rSlash - r/Bestof AWW YEAH! TREE LAW!

Episode Date: April 2, 2025

0:00 Intro 0:12 Hickey 12:25 Trees Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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With the Fizz loyalty program, you get rewarded just for having a mobile plan. You know, for texting and stuff. And if you're not getting rewards like extra data and dollars off with your mobile plan, you're not with Fizz. Switch today. Conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. Welcome to rslash best of redditor updates, where OP's wife comes home with a mystery

hickey that she claims is a bug bite. Our next reddit post is from rslashmarriage. I'm a 27 year old guy and I'm in a fight with my 28 year old wife. We've had fights before, but not this bad. I'm at a loss on how to proceed. For context, we're college sweethearts married for almost six years. We have a four-year-old daughter. Our relationship was never perfect or without challenges. We've faced some family opposition with cultural differences, but we've made it work. She's my first love and my best friend.

My wife works in corporate. Her job has annual work retreats that last for about a week. This year was in Vegas. I usually arrange my work schedule to tag along with her, and we make our own trip out of it. We couldn't this year. Our daughter gets major anxiety traveling long distances. We're working on it, but she wasn't budging, and we decided to choose our battles. So I stayed behind and held down the fort at home. This change of plans was a bummer because that trip was part of us reconnecting as both a

couple and as a family. My wife's work hours have taken a toll, and her work-life balance leaves much to be desired. We entertain the idea of skipping the retreat. Attendance is optional, but it's generally frowned upon if you don't, and my wife's making connections in her field. She grew increasingly weird. We have a system of either of us is a way for extended periods. We keep in contact. For the first day or so, she was herself, but she grew distant. I would even text her about important stuff and be left on read while she claimed she never saw my text. Whenever we talked, she was rushing me or our daughter off the phone. There were all these times she wasn't involved in retreat activities.

We were supposed to have a mini birthday celebration for our daughter over FaceTime. Our daughter was excited! It was something my wife promised her because the retreat overlapped her actual birthday. But my wife backed out because she had people up to her room after a seminar. It was like she wanted my permission to break her promise to our daughter. I told her I wasn't offering that, nor making her keep her word. She said I wasn't being fair and this was a networking opportunity. They were business oriented and wouldn't understand her stepping away for family time. I said her decision is her decision,

but she'd have to explain it to our daughter. She promised that she would rain check the following day. Our daughter didn't understand and cried. My wife ended up hanging up and leaving me to comfort our daughter alone. The whole incident rubbed me the wrong way. I didn't like it. She didn't keep her word for the rain check either. She was documenting the retreat on social media. One coworker, a 23 year old guy, was in almost every picture or video attached to her hip. In one picture, he had his arm too comfortably around her in my opinion. He's a recent hire in my wife's department. She was asked to oversee him. I do not like the guy. He doesn't know boundaries.

Once in response to a work assignment, he texted my wife that she's exactly the kind of woman he needs to keep him in check. My wife had brushed it off. She feels bad for him because he's not fitting in. She took him under her wing during his first retreat with the team. If I'd questioned, she'd say that she was tired or networking. There was always something. But I've seen her at these retreats. This wasn't like her. She was just off. The day before her return home, she complained about a bruise on her neck. She stressed that it was a bug bite. I didn't actually see the bruise until she came home. I instantly thought that it was a full-on

hickey. She kinda brushed it off after making a big deal of it over the phone. I didn't push because our daughter was present. But when I was able to confront her, she clung to her bug bite claim. When I kept pushing, she asked what I was trying to imply. I outright said that I believed she had a hickey and I didn't believe that she was being honest with me. We had it out then. She was offended and pissed at the accusation. Infidelity has always been a sore topic. Her family has a history of infidelity. So we had a pretty bad fight and she accused me of looking to pick a fight due to the incident with our daughter's birthday.

I told her it had nothing to do with that and everything to do with a hickey on her neck. The fight ended in an impasse. We're still not recovered. She swears it's a bug bite, but I'm not convinced. I've always trusted my wife. I never doubted her. But this bruise doesn't look like a bug bite. It looks like a hickey. I only feel more strongly when I consider how distant and weird she was during the Vegas retreat. Now she's wearing turtlenecks ever since, and we're caught between arguing and her dousing our daughter and me with affection.

Communication usually prevails for us, but not now. I think my accusation pushed us to a new level of argument. I'm at a loss here. I really need outside perspectives. How do I move forward? Have you guys ever gotten a bug bite that looks like a hickey because I know I haven't? Then about one week later, OP posted an update. Things are a roller coaster. I'm trying to process. It took a while for my wife and me to have any real conversation about the bruise on her neck. I rarely saw the bruise because she was turtle-necked up, but I did notice the healing process from

reddish purple to yellow. There wasn't any more discussion about the Vegas retreat. She made it clear that she was done talking about it and she shouldn't need to defend herself to her husband. I told her she could do whatever she wanted, but I was done being treated like an idiot and I wasn't sharing a bed with someone I couldn't trust. So I moved to the guest room. Communication stopped. The silences were palpable. Even our daughter noticed. I'm not proud of that. I try keeping her out of fights. My wife came to the guest room one night and asked if we could talk.

