People Reveal The Moment The Realized Their Relatives Were Living A Double Life
[rebelmouse-image 18350220 is_animated_gif=How would you react? What would you do? Would you stay married or would you make the hard choice to say goodbye?
u/Berns_whenIP wanted some stories from Reddit:
People who discovered their partner was living a double life or keeping a significant magnitude secret, in retrospect what signs did you perhaps miss or what events now make more sense?
Here were some of the answers.
The Signs
[rebelmouse-image 18350489 is_animated_gif=The fact that these insane arguments would spark from nothing and he would end up stripping naked randomly and/or punching things.
Drugs. I was that oblivious.
Fake-TSD
[rebelmouse-image 18349253 is_animated_gif=He pretended to have combat-induced PTSD, that he used as an excuse for his behavior. Turned out he was never in combat, but he talked about it every day, all the time to everyone.
It's usually just when the lies don't add up, dates and names change and there are obvious things that you choose to ignore (he told me he talked to his dad about it all the time, but when I went to meet his parents he said that they don't know anything about it so don't bring it up).
Ya Got Caught
[rebelmouse-image 18355108 is_animated_gif=I was seeing this girl. We met at work, and hit it off pretty quickly. Things were pretty normal. We'd go out, come back to my place, do our thing and then sometimes she'd stay or other times she'd head home. This went on for about a year.
So when things started to get weird was when we went out to a bar, both got sh-tfaced, and I said well your place is like a few miles down the road, let's just crash there. She was adamant about getting a cab back to my place. Seemed a little weird but whatever, yay drunk sex. So this happened a few more times, she'd always have excuses, her place was a mess. She was painting. Etc. At this point it's not adding up.
So one night I decide to surprise her at home, figuring she would be happy to split a pizza and a 6 pack. She's not home. But her fiancée is. Turns out he's a pretty cool guy, has suspected something is going on with her, says she's been staying late at work a lot lately, including tonight. No she isn't.
So we decide to split the pizza, watch the baseball game and wait for her. I will never forget the look of oh I'm screwed on her face when she strolled through the door and saw her fiancée and her boyfriend sitting on the couch eating pizza and drinking beer.
Things Keep Spiraling
[rebelmouse-image 18346341 is_animated_gif=My dude had to go home and help with his ailing stepdad on the weekends. Initially, I was apprehensive because they had a rocky past, but was convinced because family is family, right? So it must be true.
He'd leave the city Fri afternoon, return Monday night - it was a three hour drive out to the middle of the nowhere and was almost a decade ago when cell service wasn't that great, and I worked overnights at a hospital; it worked out.
This went on for a year and a half before I broke up with him. You see, things weren't adding up, I wasn't allowed to talk to his Mom or sis anymore, we were growing distant, he'd get very agitated with me. Also, I was never invited to go with him, I mean I could have asked for time off ... Therefore, I hired a PI.
Turned out he'd hop a ferry to Canada and visit some other woman ... I wound up contacting the other woman after I kicked him out. She and I exchanged some info, filling in a lot of the missing pieces for both of us; she was pissed she was bamboozled and broke up with him too.
Through some friends, I received news a year later that his stepfather died, but this guy never visited and had actually become estranged from the family, and they didn't know where he even was. About a year later he contacted me and told me he had lung cancer and wanted to be my friend again. This wasn't reciprocated, partially because his lung cancer info never added up (I'm in the medical field, you can't fool me man), but mostly because I didn't trust him, so why bother? I told him to pound sand. This escalated his illness AND said he had now suffered a concussion due to a bicycle accident. Keep in mind this was all via text and a few phone calls, we did not live around one another. When I still would not spend time with him (he wanted to watch Netflix over Skype or play video games), he said a former lover proposed marriage and he was leaving the country to be with/marry her. It's been over a year since I've heard from him, but fully expect something in a few months because he does this cyclical pattern when he contacts me.
Okay guy.
A Little Black Book
[rebelmouse-image 18353308 is_animated_gif=Not my partner, but my boss (married mother of two) was always taking long lunches, forgetting things, dressing particularly nicely for normal days, seeming a little tipsy after lunch. Once, a friend mentioned the neighborhood she'd moved into appeared to have a big swingers vibe, and my boss laughed out loud but went back to her work, saying nothing.
We'd make jokes she was having an affair but I don't think anyone believed it. She was a proper southern lady, dedicated to her family, or so we thought.
After she passed away (RIP) they found a highly detailed sex log that specified huge numbers of guys and a liaison almost every day except the week she and her family took their annual vacation.
