i fell in love with a viewer of my stream on twitch i'm a small streamer on twitch with a little over 100 followers and i average around 7 to 11 viewers concurrently i met him when i got queued up against him on valeran he was smurfing he followed me and he's become one of my active followers since he then asked to be one of my mods and i agreed it started as something small whenever i would go live he would bring his friend to the stream it's something some of my viewers did to show support
one of his friends pretended to hit on him in chat and i shipped him but he corrected him immediately and said i wouldn't troll my streamer that line kept repeating in my head i don't know why but i started to notice him then as a good mod he would police scary viewers and protect me when people make me uncomfortable i appreciate everything then we were friends in steam and valorant my viewers would often chat me in game to encourage my grind and he would do the same one thing i love doing is check their careers
and celebrate with them whenever they would rank up the next stream two weeks passed and he still hasn't visited my streams i got curious and checked if he's still on my discord on my twitch followers etc he is still there but a few days later i find myself constantly checking his discord activity status and steam status whenever i see him playing valorant i would open mine and play for a bit to see if he'd chat me as usual he doesn't another week passed he visited my stream and he brought another friend girl number two his
friend cheered him on because we were playing valorent together on stream we played with her and she was quiet most of the time a month past then and he hasn't visited my streams at this point the discord activity and the steam status checking has been something i'd do as a habit turning for the worse i would think of his voice as i would sleep at night daydream of what if i talk to him and occasionally replay some of our games together every sane person should have sent a dm right a quick hello don't make it
awkward how are you but nah i was too shy for that ridiculously waiting for his move because i was too chickened to do so he's probably busy with a lot of things or just wasn't interested to watch anymore i guess i stalked lol checked his stream profile and saw he's friends with two familiar names the two ladies he brought on stream and i got to play with once then i checked his previous valorem matches and saw one consistent name on every single one of them girl number two i felt stupid viewers watch a lot of
streamers i'm nobody special to him and i don't know him at all apart from he's a mod and he loves games as i do while i'm here wasting my time thinking of him he could be stressed with his own life i would never know because we're not really friends and i'm too cooped up in my shell to approach him i don't understand why and how this came to be but yeah that lady could be his girlfriend or best friend and i wouldn't know either even typing this whole thing out feels absurd there it is i'm
ending this and does this whole thing make me the jerk or not i don't know if i would call this love but the streamer and the viewer clearly had very different expectations for each other i don't even really know how the streamer knows that she likes the viewer since it sounds like even though he's a mod he doesn't really show up to the stream like he used to so she's going off of i guess just the short amount of times they played together and the times that he was a mod in the stream and that's
really it i think that the only thing that makes sense here is to actually just dm the guy and get to know him to see if he's even somebody you would want to no further to begin with whatever happened in those ballarant streams and the chat must have made a pretty big impact but it seems like the viewer has no idea that the streamer is in love with him so anyway let me know what you guys would do in this situation if you were either the streamer or the viewer here am i the jerk for
letting my brother call me dad and refusing to tell him the ugly truth i'm well aware this story sounds extremely hard to believe and i'm aware there will be many people that will think this is fake sorry but this story is 100 true and it is a hot topic of discussion in my family at the moment i was born when my parents were both 19 and my only other brother let's call him josh was born when they were 42. they divorced shortly after josh was introduced into the world he was four months old at the
time and they both wanted nothing to do with the child at the time i was 23 years old i was living alone with my then girlfriend who was 21 now my wife and i've done my best to convince at least one of them to take care of young josh for his sake and the family's sake but they refused adamantly and said that i should be taking custody of him instead so i became legal guardian of my brother and he's been living with us for the past 12 years and things have been going really smooth for
us josh now almost 13 years old has been calling me dad and my wife mom and our two children a four-year-old girl and nine-year-old boy his siblings and he has absolutely no idea about his real parents and to be honest i let all of that slide he has no idea that i'm really his blood brother and not his father and i'm starting to feel guilty and a little weird some of my uncles and aunts come to visit occasionally and they are really disgusted at the fact that he calls me dad and they are surprised i
haven't told him the truth they constantly messaged me talked to me in private and i could not chat to them without this one particular topic rising up badgering me to let him know already but i refused i discussed this with my wife and she thought it would be wrong to tell him the truth because none of my parents wanted to take care of him and i'm the only one in the world who gave him the father figure everyone deserves i feel that he has the right to know what he is to me and what i
truly am to him but he suffered enough already and i just want things to continue how it is so am i the jerk and would i be the jerk if i let him know the truth this has got to be absolutely shocking to the kid and i'm really surprised that of all the other family members nobody said anything or hinted or given it away up to this point i don't really understand why exactly he hasn't told josh that he's his brother this entire time because it seems like if you would have told him as a