I could tell that she'd been crying. She said she hated the way things were between us. She felt like she was losing me either way. I told her I needed complete honesty. She confessed that she hooked up with that coworker on OH MY GOD! ON OUR DAUGHTER'S BIRTHDAY! The hickey was from him. Yo, that's actually crazy. She was lost in the heat of the moment and didn't realize he was sucking so hard on her neck. By her account, they made out while doing some over-the-clothes stuff and then he gave her oral. It stopped there because he called her by a nickname that I affectionately call her. It snapped her back to the reality of her actions.

She went to splash water on her face and saw the hickey. The guy made light of it and made a joke about the hickey being her souvenir. She blew up on him and kicked him out of her suite. Part of the reason she was avoiding me was out of guilt. She said she's coming clean because she doesn't want to hide things anymore. I asked her why she cheated. What was it about this guy that she deemed worth risking everything? She claimed it wasn't him specifically, nor is she unhappy with our marriage. She doesn't really know how to explain it, but a part of her feels broken. The more she looks in the mirror, the more she sees her dad, a cycle of being consumed

with work, becoming distant from her child, and the infidelity that he put her mom through. She said her family never talked about anything openly and how when she was growing up, my mother-in-law never addressed anything with her. I said that her parents didn't make her cheat. She chose to party up with a guy who constantly disrespected our relationship. Those were all her decisions decisions and she at any point could have chosen our family. She agreed. She wants to blame her parents but realizes this

is on her. She apologized for cheating and for entertaining the guy's advances. She said that she'll do whatever it takes to repair. Go to HR, quit her job, counseling, anything. She wants to make everything right. I told her I don't know what right looks like or if that's possible for us anymore. I knew we had our problems, but I thought there wasn't anything that we couldn't talk out. She insisted we could still talk it out. We didn't have to give up on us. She tried giving this rally cry for our relationship, but I felt very numb.

I said I didn't recognize her. Not just the betrayal of our vows, but also how she treated our daughter. She's like a stranger. She feels she's failed as a wife and a mom, but she loves us both beyond words and wants our life together and our family intact. I told her I couldn't give her the answer she wanted and thought we needed to separate and reevaluate. She didn't want separation.

She felt that we should stay together in our home, but I told her a separation was happening. Either she was leaving the home or I was with our daughter. She consented to leaving so as to best not uproot our daughter too much. She asked for our daughter not to be taken away from her. My wife is staying with my in-laws. I know that's difficult in itself because she doesn't have the best relationship with her parents. One of the hardest parts is the shift for our daughter. Right now, she believes her mom's just busy with her work per usual. She hadn't questioned it too much.

My mother-in-law called the other day. She made no excuses for my wife, but she's advocating for us to work through it. She told me times when she heard my wife describe me as the anchor she always wanted. She believes there's something worth fighting for if I'm open. Despite some family opposition we face throughout our relationship, my mother-in-law was always a supporter of us. I'm even more at a loss. I never imagined this kind of betrayal from my wife. She was my safe place. I feel numb yet broken. I'm in love with her. That hasn't changed. But I don't see myself, her, our relationship, or our family the same. Everything's more tense because it's fresh. I think this period of separation is for the best. I'm not sure about divorce. I haven't let myself fully go there. I'm not sure about divorce. I haven't let myself fully go there

I'm not set either way. I don't know where things go from here But I'm focusing on our daughter and taking things one step at a time. I feel that's all I can do right now What's so bad about this is we know this woman is a liar She came in and tried to fight with OP over, no, it's just a bug bite. How dare you accuse me of cheating on you. So she lied to his face viciously. And we're supposed to believe that they just did some over the close light groping. No big deal.

Just a little peck on the neck. I mean, you could hardly even notice it. And just some a little bit of oral, just a tiny bit, and it ended immediately. Nah, man, they went to pound town all night. Then she tries to blame OP for the accusations and then blame her parents for this culture of cheating that I grew up in. Yeah, right. Like any of these things are individually enough to break up a marriage.

But to me, sleeping with another dude on your daughter's birthday while she's crying? Why won't mommy be with me on my birthday? Yo, that's unforgivable. You know, I guess ultimately it doesn't really matter what happened in that hotel room because she's already just fundamentally betrayed her family in the worst way possible. So whether they just did oral or went at it a thousand times that one day, you know, I guess it's all the same thing at the end. You know what? Actually, I just realized something.

When I was reading the first part of the story, I thought it was odd that the wife called OP on the daughter's birthday and didn't do FaceTime to have their mini celebration. I was thinking to myself, why call and turn down the FaceTime? Why not just do the FaceTime because it'll take up the same amount of time? And now I realize the reason why she didn't want to do FaceTime is because she knew that if she saw her daughter's face, she would no longer have the willpower to, you know, do the nasty with this coworker. So she protected herself.