Tripsy-Daisy
[rebelmouse-image 18351945 is_animated_gif=I caught my boss cheating on his wife. We ran a really small screen printing operation and it all started with these "business trips". The first few times it was just a week or two, then over the span of a year the trips would become longer and longer and more frequent. I ran the business when he left. He wouldn't answer customer calls while he was there and never brought back any new clients, so I started to get suspicious.
One day he slipped up and sent an email to our work inbox that i used daily to correspond with customers. It was a receipt for a flight to new York for him and another woman... On his wedding anniversary... He never even called his wife that day. Now at this point I was not interested in outing him or meddling but I was the only one that talked to him daily. I loved his wife and when she came to me asking if I heard from him because he didn't call her on their 23rd wedding anniversary and didn't know where he was, i may have mentioned that he was in New York and maybe that was why he didn't call. She asked how I knew that and I told her there was an email in our work inbox.
I absolutely do feel guilty about being the one to lead her to finding out the truth but it ended up being what he wanted anyway. He didn't have the balls to tell her what was going on and wanted to get caught. They split and he now lives with the other woman. His ex wife is happier than she has ever been considering the wake of bullsh-t he left her to deal with.
A New World
[rebelmouse-image 18351937 is_animated_gif=Not me, but my ex girlfriend in highschool. Her father was a businessman who would travel back to their home country a lot for work. Apparently around the start of highschool he'd started travelling back home for work a lot more for longer durations.
Around the time we were in senior year, it came out that he had a secret family back home (wife and two kids, oldest one was maybe 3 or 4 which sparked the move I think) and he was planning to move back their home country to live with them instead.
I remember it all because she called me the night this all happened, about two years after we broke up (still friends) and she was pretty devastated.
They noticed the following suspicious things:
- His trips were less well-planned, and seemed spur of the moment
- Despite travelling for much longer he was still packing light
- He would call back home a lot less when he was travelling
Heroin(e)
[rebelmouse-image 18348549 is_animated_gif=I found the hidden heroin habit when I found him not breathing in the bathroom and the paramedics that came asked me if he's taken anything... I didn't know heroin enemas existed.
Paramedics unable to revive him and every year I think about what could have been...
A "Friend"
[rebelmouse-image 18351941 is_animated_gif=I was with a guy for about 6 months who would get really awkward when this one friend of his would call. He'd clench up when I'd ask about her and we'd always end up in a fight. Obviously, he turned it around and said I was insecure and jealous. He broke up with me pretty abruptly and didn't give me much of a reason. Turns out I was the mistress and she was the girlfriend. They're getting married this year.
Brother, Brother
[rebelmouse-image 18355109 is_animated_gif=So my dad's best friend lives in a city a few states over and they call each other pretty regularly (they've been friends since the 80s). One day his friend calls him kinda annoyed and says he saw a guy that looked just like him the other day in the city, and if my dad was visiting, why not come over and say hi? My dad says no, I was never in that city, I'm sat at home right now in Nowhere (my glorious hometown). His friend says huh, well this guy looked just like you, he could have been your brother.
Fast forward a few years and my dad is chatting with his dad (my grandpa) who is a WW2 vet and generally a pretty "keeps to himself" kinda guy. They were talking about how growing up, they didn't have two beans to rub together and my dad was always admiring his friends' fancy houses when he went there after school. As an adult he realised something literally didn't add up because my grandpa had a very well paid job as an executive and made a decent salary. So out of the blue his dad sits him down and says son, there's something you should know. The reason we were so poor when you were growing up was because before the war, I married in a bit of a rush to a lady in the city because she was expecting, and we had 3 kids, and when I got back from the war things didn't work out and we got a divorce. In those days a divorce was pretty unusual and seen as shameful, so it was a totally clean break, and he had no contact with the family ever again except for paying regular child support for each of his three kids. Meanwhile he met my grandma and had 3 kids with her, and hence, the lack of beans. Suddenly my dad realises that this doesn't just explain why they were so poor, it also explains the weird phone call from his friend. The guy his friend saw probably was his actual brother. My grandpa kept quiet about this for almost 40 years, not a word to anyone.
Pure Evil
[rebelmouse-image 18350214 is_animated_gif=I dated a guy in University who told me pretty much right away that he had terminal cancer and had about a year to live. I really liked him so I decided that I would stay with him and support him through it. He never wanted to talk about it and when I'd try to check in with him he'd go quiet and change the subject. He told me that I was the only person who knew about it and that I wasn't allowed to talk about it with anyone else. Well we ended up dating for three years, and I never once witnessed a doctor's appointment or any type of symptom (and I was still the only person who apparently "knew"). He became incredibly emotionally manipulative and abusive, tried to isolate me from friends and family, and eventually became physically abusive. Of course, whenever I would try to leave he'd use his "condition" to play on my emotions (and naivete) to get me to stay. He'd also physically block the door, pin me down, and do whatever he could to prevent me from physically leaving.
