Reddit Stories - Caught in the CROSSFIRE_ NAVIGATING the INTRIGUING Dance of Jealousy and Affection_

Episode Date: June 7, 2025

#redditstories #askreddit #aita #relationships #jealousy #affection #drama #conflictSummary: In "Caught in the CROSSFIRE_ NAVIGATING the INTRIGUING Dance of Jealousy and Affection_," a tale of complex emotions unfolds, testing boundaries and relationships. Readers witness the delicate balance between love and envy, leading to unexpected twists and turns in the characters' lives.Tags: redditstories, askreddit, reddit, aita, tifu, relationships, jealousy, affection, drama, conflict, love, emotions, boundaries, twists, turns, characters, lives, balance, envy, unexpectedBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reddit-stories--6237355/support.

Partner has an overly sensitive female acquaintance who behaves affectionately solely in his presence, and when I attempted to address the issue, he became upset. Subsequently, I uncovered the reality about what he was hiding. My boyfriend Justin, 26M, and I, 23F, have been a couple for just over seven months but started dating a couple months before that. So in all I've known him less than a year and I'm already head over heels for him and feel like I've known him forever. I know it's still our honeymoon phase, but I've genuinely never felt this strongly about another guy before, and have definitely never thought as long-term as I'm thinking

with him. Justin is confident, charismatic, passionate and driven, intelligent and emotionally mature, values his family, is especially kind to children and elderly people, and just has a presence that lights up the room. It also doesn't hurt that he's six feet one inch, handsome, has a yummy body, and is an amazing lover anyway, L.O.L., the only real problem in our relationship, from my point of view, is his friendship with Olivia 24F, who is as known since her first year of university, six years. B.F. is smart with women, used to attention, and doesn't cross boundaries with them. The only time he comes close is with Olivia, and even then, it's mostly her initiating things, but the way she behaves around him is honestly the number one source of conflict in our relationship.

I am quite friendly with Justin's circle of friends now and I hang out with them at least once per week, so things can be pretty uncomfortable for me. Things that make me uncomfortable, she is exactly my BF's type, not really her fault I know. I have seen a few girls that my BF has been with from his social media, and they all look more or less like Olivia. She's 170 centimeters, 5 feet 8 inches, athletically built, has cat eyes and a pouty mouth, and just gives off a sexy aura. I'm 162 centimeters, 5 feet 3 inches, in shape, and have a decent face but one, it bothers me that

I'm nothing close to Justin's type and two, that Olivia is his type. Olivia has always been nice enough to me, but when I first met her she gave me an eyebrows raised, let's see how long you last kind of look. I admit that I could be overthinking this one. She's always finding excuses to touch Justin. An example is brushing food off of his clothes slash face, Hello, that's my job, or fixing his shirt collar. She also likes to give him back hugs. Once, she hugged him from behind and I overheard her saying

how come you never give me back hugs anymore. The way she said it was low and whispery and rubbed me the wrong way. I'm 99% sure an objective passerby could have interpreted her tone as seductive. When I brought it up to Justin, all he said was yeah, that was weird, I guess, she has this cute act that she does for Justin when he doesn't want to do something for her. Sometimes, this is probably weird in itself, she'll ask him to buy her something, like an ice cream, and when he says no, she'll stand in front of him and pout and make dear eyes. Or sometimes she just grabs him and pushes him towards whatever she wants, points to it,

and as the cutesy act, she greets him by saying, hey, you. And winking and pretends shooting him, Justin only listens to Olivia. He's a pretty stubborn guy and doesn't really follow others, unless it's Olivia. One of the things that bothers me the most in this regard is an incident that happened in a club. Justin and I were drinking with his friends, when another group of people got in an argument with some of Justin's guy friends. Justin tried to defuse the situation at first, but the others' guys were extremely disrespectful and he was on the verge of fighting three guys at once.

I kept telling him to leave them alone, but he just wouldn't back down, even after to the bartender threatened to call the police. Then Olivia walks over to him, pulls him by the arm and yells at him, stop. You're acting stupid. She dragged him to the bar and they were talking there alone for 15 minutes. I know I probably should have went and checked on him, but I was pretty shocked slash angry considering what just happened. One of Justin's friends noticed me watching and told me, don't feel bad.

