowling or something. ” I reminded him, “You made fun of us every time we suggested it. And the one time you went bowling that year was because we made you come along. ” He’s back to normal now, but it took a long time.
I met my partner at uni. The first time I walked into his room, it was boiling hot. He was covered in his duvet, having just jumped to turn the VCR off. Paper tissues everywhere.
The dude was skinny with long, lank hair and big bottle glasses. He loved Richard Linklater and was kind of socially awkward in an Alan Partridge kind of way. Used to go on about slackers and that kind of thing. He was teased pretty mercilessly by the whole gang and would often do and say things that would unintentionally make people laugh.
But besides that, he was a pretty sound lad, loved music, and had his heart in the right place. Even if he had no real confidence of his own, he was the kind of guy who would say an opinion, and if the group didn’t agree with it, he’d completely say the reverse of what he actually thought just to fit in. His idea of cool was whatever Wired or NME said was cool at the time. I introduced him to a friend of a work colleague on a night out, hoping to get the two of them together.
At first, they kind of danced around each other for a bit, but eventually ended up together. Over the next couple of years, he went from living on our couch in our living room, working as a bike courier, to having quite a high-powered backroom job for a media company in London. When he got married, he ended up investing in property and has a number of properties in the town he lives in with his wife and two kids. I’ve seen his confidence soar, particularly after his kids were born when he became like a new man.
Really proud of the guy. My cousin married young and treated his wife like crap, so she left him after a few years. He had a difficult time being single. It got to the point where he threatened suicide.
He met a new woman. She didn’t take his crap. She actually put him in his place. Now they both live happily with her kids and grandkids surrounding him with love.
He couldn’t be happier. He has totally changed as a person, a husband, and stepfather. Unfortunately, he’s now in bad health, but he’s happy. Love works.
This one worked both ways. I knew a guy who was immature, arrogant, and had no idea how to properly use his talent. I knew a girl who was awkward, a pushover, and had no idea how to properly use her talent. They started dating and everyone was confused until we realized that they quite literally brought out only the best in each other.
Now they’re two of my best friends and absolutely inseparable, as well as being two of the most talented people in our choir. A genius PhD student who could have literally chosen where to go for his postdoc position met this woman who was more than twenty years older than him. Knocked her up, and now they have a special-needs kid. He teaches middle school science now, and she monitors his online activity and social media.
That is not ideal. I had a friend on his way to transferring to Cornell, but then he met a girl. She convinced him not to transfer, switch to a much worse major, and start smoking and using drugs. She was rude, obese, and arrogant as heck.
He married her and had kids. They live essentially in poverty as she can’t hold a job due to her drug use and attitude. I’ve tried reaching out, but he won’t do anything without her. A friend I considered my twin, with whom I’d hang out for hours without feeling bored, developed feelings for a mutual friend we had.
I decided to play matchmaker and urged them to go on a date. It was downhill from there. We’d hang out and they’d have whispered conversations while I was there, exclude me from plans, throw racial slurs around, use me for when they needed something. They’re still together, but I don’t hang out with them anymore.
My dad’s current wife waited until they were married to show how much of a psycho she really is. Controlling, possessive, cruel to my half-sister from his last marriage. Won’t take her meds. Lots of fun.
My buddy ghosted everyone after dating this psychotic girl. He was a really nice guy, but also really desperate, which everyone knows is a bad combo, and she sniffed that out like a shark smells blood in water. He showed up at our buddy’s house after not hearing from him for a year. He had his little car packed with everything he owned and asked if we wanted to hang out.
We said sure, but what was up? She kicked him out for talking to a waitress in what she perceived as a flirtatious manner. We spent the next two weeks hanging out like old times. Then I get a call from him on a night we’d all planned to hang out.
He said he couldn’t make it tonight because he was out to dinner with his ex. He then told me they were getting back together. Haven’t heard from him since. She literally made him call everyone in his contact list to announce that they’d gotten back together and he was off the market again.
Another time we were all hanging out at the river, and two girls were there with their boyfriends. She somehow found out and made him call me at two in the morning, knowing I had to work at six, just to confirm he wasn’t cheating on her. The most messed-up part is I ran into his brother, and I guess he doesn’t even really talk to his family anymore. I dated a girl for almost two years.