I'll never forget the day I told him that he was such a good person with a good heart (something to do with how he was handling an issue with his alcoholic mother), and he mumbled "No, I'm really not". I thought then that he was being humble, but looking back on it, it was probably guilt.
I've built a happy and successful life for myself now and have a wonderfully loving and supportive partner, but it still makes me full body cringe to think of how I spent so much time with what I consider to be pure evil.
Yikes
[rebelmouse-image 18351947 is_animated_gif=My wife went through a heroin addiction for a good chunk of time. When she finally came clean to me I was blown away. I had been spending so much time at work I guess I was never around to catch how off she would have been behaving. I felt like such a POS for not noticing. It was one of those things were I was only seeing her for a few hours before bed each night.
I looked back and realized that there were signs and that I had just been too stupid to think much of them. She was shaking when she went to bed. She would say her allergies were making her body itchy. She was also taking out a lot of cash from our account. At the time I figured she just liked spending in cash. She was picking at her face a lot leaving behind little marks all over. I just thought she was having a bad time dealing with acne. Those are just a few examples. I guess I should have also known it was weird that she would meet up with a "friend" every other night for about an hour.
Unfaithful
[rebelmouse-image 18351934 is_animated_gif=A very good friend of mine. She dated a guy who claimed to work in quality control for a nation-wide bakery chain. So traveling a lot was reasonable. They were together for 3 years (living together for one) and she knew he had an ex-wife with two children in another city, so he had to pay for them. She became pregnant, and shortly before birth she discovered the ex-wife was pregnant too. But she lived in the same city, and they were not separated at all obviously. He also had a completely different job, in town, without traveling.
Cheat?
[rebelmouse-image 18351929 is_animated_gif=Constantly accused me of cheating or wanting to cheat or trying to cheat.
If I went to the bathroom and didn't answer the phone I was cheating.
If I crossed the street to check out a store when I told him I was only going out for groceries I was cheating.
When I had a conversation with a mutual friend in front of him we were secretly with each other.
When I was pregnant with his child I was going to cheat.
The doctor who delivered my baby had to be a woman because a man would be looking at my vagina and I would probably cheat. I am not exaggerating or joking in this last one or any of the previous ones.
I stayed with him because I didn't know what normal was. My mom's a narcissist and my childhood was emotional hell. Family is everything and all that crap.
I just didn't know to run. Fast and far away a long time ago.
We split. Of course he himself was a cheater.
Racism Rebounded
[rebelmouse-image 18348506 is_animated_gif=Growing up we thought my dad had 4 kids (us, with our mom). Turns out he had families/mistresses on the side and had 13 kids total. Biggest giveaway was that there was a 30 year age difference between my mom and dad and he swooped in and married her on her 18th birthday soon after she got out of Catholic school. I'm almost 50 now with 2 kids and I'm still younger than he was when he married my then 18yo mom. He was almost 60 when I was born. With us he acted extremely prejudiced against a particular race, yet he had several children of that race. We found out late in life, when they came on a lifelong quest to meet their bio dad.
Being True To Herself
[rebelmouse-image 18355110 is_animated_gif=She slowly and then completely stopped being social or doing anything outside of the house that she usually enjoyed. It always seemed like she really wanted to go meet people, hang out, but then didn't feel up for it, or had work to do etc. I thought perhaps she was starting to get depressed. I would ask and keep an eye out but she seemed fine otherwise.
I honestly stumbled across browser history of gay male porn, and though "Huh...that's a little strange but I guess a lot of guys enjoy watching lesbian porn" Never thought of it again.
A few months after that I get a series of cryptic text messages while I am at the airport travelling for work. I am confused and am not sure what is going on, but once on the plane and a couple of hours into my airplane mode flight I start to realize......
Wait.....Is my wife of 6 years transgender?
Yes. After my work trip I came home to a husband.....
In hindsight the sudden reclusiveness was because they didn't want to meet new people as they were then. She wanted to meet new people as a man, not a woman.
Paper Heart
[rebelmouse-image 18355111 is_animated_gif=A friend found out that his dad was in the special forces after years believing he sold paper products abroad. He eventually discovered the truth after seeing his dad on a liveleak video receiving a blood transfusion after being shot. When he confronted him, his dad had said "Oh yea, that. The paper industry can be very competitive"
The Little Things
[rebelmouse-image 18347304 is_animated_gif=Husband was cheating. I knew something was wrong, but I never imagined that. He always had his phone, it was never out of his sight. When he came home from work he would be sitting in the driveway on his cell phone for awhile before coming in. Sex started getting sparse.... So many little things that I never even worried about, because I thought hey were normal marriage ups n downs, became huge "AHA" moments after I connected all the dots.