little kid and he would have already known that over time that'd probably be the more simple thing but the older he gets the more complicated this seems like it's gonna be there was a massive response to this that had almost 20 000 upvotes on it that said my understanding is that it can be very distressing to a child or an adult to abruptly find out they've been adopted most things i've read indicate it's best to let the child know early on that they came from a different mommy's tummy and went to their mommy and daddy
or something along those lines your brother is past that point but you are better off acting on this sooner than later it's better that he finds out now from you and your wife otherwise someone is going to spill the beans so unless there is a big update a lot of times i don't include the update because usually they're pretty small but this one actually had an update to it in the future so skipping forward in time the husband and wife actually told josh that he is josh's brother so so there's a lot of information here
i'll try and break it all down he actually went to a therapist to ask some advice and one of the first pieces of advice was to tell him as soon as possible for multiple reasons and to also make sure that his biological children are present for other multiple reasons so starting from that point he says my wife and i decided to sit the kids down and burst the big bubble i asked my brother josh to come closer to make sure i helped him close and make him feel comfortable he asked what's going on but i
started by telling him how much we cared and loved him then told him everything about my parents i put them in a bright light in hopes of a reunion and who i am to him then quickly hugged him and my two other kids and i told him that i love all my children the same and nothing is gonna change my love for him he was shocked and asked if i was joking but i was starting to cry so he knew i was serious my biological children were very surprised too he was in tears and asked
me why i didn't tell him sooner i didn't know what to say and said i was just trying to protect you i'm sorry and i hope you can forgive me but unfortunately and understandably he left he didn't talk to me as much again and understandably so i continuously offered him to go out to the park and play a little bit of football and all of his favorite things but he just outright decline and even got a little angry sometimes for me even talking to him i thought i messed up big time until one day my
wife and two children were out doing shopping and we were alone he came up to me and said i know you're not my real father but i want to let you know you're the best dad in the whole world sorry from before i hugged him and things got pretty emotional it would be a big lie to say my house is normal now it's far from that but things are slowly ever so slowly starting to brighten up there is no longer anything to hide anymore and it feels like we are born again so from the way
he tells it it seems like josh is taking it as well as you could expect taking something that serious but let me know what you guys think is he the jerk or not for this whole situation unfolding in the way that it did am i the jerk for barring my husband from the bedroom tonight so here is the situation me i'm a nurse working 50-ish hours a week in the pediatric icu i cry at least once a week because the job is hard my salary pays our bills all of them my husband is 25 years
old has a degree but isn't looking for a job he works two days a week at the grocery store and spends most of his time playing league of legends by the way all the events here are in accordance with the global illness legislation today was supposed to be a good day i had been begging my husband to swap his saturday shift to literally anything else we could have days off together we haven't had a weekend together since our wedding 18 months ago today was supposed to be our first saturday night off together we were going
to an animal sanctuary he starts the day by going to breakfast with his best mate leaving before i even wake up i wake up around 9 and realize he is not home i call he says he's helping his mate set up some lights and that the weather was too rainy for the animal sanctuary anyway he gets home at one ish lies around play some league of legends promising we would cook dinner tonight together he leaves again at five to help the same mate with something else i go grocery shopping i don't drive because of medical
issues but i walk there and back in the rain i get home and realize i've left my keys inside i call my husband knowing he's five minutes away he says he'll leave in a minute i sit in the rain and cold in the southern hemisphere and 45 minutes later i call again he still hasn't left yet he finally agrees to come let me in the house so he drives up presses the clicker to let me in the garage and leaves again at 10 pm i called to see where he is his friend answers says he's
out driving to do something an hour away it's 10 30. i'm going to bed i have sent him a text and i'm upset and i don't want to speak to him tonight and would rather he left me alone as far as i'm concerned if he can't value me more than his best mate on the first day off he and i have shared in a year and a half he can go sleep in his bed instead by the way his friend doesn't work so they hang out all the time when i'm at work he is going
to be upset and he is going to tell his mate and his mate is going to tell him i'm being a jerk so am i the jerk immediately a lot of people seem to think that he is having an affair but she responds saying that she is confident he is not having an affair i mean i guess you could hope that maybe this is all a big mystery secret where he's trying to get a job and he's going to surprise you with a job because i've known people in the past that they don't want to
get others hopes up by saying i'm going to apply for this i'm going to apply for that they just do it and then if they don't get it they don't bring it up and then if they do get it then they can finally just say one thing and that is i now have this job it's probably not that but that would be the best case scenario here from her perspective that whole thing about being five minutes away and leaving her in the rain for 45 minutes is really messed up though it's either that he wasn't
