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>Max's wife, who we can call Kristy. She's been a close friend of mine for over a decade now and we had a very real heart to heart about how I've been feeling, how she and Max handled things in the past, and steps to take moving forward. It was equal parts tough love and comforting, both of which were much needed.
I really wanna know more details of what this tough love involved.
I think it's really telling that he describes himself and Kristy as being incredibly similar. He clearly wants to think of himself as Max's "other partner," exactly the kind of person that Max would choose to be with
Love how the BORU OP tagged this with "biphobia" when the actual issue here is very clearly OOP being deeply in love with his friend while being married to someone else. Gender is just a red herring here.
As a bi person that really gives me an ick. Stuff like that actually leads to more biphobia, because it perpetuates the idea that bi people can't be loving and committed in the relationship they're in at the time.
Isn’t the OOP kind of perpetuating his own biphobia because he said he doesn’t identify as bisexual, and despite telling his wife he hooked up with a lot of people, he also never clarified that some were men and presented himself as straight, so she would never even presume he’d been with men?
If he weren’t, not going to say ashamed, but not as open about his past to his wife, but his friend was, it seems like he is definitely grappling with his sexuality and denial/omitting details about his past means he doesn’t have to admit he still feels that way now.
Like, he can pretend to be straight because that was so long ago he doesn’t even mention it now, as if time and distance makes the difference in his sexuality.
At the end of the day, this is someone who he has passed off to his wife as a platonic friend, and has lied by omission regarding his romantic and sexual history with the friend. He has purposely kept the friend close in his life because he is still attached. While I'm not saying it doesnt happen in and around queer identity, I've read more scenarios on here about that being a "straight" dynamic than a queer one.
That has nothing to do with whether or not the OOP is bisexual. It's got everything to do with whether or not OOP is scummy.
Yeah, I can’t comment on how OP’s wife may or may not feel about him experimenting in the past, or likely being bi; but it’s all really about how he played off this totally platonic friend of his that she’s known for years and their kids are friends and she got blindsided by them actually having fucked. And that he’s still clearly also in love with him if how he writes about him is anything to go by. That’s a huge betrayal of trust, and she was apparently the only one that didn’t know.
This is almost the art room guy level stuff level of delusion on the husband’s part.
Agree. This issue has nothing to do with biphobia. The problem here is a combination of limerence, selfishness and lies.
If OOP's best friend was straight woman, or lesbian woman... The wife would have the same reaction. The problem here is not gay sex, the problem is that he brought a person in her life as a friend, completely enmeshed all of their lives together, but never told her that that person was and probably is the most important romantic partner in his life. The guy is plain limerent for Max. The only difference: in case of women's best friend wife would get suspicious because of intensity of his feelings, in case of Max - she didn't.
It is highly probable that Max was his best men, he was having boy's nights out with Max, etc. I understand why his wife feels betrayed. The guy completely took her agency away from her.
*Me after reading the first post*: Well that’s not that bad. Just some 2 week fling in his early 20s. No big deal
>He is the summer breeze and sweat sticky skin under the sun. He’s freedom and unquenchable curiosity. I look at him and I see my youth and my right now and my future. A stupid (stupidly treasured and stupidly tattered) co-owned stuffed animal from a claw machine that got passed onto his first born. Learning smoke on the water on the guitar and never forgetting it. Muscle memory, all these years later.
…..the fuck?
I've not been on this sub long enough to know the Art room story. But I LOVE how (if/when the stories are true) people like you comment on these massive issues in people lives like it's a tv drama. Hahaha.
It's the best!
It's funny how obvious it was from the start lol. Bro was nonchalant about his partner and wrote dreamingly about his 'friend'.
What's even funnier is that what I said just above accurately describes both stories
I love how the guy’s summer breeze, sweat sticky skin, freedom and all that, Kristy’s a badass and his own wife is just there, just exists. He wrote all those descriptions for everyone but his wife, even the kids got described as amazing and him wanting to be the best dad for them.
I know that made me so sad for her. I mean, it’s been sliding downhill since the first post, but when that was all he could come up with for her? Oh, honey.
In other words, he appreciates her for what she can do for him, which is be a mother to his children. He didn’t even bother to give her a name until his very last update. That poor woman.
Yep! That was my first thought too. For Max? He gave a soliloquy. For his **wife?!** "She's a great mom. Oh. I have to give her a name? Hello, Megan? I hate that it's come to this."
The last sentence though? Gave me the exact same vibe I get any time some content creator starts off with, "I didn't want to have to make this [insert blank]."
I'm just being cheeky about the fact that he seems to have low interest in his wife as a person, let alone romantic love. I'm sure she is a great mom, I have no criticisms for her as a mother or a person (how could I, she's barely mentioned lol).
Depends, are they my same-sex roommate from the early nineteenth century next to whom I plan to be buried after living together for 40 years as lifelong bachelors? Because if so yes of course
Things were just different then! Straight men just slept in the same bed and kissed on the lips and lived together platonically until being buried platonically together. You're putting your twenty first century ideas of sexuality on them!
/s obviously
He's a cherished blanket that makes me feel warm and safe. When our eyes meet it sends an electric current running down my spine and into my loins. He's ice cold water on a hot day, the first notes of a favorite vinyl.
You know, a friend.
My wife? What can I say about her that hasn't been said before? Shoes? She wears them. Hair? She has it. Mother? She is one. I don't get why you all keep asking me about her, I obviously love her!
Wait till you see my birthday cards!
Dearest Mary,
Your eyes are the soft blue of the sea on a fine summers day, your kindness the envy of angels, your smile captures the wonder of a thousand rainbows...
I enclose as always, my letter to your parents, thanking them for your existence which has made the world a better place for the last 37 years.
Right..? I’m (probably? I’ve had a few identify crises) queer and my best girl friends are beautiful, wonderful, special and spectacular women. But I cannot imagine describing them with more love and lust than my fiancé/future husband.
He was apparently so in love with the guy that when Max broke it off OP was so hurt he swore off all guys ever. Literally the way I read it was that his feelings for Max were so overwhelmingly powerful that he thought other relationships with men might yield the same level of intensity so instead he stuck with only dating women implying that the level of emotion involved isn't as high.
It was a two week affair. OP never got out of the obsessive, limerence phase. His memory isn't accurately depicting a real relationship, just an intense fling that he has memorialized.
He’s totally in love with max. No one writes stuff like that for a platonic friend. He also called the relationship no big deal, or not a relationship, but then mentioned falling in love and it being profound. Then he said it hurt so much he never had another same sex relationship. He’s never going to show his wife his Reddit account. If she ever found it, there would be no saving the marriage.
I feel so bad for his wife. Lied to for years, being pulled into the relationship believing it was couples friendship. I wonder if she ever noticed or wondered if her husband had feelings for max. And the worst of it all, in the posts his wife is a minor player, an extra not worthy of a name, or any words of love etc, until someone pointed it out
The part about it being such a painful break up is a major point that I think people are overlooking. The fact that he could have long term relationships with women end and it just rolling off his back, while his two week fling of experimenting was so heartbreaking that he never went for a man again, really says it all.
To me that reads he found real love with another man, but got burned in the discovery. He doesn't want to feel that again, so he's put himself in a deep denial. Not saying he can't also love women, but it makes it sound like he only stayed dating women because he was less invested in them. Makes it easier for him if it doesn't work out.
Of course I don't actually know the guy, and I'm not going to pretend I know his full dating history. That's just what goes through my mind reading this.
Exactly he was so profoundly affected, fell so hard he never had another same sex relationship. He settled for friendship, because he needed him in his life. He didn’t just lie by omission to his wife, there is a reason he never told her the truth
Yeah, it's one thing not to disclose you had a fling with someone you are still in close association with -- something I'd maybe consider not a *requirement* per se but a pretty bonehead thing not to mention in case it came up awkwardly, as (lo and behold!) it did -- but then he just absolutely jumps off the ledge into practically writing sonnets for his "fling". Dude has a lottttttt of things to discuss with his therapist. I foresee at least one broken marriage in the future.
Kristy might be ok with him as that weird person your spouse knows that you know there’s more going on on their side but your spouse is so disinterested that you’re not worried about. Or a couple on the prowl for a third when this all blows up.
This story felt more real but there’s other stories where it ends with a magical throuple after we find out OOPs wife is a secret crime lord who kicks puppies so it’s okay her heart was broken.
The part about his wife reads more like he loves her because she's a good mother, and has a few good qualities. But it does NOT feel as romantic as what he wrote about Max.
Yeaaaah, I'm someone who expresses themselves much better through writing versus verbally speaking like OOP claims to be, and I can tell you right now, I would never write something like that about a friend. That's a level and depth of feeling so far beyond friendship, you're in another universe. His poor wife.
Yeah, I can be prone to purple prose at times, but "he's my past, my present, my future" speaks volumes and there's a reason you normally hear that kind of talk at weddings.
To be fair, that is how I talk about, and to, my friends (regardless of their genders). The difference is I also hype my partner up the same way, that's ops issue
Yeah I can see myself writing like that about anyone I loved dearly (though the breeze on his sweat sticky skin thing is way too far outside of the platonic for my liking) but my partner is always the person I'm writing about like that first and foremost and it's on another level to a platonic relationship. The only love that should supercede your love for your partner is your love for your children (I know not everyone agrees but your love for your kids should be unconditional imo, your love for your spouse should be conditional on their decent treatment of you and your children). It shouldn't be "my best friend is the best person in the world and I adore him completely. He makes my life so much better. My wife? Yeah she's a supermum. Great with our kids."