I still hate to see anyone who can't let their cell phone out of their sight or gets mad if their SO picks it up. It makes me immediately suspicious.
Good luck, I'm sure you're asking for a reason. :(
Health Updates?
[rebelmouse-image 18355113 is_animated_gif=Not a partner, but my husband's mom has been lying to us for years. She's had been having some financial troubles & moving a lot and made it seem like bad luck. Turns out she just doesn't pay her bills and has been evicted from everywhere that's she's lived in the last few years. In the last couple of year she has been pretending to have cancer. I'm a critical care nurse and it took me until I went to a class to get certified in chemo administration to wake up and realize she was lying about having cancer.
The signs we missed- She was moving all of the time for really silly reasons like her landlord sprung a rent increase on her or she wanted more animals than her current lease allowed. Bad things were always happening to her that impacted her ability to pay her bills like her boss screwing her over, getting robbed, and getting cancer. All of her health scares correlate with some big event in her children's lives like our engagement, her daughter moving across the country, her son getting married, etc. She texts us instead of calling to update us on big news related to her health.
As the years go by, it's harder to imagine what life was like before the invention of the things we take for granted today. Things like cell phones that boast professional camera functions, ordering food online, and of course, social media.
Ask any 18-year-old what the world was like before social media came along, and they won't be able to answer. I barely remember that world!
Some people are worried about the way social media has overtaken the lives of children and wonder if we should place age restrictions on social media. Currently, most social media sites stipulate that users must be at least 13 years of age to register for an account.
Wondering if we should Redditor aussieredditooor asked:
"Would the world be a better place if we put a minimum age of 18 on social media, why/why not?"
The responses were quite mixed. Some people definitely thought the idea of placing an age restriction on social media was a winner.
"Facebook should go back to being just for college students. Once they opened up to everyone the world collectively became more dumb than it already was. There's that tweet that talks about parents warning children about the dangers of the internet, only to be the ones who should have taken heed of those words."
– ParticularBiscotti66
"Yes I’ve been suggesting this for a while. Social media is damaging for children. They should have a right to be kids and not worry about sh*tty insta posts. They also deserve to have some solitude after school and not be bullied through social media at home."
– Ionlypost1ce
"There’s more than just one problem and some of them absolutely involve kids. Cyberbullying, for example, is absolutely a kids problem just as much as an adult problem."
– Formo1287
"Abso-f*cking-lutley"
"It's ridiculously hard enough for adults to navigate the complexities of online communication, let alone children, adolescents, and teens... Whose BRAINS are still developing."
"Studies have shown for years that a rise in online communication is detrimental to interpersonal skills."
– Longjumping_Ad_1477
"Yes 10 year olds don't need to see all the garbage people be posting. Kids don't need to know all the drama and hate. They need to learn to be nice and respectful before coming to social media. Social media made me see thing that I will never forget."
– HornyDragons69
Others think the age restriction should go the other way. Instead of having a minimum age requirement, social media sites should institute a maximum age requirement.
"I think a maximum age would have a better effect honestly"
– VanillaThunder324
"Kids aren't the problem, they just laugh at memes and make dumb jokes the same as the rest of us."
"Put a maximum age like 65. Kick all the senior citizens off. They're the ones who promote violence, hate, etc."
– Yvaelle
"It would be a better place if we put a maximum age of 40 on social media."
– Albae87
"Only if we do a maximum age limit too. Both extremes of the age spectrum seem to make it a habit of posting the first vile thing that comes to their mind without a second thought as to whether it is factual or will cause hurt to others."
– jenni_anydots
Some people think social media should be done away with altogether.
"Getting rid of social media will make the world a better place."
– Deleted User
"Just get rid of social media all together and things would be a lot better in this world"
– Bout2Drop
"No. I think we should get rid of social media entirely, at least in its current forms. We need to get rid of all kinds of internet points, infinite scrolling, suggested content algorithms, targeted ads, and everything else that makes social media as addictive and divisive as it is. We need international laws about misinformation, hate speech, and encouraging violence, and if we can't make that happen then we should segregate it by country to lessen the chances of the real world being influenced by foreign trolls and the kind of memey BS that got Trump elected."
"We're better off interacting with the people in our local communities, and trying to change things in real life instead of complaining about them online and drawing validation from echo chambers on the internet. We can't live in a fantasy world forever, and we'll only dig ourselves into deeper holes if we try."
– NutSockMushroom
Most people agree that implementing an age restriction won't stop kids from using social media.