She intentionally, she protected her infidelity. She guarded her cheating heart against the one thing that could kill it, which was, you know, her daughter, so that she could preserve that flame of lust and screw the dude. Oh my god, that makes it so much worse! Our next Reddit post comes from r slash legal advice. I moved this month to Washington state and my yard borders windows of the neighboring property. The neighbor's yard is on the other side of their house, so their kitchen and living

room plus one of their upstairs bathrooms. And from what I can best ascertain, the window to a study are pressed right against the dividing line property between the two yards. A small stone path. Along the edge of my property, we have three black walnut trees and four bushes. About a week after we moved in, the new neighbors approached us and said the previous tenants had promised to trim the trees because they blocked the view out of their windows. I called the previous owner and he said he promised nothing of the sort. And half the reason he

planted the bushes along the existing tree line was because the neighbors complained about his cookouts in the yard making them feel as though they had to draw their curtains for privacy, which they didn't like. So the bushes were essentially a privacy hedge. The previous owner did just move into an assisted living for dementia patients though, so I'm waiting to get double confirmation from his daughter. We told the neighbor, a woman, sorry but no. Both because the trees provide nice shade and without the bushes on the lower level, they'd be able to see directly into our house and vice versa.

We went away for the weekend and found five large branches and a dozen smaller branches missing from our trees. Exactly where their windows were blocked. The trees look hideous and diseased now because of these giant bald patches and no longer provide privacy or adequate shade. One of our bushes was completely gone. Two others crudely uprooted from the ground and unsalvageable. The neighbor said the black walnut trees had been there since he moved in 60 years ago

and the bushes had been there for 15 years. I figured I was screwed because we don't have security cameras or anything to prove they did this. But as a last-ditch attempt, I sent them an email asking if they knew what had gone on, to which this neighbor had the audacity to reply as though they'd done us a favor. Their exact words were, Yes, we decided it was unfair for you to shoulder the burden of the previous property owner's unfinished business. So we went ahead and

had a crew take care of it out of our own pocket this weekend. No need to thank us. Merry early Christmas! I'm irate, especially because I had bought my girlfriend a bench swing for one of the trees for Christmas, something she's always talked about having. The trees were not crossing their property line, and the bushes were solidly within our property as well. As aforementioned, there's a small dividing stone pathway between the two properties, but I also have a recent official survey done just before we moved in.

Do I have any recourse even though they've contorted it to sound like it was a favor? Much appreciated. Oh OP, you got plenty of recourse. Let's see if this goes the way I think it's gonna go. Then, 19 days later, OP posted an update. I consulted three separate arborists officially, plus had an arborist friend check things over unofficially. The uprooted bushes were honey locusts, and the branches cut from my black walnut were valuable lumber. It was also determined that since the bushes and trees were acting as privacy barriers and no longer served that purpose that I would require extra compensation to come up with the means of a new privacy barrier. It was initially going to be $2300

for the missing honey locust, $1600 for the first uprooted one, and $1800 for the missing honey locust, 1600 bucks for the first uprooted one and 1800 for the second. Then, sweet Jesus, we got to the issue of the black walnut trees. One was cut in such a way that it was permanently damaged and will likely have to be removed, thus costing my neighbors $17,000. The next tree was deemed to have lost enough lumber to be worth $4,000, and the final one $2,500. This was just the initial decision. There were just a few more steps before everything was finalized. But then, we had had two arborists come by at this point. Then a third who came highly rated but was unable to get to us anytime soon. Well, he had a cancellation and got

in contact. We figured why not see him, anything to fortify our case. He comes in and looks and observes that our trees have been afflicted by thousands of canker disease, and they'll all have to be removed. And our neighbors may have even exposed other old valuable trees on our property that the neighbors didn't even touch to this disease. The first arborist had raised this concern and a kind Redditor had even written about that condition after my first posting. But no one caught it until this arborist because it was still in its early stage. All told, the three other less valuable trees on my property had to come down, all the black trees had to come down, and not only do my neighbors now owe me 158,000 dollars, but they'll also be charged with criminal trespassing. Now I didn't want to be a horrible, vindictive person and target an elderly couple over a

dispute like this, so I asked around to other people in the neighborhood and asked what their experience had been with these neighbors. Resoundingly everyone said, do it! Press charges! Apparently, in the years they've lived here, they've called the cops on kids having a lemonade stand for lack of a permit to run a business, called ICE twice on a Filipino family down the road, and had similar weird disputes to this one they had with me over other plants and lawn adornments. It appears they'll have to sell their house to pay me and they won't be missed. Thanks for all the advice!

Oh my god, there's no story quite like a tree law story. 150 G's man. 150 K for trees. And if they had just kept their mouth shut and not sent that email gloating, then they probably would have gotten away with it. That was r slash best of Redditor updates. And if you like this content, be sure to follow my podcast because I put out new Reddit podcast episodes every single day.