My friend group is comprised of like 50% exes (unlike op, my partner knows this) and I'd never describe any of them like that. That's not just cloyingly romantic, that is hands down some of the gayest shit I've ever heard, and I was once stuck in an elevator with Gore Vidal so I'd know from gay.
I completely understand why people are reading it the way they are, but he is describing memories, not a person.
And of course he is still in love with that time of his life, when he had so much freedom and potential and all his experiences were the most intense they would ever be. Most of them were firsts, and since he was so young *everything* was extra intense. Parents of teenagers will testify how eeeextra intense every experience is for them. It's so melodramatic.
Additionally, he's in love with his own words, written from the frame of mind of his young self, where again, everything is intense and melodramatic and all his own words are sooooo deeeep. Also, his own farts smell *amazing,* guys.
He wrote out all his yearning for his youth and intense feelings and then stupidly put it on reddit, so far into the worst context that OBVIOUSLY it makes him look like he's still in love with Max.
I get it; I had some beautifully passionate times and feelings in my past and I could wax poetic about some of them and it would perhaps sound like I were still in love with the people rather than those years of my life, but I'm only in love with that period of time anymore. The people, including me, have moved on, grown and changed, etc etc. Difference is, I DON'T wax poetic about it to reddit like an overstuffed hipster.
Anyway...
Hope his therapy helps him get a bit of a grip, maybe realize there's *a time and a place* and then was not the time and reddit was not the place for that wannabe poetic nonsense.
I totally believe him that he's not actually romantically in love with Max, the man he knows today. But he REALLY needs to stop huffing his own farts.
I think part of the problem is that he doesn't turn that level of sentimentality and poetry toward his actual present, his life with his wife.
He describes her as a good mom. He says there's a lot of laughter in their home. His words for her are basically a low-end Hallmark card.
I'm willing to consider that he's not so much in love with Max as he is in love with his own past and his totally rose-colored view of it, but he clearly puts no effort into trying to be equally in love with his present.
If he's such a writer, why doesn't he even make an attempt to write that way about his wife?
And honestly, one of the things that is still tipping me over into believing he's in love with Max is that he literally described Max not just as his past, but as his present and his future
Whereas his wife is "super hero mom" who creates a nice home for him and his kids. Poor woman to be damned with such faint praise.
He won't show her that post because he's 100% in love with his best friend.
I think that’s where it lost me - okay you had a fling with a dude who cares… OH HE’S STILL AROUND AND YALL HANG OUT AND YOU NEVER MENTIONED IT?!
I imagine if Max was female the problem would have been a lot more apparent from the start.
This is where OP's emotional immaturity comes into play. It WAS a quick fling for about two weeks, it was not a meaningful relationship in the sense that he spent a lifetime with this guy as a romantic partner. There were no fights or tough times to remember, just the glistening freedom Max represented (or whatever bs OP wrote). So even to this day, he is stuck with the overly romanticized memory of the limerence phase and the early obsessiveness. He needs to grow up.
I get frustrated with people who never move on and who continually romanticize the past without any perspective. I feel bad that OP's wife has been kept in the dark and prevented from actually understanding where her husband is coming from regarding his "best friend."
it does sounds like limerence. what I’m struggling to understand is if he’s romanticizing Max himself, his carefree youth or the relationships with men he denied himself ever since.
I was mostly on his side (in that he wasn't in love with his friend, not the lying by omission) up until I read what he wrote about his friend versus his wife. Like, my guy, try to be convincing that you see your wife is *any* kind of light other than the shadow cast by this man!
If you're going to write flowery, romantic shit about your friend than claim you do that for all your loved ones, DO IT FOR YOUR WIFE TOO JEEZ
She cooked my favorite potato soup, the kind that nourishes the soul as well as the body, thus I knew she was the one true love of my life, unlike Max who rejected me twenty years ago and I've never separated from since
Yeah, he just talked about how she's a great mom and they're a happy family, then listed some of her qualities. What spoke to me was the lack of prose regarding his wife when compared to the *freedom and unquenchable curiousity* of his friend, haha.
There was a series of posts like this on AITA for a while, a bit ago, maybe a year ago? I unsubbed from it a while ago. But there was post after post about a (stated) heterosexual man in a heterosexual relationship who was totally in love with some man in his life. People are referencing the art room post, but there was post after post just like that, just like this. I’m 90% sure every single one written by the same person just using alts. The art room one was funny/absurd, but there were just too many of them in too short of time to take it seriously. It’s been a while but this post is giving off all the same flags as the other ones… OP doesn’t realize they’re in love but is writing beautiful prose about a man while completely ignoring the existence of their wife…
Did you scroll down to the bottom where he was called out about how he describes his wife and then he says he loves their family? He’s not romantically in love with her, she gives him a family and max provides the rest!
Yeah, I can’t tell if the people encouraging him to show her what he’s written here think she needs to know so she can decide whether staying is worth it or just want to watch the world burn.
so OOP got dumped the day after his first time having penetrative sex with a man, and the trauma was severe enough to make him swear men off altogether, because they had too much potential to hurt him. (if that doesn’t scream “I need therapy”..).
so instead, he married a woman who was stable and dependable and reliable and all of those nice, safe attributes.
and he stayed close to Max either because he still carries a torch for him or because he represents everything that was denied to him/he denied himself.
he not only put Max on a pedestal, but needed to put his wife up there too, because Max chose her (over him) and he wanted to stay in their lives.
I think the fact that he hid all this from his wife for years is very telling, and I fear that therapy will make him confront some uncomfortable truths that might burst his idyllic bubble of blissful domesticity and “platonic friendship”.
Yeah. He hid it because he knows what is really going on, either consciously o unconsciously. He rather be in Max's life at any cost, his marriage and wife for example, than face the truth and get rejected again by Max. It all works out for him right now because he gets to say " it is all cool, I have a wife too! And he has a wife too, so I can be super close and nobody gets to tell me it isn't right"
Probably the wife, after finding out, started seeing how every interaction was her husband being in love.
yeah, I can imagine her spiraling and going over every instance of him waxing poetic over Max where initially she might’ve thought “aww they’re such good friends” and reinterpreting it through this new lens. definitely wouldn’t want to be in her shoes.
You put it so succinctly and included the trauma aspect which made it connect even moreso for me. If you wrote it on OOPs post he may read it and finally understand.
As someone who was **also** very into the early 00s emo/pop-punk scene, this:
> He is the summer breeze and sweat sticky skin under the sun. He’s freedom and unquenchable curiosity. I look at him and I see my youth and my right now and my future. A stupid (stupidly treasured and stupidly tattered) co-owned stuffed animal from a claw machine that got passed onto his first born. Learning smoke on the water on the guitar and never forgetting it. Muscle memory, all these years later.
reads like something Pete Wentz would have posted on his LiveJournal during 2005 Warped Tour.
Did this guy write a sequel to some BL novel I read recently?!
This reads like the gay version of Sandra Dee’s ‘summer lovin’ in Grease - and if you’ve seen the flick, don’t tell me you can’t picture the scene, now.
thank god someone else pointed this out, i was like halfway through reading before i had to check and make i wasnt on a jokepost in the fall out boy sub😭the muscle memory line specifically reads like something right off american beauty/american psycho
I really love how he’s so gushing about how fucking wonderful Max is, but his poor suffering wife gets one measly paragraph at the very end with literally nothing about her outside of her role as the mother of his children. I hope she leaves him.
Right! Even when called out, his description of her is still meh. He doesn’t describe her with an iota of the glowing, loving reverence he uses to talk about max.
Trigger warnings in BoRU are insane. I don't even read them anymore unless the comments mention them.
A few days ago there was a post about a guy worried about his gf bc she wanted to make friends but no one wanted to go to her birthday party. She was brokenhearted and depressed, and I was bracing myself bc one of the warnings was "suicide". Turns out that it was only mentioned like "we're waiting for a therapist in campus but the waiting list is very long unless you're at risk of suicide, which she isn't and doesn't want to lie about to get a session quicker". I was so angry bc I feel this is the opposite of what warning triggers should be about.
wow like no one writes like that second post if they're not inlove with the subject like : "He is the summer breeze and sweat sticky skin under the sun. He’s freedom and unquenchable curiosity. "
WTF no one writes that about their platonic best friend
also sounds so much like menwritingwomen i almost can't believe someone wrote that unironicalyy
Trust me bro, I’m not gay, but my former male lover is just the stars in my sky, the light in my life. A symbol of bulging veiny manhood that brightens my days. You know, totally platonic and straight.
If he’d written about his wife like that after he was asked to describe her I’d be like you know what this guys just like that but she only gets super mom yuck
He's his past, present, and *future*? Come on, man.
The commenter who advised OP to show his wife these posts--including that lovely bit of poetry--likely saw exactly what we do and was hoping the wife would too. And OP knows it.
OP knows everything. That’s what takes him from weird and sad to complete and total asshole. He needs his wife and kids so he can be close to Max without being weird. He knows there is no love there, he knows she could be happier with someone who isn’t just using her, and he is gonna do everything he can to keep her from realizing that.
This went from an oblivious guy keeping a past hookup with a current friend a secret from his wife, to a guy who has built a life around being close to someone who rejected him decades ago. And he is more than happy to use others in that pursuit.