"Is that going to stop teens from going on their adults account? Not really. So it won’t help"
– Rude-Taco2140
"People won't magically understand how to use the internet safely once they become of age. Blocking children won't work. We need to be educating children on how to engage with the internet safely, how to set boundaries and how to follow them."
– BipedSnowman
"I signed up for MySpace at 11 or 12 when I think you had to be 13, most of my friends did the same. Same with Facebook when it had age limits back in the day. Hard to actually verify unless you have to put in your social security number or whatever equivalent other countries use for background checks which is a kinda dangerous slope."
– fenderdean13
"I mean, adult-only sites say "You can only view this content if youre 18+", do kids just be like "Oh ok I'll come back when Im 18"?"
– SurferSmith
However, it seems most people think an age restriction is a bad idea.
"I have only been over 18 for less than a year, so I’ll have to say no. I think that sheltering is one of the worst ways to teach safety. Also, I have learned about so many topics that I never would have without the internet."
– NiamhHA
A World Of Knowledge
"Blocking kids from social media would negatively impact minorities, disproportionately to non minorities. Many queer youth rely on the internet for support and advice to navigate the world safely."
– BipedSnowman
"As I used internet as a form of escapism as well, and it also helped me learn about my bisexuality and my ADHD."
– JesseAster
"I definitely found a lot of good help from online subgroups when I was younger. It’s tough bc there definitely is a lot of bad out there and it’s important we teach good Internet guidelines as a precautionary to avoid issues. I know my family was quite spoken on how I shouldn’t ever share any private info"
– foreveralonesolo
And that's the answer. Social media in and of itself isn't evil. In fact, sometimes, it's necessary. Between helping kids deal with their loneliness and depression, passing along important and truthful information, and just allowing ease of communication and teamwork, social media is a very good thing.
While the public's concerns are valid, getting rid of social media, or restricting who can and can't use it isn't the answer. Educating people on internet safety and what counts as helpful on social media, and what only causes harm, is the way to go.
What do you think? Let us know in the comments below
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It's all our deepest fear to fall flat on our faces when there's a bunch of people around. No one wants to look the fool, and no one wants to look the fool especially when it happens before a group of people you're going to see every day for the forseeable future.
Embarrassing moments can come out of nowhere, but how you handle yourself in the aftermath is what matters. Laugh it off, shake it off, go with the chuckles, and let the people know you can't be hurt by it.
Well, unless you're any of the people in the stories below. Then I'd consider getting a new address and name.
Reddit user, Konke420xd, wanted to know when the shame was too much to handle when they asked:
"What is the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever witnessed?"
School seems like a good place to slip up and make a fool of yourself. Surely, everyone will treat it with care and kindness right?
Right?
"Oral," Not "Oral"
"I was a sophomore in HS (so around 16) taking the last leg of my county's sex ed class. It was a co-ed day, so our full gym class of about 30 kids was in the room. Topic was STD's. The teacher mentioned oral sex a few times and I guess which diseases can be spread through it. One guy who was always pretty quiet and shy raised his hand and said "I just don't really understand how you can get an STD from talking about sex..."
"It took everyone, including the teacher, a few seconds to understand, but some quiet laughter came from a few students. the teacher then of course had to explain as simply as she could that oral sex did not in fact mean talking about sex (I think the stupid bylaws of the program in our county didn't allow her to fully disclose what it was)."
"Anyway, we thought he was joking but as he heard the laughter from everyone after getting this explained to him, he slowly put his head down and covered his face for the next few minutes. Poor guy. I felt bad, but it was hard not to laugh. At least no one directly gave him sh-t for it afterward"
shlumpy_dumpyyyyy
Keep Your Preferences At Home
"Community college in Tampa, 2009. Spanish class. Shy goth girl walks to the front of the class and plugs in her USB drive to boot up her PPT and begin her presentation like the rest of us did. Except when she pluged it in, a file opened up and the most vile anime porn started playing. Everyone was mortified for her. It took her maybe 3-4 seconds to turn it off but the moment felt like forever. She said, "THIS IS MY BOYFRIEND'S DRIVE!" and ran out of the room crying. The teacher just moved on. The girl didn't show her face for a week. Just an absolutely insane moment."
grandpasmoochie
Triumph, Glory, Embarrassment
"At a pep rally to celebrate a sporting victory, a student insisted that he carry the school flag and run laps around the team. He tripped and fell onto the newly displayed trophy, immediately breaking it. This was on the front page of Reddit for a bit and I’m glad I witnessed it as my school’s claim to fame."