It's always been this way with them which obviously made me feel worse. Yesterday we went to dinner with his friends. The day was pretty warm, so Justin was only wearing a t-shirt, but by the time we finished it was windy and quite a bit colder. We decided to take a walk along the river walk, and Olivia suddenly wrapped her cardigan around my BF's shoulders. He started joking around and posing like a model before giving it back, but I kind of wish he would have just given it back to her right away. There are a lot of these kinds of instances where Olivia will do small, caring things for him. Things that a G.F. does, my woman's intuition just tells me that Olivia wants more from Justin

than he's giving her. She's sarcastic and rude to him half the time because that's their dynamic slash her personality. However, when he's not paying attention to her, I sometimes catch her stealing glances at him. Sometimes she looks smitten, sometimes she looks straight up lustful, and sometimes she looks sad. I think it's obvious she has feelings for him, but when I brought it up with my BF, he told me they were just close. There is much more to add, but I'm just going to end with this. I understand that some people are natural flirts,

but Olivia doesn't act like this to any other guys in their group. Her personality is pretty strong. She's sarcastic and relentlessly teases them, but no touching, no cuties why act, none of the small, thoughtful stuff, and definitely none of the misty odd gazes. Some of the guys even jokingly complained that they're jealous that she only acts like a girl to Justin. Yesterday, after the cardigan thing, when Justin dropped me off, I asked him to talk because I've been growing more insecure about his friendship with Olivia. We talked in my apartment for around

one hour about it and didn't really make any progress, basically, he agreed not to meet Olivia alone, but said that she was important to him, told me some things they helped each other get through in university, and that he wanted her in his life. I tried to initiate sex with him after that, but he said he was tired and left. I cried after that and called my older sister and talked about the situation. She told me that since Justin hasn't done anything to break my trust, that I should continue trusting him and that there's a reason he's with me and not Olivia. She also said that if he crosses the line, I need to be strong enough to leave him. I also called my best friend this morning.

She, on the other hand, is convinced that Justin and Olivia were or are more than just close. She thinks I need to give him an ultimatum, choose the friendship or the relationship. Basically, I'm at a loss for what to do now. I love Justin and really think we have a future together, but this friendship with Olivia is driving me crazy. Is this just jealousy slash my insecurities or do I really need to give my BF an ultimatum? I really, really like him but I don't know if I'll ever be comfortable in this relationship as long as Olivia is a part of his life. Edit, thank you all for your replies. I tried to respond to as many as possible. In reading your comments, my own post and some self-reflecting I realize

that a lot of the issue has to do with my insecurities slash fears about what could be happening or what may happen in the future. I don't know why it's been so hard for me to stop rationalizing these fears and accept that they aren't indicative of what actually is happening. That being said, though I realize that a lot of the points of discomfort I've felt are purely a result of my gut feelings, there are still several things that Olivia does with my BF that are personally not okay with me. I understand that it was wrong of me to even entertain the thought of asking Justin to distance himself from her. But at the same time,

if they really are that close and nothing farther than platonic feelings are being shared, I think that one, my BF shouldn't have a problem establishing within reason boundaries with a female friend whose behavior makes his GF uncomfortable,

and that too, that female friend should understand and respect those wishes. I understand that some of the things that bother me, like her cute act or some of her other affectionate gestures, might just be part of her personality towards him and that I'll probably just have to suck it up and deal with it. But for me, it's within reason for him to ask that she cut out the intimate

physical stuff like the back hugs, grabbing his arm incessantly, brushing his hair slash face, clothes, etc. Justin and I haven't talked much today, but I'm meeting him later tonight and I will tell him exactly what I've written above. I'm not going to ask him to stop being friends with her, and I'm not going to ask her to distance himself from her. I'm also going to ask him to clarify some things for me, like the extent of their physical relationship slash if there's any romantic history between them that I'm not aware of. Some people might have a problem with this, but I think that given the nature of their relationship slash the fact that they see each other so often, he should be transparent about it. I think this conversation will help me decide whether a compromise can be made

and I can learn to deal with their friendship healthily, or if I will have to do the hard thing and walk away, which I really, really don't want to do. Update, I met just in the night after. I added the edit to the original post, with the intentions of telling him that I was wrong for wanting him to distance himself from Olivia, but that I wanted one, for him to ask that she toned down the physical intimacy and two, that he disclosed the extent of their relationship in the past. I.e. how far their physical relationship has gone, if either of them has confessed romantic feelings, which was something I previously wondered about but always avoided asking him. That talk didn't go as planned at all, I thought he was going to be understanding of me and

honest about his feelings, but he stonewalled me and was super rude and an all-around asshole to me. As soon as I brought up Olivia, he laughed and shook his head and asked me if I was really going to do this shit again. I tried my best not to get emotional and just explain my point of view, the whole time he was leaning his head against the wall, didn't make eye contact, and was playing with his earrings. So when I asked if he understood my feelings and was okay with what I was asking of him, he smiled sarcastically and said, of course, honey with a fake tone. He was extremely angry when I asked if they have hooked up before, his exact words where you haven't even been my GF for a year, if you think you're entitled to know every little detail from my past, fuck yourself. He walked out after saying that, and I cried.