We both changed each other relatively positively. I’d been in a bad relationship before, so I had a lot to work through. And she was in the process of getting out of a manipulative relationship as well, similar to the one I’d been in. I saw the signs, pulled her out.
All of her past relationships had been very controlling, so she was on the clingier side. She didn’t prefer to hang out with friends, just me. Wanted to talk all the time, which I mostly didn’t mind. But little stuff started to build up that I didn’t want to be responsible for.
She wouldn’t socialize without me. If I was out at class or something, she wouldn’t really eat until I got back. She explained that that’s what all her exes wanted her to do, so that’s all she knew. We had a lot of conversations about her being independent.
When I started pulling away, made work friends, was going out more, she didn’t love it. I could tell even though she didn’t say anything. I was tired of feeling guilty for wanting to have a life outside our relationship bubble. When I broke up with her, I told her she needed to be able to function on her own.
She needed to spend time by herself, figure out who she was before being in a relationship. But I kid you not, she was dating another girl a week later. This is where the change comes in. All our mutual friends report it.
The girl I loved, the girl I dated, retreated back into some corner of her brain because she’s now a carbon copy of her girlfriend. They don’t function separately. The girl I knew is gone. Her new girlfriend is all too happy about how submissive she is and takes full advantage.
I hate it, but I’m just the bitter ex. I just miss the girl I knew. All our mutual friends report it. I don’t think it’s just you being a bitter ex.
It sounds like you do care for her well-being as a friend. Myself, honestly, I had a girlfriend who tore me down emotionally without realizing it, and I was spiraling into a hole I couldn’t climb out of. I felt trapped every time we spoke. She had bipolar disorder and a few other issues.
But our main fight was about how she refused to take medication for her bipolar. She said she didn’t want to lose her creativity. So when we fought, we fought hard, and she was not nice. I never thought of her as abusive or awful, but I realized one day I was just making excuses for her.
She also mentally exhausted me. We talked about fun scenarios every now and then, like say we win a billion dollars from the lottery or whatever. I said with my share I’d travel, go to France and have a nice house there or something. You know, typical fantasy stuff.
But she said she couldn’t move because of her family. She has two autistic brothers, both differently placed on the spectrum. Even in a fantasy, she wouldn’t move or even travel on vacation. I don’t want to blame her for staying with her family to help them.
But even in a fantasy where we have a billion dollars, it’s out of the question. It made me realize how miserable I was because I then said I would give up that stuff to be with her even if it made me unhappy. I had to have someone else explain to me that when you give up things for your soul, you’re not supposed to be miserable after. She absolutely drained me and exhausted me mentally and emotionally.
I still feel like a shell, and it’ll be a year after I broke up with her come September. I don’t like feeling like this, and it’s made me an entirely new person. I’m trying to get over the obstacle, but it’s difficult. You and me both, brother.
My friend has always been very religious but also very open and accepting. He started dating this girl who was also very religious, but like turned up to eleven. I used to describe her as Mormon Catholic. She grew up in a small town in a huge, very strict religious family.
Homeschooled until college. Very close-minded, stubborn, and judgmental. When my friend started dating her, none of his friends or family liked her much. She was very controlling of him, so we would see him less and less.
Then I moved in with him, so I was able to keep in close contact and see him all the time. But he still had basically no say in what he did when he had free time and she wasn’t at work. We’d be hanging out with friends and he’d get a phone call and have to leave to go watch TV with her. Then she started getting really pushy about wanting him to propose.
He proposed before any of us thought he was ready. Everyone tried to talk to him about it and get him to think things over more, even his mom. Then the wedding ended up happening way sooner than planned. Not because of a pregnancy or anything.
She just didn’t want to wait. She’d always said she wanted to have a bunch of kids and be a stay-at-home mom, and that she wanted to get married so she wouldn’t have to work anymore. They got pregnant not too long after the wedding. Naturally, things started to change.
Plot twist. She changed for the better. She’s mellowed out a lot. Still very strictly religious, but not nearly as judgmental about it.
