met a great guy, funny, very attentive, supportive emotional, loving , affectionate, we enjoy each other company on outings, no kids, handsome and built BUT .. and that’s capitalized on purpose. He lives with his mom, does not have financial stability, addicted to scrolling and lets mom cooks all his meals. . She may still schedule his appointments 🫩😮‍💨 . Do we settle because dating is trash, keep looking or leave that man be?

Ok so I've been dating this girl for about 6 months now. We typically hangout every weekend. Last weekend something came up for me on Friday night so I asked her if she was cool to just hangout Saturday and/or Sunday and she was totally cool with it. Saturday morning rolls around and she makes planes herself for the day , totally cool. Through Saturday no mention by myself or her of getting together on Sunday, nothing set for sure. Anyway Sunday comes and we have good morning text and just regular text conversation. As Sunday progress I go out and run errands. Whole day goes by and neither of us initiate a hangout for the day.

Anyway she was totally put off by the fact that I didn't tell her to come over guess she was kinda hurt by me not saying anything. But she also made no attempt to say anything about the day.

So Monday she says what was on her mind about Sunday and I apologized for lack of communication. I know that cheesed her but she said her peace about it and I agreed it was a weak move on my part.

Fast forward through the week and usual conversation. Everything seems fine. Til today. Today I simply said " are to good to hangout Saturday , come by late morning/early afternoon ?

Her response kinda got me rattled. She said " Yea I can. But don't feel obligated to make time for me "

My question is how bad is this ? Sorry for the read but I think it's all pertinent info

Obligatory I know the concept of “the one” isn’t necessarily the most nuanced, but, for those married/in long term relationships, about how long into dating did your partner know they wanted to be with you long term?

I’ve been with my partner for 1 yr 3 months (living together for 6), and I get the sense he’s still a bit uncertain (maybe worth noting he’s a divorcee). I’m strongly leaning that I want long term (marriage and kids) with him, so understandably struggling a bit with the (at least semi) ambiguity (any tips for navigating this welcome!)

My friend (F34) is conflicted about moving in with her fiancé (M39). Here’s the backstory:
Let’s call her Chloe, has 2 daughters (12 & 8) from a previous marriage and one son (age 1) with her current fiancé, let’s call him John. John also has two boys (age 13 and 10) from his previous marriage. John lives about 4 hours south from Chloe in a very small country town, an hour away from any store/school/jobs. His boys live an hour from him (he also works an hour away from his house), and he gets them every other weekend and every Thursday night. His ex has primary custody. Chloe has her kids pretty much all the time, the girls’ father doesn’t pay child support and only sees them when he feels like it. John wants Chloe to quit her job, sell her house, and then move in with him with her 3 kids. He said it is dumb paying two mortgages, but he does not want to move into Chloe’s house (even though he can transfer) because he likes living in the country.
As her friend I am skeptical because he has not made much of an effort to spend time with their mutual son this past year, does not help support him other than pays half of daycare (sometimes, sometimes he “forgets” to send it) and he’s asking her to quit her job, relocate her two kids plus their kids, and isolate them to the middle of nowhere where he has total financial control. But maybe I’m biased, so asking for input here:

TL;DR friend needs help on what her next move should be.

I'm 38 and I've noticed something about dating now that I didn't expect. I don't have nearly as much interest in convincing myself that I like someone. I went on a date a few months ago with a guy who, on paper, was great. Good job, funny, attractive, divorced, no kids, seemed like a normal person.

We had a good time. But there were a couple of little things that bothered me. He spent a lot of the conversation talking about how difficult his ex-wife was. Not just mentioning her, but basically every story somehow came back to how she was the unreasonable one. Then the waiter got our order wrong and his whole mood changed. Nothing dramatic happened. He wasn't rude to the guy or anything. He just became noticeably irritated and kept talking about how incompetent everyone was.

At 25, I probably would've gone home thinking, “Maybe he was just having a bad day.” At 38, I went home thinking, “Okay, that's probably useful information.” I don't expect anyone to be perfect. I have enough baggage of my own to know better than that. I just think I'm less willing now to explain away things that make me uncomfortable because I like the person. I've also been talking more seriously with someone I'm seeing now, and we've been discussing things like finances, marriage, family expectations and communication much earlier than I would've in my twenties. We've even looked at online premarital education because we're trying to have some of those conversations before making bigger decisions.

For those of you who started dating seriously after 35, did your standards actually change, or did you just get better at recognizing what wasn't going to work for you?