NathanialH0rnblower
When You Want To Stand Up To A Bully But Fail
"There was this kid in my high school that was taking karate classes. He decided he wanted to fight a kid that was bullying him after school in the town park. A sh-t ton of people went. He got all pumped up before the fight. Instantly, once the fight started, he began doing karate moves at the air. Once he reached the bully, the first thing he decided to do was a very flashy "spinning backhand"(?). He missed by a mile and was knocked out immediately. I felt really bad for him. He was always known for not being able to read situations very well and that, being his first normal fight, was just the absolute worst time to try that move out. Bullies suck. It was embarrassing for both of them."
meetmeinthebthrm
Public places seem like the perfect spot to get into all sorts of chicanery. After all, nobody is going to judge you for it on the internet.
Except, of course, that's exactly what we'll do.
To Be Fair, He Made The Right Call About His Idiocy
"Alright, so my husband and I were driving around the city and it was pouring outside. Absolutely pouring. We were about to pass the lightrail train tracks (going in both directions) when the crossing gates came down because the lightrail was approaching."
"One idiot in a van decided he could make it across before the gates came all the way down. He kept on driving, but he did not make it. Instead, his vehicle was now trapped between the gates."
"We could see from our car that this person was PANICKING. His life was flashing before his eyes. In his movie mind, the lightrail was about to crash into the van and drag it for dozens of yards before finally stopping... so he did what anyone would do. He violently pushed the door open and RAN in the pouring rain for his life."
"He was halfway down the street before he stopped, turned around, and noticed that the lightrail was patiently waiting for him to move the vehicle. The door was still open. My husband and I just about pissed ourselves laughing."
JoyceReardon
Keep Your Passions At Home
"I was watching a symphony orchestra concert at the Sydney Opera House one evening. The concert hall foyer has these huge glass windows beneath the sails that overlook the harbourside. The sun hadn't quite set yet, and every audience member that was exiting the hall could see this incredibly drunk middle aged couple having sex on a bench outside the hall."
cowbelljazz
When It's Not Just A Towel
"Was in a pool at a Euro beach resort. We’d been chatting with an old brit tourist, he got out of the pool and went to get changed poolside, using his towel to do the discrete swimming tog shuffle."
"Suddenly up steps an angry Frenchmam wanting HIS towel back..."
"Turns out our poor retired gent had grabbed the wrong towel. There ensued a desperate tug-of-towel as a very stroppy Frenchman attempted to rip his towel from this poor old guy who was butt naked and frantically trying to save his modesty."
"The old guy’s grandson saved the day, with an emergency towel transfer, but not before the whole pool complex had seen way too much hairy old British grandpa scrote."
Bigfoothobbit
We're Not As Cool As We Think
"I was at a food court and I got the brilliant idea to jump over a row of those plastic chairs and tables.. You know, the ones that are fixed to the floor."
"Foot got caught and I fell flat on my face. I stood up to 30 people clapping. One guy yelled asking for my autograph."
Niteryder007
Perhaps the lesson best learned from these following stories is to make sure you use the bathroom before you leave the house.
Otherwise, well...
Take It To The Dance Floor?
"I was on a high end cruise line at dinner. An older lady got up to go to the bathroom but missed and pooped herself in the dining room entrance. She left her panties there and continued on to the bathroom."
SimbaOne1988
Maybe We Should All Only Poop At Home...
"I used to work in nightclubs. I once witnessed a girl leaning against a wall, casually flirting with a guy and as she laughed she actually sh-t herself. She was wearing a white dress and there was no hiding what had happened. The smell actually cleared the whole level of the club. She ran out crying. We had to clean poo off the floor where she had been standing. I often wonder what she is doing now..."
Vaiken_Vox
I think the lesson we can take from all of these is anything you would normally do in private that, in the moment, feels right to do in public, don't. Just, don't.
Have you ever seen something so embarrassing you felt bad from the person? Tell us about it in the comments.
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Not everyone is capable of mastering the art of conversation.
It takes skill to perpetuate a lively discussion while also being a respectful listener.
Some people are naturals at this.
Others, however, make up for their self-aware verbal shortcomings by overcompensating. Unfortunately, the ruse ends up exposing their insecurity, much to the delight of their amused audience.
Curious to hear examples of this, Redditor TheArchitect_7 asked:
"What’s a thing dumb people say that makes them think they sound smart?"

Some people just want reactions more than a back-and-forth interaction.
Attention-Seeker
"'You wouldn't understand.' Yeah, that's why I asked you for an explanation."
– Appropriate_Donkey18
Fancy Words
"I sometimes use big words that I don't really understand to make myself sound more ambidextrous."
– Alone_Ad1278
Looking At The Score
"The more someone emphasizes their IQ, the less smart I think they actually are."