He'd never talked to me like that or expressed anger towards me before. I was shocked, hurt and angry. Obviously he was hiding something. I didn't know if something had happened between them or he had feelings for her or what, but I wanted to talk with him again, so I messaged him. telling him I wasn't trying to make him mad. But that I felt like we needed to talk again. He didn't reply to my messages that night, and the next morning he still hadn't replied. I never thought I would do this, but I sent Olivia a message asking to meet for a coffee. Surprisingly she answered almost immediately and agreed to meet in the afternoon. When we met I told her about my feelings about their relationship, how Justin had reacted the

other night, and straight up asked her if there was any romantic feelings between them. She admitted that she has feelings for Justin, but that it was complicated. She said she loves him and hates him at the same time. She told me that I should leave him, that she wasn't just saying that because she wants to be with him instead of me, but that it was because Justin has always been a player, has been charming and leaving girls for years, that she's waited for him to change, that she knew she could never be truly happy staying by his side as a friend. That she should leave him too but couldn't.

I thought she might try to BS me, but she seemed very sincere when saying these things. I asked her what the extent of their relationship was like in the past, and she told me that basically, she was attracted to Justin at first sight when they first met in university, but that Justin had a long-distance GF at the time. Justin broke up with his LDGF, they got closer, Justin had some problems, she wouldn't tell me what they were, that he counseled to her about, this led to them kissing one night and having sex. That was her first time. She confessed feelings to Justin, but he said he didn't want their friendship to be affected if the relationship didn't work out. They were on and off

FWBs throughout college. Justin had a handful of short-lived relationships during that time and he cheated on one of his GFs with Olivia. She claimed at this point that they haven't had sex since he's been in a relationship with me, I'd quote to believe. When they graduated, their friend group rented a vacation pension on an island. One night their friend Ashley walks in on them in the bathroom. Justin told Ashley that it was a drunk mistake, Olivia was extremely hurt and refused to see or speak to Justin for weeks. After being ignored, Justin apologizes to her,

tells her he has feelings for her, and they go on a few secret dates but Justin never commits to a relationship and then backtracks and says he's confused about his feelings not ready for anything serious. From that point on, they went back to being FWBs until Justin met me. I'm a little confused and skeptical as to why she's told me all this, so I ask if she has any proof. She searches chat logs and shows me multiple messages of him booty calling her. She starts getting emotional and tells me that Justin has amazing qualities but that he has some deep personal issues that he refuses to work on that prevent him from being a good partner right now.

I asked her what she meant, but she wouldn't tell me. I could tell that she cares about him a lot. She's been single this whole time. There were likely many opportunities for her to end up in a happy relationship, but she turned a blind eye to them all for Justin, who can't even admit that he has feelings for her. Even though I didn't like some of the things she did before, I actually sympathize with her a lot.

It sounds like Justin put her through a ton of shit, given her false hope and taken it away, and she's always stayed by him for whatever reason. After, she tells me not to worry about throwing her under the bus because she was going to tell Justin herself that she told me about them. She said she wanted him to be mad at her. Later that night Justin called me trying to explain himself to me, but I broke up with him. I was crying on the phone.

I really didn't want to break up, but I knew it was the right thing for me to do. Regardless of what was true or false about his past, it was just too much drama for me handle and the way he reacted to me when I had originally wanted to talk to him scared me. He didn't try to fight me or ask me to say, we just kind of sat in silence on the phone for a while before hung up. It's been about two weeks since then. I know that Justin was probably a bad boy and it was only a matter of time before he broke my heart, but I feel devastated. I'm just starting to be able to get back into my normal routines, but even then sometimes it's just so hard to get out of bed. I think about Justin every day. It's like the more I'm away from him, the more I think about the

good things we had together. I miss his smell, his laugh, his touch, just being able to be with him whenever I want. Part of me hoped he would reach out to me, but he hasn't. I met Olivia last week and she told me that Justin wasn't talking to her anymore, and that it was probably a good time for her to move on from him. My ass. Last night I saw Olivia uploaded a couple-white picture of her and Justin on Instagram. They were in a nightclub or some dark place. He had his arm wrapped around her with a drink in that hand and she was sipping from the straw. I know it was a mistake not to block slash unfollow Justin and his friends. After I saw that I blocked and unfollow them all. That was kind of what inspired me to post

