I hate that I have to keep my guard up around men. I love my friends who just happen to be men. But, keeping up with receiving basic respect from them is really draining.

You have to keep on your toes. They can and absolutely will give you s*** about anything, you MAY be doing wrong, MIGHT be doing wrong, or may be doing “wrong”.

An example:
I just got a new job that pays well. I am the only one in my family working. I am supporting my family and I don’t mind. I was able to save up over half a grand in 2 months.
That’s $500
WHILE STILL supporting
my husband and my three year old.
Unfortunately, I had to pay for an emergency tooth pull for my husband ( he has no insurance) with all those savings.
Shout out to the kind dentist for doing one of his two teeth free, because we couldn’t afford to pull both.

So, my account was in the negative. Which wasn’t too bad because I was going to be paid two days after.
We’re good enough to survive two days.
Probably because I was paying for everything, and taking care of everyone, and saving money.
Anyway, I verbally mentioned how much it s**** that I’m in the negative, and my account gave me an overdraft fee.
My guy friend facetiously said, (but he actually meant it) “save money😏”
It took me a second to actually process what he said,
because I’ve ADHD,
But when I did process what he said, all I could say was, “what..?🤨”
He was a bit defensive, but not really. I don’t know how to describe it. But he suggested things to help me save money and say it’s something everyone should do.
As if I wasn’t saving any money, and he wasn’t there when my husband had the tooth (teeth) emergency, and I had to pay it.

Which he did know all of that😐

So I couldn’t just let him get away with saying that to me.
(This is what is so exhausting by the way)
I had to tell him, “Dude, I just paid for an emergency tooth pull for my husband…
With the money I saved…”

“Well, save more😶👀” is along the lines of what he said.

“Yeah, I should have saved more than over$500 in a span of two months, while supporting my family.”
(As well as the 3 nieces and nephew that come over for 7-8hrs week days for babysitting. But I didn’t mention that.)

He awkwardly shrugged it off in a haha kind of way.

So, what is so exhausting is I can’t rely on men to give me a break. Sometimes, they just don’t know any better. Sometimes they don’t think.
I really wish I could just trust them not to give me s***, but I can’t. He would have thought he was right. If I relax around them, dumb sh!t like this would happen all the frickin time.
And I’d feel drained as a person anyway.