Way easier to be around. Her social skills have really developed over the past few years. And it turns out a lot of what we thought was her being mean was mostly her being really socially inept. And I guess a little sometimes, but everyone is.
I genuinely believe she had basically been treating her entire life as just steps leading up to getting married and having children, like the housewife edition of a Terminator, because that’s all she ever knew. Her whole life before college was spent in a home where her mother was a stay-at-home mom raising a bunch of kids. Her father was the head of the homeschool organization. And her older sisters got married young and also became stay-at-home moms.
So yeah, she’s a lot friendlier and easier to be around now. And we get to see them more than we used to. Their son’s pretty cute, too. A girl I was friends with at university was a massive party animal.
Hooked up with a million guys. And you name it, she smoked it, drank it. She blew off lab work with me too, which peeved the rest of us off. Her now-husband knocked her up after a whopping six weeks of dating.
With that being stated, she was working a dead-end job in a crappy town and was looking for a person to take care of her. Eight years later, she had three kids and is the most sanctimonious, crunchy person ever. She even has a decal on her crappy SUV about how she’s a cloth-diapering, breastfeeding, anti-circumcision, co-sleeping mama bear. When someone refers to themselves as a mama bear, I know what they really mean is that they’re going to act like a bear around humans.
Which is to say, a wild bear should not be hanging out around human adults and kids. Best change. The person used to be an addict and had very problematic behavior. Over the past two years, they got clean, cut everyone toxic out of their life, started working again, made lots of new friends, and is extremely happy.
Worst change. The person developed PTSD and BPD and never leaves their place. She was mentally unstable and had just been sexually abused by what was about the fourth different person. Constantly either manic or depressed and unable to hold a job, barely staying alive.
I knew a woman who was a complete mess. A year later, after meeting her girlfriend—stable, medicated, has a good highly skilled job. You’d never know what a disaster she was just a year before. I worked with a contractor who owned his own asphalt paving company.
He was the most arrogant and irritating person I’d ever met. Running a successful business was the only thing he was good at. He was a hothead all the time. Then Brad met a little wisp of a girl at a wedding after-party.
As they talked, he commented he’d be in her area in a few days paving. She asked him to take her to lunch when he was in the area. He did. The softness she projected onto his life, plus a few food socials at her church, and Brad became a changed man.
It was like the devil turned into Mr. Rogers in two weeks. She’d told him his temper not only hurt others but was hurting him, and her just witnessing it upset her. Brad just dropped his whole old persona.
He became one of the most peaceful men I’ve ever met since that time. It was just stunning. My best friend in high school was a normal teenager. She grew up very poor though, and always desperately wanted to have money.
She also was only attracted to Black guys and dated them exclusively. When we were in our early twenties, she started dating a white guy who was a religious, wealthy racist. She lied to him about her past dating life, and they ended up marrying. She eventually became just like him—born-again Christian, racist, and even a rabid pro-lifer despite having had an abortion herself.
He has no idea. And no, we are no longer friends. A good friend from high school got a serious boyfriend, and I virtually never saw her anymore. I’d invite her over for dinner and she’d say, “Hang on, I’ll just see what Michael’s doing.
” And I’m like, “I wasn’t inviting him. I was inviting you. ” It sucked. One of my exes hated my ear and facial piercings.
She constantly bugged me to take them out. Ran into her about two years after we broke up, and she has a ton of piercings and tattoos. I get that people change, but what? Before I met my partner, I attempted suicide three times, was drinking up to six liters of cider a night with painkillers, doing a terrible job at my place of employment to where they eventually fired me, not seeing my kids, and living in a spare room which, a few weeks after meeting her, I was evicted from for general tomfoolery previously mentioned.
Now, five years on, I see my kids. We have a two-year-old of our own. We just bought a three-bedroom house in a lovely area of town. I’ve held down the same job without so much as a telling-off for almost three years.
Haven’t attempted suicide or even self-harmed since a few months after meeting her. Completed twelve months of therapy and drink just once a week. She changed my life. Heck, she saved it.
She’s the most wonderful woman in the world.