actually five minutes away or that he truly just doesn't care because she had to call again 45 minutes later while she's standing outside in the rain in front of her own house with all the groceries i mean depending on what's there could have melted or gone bad but then when he gets there he doesn't even say anything to her he just drives up hits a clicker and drives away from the way she tells it it almost just seems like he's kind of just over her there's actually a mini store in response to this where somebody
said i used to be married to a man like this our marriage cracked up at about 18 months too he wanted to take his best friend on vacation with us except they were going to travel separately by motorcycle which would take a week and i'd fly alone he wanted to spend our anniversary with his best friend post-divorce he and the same best friend bought houses next door to each other where they live with their beard slash wives the whole thing sounds pretty awful but let me know what you guys think jerk or not a jerk
and what would you do in this situation am i the jerk if i cancel christmas because i can't afford it this year the title says it all i'm a sole provider for a family all my credit cards are maxed out negative bank balance upcoming missed payments until my next check basically destitute for the foreseeable future my wife and i usually decorate on black friday but this year i don't want to the thought of putting up our fake tree knowing i'll have nothing to put under it fills me with such a mix of shame anger and
pain i would prefer just to let december pass and cut out as many things as i can until i can get my finances under control plus my daughter is two years old she won't know care or even remember one missed christmas so am i the jerk i'm already a failure as a husband and a father what say you hear i'm assuming the wife wants the tree to go up or at least to have a little bit of christmas spirit that at least seems to be the implication here and if they already own the christmas tree
i don't see what the hurt could be from just putting it up even if there's nothing that goes under it but there's actually a lot more info that came out after this a lot of people ask questions about the specifics of a situation and he clarified saying our mortgage and utilities are paid there is food in our fridge and my paychecks are secure even though it too will all go to bills and none left over for gifts i pretended not to notice that we weren't keeping up our pre-child lifestyle without credit cards and i got
in over my head and now i have to dig myself out of a relatively deep hole meaning i won't have money for gifts and meals out and holiday gatherings and whatnot for a good bit of time to come but i have a great job an outstanding family support system who all live close by and know what debt feels like and will understand if we can't chip in this year with anything but our presence but it just felt shameful to have the advantages i have and i still managed to screw it up as bad as i
did without asking for help so of course there are a lot more details to every story but based on what you know so far jerk or not a jerk for canceling christmas because he can't afford it this year am i the jerk for telling my family if they gift us money for our wedding there will be no strings attached or we will politely decline i hate wedding culture it's nonsense my fiance and i thought we would escape all the nonsense and the money by having a small thing well the family started trying to throw money
at us to make it bigger and more spectacular we were surprised but it was a good surprise then the demand started coming out they wanted this they wanted that they wanted this person to come these colors dresses can't do this this person has to be a flower girl this person has to be a groomsman etc etc suddenly it didn't feel like our wedding but an excuse for our families to have a family reunion we put our foot down and said this thank you all for your kindness and generosity when it comes to our wedding unfortunately
it looks like we may not have been on the same page as the rest of you when we were offered money for this wedding we did not realize it came with strings attached with so many requests and so many demands from people we didn't expect would think they had to say in our wedding we decided to give everyone their money back our understanding of what a gift is must be very different if you would like to give us money without strings attached or requests or demands we will gracefully accept it but if you believe a
gift should come with stipulations we must regretfully and politely decline this caused an epic fiasco such to the point where i have people saying they will never come to our wedding honestly not the worst thing in the world that we are spoiled that we're jerks etc etc etc my parents are rather upset about it but hers who never made any demands and gave us a small cash gift said we did the right thing we are halfway to canceling the whole party and just absconding into the wilderness to do the wedding the way we want are
we the jerks this is probably the best way it could have been handled just give back everyone the money and let everyone know what page the bride and groom are on i'm guessing that what happened here was one family member probably gave money and then thought nobody else will be making any requests so it wouldn't be a big deal if they made a request and then another family member thought the exact same thing and then another family member thought the exact same thing not realizing that the bride and groom were bombarded with requests from everyone
or at least a huge majority of people besides the wife's parents it sounds like and if they wanted a family reunion as he put it here they should just have a family reunion they could do before or after the wedding but then make the wedding be exactly what the bride and the groom want but let me know what you guys think are they the jerks or not for returning all the money and saying that they will only accept money for their wedding that has no strings attached