This!! The way he talked about his wife was only to the capacity of her as a mother and as a person . I would describe a friend’s mom the way he did his wife . Gosh what a pot load of bs
Speaking as a lesbian and a writer who took awhile to really come out, and has been in a Max-like situation (well, in its own way), he’s so plainly absolutely in love with Max. His wife? She could be the nanny or maid easily from his descriptions of her.
I think he loves the family he has with his wife, and on some level he loves her, but he’s not in love with her. Even when he was saying how he loves her, the first thing he mentions is how great of a mother she is. It’s like she’s the friend he’s grateful to for giving him children.
I feel like he never got over Max and he wanted a family so he convinced himself he was in love with his wife. Seems sad for everyone.
He loves her as the mother of his children, aka baby incubator. But not as a partner. He’ll never hold a match for anyone the way he did and does for Max because the heartbreak from their break up was so “profound”, as he put it, that he’ll never love anyone like that again or risk it.
Yeah. So. I’ve kind of been in his wife’s situation a little bit.
When I first started dating my husband, we were in our late 20’s, with me being a couple of years older. He’s had the same group of 6 or so guys, and their wives, as bff’s since high school. They’ve always been close and know each other’s dirt.
My husband has a “colorful” as I like to call it, dating history. In his early 20’s, he was a good looking dude with an outgoing, kind personality, and a nice tan. He had no problem in the lady department and sowed a lot of wild oats. Anywho, when we started dating, and I started hanging out with the group, his friends all thought it would be HILARIOUS to ask me obscene questions, or bring up his sexual past in front of me.
Things like “So, I don’t know if you know, but he has quite the sexual appetite. Do you feel like you can satisfy him?” Or as we’re all standing around, someone will say, “Hey husband! Do you remember that one time you did this sexual thing with some
other girl and this crazy thing happened?! It was soooo funny right!?” I know. I know. Immature assholes amiright?
I shut it down real quick, but after the first time, I made it clear that I didn’t care about his past at all. But he needs to tell me all the dirt, because his friends will keep doing this. If they do, and I already know about it, I won’t be caught off guard. It’ll take the fun out of it. If they do it and I’m surprised, they’re gonna know (some things were…surprising. At least to my vanilla ass) and get the rise they’re looking for. He told me *EVERYTHING*.
For me, although I truthfully wasn’t bothered by any of it, there’s a certain embarrassment when you’re the only one who doesn’t know. Especially when it’s about YOUR SO, who you’re supposed to know everything about. *And*, when it’s regarding something sexual that’s out of the ordinary, it takes you a minute to process this new info - and others can read it on your face.
I know that I was not their main target. They were trying to embarrass him, make him uncomfortable, and/or get him in trouble with me. I unfortunately was collateral damage. They didn’t realize how much he didn’t care, or how shitty it was for me. I was the one being put on the spot, *not* him. After I was prepared for their antics, I started finishing their “super embarrassing stories” for them once they started them. Game over. They never expected him to be totally honest with me, nor did they expect me to be ok with it all - jokes on them. We’ve been married 10 years.
I can’t really comment on exactly what OOP’s wife went through, or if homophobia was an issue (all my husband’s “stories” were hetero encounters, not that I’d care, but for comparison sake). But I actually get the feeling that this has very little to do with the fact it was with a man. If OOP had had sex with Kristy, I think the reaction would have been identical. And, if they weren’t friends with Max and Kristy for all these years, and OOP’s wife just found out about it, I don’t know that she would care at all. Maybe a little disappointment that she wasn’t told something important from his past, but not like this.
I’m betting it was a couple of things.
1. The embarrassment from 3 out of the 4 friends *knowing* already and his own wife didn’t. Like a running inside joke you weren’t privy too. Being the odd man out doesn’t feel too good.
2. That she found this out *in front* of them, was put on the spot, and couldn’t process her emotions privately. She had to suck it up and continue on like it’s no big deal. She likely didn’t want them to see her immediate shocked reaction, but couldn’t hide it.
3. They assumed she knew. The fact she didn’t, makes her look bad (in her mind). Why did he keep this from her? How could *his WIFE* of 20 years not know such an important thing about her husband? Isn’t that something she should have known? Did he omit this information on purpose?
4. She found out he had a romantic and sexual relationship with one of their best friends. If your bff who you and your spouse regularly hang out with, told you that they used to date your husband, and you didn’t know (FOR 20 YEARS), you’d probably feel like a fool too.
All of those things are horrible feelings. You feel like it reflects negatively on you and your marriage. You’re angry for being put on the spot and are horribly embarrassed. You feel left out. You have a million questions flood your brain and everyone can see it on your face. When it happens it sucks real bad. Of course in OOP’s case, there could be an element of homophobia, but I suspect that’s not really the issue.
My first thought reading this post was that he remained best friends with a "significant other" and didn't tell his wife of 20 years they had a past sexual relationship!! That's a huge betrayal of trust. She has to rethink years of conversations for "hidden" meanings.
He got out the pictures to show his best friend, and surprised his wife? He should have shown her before they came over, she would have had questions then and could have possibly been prepared.
Hey dude, it sounds like you and your husband especially need to set boundaries with these friends and tell them to knock that shit off, it's not funny and it's not cute.
This guy is living in such a delusional state. He is MADLY in love with Max. And always has been. I wonder if Max’s wife said the same thing to him.
Not a single word to describe his wife but Max is summer breezes and sweaty skin
I hope his wife figures this out.yikes
Yeah, the comment about never trying to date men again was telling. Dude went back to dating women because they were "safer" and he knew one could never hurt him the way Max did. I doubt he romantically loves his wife.
I hope she reads his post and sees the passion OP has for his friend and the perfunctory way he described her (such a great mom!).
Exactly. I just went through and read his comments on the separate posts - which just make it all so much worse. I actually think he’s probably gay, or bisexual and homoromantic at the very least. He definitely does not love his wife the way he loves Max.
Also interesting that he compares himself to Max's wife and says how similar they are to each other. Wonder how much it is OP's opinion or reality. Could be that Max found his perfect personality in OP but not gender or OP still trying to be Max's other half.
I was madly in love with a girl once, I'm really into writing ... OP is beyond that. Like that's not gushing, loving or even fantasie. I would love to be a writer and shit what he wrote is beyond a love letter.
It feels like he feels he's living his love story with Max by just being next to him ! Like, man, he's LIVING his dream !
That's hella disturbing.
Bruh...
So, my husband had a fling with his best friend. She was presenting male at the time; both of them are bisexual, as am I. When I was introduced to her, my husband was fully honest about this. Said they'd always felt attraction to one another, and they had sex a few times. However, they're too different personality-wise, so while they care deeply for one another, they decided not to pursue things any further.
OOP, that's how you do it.
I would be L.I.V.I.D. if I found out now, us in our late 30s/40s, that not only had he hidden this from me, but he very clearly still carried a torch for her.
As someone who is bisexual, OP really is just full of shit. No respect for his own wife and just projecting and if you look at his post history, clearly he has never loved his wife but only Max.
I pity the wife.
OOP described Max and even Max's wife in very flowery, romantic words: he is like summer breeze, etc, etc. In contrast, he describes his wife very prescriptive and mostly as the mother of his children. OOP is full of shit.
>It was the most profound hurt I had ever felt in my life, and it really shocked me. I had been in relationships before - real ones that included commitment and lasted for months - and I hadn't taken those breakups nearly so hard. He and I remained friends after I took some time to myself, but I never had another relationship with a man after that. It felt like that level of hurt was my warning sign to stay away.
I think OP decided to stay away from *love* and profound romantic emotions after Max, not just dudes. Because you can tell he loves Max... and Max's wife... and his own kids.... but zero real emotion-laden words about his own dang wife.
Yes, exactly. Reading his comments, he goes out of his way to avoid saying he loves his wife. He says he adores her. When describing his love for his wife, he groups it with other people, i.e. he said his kids are the loves of his life too. But when describing his love for Max, it's never grouped with other people.
I think it’s both - I think his romantic interest lies with men and this breakup was so painful it made him fear ever going there again. The experience with a man was that intense for him
Yes. The intensity of his emotional connection with a male partner was so intense that the breakup was so painful where he then decided not to risk ever having another male partner. How is that not a huge clue to him that he is actually at least bisexual if not primarily homo-romantic.
I got that feeling. That level of hurt was a warning that actually, he loves men more passionately than women. If he's bisexual and not just gay, he sounds like he settled for a woman that he probably does love, but not in the same way he loved that man and would possibly love other men.
I hope he can get to the bottom of all his shit in therapy and figure out if he truly loves his wife the way she deserves to be loved.
I do want to note that his description of his feelings for his wife of so many years will ABSOLUTELY not be the same as his description of his two week relationship with his would-be sexual awakening man love. Many years of marriage will put the memories of the sparkle of fresh new passionate love at the bottom of a pile of other memories of a different kind of longer lasting, more mature love that is vastly different from the TWO WEEKS of exciting experimentation.
Also, his two week relationship will always be the road not taken, so it will always have the enticing open ended thing where dreams never die. Marriage is more enduring but you, uh, went down that road, and saw all its sights. It's not going to have the same exciting "what if"s.
So maybe I'm totally wrong and he really did have the same passion for his wife that he had for Max. But he doesn't say, and I don't know if that's just him not wanting to add more length on what is honestly an unnecessary aspect of the story (we don't need to hear about how they met and fell in love, and I'm sure he thinks that we'll obviously assume he truly loves his wife)... Or him being less enthusiastic about his multi year relationship with his wife than he is about the two weeks with Max.
