3 of your horror stories about work and relationships

At that point we had been dating for a little under six months, and we were both finishing university. I found a job at my dream company and for the first time felt I was moving in the right direction: my professional skills and ideas were helping the business grow. That motivated me to keep developing, and I could afford to do more nice things, buy something to make home cozy, plan interesting ways to spend our free time. My partner was writing his thesis and ignored every opportunity to work in his field — he was doing side work packing products.

After I started working, we began fighting more, and he started saying things like:

"You can afford this, and I can't."

In the end I got tired of hearing complaints in response to every piece of good news, and I was fed up with the person next to me living in a comfortable mode and not wanting to grow. We ended up breaking up a few months after I started the job.

We met and started dating when we were both working as sales assistants. We worked together for 2 months, after which he was fired for theft (of course, I didn't believe it). But he gave me an ultimatum:

"You shouldn't work there, quit too!"

And I left.

After losing my job, our relationship started to deteriorate: there wasn't enough money, there were constant conflicts, and I sat at home looking for work.

My partner criticized every position I found:

"It's an all-male team"

"It'll be hard for you there"

"It's too far"

It all ended with me spending 3 months barely leaving the house, and in the end I decided to break up with him.

We're both programmers, we studied in the same year, and we were always looking for good places to work — there was a constant sense of rivalry. One day, through friends, we were passed a great job opening, and we were both invited to interview.

My partner's interview was scheduled earlier, and during it he was told they would also be interviewing one more person for the role — me. To which he said that I was prioritizing an opening at another company. That wasn't true, but he got the job. In his defense, he said:

"But you wanted me to have a job too"

And I really did end up having to take the job my partner had lied about — it wasn't my priority, but experience and money during the lockdown mattered more.

We dated for another year and in the end broke up.