an update. I don't know if Olivia played me or if Justin is working his magic on her again, but I just feel shitty all around. It hurts no, but I know these people. people would have been toxic for me if I had stayed with him. It just hurts so much more than I'd imagined. Next story, boyfriend claims his chronic pain stops him from doing chores and going out with me but he can still go kayaking with friends and have fun time whenever he wants. I, 26F, have been with my boyfriend, 30M, for a little under two years. In the time we've been together his chronic pain, which isn't connected to any particular slash known condition as he refuses to go to the doctor, has gotten worse and worse. It's reached a point where he's almost incapable of doing

chores or house projects, is usually too exhausted slash in pain to make or agree to plans and getting him to do anything outside of the house together is like pulling teeth. His objections always revolve around his pain and fatigue. I've never suffered from chronic pain, and thank God, so I'm not one to judge or accuse someone of making it up since the pain itself is invisible and my boyfriend looks perfectly healthy. But he's now been to be. unemployed for about four months and I'm starting to question things. I'm starting to feel doubtful for a number of reasons, and the main ones are that A, he never turns down his friend's invitations to hang out, even when the activity is something physically intense like kayaking or going

hiking or going to a music festival and B, he is never too tired slash in too much pain to have sex. Over time it's almost made it seem like he's conveniently in an unbearable amount of pain when he has to do something he isn't all that interested in, i.e. chores, and I'm starting to feel hurt that he just doesn't seem to want to hang out with me outside of what we do lazing around the house. I've never accused him of faking or exaggerating his pain, but I have tried to talk to him about doing more fun stuff together, and it always circles back to his pain or him accusing me of trying to keep him from spending time with his friends, which I'm not trying to do by

any means. I've done a ton of research into autoimmune disorders and other conditions that could be causing his problem, always bringing my findings and suggestions to him, but he just doesn't believe a doctor or any traditional medicine will help him. I'm also bothered because when we go to family outings or parties that we're both invited to, it's rare, but it does happen. He will talk anyone who will listen Zeyer off about how bad his chronic pain is and how frustrating it is to not be able to find a solution. The thing is, he's not actually looking for a solution. He just smokes weed every day and calls the good enough while lamenting and complaining that his body is the way that it is.

He also refuses to return to work because of his pain. For additional context, he seems to have really extreme muscle spasms slash tightness, particularly in his back. I'm happy to support him through hard times, but the fact that he won't work is getting concerning and I feel severely stuck. I'm not interested in supporting him financially on a long-standing basis, but at the moment I partially am by covering some of his expenses. If this post makes me a total asshole for questioning the degree of my boyfriend's chronic pain, so be it. I just need help and answers.

So, here are my questions. Where do I go from here? Do you think it's possible that my boyfriend is using his pain as a crutch? Should I put some kind of ultimatum in place that will get him medical care slash attention? Your advice is appreciated. Update, March 21st, 2025. Thank you to everyone. who responded to my post and was so compassionate and kind. It was incredible to hear from so many people who actively battle chronic pain slash illness and those with loved ones who do. I hope to continue deepening my empathy towards anyone who is struggling with an invisible illness.

On to my update. Armed with some fresh perspectives and some fresh frustrations, L.O.L. I talked to my boyfriend and told him that he needs to see a doctor or I will no longer be able to support him financially and stand by while he remains unemployed. and unmotivated to get the help he needs. I also addressed the idea of managing slash balancing his energy levels differently so that we're able to share household responsibilities more effectively, spend quality time together, and keep him doing the things he loves with his friends. His response was, really bad. He told me that if I'm not willing to step up and clean around the

house, something I'm already doing, that there's no use living together and that my efforts to clean are the bare minimum and not good enough for his standards anyway. He was also really mad that I haven't taken initiative to take care of yard projects and car repairs. He sat there and spouted off a whole list of things I'm not noticing and cleaning. And, once again, he was focused on this idea that I don't like his friends slash him jealous of them and want him spending less time with them, which isn't true at all. This really stung. He basically brushed over everything I said and focused on my perceived faults. This told me everything I need to know and I told him I was leaving. He was just, mad, not sad or hurt at all. I'm still crying excessively over his whole reaction.

I still don't know how real or unreal his chronic pain is, but I guess it doesn't matter anymore. Thank you again, everyone, for your support and kindness. I'm truly at a loss.