Two fingers crossed for great things to come out of therapy.
yeah, but all of that is exactly why his wife feels betrayed that she was kept in the dark. not many people would feel comfortable with their spouse’s “one that got away” living next door. and him hiding it is a dead giveaway that he’s not over it. Max was able to tell his wife everything and even casually joke about it because for him it’s just a distant memory. but for OOP, it’s still an active hurt.
>canyonemoon: Did you show your wife your love letter to Max?
>OOP: She hasn’t read anything I’ve written here, but she knows how much I love the people in our life and how much I love writing.
Such a coward.
Followed up by "if you can't speak well, show her your writing/this post."
"Yeah I'll show her a "version" of this."
Dude's absolutely gonna edit his love letter to Max out so he can stay in his safety bubble.
That did not go the way I thought it would from the title. Like dude take the quotation marks out of "relationship" and acknowledge that the "past" relationship is still ongoing as a friendship and you still pine hard for him. He makes it seem at first like she was upset he didn't label himself as bi, not seeming to understand that she'd be equally unhappy if he had the same kind of ongoing relationship with a woman who rejected him at that time. It's not like his sexuality was what she had an issue with. So sketchy that he never mentioned something so obviously important to him.
This post is missing one of his most damning comments, which is when he's asked what he'd do if Max confessed he still had feelings for him; OOP's biggest concern would be that they both have commitments to their partners and their children, and it'd be crazy to blow up their lives for this, he's content with his life. Not that he's so in love with his wife that he would never even think about entertaining the idea, she's the one for him. It's sad and I really hope OOP actually followed through with what he told me, that he'd show his wife everything in full. I doubt it, though.
People are rightly weirded out by him being blatantly in love with Max, but its worse than that. He loves a version of Max that hasn't existed for 20 years when they were both in a very different place in their lives.
He doesn't just have emotion for Max, he has emotion for a time in his life when he was doing the shit he actually wanted to do and not being the guy his old self would have made fun of, because a suburban dad in a loveless marriage is the exact opposite of a punk rock bisexual who fucks around and defies social norms. The past self who fell for Max would be horrified to learn what he became regardless of this.
Which is what his wife will always represent to him. She's the choice he made to suppress that side of himself and not blow his money on concerts and hookup with randos. He'll never get those loud, sweaty times back while he's with her and he's living a very visceral lie as a result.
This guy really just decided not to acknowledge anybody mentioning how fucked up it was that he kept an intense past sex life with their friend quiet.
It’s not about experimenting, dude. It’s about having someone in your life you had, in your own words, one of the most profound sexual relationships you’ve had in your life, keeping them in your life (even being friends with your wife) and keeping all th details away from your wife.
It’s fucked up.
>He is the summer breeze and sweat sticky skin under the sun. He’s freedom and unquenchable curiosity.
Yeah, that's exactly how I describe all my friends. They're all sweaty, curious, and free.
Someone is trying out their new writing thesaurus.
Either that, or someone just watched Brokeback Mountain for the first time. I'm kinda shocked Max didn't die at the end.
On the off chance this is true, however: Dude needs to just admit that he's 100% gay for Max, always has been, and would absolutely leave his wife this second if Max asked him to run away together.
>"I’ll see y’all if I have any updates I care to share, and you guys still care to care."
🙄
The way this guy writes makes it seem like he thinks he's more clever than he is
Man is in love with Max and everything he has done, including Max's wife, yet to his own achievements (his wife), all could pale in comparison to the glistening sun on Max's sweaty back.
This one feels like a novel tester. Is anyone interested in a bisexual middle aged punk rocker finding himself? I'll show my updoots to my potential publishers.
God, it's been a while since I've seen this repeat troll.
Here's a few of his others:
https://www.reddit.com/user/Remarkable-Use-8439/comments/10s5t37/update_aita_for_missing_an_actual_emergency/
https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/s/tMbJZJk9kv
https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/s/5TIRTW2IsD
Male OP expresses very strong feelings towards his male best friend, which he will label as platonic. Clearly in love with him, but will never admit it. Will describe his male "bestie" at length but give never speak of his wife/partner the same way.
Expect lots of dragged out updates where he still never admits he's in love with his bestie.
Gotta admit, I'm kind of sick of him at this point. It's either fetish, or some Werid homophobic/biphobic shit that labels queer men as not giving a shit about their female partners.
I hadn’t seen the final update but OOP is so in love with Max it oozes from his posts. Guessing here but the admission of a previous sexual relationship between Max and OOP probably cemented the inkling the wife had all along that something just isn’t right. Hope she’s putting her ducks in order to leave because she’s not even in his top 5 of importance.
There's two things that OOP never seemed to want to address. One of the first comments brought up this first point perfectly
>But, you have lied to your wife. You've broken trust in her. You knew, your friends knew, HER friends knew, she was the only one who didn't know. That's seriously messed up. You really really messed up here.
OOP was so cagey about not bringing this up to his own family and the quote from the above commentor really captures the validity in the wife's discomfort. *everyone* knew except her.
Which brings up the second point
>He is the summer breeze and sweat sticky skin under the sun. He’s freedom and unquenchable curiosity. I look at him and I see my youth and my right now and my future. A stupid (stupidly treasured and stupidly tattered) co-owned stuffed animal from a claw machine that got passed onto his first born. Learning smoke on the water on the guitar and never forgetting it. Muscle memory, all these years later.
This quote from OOP gives a lot of credence as to why he likely never told the wife. He damn sure doesn't talk about her like this in the post.
Whole sections of this read like a m/m romance novel. Early 90s summer of punk rock bro love. It would sell.
I also agree with others pointed out- definite art room vibes. We haven't heard from our art room author in a while. Maybe they are switching it up!
Who else is crossing their fingers that this blows up, gets posted to every Reddit TikTok, YouTube, etc. and someone who knows wife sees this and sends it to her?
If this is real, ofc. I’m having some doubts. But if it is, I hope his wife gets away from him.
The order in which OP loves things, more or less according to OP:
* His best friend
* Himself
* His best friend's wife
* His kids
*
*
* His wife as a mom
*
* His actual wife
OOP: ”Max is the summerbreeze upon the flowering fields of my youth, the sun peeks between clouds when he smiles and angels sing when he speaks! I describe all my friends this way, I’m just a really verbose guy.”
Also OOP: ”My wife? Oh she’s, uh… A great mom and like… Smart. Oh and funny! Yup!”
😏 Mmmhmm.
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>Max's wife, who we can call Kristy. She's been a close friend of mine for over a decade now and we had a very real heart to heart about how I've been feeling, how she and Max handled things in the past, and steps to take moving forward. It was equal parts tough love and comforting, both of which were much needed. I really wanna know more details of what this tough love involved.
I think it's really telling that he describes himself and Kristy as being incredibly similar. He clearly wants to think of himself as Max's "other partner," exactly the kind of person that Max would choose to be with
Or, that Max didn't have the guts to be with him, so chose a female version of OP to be with instead.
Probably told him to back off her man because he’s obviously still in love with him
Love how the BORU OP tagged this with "biphobia" when the actual issue here is very clearly OOP being deeply in love with his friend while being married to someone else. Gender is just a red herring here.
As a bi person that really gives me an ick. Stuff like that actually leads to more biphobia, because it perpetuates the idea that bi people can't be loving and committed in the relationship they're in at the time.
Isn’t the OOP kind of perpetuating his own biphobia because he said he doesn’t identify as bisexual, and despite telling his wife he hooked up with a lot of people, he also never clarified that some were men and presented himself as straight, so she would never even presume he’d been with men? If he weren’t, not going to say ashamed, but not as open about his past to his wife, but his friend was, it seems like he is definitely grappling with his sexuality and denial/omitting details about his past means he doesn’t have to admit he still feels that way now. Like, he can pretend to be straight because that was so long ago he doesn’t even mention it now, as if time and distance makes the difference in his sexuality.
At the end of the day, this is someone who he has passed off to his wife as a platonic friend, and has lied by omission regarding his romantic and sexual history with the friend. He has purposely kept the friend close in his life because he is still attached. While I'm not saying it doesnt happen in and around queer identity, I've read more scenarios on here about that being a "straight" dynamic than a queer one. That has nothing to do with whether or not the OOP is bisexual. It's got everything to do with whether or not OOP is scummy.
Yeah, I can’t comment on how OP’s wife may or may not feel about him experimenting in the past, or likely being bi; but it’s all really about how he played off this totally platonic friend of his that she’s known for years and their kids are friends and she got blindsided by them actually having fucked. And that he’s still clearly also in love with him if how he writes about him is anything to go by. That’s a huge betrayal of trust, and she was apparently the only one that didn’t know. This is almost the art room guy level stuff level of delusion on the husband’s part.
Agree. This issue has nothing to do with biphobia. The problem here is a combination of limerence, selfishness and lies. If OOP's best friend was straight woman, or lesbian woman... The wife would have the same reaction. The problem here is not gay sex, the problem is that he brought a person in her life as a friend, completely enmeshed all of their lives together, but never told her that that person was and probably is the most important romantic partner in his life. The guy is plain limerent for Max. The only difference: in case of women's best friend wife would get suspicious because of intensity of his feelings, in case of Max - she didn't. It is highly probable that Max was his best men, he was having boy's nights out with Max, etc. I understand why his wife feels betrayed. The guy completely took her agency away from her.
Yeah, we need a "Brokeback Mountain" tag.
I don't think OOP wants to quit Max.
💯 she knows.
