I’d posit that your well-loved cast iron looks even better than new. For me, moving off nonstick pans was about sustainability (and money waste, who wants to buy a 2 year subscription to cooking?), but I can’t get over how beautiful some cookware gets just from being used. The patinas on cast iron/carbon steel pans reflect the dedication of their owners to a craft, which I’ll take any day over a colorful pan whose surface flakes just from looking at it.

You won’t find any disagreement from me there. I just think that when you set the expectation too high (stainless steel can actually be more nonstick than Teflon), people will give up and just go back to nonstick pans when they can’t achieve those results.

Regarding dishes that are solely the domain of Teflon, I think it definitely has a place for dishes that already have a high bar for execution. A perfect French omelette is hard enough on a nonstick that adding another layer of heat management puts it out of reach for most people. But like you said, there’s not much that I’d use Teflon for, so I just don’t have one after switching to induction.

I think it’s a bit disingenuous to say that any other cookware material outperforms Teflon nonstick, and actually harms the conversation when trying to convince people to switch to an alternative. Nothing is going to beat the nonstick performance a fresh nonstick pan, and that’s perfectly fine. I don’t need a pan so nonstick that I could start an egg in a cold pan with no oil. Well-meaning people run the risk of frustrating less experienced cooks when they assert that they’ll get the exact same or better results from a stainless steel pan, which just isn’t true, especially right from the start. Stainless has plenty of other benefits that make it more than worth the learning curve to use. Sometimes you want some stick, to build fond for a pan sauce. Or you need a pan that can go from stovetop to oven to finish cooking.

This post wasn’t aimed at you specifically, I just wanted to vent at what I feel like has been an uptick in cookware bros flexing their ability to reduce sticking on stainless steel (“I’m so smart I name dropped this little-known thing called the Leidenfrost effect”). I quite like your video and post because they show an alternative way to reduce sticking on stainless that is definitely more forgiving for a beginner than trying to hit a specific temperature range.

I’m really not in a position to understand your financial situation, but I don’t think it’s inherently wrong to accept money from people. I’ve been on a few dates with girls who just put their Cashapp/Venmo in their dating bios without any explanation, and it weirdly seems to work. I’ve literally seen the notifications of random men just sending them money while we’re out for coffee or something. It’s not like they made a bunch of money from it or anything, but there were definitely guys willing to send them money without them even asking for it or pretending to offer anything in return. If you’re not lying to them and they just send you money, I don’t think you’re not a bad person for taking it. Some people just want to spend that way. I will say that if it makes you feel weird, you probably shouldn’t do it though.

If you need someone to talk to in the future, feel free to dm me. I’m not opposed to a respectful Internet friendship, and if you’re feeling lonely and just want someone to talk to I don’t want you to necessarily feel limited to the contents of the original post.

Yeah I can’t say the conversations with those guys were exactly a good thing, but you regret it and I don’t see the point in dwelling on it as long as you don’t do it again. Feeling guilty about not telling him at first is a normal reaction, but things didn’t go wrong just because you didn’t tell him immediately. You worked up the courage to tell him, and that took strength. I will say though, I don’t think it’s necessarily good to tell him just because it makes you feel guilty. You should share things with people out of a positive want to, not out of guilt.

I saw elsewhere in the thread that your body count made you feel terrible because it got such a negative reaction from this guy. I don’t think you should be worried about it, because it doesn’t define you or say anything about you as a person. I’ve had partners and irl friends with much higher body counts than you, and I didn’t think any less of them because of it. It’s one of the least interesting things about a person, so getting too worked up about it is weirdo behavior.

I’m probably the wrong person to ask, since I haven’t really been on socials for about 4 years now, but I really don’t think it’s a big deal to share your Instagram with someone. Are you both particularly cagey about who you share it with? Maybe there’s just a more recent divide on how you curate your personal stuff now.

As far as being upset about not immediately sharing that someone else sent you unsolicited pictures, I think the anger is probably related to some other underlying issue moreso than trust. It could be about some insecurities that he has, but I’m not going to try too hard to rationalize his thought process because the response was completely inappropriate. We can’t even know for sure the response would have been any different even if you had told him right away. You didn’t want the pictures, and you did tell him about them on your own without him prying. He doesn’t get to determine the timeline that you do it on.

You’re not being delusional if you think he’s being irrational. He complains about not being able to trust you, but I don’t see why he deserves your trust either. I wouldn’t trust him with my emotions since he hasn’t shown that he can treat them with the depth that they deserve. The Instagram and GoFundMe stuff sounds like a really complex scenario, but he only thought about how it made him feel. If someone I actually care about did something that made them feel disgusting, I would want to comfort them before addressing the way that it made me feel. It’s something that happened to you, not him. He doesn’t get to be the victim just because you didn’t perfectly follow his instructions regarding the GoFundMe. He just dogpiled on you without giving you any air when you were the one who trusted him enough to open up about it.

In the future, you shouldn’t have to “try” to win anyone back. People who want to be in your life will put in the effort, since relationships are a two-way street. The people who don’t try aren’t deserving of your time. This sounds like it was a pretty terrible experience for you, but I hope it doesn’t make you more jaded about emotionally connecting with people.

I’m gonna be frank: I would not want to remain friends with someone like this at all. It’s incredibly insulting and manipulative to tell someone that they’re unworthy of being trusted when you know that they have issues with their self-worth, while also continuing to maintain contact with said person. Trust should be implicit in any opt-in relationship, whether it’s a platonic friendship or a romantic one. Relationships require sharing vulnerability, and I wouldn’t do that with anyone I don’t trust not to take advantage of me. If for any reason I no longer feel able to trust a person, that’s fine, it’s just where the relationship is going to end. From my (admittedly extremely limited) outsider perspective, you’re being vulnerable to this guy and he’s taking advantage of it.

You were honest with him about what you viewed as a mistake, and he used that as a vehicle to say you can’t be trusted? Make that make sense. I can’t say whether I’d be happy about it in the same scenario, but if anything it would make me trust you more. Even though you knew it would be upsetting, you made the mature choice to tell him what happened. I think an appropriate response in that situation would be to be upset, but to recognize that you were already reflecting on your actions. It sounds as though you were already unhappy, and even if he wasn’t going to comfort you, the least he could do is not blow a fuse. That’s not healthy behavior in a relationship, and I’d urge you to look at things like that when vetting potential partners in the future.

Plainly speaking, it sounds like you were just being strung along from this point forward. He knows or should have known how hurtful it is to say that he can’t trust you, especially given all of the nice and flowery things he’s said in the previous months. He knows your insecurities, and made them so much worse with his actions. Then, he continues a physical relationship with you and the dates under the guise of being “just friends” while knowing that you want something more from the relationship. That’s a horribly shitty thing to do to someone that you know you have an emotional grip on, especially if they have some emotional trauma as you seem to. It’s not something I would do to someone I dislike, let alone a friend I’m supposed to care about. It shows a complete disdain for your feelings. You deserve much better from your friends. Strangers on the internet shouldn’t be more considerate of your feelings than some guy that you wanted a relationship with.

I hope your therapy goes well. I’m rooting for you, and want to tell you that I think that you are absolutely worthy of love as you are, so you should try loving yourself. You’re honest, introspective, and capable of self-critique.