– rmshilpi
Hackneyed Sayings
"Everything happens for a reason, nothing is actually 'free' as someone has to pay for it, both parties are the same, you may have book smarts, but I have street smarts, common sense isn't so common anymore, but that's how we've always done it!"
"An addition to the previous: 'We will send 40 billion to Ukraine, but we won't spend 40 billion to secure our schools!'"
– humorous_anecdote
Things can get wacky when dealing with someone who is cantankerous.
Futile Argument
"Something along the lines of 'You can’t prove it didn’t happen.'"
"A guy at work tried to pull this one on me. He believed one of those Animal Planet mockumentaries about a giant killer shark was real. When I told him it was all fiction and that there was no real proof of this kind of stuff, he tried to argue back about while he couldn’t prove it, I couldn’t disprove it either."
"There’s a saying about getting into an argument with a stupid person. This was my real world experience with it."
– WongoKnight
Status
"Do you know who I am?"
– FoxFourTwo
The Equivalent Of Winning
"Thinking that getting a reaction out of someone is the same thing as winning an argument."
– bcopes158
Please Define
"My friend once used the phrase 'By its very definition' while we were arguing about something...so I asked him what the definition actually was, while he fumbled with that a bit I told him to stop using weasel words."
– groovyinutah
No Kidding
"'it all depends on how you look at it.' yeah thats f'king obvious."
– psychpopnprogncore
We all love a good malaprop.
Or Intents
"For all intensive purposes"
– p38-lightning
It's Moot, Really
“Mute point”
"Cracks me up every time."
– Ed_The_Bloody
Sometimes, editing yourself a bit in discourse with those who are intellectually out of your league is better than trying to keep up with them in an attempt to win their favor by articulating something you know nothing about.
I would explain better, but you wouldn't understand.
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*The following article contains discussion of suicide/self-harm.
Positive memories stay with us forever that we can always revisit with a smile.
Witnessing a loved one receiving their diploma after years of dedicated studying, celebrating a sports victory with other teammates, or traveling to a dream destination with your significant other after months–even years–of careful planning.
But in addition to reveling in nostalgia, there are other life experiences we'd like to soon forget but have a difficult time shaking off.
Curious to hear about some of the more ominous events experienced by strangers online, Redditor IM_Not_A_Robot_10110 asked:
"What have you witnessed that will haunt you forever?"

What happens inside hospitals are full of trauma and heartache, even medical professionals have a hard time processing what they encounter.
The Pediatric Patient
"X-ray tech here, but I was a student at the time. Called to ER for trauma code. Only know it's a pediatric patient. The terror as I walk around the corner and see it's a little boy, same size as my son. We go to take an x-ray and he's making this high pitched shrill wheezing noise. They couldn't intubate enroute so we were doing a chest/neck to see what was going on. His neck was full of air."
"Come to find out the story later, he had tripped and fallen in school and his neck went square on a desk and he had broken his trachea. Believe he was stabilized & flown out. Never found out what happened after."
– ZephyrGrace
Calling Time Of Death
"ER nurse. This won’t haunt me in a bad way, but it’ll stick with me for sure. We were coding a middle aged lady we knew was going to die. We were pulling out the last ditch stuff hoping we’d get lucky, but everyone knew which way it was going."
"Family was there and in the room. When it was clear we had run through all the Hail Marys and it was time to call it, the husband spoke up for the first time. He had apparently been an EMT for a long time so he knew what he was looking at. He said he was going to do the final round of compressions."
"It was very respectfully done. He got up to do his 2 minutes, the nurses quietly started turning things off so there wouldn’t be continuous alarms, we called for a pulse check which the husband did, then we called time of death. He was thankful we let him do that and I was thankful to be a part of it."
– pause_and_consider
Missing Jaw
"Not me, but my roommates fiancé is a flight nurse. She told me this story around Easter."
"They showed up to a scene being told beforehand that there was a patient with a gun shot wound and bleeding bad but that’s all they were told. When they got there they found a woman who was sitting on the ambulance gurney completely lucid and looking around, completely missing her lower jaw. She said you could see down her throat and she looked like a zombie. Her lower jaw was hanging to the side by some tissue and when she looked about it swung around and dangled. She said the woman seemed relatively calm and when she tried to speak what was left of her tongue kinda moved but nothing but gurgles came out."
"It was not a suicide, her boyfriend accidentally discharged his firearm while they were in his car."
"She survived."
– New_Hand_Luke
AIDS Epidemic Era
"Retired RN. I was working in the PACU and helped another nurse take her patient to his room. As I was adjusting something by his head, he grabbed my hand and started crying. He kept saying I don’t want to die. He was barely 20. In an isolation room. I looked into his eyes and tried to comfort him as he sobbed. This was in the early days of the 'AIDS epidemic.' He died within a week. To this day I still see his eyes and hear him sobbing."