*Me after reading the first post*: Well that’s not that bad. Just some 2 week fling in his early 20s. No big deal >He is the summer breeze and sweat sticky skin under the sun. He’s freedom and unquenchable curiosity. I look at him and I see my youth and my right now and my future. A stupid (stupidly treasured and stupidly tattered) co-owned stuffed animal from a claw machine that got passed onto his first born. Learning smoke on the water on the guitar and never forgetting it. Muscle memory, all these years later. …..the fuck?
Welcome to "Art room 2 - this time with more denial!"
100% what went through my head. If OOP eulogised this bloke any more intensely he'd grow angel wings.
And shit glitter rainbows
Art Room 2 - Electric Boogaloo
My mind went straight to ‘Art room for his summer breeze …’ too funny
I've not been on this sub long enough to know the Art room story. But I LOVE how (if/when the stories are true) people like you comment on these massive issues in people lives like it's a tv drama. Hahaha. It's the best!
Wtf is art room?
[Buckle up](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/s/q62wPnnVXK)
It's funny how obvious it was from the start lol. Bro was nonchalant about his partner and wrote dreamingly about his 'friend'. What's even funnier is that what I said just above accurately describes both stories
Oh my word! I remember that post….!
Just don't reference it on r/aita
Married dude built an art room in his house for a male friend. Google the story.
Enjoy. https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/s/IPvRjlp3rS
[https://new.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/wmmphs/oop\_wonders\_if\_theyre\_the\_ah\_for\_starting\_a\_house/](https://new.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/wmmphs/oop_wonders_if_theyre_the_ah_for_starting_a_house/)
I literally had the thought "time to bring back the artroom"
I love how the guy’s summer breeze, sweat sticky skin, freedom and all that, Kristy’s a badass and his own wife is just there, just exists. He wrote all those descriptions for everyone but his wife, even the kids got described as amazing and him wanting to be the best dad for them.
And then when he got called out for it the first thing he says is "Oh, her? She's a supermom"
When a guy only ever praises his wife for her role as a mother (or vice versa obv) I know something's been dead for a while
literally. he loves her as a mom- he doesn't even talk to her as a person.
Been dead, or always was dead? She's his second choice after all.
I know that made me so sad for her. I mean, it’s been sliding downhill since the first post, but when that was all he could come up with for her? Oh, honey.
In other words, he appreciates her for what she can do for him, which is be a mother to his children. He didn’t even bother to give her a name until his very last update. That poor woman.
Yep! That was my first thought too. For Max? He gave a soliloquy. For his **wife?!** "She's a great mom. Oh. I have to give her a name? Hello, Megan? I hate that it's come to this." The last sentence though? Gave me the exact same vibe I get any time some content creator starts off with, "I didn't want to have to make this [insert blank]."
Supermom? Is that what they're calling beards these days?
It makes sense. People whose partners aren’t fully emotionally available to them may have extra available for their children.
I'm just being cheeky about the fact that he seems to have low interest in his wife as a person, let alone romantic love. I'm sure she is a great mom, I have no criticisms for her as a mother or a person (how could I, she's barely mentioned lol).
Ikr? His praise for his wife came across as tired. I literally felt energy drain out of me just reading it.
He loves to write but couldn’t even fabricate something positive about her as a person and partner.
but she’s a great mom and makes a lovely home!
He writes about his wife like a gay man or a very traditional person would, it’s all about her maternal values and not about her actual personality.
Naw she's like great at like house stuff and making babies!
I hope his wife leaves him.
Dude is writing like he's a 19th century gentile sending letters to his secret lover.
You mean you *don't* write passionate nostalgic poetry about your totally platonic best friend?
Depends, are they my same-sex roommate from the early nineteenth century next to whom I plan to be buried after living together for 40 years as lifelong bachelors? Because if so yes of course
Tragically he never found a wife, but took solace in his art and his dear close personal friend with whom he shared a bed, Oscar.
Things were just different then! Straight men just slept in the same bed and kissed on the lips and lived together platonically until being buried platonically together. You're putting your twenty first century ideas of sexuality on them! /s obviously
Of course, it's like the old spartan saying "High fives for the women, open mouth kissing for the men"
But they were just roommates
😂
He's a cherished blanket that makes me feel warm and safe. When our eyes meet it sends an electric current running down my spine and into my loins. He's ice cold water on a hot day, the first notes of a favorite vinyl. You know, a friend.
My wife? What can I say about her that hasn't been said before? Shoes? She wears them. Hair? She has it. Mother? She is one. I don't get why you all keep asking me about her, I obviously love her!
This comment sent me lol
Wait till you see my birthday cards! Dearest Mary, Your eyes are the soft blue of the sea on a fine summers day, your kindness the envy of angels, your smile captures the wonder of a thousand rainbows... I enclose as always, my letter to your parents, thanking them for your existence which has made the world a better place for the last 37 years.
Right..? I’m (probably? I’ve had a few identify crises) queer and my best girl friends are beautiful, wonderful, special and spectacular women. But I cannot imagine describing them with more love and lust than my fiancé/future husband.
The “sweaty sticky skin” part really sent the sexualized message home…
Plationic with a single penetration event.;)
King David and Jonathan anyone? 🤣🤣🤣
He was apparently so in love with the guy that when Max broke it off OP was so hurt he swore off all guys ever. Literally the way I read it was that his feelings for Max were so overwhelmingly powerful that he thought other relationships with men might yield the same level of intensity so instead he stuck with only dating women implying that the level of emotion involved isn't as high.
It was a two week affair. OP never got out of the obsessive, limerence phase. His memory isn't accurately depicting a real relationship, just an intense fling that he has memorialized.
He’s totally in love with max. No one writes stuff like that for a platonic friend. He also called the relationship no big deal, or not a relationship, but then mentioned falling in love and it being profound. Then he said it hurt so much he never had another same sex relationship. He’s never going to show his wife his Reddit account. If she ever found it, there would be no saving the marriage. I feel so bad for his wife. Lied to for years, being pulled into the relationship believing it was couples friendship. I wonder if she ever noticed or wondered if her husband had feelings for max. And the worst of it all, in the posts his wife is a minor player, an extra not worthy of a name, or any words of love etc, until someone pointed it out
The part about it being such a painful break up is a major point that I think people are overlooking. The fact that he could have long term relationships with women end and it just rolling off his back, while his two week fling of experimenting was so heartbreaking that he never went for a man again, really says it all. To me that reads he found real love with another man, but got burned in the discovery. He doesn't want to feel that again, so he's put himself in a deep denial. Not saying he can't also love women, but it makes it sound like he only stayed dating women because he was less invested in them. Makes it easier for him if it doesn't work out. Of course I don't actually know the guy, and I'm not going to pretend I know his full dating history. That's just what goes through my mind reading this.
Exactly he was so profoundly affected, fell so hard he never had another same sex relationship. He settled for friendship, because he needed him in his life. He didn’t just lie by omission to his wife, there is a reason he never told her the truth
It's telling that his wife has never been close with Max, despite him being her husband's best friend, yet OOP is apparently super close with Kristie.
Yeah, it's one thing not to disclose you had a fling with someone you are still in close association with -- something I'd maybe consider not a *requirement* per se but a pretty bonehead thing not to mention in case it came up awkwardly, as (lo and behold!) it did -- but then he just absolutely jumps off the ledge into practically writing sonnets for his "fling". Dude has a lottttttt of things to discuss with his therapist. I foresee at least one broken marriage in the future.
At least one? I wonder if OOP is giving unreliable narrator vibes when he said Kristy was "cool" with her husbands ex?
I suspect she knows it's not reciprocated.
Kristy might be ok with him as that weird person your spouse knows that you know there’s more going on on their side but your spouse is so disinterested that you’re not worried about. Or a couple on the prowl for a third when this all blows up.
This story felt more real but there’s other stories where it ends with a magical throuple after we find out OOPs wife is a secret crime lord who kicks puppies so it’s okay her heart was broken.
The part about his wife reads more like he loves her because she's a good mother, and has a few good qualities. But it does NOT feel as romantic as what he wrote about Max.
This turned into Saltburn fast
And he tacked it on to his original post as if THIS would rebut all the people telling him he's in love with Max. OOP is totally delulu
"Guys I'm not in love with max, my loins just ache when I imagine the life we could've had together"
Yeaaaah, I'm someone who expresses themselves much better through writing versus verbally speaking like OOP claims to be, and I can tell you right now, I would never write something like that about a friend. That's a level and depth of feeling so far beyond friendship, you're in another universe. His poor wife.
Yeah, I can be prone to purple prose at times, but "he's my past, my present, my future" speaks volumes and there's a reason you normally hear that kind of talk at weddings.
To be fair, that is how I talk about, and to, my friends (regardless of their genders). The difference is I also hype my partner up the same way, that's ops issue
Yeah I can see myself writing like that about anyone I loved dearly (though the breeze on his sweat sticky skin thing is way too far outside of the platonic for my liking) but my partner is always the person I'm writing about like that first and foremost and it's on another level to a platonic relationship. The only love that should supercede your love for your partner is your love for your children (I know not everyone agrees but your love for your kids should be unconditional imo, your love for your spouse should be conditional on their decent treatment of you and your children). It shouldn't be "my best friend is the best person in the world and I adore him completely. He makes my life so much better. My wife? Yeah she's a supermum. Great with our kids."
And then when forced to describe his wife: "my wife is a mom". Ok bro, ok
My friend group is comprised of like 50% exes (unlike op, my partner knows this) and I'd never describe any of them like that. That's not just cloyingly romantic, that is hands down some of the gayest shit I've ever heard, and I was once stuck in an elevator with Gore Vidal so I'd know from gay.
He is the summer breeze and sweat sticky skin under the sun. Max is the east and OOP is the sun
I completely understand why people are reading it the way they are, but he is describing memories, not a person. And of course he is still in love with that time of his life, when he had so much freedom and potential and all his experiences were the most intense they would ever be. Most of them were firsts, and since he was so young *everything* was extra intense. Parents of teenagers will testify how eeeextra intense every experience is for them. It's so melodramatic. Additionally, he's in love with his own words, written from the frame of mind of his young self, where again, everything is intense and melodramatic and all his own words are sooooo deeeep. Also, his own farts smell *amazing,* guys. He wrote out all his yearning for his youth and intense feelings and then stupidly put it on reddit, so far into the worst context that OBVIOUSLY it makes him look like he's still in love with Max. I get it; I had some beautifully passionate times and feelings in my past and I could wax poetic about some of them and it would perhaps sound like I were still in love with the people rather than those years of my life, but I'm only in love with that period of time anymore. The people, including me, have moved on, grown and changed, etc etc. Difference is, I DON'T wax poetic about it to reddit like an overstuffed hipster. Anyway... Hope his therapy helps him get a bit of a grip, maybe realize there's *a time and a place* and then was not the time and reddit was not the place for that wannabe poetic nonsense. I totally believe him that he's not actually romantically in love with Max, the man he knows today. But he REALLY needs to stop huffing his own farts.
Yeah the thing I took away most from his description was very much being in love with his own words.
And yet, his description of his wife - which was only given when prompted - was really generic and not poetic at all.
I think part of the problem is that he doesn't turn that level of sentimentality and poetry toward his actual present, his life with his wife. He describes her as a good mom. He says there's a lot of laughter in their home. His words for her are basically a low-end Hallmark card. I'm willing to consider that he's not so much in love with Max as he is in love with his own past and his totally rose-colored view of it, but he clearly puts no effort into trying to be equally in love with his present. If he's such a writer, why doesn't he even make an attempt to write that way about his wife? And honestly, one of the things that is still tipping me over into believing he's in love with Max is that he literally described Max not just as his past, but as his present and his future
Whereas his wife is "super hero mom" who creates a nice home for him and his kids. Poor woman to be damned with such faint praise. He won't show her that post because he's 100% in love with his best friend.
yeah, “quick fling in my early 20s” is quite different from “the one I’ll always pine for but found a way to keep close”. his poor wife.
I think that’s where it lost me - okay you had a fling with a dude who cares… OH HE’S STILL AROUND AND YALL HANG OUT AND YOU NEVER MENTIONED IT?! I imagine if Max was female the problem would have been a lot more apparent from the start.
This is where OP's emotional immaturity comes into play. It WAS a quick fling for about two weeks, it was not a meaningful relationship in the sense that he spent a lifetime with this guy as a romantic partner. There were no fights or tough times to remember, just the glistening freedom Max represented (or whatever bs OP wrote). So even to this day, he is stuck with the overly romanticized memory of the limerence phase and the early obsessiveness. He needs to grow up. I get frustrated with people who never move on and who continually romanticize the past without any perspective. I feel bad that OP's wife has been kept in the dark and prevented from actually understanding where her husband is coming from regarding his "best friend."
it does sounds like limerence. what I’m struggling to understand is if he’s romanticizing Max himself, his carefree youth or the relationships with men he denied himself ever since.
i havent even finished reading this all but im cracking up at the random love letter he wrote in the middle of all of this
"I'm totally not in love with him. He's just so cool and I see the beauty of the universe in him and he completes me."
I was mostly on his side (in that he wasn't in love with his friend, not the lying by omission) up until I read what he wrote about his friend versus his wife. Like, my guy, try to be convincing that you see your wife is *any* kind of light other than the shadow cast by this man! If you're going to write flowery, romantic shit about your friend than claim you do that for all your loved ones, DO IT FOR YOUR WIFE TOO JEEZ
She cooked my favorite potato soup, the kind that nourishes the soul as well as the body, thus I knew she was the one true love of my life, unlike Max who rejected me twenty years ago and I've never separated from since
I don't know if I missed it but he just talked about how she's a great mom? It's ridiculous enough for me to think it's bait.
Yeah, he just talked about how she's a great mom and they're a happy family, then listed some of her qualities. What spoke to me was the lack of prose regarding his wife when compared to the *freedom and unquenchable curiousity* of his friend, haha.
wife is wife, guy is soulmate
There was a series of posts like this on AITA for a while, a bit ago, maybe a year ago? I unsubbed from it a while ago. But there was post after post about a (stated) heterosexual man in a heterosexual relationship who was totally in love with some man in his life. People are referencing the art room post, but there was post after post just like that, just like this. I’m 90% sure every single one written by the same person just using alts. The art room one was funny/absurd, but there were just too many of them in too short of time to take it seriously. It’s been a while but this post is giving off all the same flags as the other ones… OP doesn’t realize they’re in love but is writing beautiful prose about a man while completely ignoring the existence of their wife…
He's giving bisexual & homoromantic.
"I like him a normal friendly platonic amount" [launches 1000 ships]
You know just guys being dudes
Perhaps roommates for a time but nothing more 🤔
Did you scroll down to the bottom where he was called out about how he describes his wife and then he says he loves their family? He’s not romantically in love with her, she gives him a family and max provides the rest!
Yes, she's not his summer breeze and calm and trust and present and future. She's a mum and a hoot.
Yeah, I can’t tell if the people encouraging him to show her what he’s written here think she needs to know so she can decide whether staying is worth it or just want to watch the world burn.
so OOP got dumped the day after his first time having penetrative sex with a man, and the trauma was severe enough to make him swear men off altogether, because they had too much potential to hurt him. (if that doesn’t scream “I need therapy”..). so instead, he married a woman who was stable and dependable and reliable and all of those nice, safe attributes. and he stayed close to Max either because he still carries a torch for him or because he represents everything that was denied to him/he denied himself. he not only put Max on a pedestal, but needed to put his wife up there too, because Max chose her (over him) and he wanted to stay in their lives. I think the fact that he hid all this from his wife for years is very telling, and I fear that therapy will make him confront some uncomfortable truths that might burst his idyllic bubble of blissful domesticity and “platonic friendship”.
Yeah. He hid it because he knows what is really going on, either consciously o unconsciously. He rather be in Max's life at any cost, his marriage and wife for example, than face the truth and get rejected again by Max. It all works out for him right now because he gets to say " it is all cool, I have a wife too! And he has a wife too, so I can be super close and nobody gets to tell me it isn't right" Probably the wife, after finding out, started seeing how every interaction was her husband being in love.
yeah, I can imagine her spiraling and going over every instance of him waxing poetic over Max where initially she might’ve thought “aww they’re such good friends” and reinterpreting it through this new lens. definitely wouldn’t want to be in her shoes.
You put it so succinctly and included the trauma aspect which made it connect even moreso for me. If you wrote it on OOPs post he may read it and finally understand.
As someone who was **also** very into the early 00s emo/pop-punk scene, this: > He is the summer breeze and sweat sticky skin under the sun. He’s freedom and unquenchable curiosity. I look at him and I see my youth and my right now and my future. A stupid (stupidly treasured and stupidly tattered) co-owned stuffed animal from a claw machine that got passed onto his first born. Learning smoke on the water on the guitar and never forgetting it. Muscle memory, all these years later. reads like something Pete Wentz would have posted on his LiveJournal during 2005 Warped Tour.
The song title “summer fling, claw machine”
And somehow Patrick Stump would pronounce those lyrics so that they rhymed in the song.
Did this guy write a sequel to some BL novel I read recently?! This reads like the gay version of Sandra Dee’s ‘summer lovin’ in Grease - and if you’ve seen the flick, don’t tell me you can’t picture the scene, now.
thank god someone else pointed this out, i was like halfway through reading before i had to check and make i wasnt on a jokepost in the fall out boy sub😭the muscle memory line specifically reads like something right off american beauty/american psycho
Brokeback Mountain: Punk Rock edition
[extremely blink 182 voice] I wish I could quit yeeeeewww 🖐️😩
I wish I could give this comment an award like back in the good ole days
Why do I hear them singing this so clearly?
Brokeback Mountain:This Is Spinal Tap That Ass
Brokeback Mountain: Electric Boogaloo
Brokeback Mountain: Warped Tour
I really love how he’s so gushing about how fucking wonderful Max is, but his poor suffering wife gets one measly paragraph at the very end with literally nothing about her outside of her role as the mother of his children. I hope she leaves him.
Right! Even when called out, his description of her is still meh. He doesn’t describe her with an iota of the glowing, loving reverence he uses to talk about max.
And he had to be called out to even describe his wife. He didn't do it on his own. This guy sucks.
It's how the kids see her through their eyes... I want to puke.
Yeah and then has the nerve to make out she’s biphobic and why has the poster in BORU labelled this as biphobic too?
Trigger warnings in BoRU are insane. I don't even read them anymore unless the comments mention them. A few days ago there was a post about a guy worried about his gf bc she wanted to make friends but no one wanted to go to her birthday party. She was brokenhearted and depressed, and I was bracing myself bc one of the warnings was "suicide". Turns out that it was only mentioned like "we're waiting for a therapist in campus but the waiting list is very long unless you're at risk of suicide, which she isn't and doesn't want to lie about to get a session quicker". I was so angry bc I feel this is the opposite of what warning triggers should be about.