– Tkay906363
Traffic accidents can be some of the most gruesome scenes no one should ever have to witness.
Accident Victim
"I live next to a busy street, inbetween lanes is a tram station. Teenager wanted to cross and got run over by a tram. Well, partly run over, he ended up with his body squeezed in between the tram and the tram station wall, with his legs stuck under the tram. It took about 1,5 hours until they had the equipment to lift the tram to get him out of there. They managed to reanimate what was left of him but he died in the hospital."
– ir_blues
Dangerous Road
"It was Easter Sunday about 5 in the afternoon. I was driving home from the lake with a friend of mine on a country highway that’s pretty well traveled. It’s one of those single lane coming and single lane going where the speed limit is 70 roads. The intersections are far and few between so instead of an overpass it’s just a blinking yellow caution light. In what literally felt like the blink of an eye the car driving in front of me is struck on the drivers side door."
"The impact pushes both cars off to the road and onto the shoulder. I hit my brakes and was able to stop to help render aid. My friend and I get out of the car and run over to help. The drivers side door is crushed inward, driver has been pushed into the passenger side. It was a younger lady, maybe mid 30s. The impact pushed her out of her seat and into her daughter."
"You ever see movies where a dead body jump scares someone and it just stares at the with wide eyes and mouth agape….. yeah. The girl is ok but very confused. She has no visible injuries and is freely looking around so we unbuckled her and pulled her out of the car so she didn’t realize her mom was laying on her. As we do it I look at the mom and I can see a little life is left in her, so I said the only thing we could say. 'She’s alright.'”
"You could see the light in her eyes fade and she passes away. More cars stop and help out. As more people are here to help I start to realize that someone has been screaming, at me. In the back seat is her son. He must have been knocked unconscious and he’s now yelling, not out in pain but asking 'Is mom okay, is she okay?' I had no words for him, he was maybe 6. His sister was about 9. Thankfully about 4 of the cars that stopped were off duty first responders so they quickly took over for me. This was about 20 years ago, I was 17 at the time and I just saw a mom die in front of her 2 kids. I’m crying now thinking back on it and to this day I still refuse to ever take that road again."
"They finally build an actual stop light a couple years back. The area isn’t more crowded so I can only imagine what the motivation to improve that intersection was."
– Boothulu
Pedestrians
"I was designated driver at my friend's 30th birthday party. Had just dropped off my last friend and I was heading home. Little blue car zipped by me going maybe 10 over. Maybe a block ahead of me I see the speeding car hit two 20 yr olds who were running across the street. They were running to McDonald's across from the nightclub they were partying at and didn't wait for a red light. I'll never forget the girls blond hair in the bright headlights as she got hit. One thing that isn't ever correct in tv shows when people get hit by cars is how much damage it does to a human body. I distinctly remember his legs laying like 2m from his body. Both died right when paramedics got there."
– SuchAGeoNerd
PTSD
"Getting hit by a car really is ugly. My girlfriend accidentally stepped on the street while we were having a minor disagreement and bam she was gone in a moment. I have ptsd, I can still see all the blood, her trying to breathe and the moment she gave up."
– More-Masterpiece-561
You never know when a friend or acquaintance is going through an extremely rough time–even though they present themselves differently in public.
All we could ever be as fellow humans is to always be compassionate.
Prolonged Guilt
"I found my roommates body in our apartment when I was in college. He had suffocated himself with a helium tank and a plastic bag over his head. That fucked me up pretty good, especially because I knew he was struggling with his mental health. He was cutting himself too, he tried to hide it but I noticed. And I didn’t say a word, i didn’t offer a helping hand. I could have done something to help him, but I didn’t. That guilt is still there, 10 years down the line."
– Jon__Snuh
What The Taxi Driver Witnessed
"I was driving Taxi once and I picked up someone who said he thinks he just saw a dead body. Said someone had jumped from the top of the parking garage. There was already an ambulance and what not on the scene. I remember briefly thinking of my friend Willzo, but dismissed it, I didn’t even think he was depressed like that. I found it odd that I would even consider such a thing out of nowhere. But I dismissed the thought and went about my work night. Couple days later I got a call from a mutual friend. 'Hey buddy, did you hear about Will? He jumped off the parking garage a few days ago.'”
– Everywhere-Danger
These Redditors' stories are a lot to take in.
However, they are good reminders about the brevity of life and how we should always strive towards being the best versions of ourselves while we're still alive.
Because you never know when you or someone close to you will have their last breath.
If you or someone you know is struggling, you can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
To find help outside the United States, the International Association for Suicide Prevention has resources available at https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/
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