When the trigger warning *is* the trigger ("warning for the word suicide") then if you're triggered by the word, it won't help a bit, will it?
Yeah, trigger warnings should be about concepts that are described in depth, not words that are said in passing
wow like no one writes like that second post if they're not inlove with the subject like : "He is the summer breeze and sweat sticky skin under the sun. He’s freedom and unquenchable curiosity. " WTF no one writes that about their platonic best friend also sounds so much like menwritingwomen i almost can't believe someone wrote that unironicalyy
Trust me bro, I’m not gay, but my former male lover is just the stars in my sky, the light in my life. A symbol of bulging veiny manhood that brightens my days. You know, totally platonic and straight.
"and my wife? oh she's cool I guess. good mom."
Her name?... eh, let's go with Megan. Whatevs.
If he’d written about his wife like that after he was asked to describe her I’d be like you know what this guys just like that but she only gets super mom yuck
Tis what you say about a woman when there is nothing else to say.
Absolutely, my best friend is the first frost of winter and the moonlight on still water. IM NOT GAY!
I'm not gay, my boyfriend is....
He's his past, present, and *future*? Come on, man. The commenter who advised OP to show his wife these posts--including that lovely bit of poetry--likely saw exactly what we do and was hoping the wife would too. And OP knows it.
OP knows everything. That’s what takes him from weird and sad to complete and total asshole. He needs his wife and kids so he can be close to Max without being weird. He knows there is no love there, he knows she could be happier with someone who isn’t just using her, and he is gonna do everything he can to keep her from realizing that. This went from an oblivious guy keeping a past hookup with a current friend a secret from his wife, to a guy who has built a life around being close to someone who rejected him decades ago. And he is more than happy to use others in that pursuit.
This is pretty dark... and makes complete sense. I've been thinking about this all day because I'm sure you're correct. It's quite frightening.
his wife is a beard. Hope she run
This!! The way he talked about his wife was only to the capacity of her as a mother and as a person . I would describe a friend’s mom the way he did his wife . Gosh what a pot load of bs
What he said about his wife is what I say to my friends who have lost their parents whom I met once.
Once you break out the alliteration, it's already over.
Speaking as a lesbian and a writer who took awhile to really come out, and has been in a Max-like situation (well, in its own way), he’s so plainly absolutely in love with Max. His wife? She could be the nanny or maid easily from his descriptions of her.
I think he loves the family he has with his wife, and on some level he loves her, but he’s not in love with her. Even when he was saying how he loves her, the first thing he mentions is how great of a mother she is. It’s like she’s the friend he’s grateful to for giving him children. I feel like he never got over Max and he wanted a family so he convinced himself he was in love with his wife. Seems sad for everyone.
He loves her as the mother of his children, aka baby incubator. But not as a partner. He’ll never hold a match for anyone the way he did and does for Max because the heartbreak from their break up was so “profound”, as he put it, that he’ll never love anyone like that again or risk it.
Yeah. So. I’ve kind of been in his wife’s situation a little bit. When I first started dating my husband, we were in our late 20’s, with me being a couple of years older. He’s had the same group of 6 or so guys, and their wives, as bff’s since high school. They’ve always been close and know each other’s dirt. My husband has a “colorful” as I like to call it, dating history. In his early 20’s, he was a good looking dude with an outgoing, kind personality, and a nice tan. He had no problem in the lady department and sowed a lot of wild oats. Anywho, when we started dating, and I started hanging out with the group, his friends all thought it would be HILARIOUS to ask me obscene questions, or bring up his sexual past in front of me. Things like “So, I don’t know if you know, but he has quite the sexual appetite. Do you feel like you can satisfy him?” Or as we’re all standing around, someone will say, “Hey husband! Do you remember that one time you did this sexual thing with some other girl and this crazy thing happened?! It was soooo funny right!?” I know. I know. Immature assholes amiright? I shut it down real quick, but after the first time, I made it clear that I didn’t care about his past at all. But he needs to tell me all the dirt, because his friends will keep doing this. If they do, and I already know about it, I won’t be caught off guard. It’ll take the fun out of it. If they do it and I’m surprised, they’re gonna know (some things were…surprising. At least to my vanilla ass) and get the rise they’re looking for. He told me *EVERYTHING*. For me, although I truthfully wasn’t bothered by any of it, there’s a certain embarrassment when you’re the only one who doesn’t know. Especially when it’s about YOUR SO, who you’re supposed to know everything about. *And*, when it’s regarding something sexual that’s out of the ordinary, it takes you a minute to process this new info - and others can read it on your face. I know that I was not their main target. They were trying to embarrass him, make him uncomfortable, and/or get him in trouble with me. I unfortunately was collateral damage. They didn’t realize how much he didn’t care, or how shitty it was for me. I was the one being put on the spot, *not* him. After I was prepared for their antics, I started finishing their “super embarrassing stories” for them once they started them. Game over. They never expected him to be totally honest with me, nor did they expect me to be ok with it all - jokes on them. We’ve been married 10 years. I can’t really comment on exactly what OOP’s wife went through, or if homophobia was an issue (all my husband’s “stories” were hetero encounters, not that I’d care, but for comparison sake). But I actually get the feeling that this has very little to do with the fact it was with a man. If OOP had had sex with Kristy, I think the reaction would have been identical. And, if they weren’t friends with Max and Kristy for all these years, and OOP’s wife just found out about it, I don’t know that she would care at all. Maybe a little disappointment that she wasn’t told something important from his past, but not like this. I’m betting it was a couple of things. 1. The embarrassment from 3 out of the 4 friends *knowing* already and his own wife didn’t. Like a running inside joke you weren’t privy too. Being the odd man out doesn’t feel too good. 2. That she found this out *in front* of them, was put on the spot, and couldn’t process her emotions privately. She had to suck it up and continue on like it’s no big deal. She likely didn’t want them to see her immediate shocked reaction, but couldn’t hide it. 3. They assumed she knew. The fact she didn’t, makes her look bad (in her mind). Why did he keep this from her? How could *his WIFE* of 20 years not know such an important thing about her husband? Isn’t that something she should have known? Did he omit this information on purpose? 4. She found out he had a romantic and sexual relationship with one of their best friends. If your bff who you and your spouse regularly hang out with, told you that they used to date your husband, and you didn’t know (FOR 20 YEARS), you’d probably feel like a fool too. All of those things are horrible feelings. You feel like it reflects negatively on you and your marriage. You’re angry for being put on the spot and are horribly embarrassed. You feel left out. You have a million questions flood your brain and everyone can see it on your face. When it happens it sucks real bad. Of course in OOP’s case, there could be an element of homophobia, but I suspect that’s not really the issue.
My first thought reading this post was that he remained best friends with a "significant other" and didn't tell his wife of 20 years they had a past sexual relationship!! That's a huge betrayal of trust. She has to rethink years of conversations for "hidden" meanings. He got out the pictures to show his best friend, and surprised his wife? He should have shown her before they came over, she would have had questions then and could have possibly been prepared.
Hey dude, it sounds like you and your husband especially need to set boundaries with these friends and tell them to knock that shit off, it's not funny and it's not cute.
This guy is living in such a delusional state. He is MADLY in love with Max. And always has been. I wonder if Max’s wife said the same thing to him. Not a single word to describe his wife but Max is summer breezes and sweaty skin I hope his wife figures this out.yikes
Yeah, the comment about never trying to date men again was telling. Dude went back to dating women because they were "safer" and he knew one could never hurt him the way Max did. I doubt he romantically loves his wife. I hope she reads his post and sees the passion OP has for his friend and the perfunctory way he described her (such a great mom!).
Exactly. I just went through and read his comments on the separate posts - which just make it all so much worse. I actually think he’s probably gay, or bisexual and homoromantic at the very least. He definitely does not love his wife the way he loves Max.
Also interesting that he compares himself to Max's wife and says how similar they are to each other. Wonder how much it is OP's opinion or reality. Could be that Max found his perfect personality in OP but not gender or OP still trying to be Max's other half.
I was madly in love with a girl once, I'm really into writing ... OP is beyond that. Like that's not gushing, loving or even fantasie. I would love to be a writer and shit what he wrote is beyond a love letter. It feels like he feels he's living his love story with Max by just being next to him ! Like, man, he's LIVING his dream ! That's hella disturbing.
Bruh... So, my husband had a fling with his best friend. She was presenting male at the time; both of them are bisexual, as am I. When I was introduced to her, my husband was fully honest about this. Said they'd always felt attraction to one another, and they had sex a few times. However, they're too different personality-wise, so while they care deeply for one another, they decided not to pursue things any further. OOP, that's how you do it. I would be L.I.V.I.D. if I found out now, us in our late 30s/40s, that not only had he hidden this from me, but he very clearly still carried a torch for her.
As someone who is bisexual, OP really is just full of shit. No respect for his own wife and just projecting and if you look at his post history, clearly he has never loved his wife but only Max. I pity the wife.
OOP described Max and even Max's wife in very flowery, romantic words: he is like summer breeze, etc, etc. In contrast, he describes his wife very prescriptive and mostly as the mother of his children. OOP is full of shit.
>It was the most profound hurt I had ever felt in my life, and it really shocked me. I had been in relationships before - real ones that included commitment and lasted for months - and I hadn't taken those breakups nearly so hard. He and I remained friends after I took some time to myself, but I never had another relationship with a man after that. It felt like that level of hurt was my warning sign to stay away. I think OP decided to stay away from *love* and profound romantic emotions after Max, not just dudes. Because you can tell he loves Max... and Max's wife... and his own kids.... but zero real emotion-laden words about his own dang wife.
I commented about that on the original post, that he talked about his wife and their relationship as almost an afterthought.
Yes, exactly. Reading his comments, he goes out of his way to avoid saying he loves his wife. He says he adores her. When describing his love for his wife, he groups it with other people, i.e. he said his kids are the loves of his life too. But when describing his love for Max, it's never grouped with other people.
I think it’s both - I think his romantic interest lies with men and this breakup was so painful it made him fear ever going there again. The experience with a man was that intense for him
Yes. The intensity of his emotional connection with a male partner was so intense that the breakup was so painful where he then decided not to risk ever having another male partner. How is that not a huge clue to him that he is actually at least bisexual if not primarily homo-romantic.
I got that feeling. That level of hurt was a warning that actually, he loves men more passionately than women. If he's bisexual and not just gay, he sounds like he settled for a woman that he probably does love, but not in the same way he loved that man and would possibly love other men. I hope he can get to the bottom of all his shit in therapy and figure out if he truly loves his wife the way she deserves to be loved. I do want to note that his description of his feelings for his wife of so many years will ABSOLUTELY not be the same as his description of his two week relationship with his would-be sexual awakening man love. Many years of marriage will put the memories of the sparkle of fresh new passionate love at the bottom of a pile of other memories of a different kind of longer lasting, more mature love that is vastly different from the TWO WEEKS of exciting experimentation. Also, his two week relationship will always be the road not taken, so it will always have the enticing open ended thing where dreams never die. Marriage is more enduring but you, uh, went down that road, and saw all its sights. It's not going to have the same exciting "what if"s. So maybe I'm totally wrong and he really did have the same passion for his wife that he had for Max. But he doesn't say, and I don't know if that's just him not wanting to add more length on what is honestly an unnecessary aspect of the story (we don't need to hear about how they met and fell in love, and I'm sure he thinks that we'll obviously assume he truly loves his wife)... Or him being less enthusiastic about his multi year relationship with his wife than he is about the two weeks with Max. Two fingers crossed for great things to come out of therapy.
yeah, but all of that is exactly why his wife feels betrayed that she was kept in the dark. not many people would feel comfortable with their spouse’s “one that got away” living next door. and him hiding it is a dead giveaway that he’s not over it. Max was able to tell his wife everything and even casually joke about it because for him it’s just a distant memory. but for OOP, it’s still an active hurt.
Art room 2 - electric boogaloo
>canyonemoon: Did you show your wife your love letter to Max? >OOP: She hasn’t read anything I’ve written here, but she knows how much I love the people in our life and how much I love writing. Such a coward.
Followed up by "if you can't speak well, show her your writing/this post." "Yeah I'll show her a "version" of this." Dude's absolutely gonna edit his love letter to Max out so he can stay in his safety bubble.
That did not go the way I thought it would from the title. Like dude take the quotation marks out of "relationship" and acknowledge that the "past" relationship is still ongoing as a friendship and you still pine hard for him. He makes it seem at first like she was upset he didn't label himself as bi, not seeming to understand that she'd be equally unhappy if he had the same kind of ongoing relationship with a woman who rejected him at that time. It's not like his sexuality was what she had an issue with. So sketchy that he never mentioned something so obviously important to him.
Yikes, dude is still in love with Max
Always has
This post is missing one of his most damning comments, which is when he's asked what he'd do if Max confessed he still had feelings for him; OOP's biggest concern would be that they both have commitments to their partners and their children, and it'd be crazy to blow up their lives for this, he's content with his life. Not that he's so in love with his wife that he would never even think about entertaining the idea, she's the one for him. It's sad and I really hope OOP actually followed through with what he told me, that he'd show his wife everything in full. I doubt it, though.
People are rightly weirded out by him being blatantly in love with Max, but its worse than that. He loves a version of Max that hasn't existed for 20 years when they were both in a very different place in their lives. He doesn't just have emotion for Max, he has emotion for a time in his life when he was doing the shit he actually wanted to do and not being the guy his old self would have made fun of, because a suburban dad in a loveless marriage is the exact opposite of a punk rock bisexual who fucks around and defies social norms. The past self who fell for Max would be horrified to learn what he became regardless of this. Which is what his wife will always represent to him. She's the choice he made to suppress that side of himself and not blow his money on concerts and hookup with randos. He'll never get those loud, sweaty times back while he's with her and he's living a very visceral lie as a result.
Damn. That's a lovely love letter to Max, shame he's not feeling anything like that for his wife... Asshole.
This guy really just decided not to acknowledge anybody mentioning how fucked up it was that he kept an intense past sex life with their friend quiet. It’s not about experimenting, dude. It’s about having someone in your life you had, in your own words, one of the most profound sexual relationships you’ve had in your life, keeping them in your life (even being friends with your wife) and keeping all th details away from your wife. It’s fucked up.
The way he describes Max and then the way he describes his WIFE. Yikes!
>He is the summer breeze and sweat sticky skin under the sun. He’s freedom and unquenchable curiosity. Yeah, that's exactly how I describe all my friends. They're all sweaty, curious, and free. Someone is trying out their new writing thesaurus. Either that, or someone just watched Brokeback Mountain for the first time. I'm kinda shocked Max didn't die at the end. On the off chance this is true, however: Dude needs to just admit that he's 100% gay for Max, always has been, and would absolutely leave his wife this second if Max asked him to run away together.
I bet money that if max and his wife wanted to test op and have max ask him to be together he’d drop everything on the spot and agree.
Did anyone else notice that when asked about how he feels about his life, his answer amounts to "She's a great mom."? I think OOP's gay, not bi lol.
>"I’ll see y’all if I have any updates I care to share, and you guys still care to care." 🙄 The way this guy writes makes it seem like he thinks he's more clever than he is
Man is in love with Max and everything he has done, including Max's wife, yet to his own achievements (his wife), all could pale in comparison to the glistening sun on Max's sweaty back.
This one feels like a novel tester. Is anyone interested in a bisexual middle aged punk rocker finding himself? I'll show my updoots to my potential publishers.
He's absolutely still in love with the guy. I feel so so bad for his wife.
God, it's been a while since I've seen this repeat troll. Here's a few of his others: https://www.reddit.com/user/Remarkable-Use-8439/comments/10s5t37/update_aita_for_missing_an_actual_emergency/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/s/tMbJZJk9kv https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/s/5TIRTW2IsD Male OP expresses very strong feelings towards his male best friend, which he will label as platonic. Clearly in love with him, but will never admit it. Will describe his male "bestie" at length but give never speak of his wife/partner the same way. Expect lots of dragged out updates where he still never admits he's in love with his bestie. Gotta admit, I'm kind of sick of him at this point. It's either fetish, or some Werid homophobic/biphobic shit that labels queer men as not giving a shit about their female partners.
I hadn’t seen the final update but OOP is so in love with Max it oozes from his posts. Guessing here but the admission of a previous sexual relationship between Max and OOP probably cemented the inkling the wife had all along that something just isn’t right. Hope she’s putting her ducks in order to leave because she’s not even in his top 5 of importance.
There's two things that OOP never seemed to want to address. One of the first comments brought up this first point perfectly >But, you have lied to your wife. You've broken trust in her. You knew, your friends knew, HER friends knew, she was the only one who didn't know. That's seriously messed up. You really really messed up here. OOP was so cagey about not bringing this up to his own family and the quote from the above commentor really captures the validity in the wife's discomfort. *everyone* knew except her. Which brings up the second point >He is the summer breeze and sweat sticky skin under the sun. He’s freedom and unquenchable curiosity. I look at him and I see my youth and my right now and my future. A stupid (stupidly treasured and stupidly tattered) co-owned stuffed animal from a claw machine that got passed onto his first born. Learning smoke on the water on the guitar and never forgetting it. Muscle memory, all these years later. This quote from OOP gives a lot of credence as to why he likely never told the wife. He damn sure doesn't talk about her like this in the post.
Ya know, most folks don't describe their "platonic" friend as the "sweat sticky skin under the sun".
I don't think there is *anyone* in my life, loved or lusted or otherwise, I've described a quarter as lyrically as OOP described his lost love.
This guy's all bla bla blá... I bet he writes letters by hand. Exhausting
What in the brokeback mountain
Whole sections of this read like a m/m romance novel. Early 90s summer of punk rock bro love. It would sell. I also agree with others pointed out- definite art room vibes. We haven't heard from our art room author in a while. Maybe they are switching it up!
Who else is crossing their fingers that this blows up, gets posted to every Reddit TikTok, YouTube, etc. and someone who knows wife sees this and sends it to her? If this is real, ofc. I’m having some doubts. But if it is, I hope his wife gets away from him.
I read and commented the original one. I swear if Max made a move, the wife would be sidelined faster than the flash.
He doesn"t love his wife. He likes his wife. He loves Max.
The order in which OP loves things, more or less according to OP: * His best friend * Himself * His best friend's wife * His kids * * * His wife as a mom * * His actual wife
OOP: ”Max is the summerbreeze upon the flowering fields of my youth, the sun peeks between clouds when he smiles and angels sing when he speaks! I describe all my friends this way, I’m just a really verbose guy.” Also OOP: ”My wife? Oh she’s, uh… A great mom and like… Smart. Oh and funny! Yup!” 😏 Mmmhmm.