Shadowing Practice: Real-Life English Stories From Native Speakers | A1–B2 Listening Practice - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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Do you want to start thinking in English faster instead of translating everything in your head?

In this video, you are going to shadow a real story written the way native English speakers actually talk.

This helps you connect English words directly to the meaning.

So your brain starts processing English faster and more naturally.

Shadowing also improves your pronunciation,

rhythm, accent, listening, and speaking because you are copying real English in real time.

And since this is a story,

you'll also learn new vocabulary,

natural expressions, and sentence patterns that native English speakers actually use.

So don't just watch, read with me.

shadow out loud and train your brain to think in English from start to finish.

Let's begin.

I'm I the a-hole for taking a job that conflicted with my best friend's wedding

after he refused to compromise on unreasonable demands.

As you shadow me, I want you guys to remember what you're reading and what you're shadowing because at the end,

I will ask you to summarize what we just read

and take a video of yourself giving the summary so you can watch it back at a later date.

Throughout the video, you will also see words flash on screen

that you should try to learn if you don't already know them.

These are part of my 3,000 Most Common English Words series designed to help you understand up to 95% of spoken English.

If you want to get the PDF with all 3,000 words with definitions and real examples,

then get it in the description.

Let's continue.

Using a throwaway, obviously.

So my best friend got engaged about a year ago and asked me to be a groomsman.

I said yes immediately because that's what you do.

We've known each other since like middle school and I was genuinely excited.

But then planning started and it got weird.

His fiancee, who I've never been super close with,

started making all these demands about what the groomsmen needed to do.

Custom shirts, specific haircuts, mandatory bachelor party at her chosen location,

contributions to things I've never agreed to.

It was getting expensive and honestly kind of controlling.

I mentioned to my friend that some of the stuff seemed excessive.

Like, I get wanting your wedding to look nice,

but requiring specific haircuts felt over the line.

He just said, it's not that big a deal.

Come on, and shut down the conversation.

That's when I kind of started pulling back emotionally from the whole thing.

Fast forward to about three months before the wedding,

and I got a new job offer that required me to relocate for like two weeks of training right before the wedding.

I told him immediately and said I'd try to reschedule it or work something out.

He lost it.

Started saying I was abandoning him and that real friends would just turn down the job.

I reminded him that I need to actually have a career

and that I was still going to be there for the wedding.

Here's the thing though.

I could have tried harder to reschedule.

I didn't really push back with my new employer because honestly,

I was kind of over the whole wedding stress at that point.

I think subconsciously, I wanted an out.

His fiancee apparently told him it was suspicious timing and that I was being selfish.

My friend basically told me I was either fully committed or not committed at all.

I ended up keeping the job training and going,

but I told him I'd only make it back the day before the wedding.

That meant I couldn't go to the rehearsal dinner or the bachelor party.

He said that was unacceptable and that

if I couldn't be there for everything then I shouldn't be in the wedding at all.

So I got dropped as a groomsman like a week before the wedding.

I was upset but also kind of relieved.

Get my 3,000 most common English words PDF and learn the words

that will help you understand up to 95% of everyday English.

It includes real definitions, real example sentences for every meaning,

and everything is organized by CEFR level and topic.

Click the link in the description to get it.

Which tells me something about how I was feeling about the whole thing.

Now a few months later,

he's still mad at me.

He says I chose a job over my best friend.

I say he chose his fiance's demands over our friendship.

My other friends are split.

Some say I should have just turned down the job.

Others say the wedding demands were unreasonable unreasonable and he was being controlling about it.

The thing is, I could have handled this better.

I could have been more honest about feeling uncomfortable instead of just pulling back.

And yeah, I definitely could have tried harder with the job thing,

but he also could have been more flexible and reasonable about what he was asking of me.

Am I the a-hole?

So before I give my opinion we have an update

but I would like to say some things if it was me

and it was my wedding I would not want my friends to turn down a job offer

that would advance their career just for my wedding I understand a wedding is important

but we're talking about his entire life he's still going to be there on the wedding day

and that's more than enough I don't need him to ruin his life for one day because it's my wedding.

That is unreasonable.

Major update.

Things got worse, not better.

I decided to actually call him instead of waiting for next week.

Figured I'd strike while the iron was hot since I was feeling like maybe we could actually talk about this.

He answered and seemed kind of cold right off the bat.

I started by apologizing for checking out and not being honest with him about how stressed the wedding stuff was making me.

I thought that would open things up.

Instead he said yeah well you've been posting about this on reddit haven't you?

His wife apparently saw a thread that sounded like it could be us and showed it to him and now he's pissed.

He's saying I'm airing dirty laundry online for strangers to judge him

and his wife that I'm trying to make her look bad.

I literally don't even know how she found it.

It was only up for like an hour before I called him.

The post just went up.

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I'm pretty sure I didn't leave any obvious details that would lead back to us,

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but either she recognized stuff or someone in our friend group figured it out and told them.

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Either way, it feels like a violation.

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I tried to explain that I used a throw away and kept things vague,

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but he wasn't hearing it.

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He said, if I'm willing to post about our friendship online,

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then clearly I don't actually value the friendship.

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He told me not to contact him again and blocked me on everything.

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His wife apparently also texted some of the other groomsmen saying I'm trash talking them online,

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which obviously isn't great for my reputation in the friend group.

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So yeah, the opposite of reconciliation happened.

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I'm actually furious right now because I came to Reddit to process my feelings.

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And now it's literally destroyed what was left of the friendship.

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I don't know if I should have told him or if I should have just kept it to myself.

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I genuinely don't know what to do now.

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Yeah, that's kind of like a risk you always run by posting stuff like this online

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because even if you make it like anonymous and don't put names or you put fake names or something,

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the details still are similar.

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So someone can always be like,

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oh, they're talking about me or this is me.

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But the fact that they found that within an hour is kind of kind of crazy.

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Maybe they were expecting it to be posted on Reddit.

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I don't know.

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But overall, I don't necessarily think you did anything wrong.

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I think your friend is just upset because he probably read the comments

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and saw that him and his wife were in the wrong

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and they were being very controlling and they seemed like the problem.

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So that's probably why he was upset.

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Like I said in the beginning,

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I want you guys to take out your phone and record yourself giving a quick summary,

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maybe one or two sentences of the story you just read.

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On to the next.

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Am I the a-hole for telling a funny story at a wedding about the bride?

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This happened a couple of weeks ago,

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but I am still reeling from it and want to know if I was being an a-hole.

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Me, 30 male, and my friend,

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30 female, who I'll call Colleen,

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have known each other since we were kids.

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Her family is deeply Catholic,

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but she isn't nearly as religious.

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Important later.

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Years ago, she met a guy.

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I'll call him Mike.

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And they became committed.

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I met him and got along great with him.

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And the three of us hung out a lot.

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So he proposed and they held a big wedding.

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The actual wedding came and went and at the reception afterwards some of us were giving speeches.

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I went up and told them how happy I was for them

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and decided to tell the audience about some of our experiences in college together.

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Ooh, this couldn't go really bad.

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I hope this guy isn't like clueless

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and doesn't like say any really personal stories that they would obviously not want other people to know.

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But by the sounds of it,

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he's probably going to do that.

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That's just my guess.

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To summarize, my speech, it went something like,

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When me and Colleen went to college together,

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Colleen let loose and changed completely from her days at Catholic school.

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But then she met Mike and it seemed like he calmed her down.

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I'm happy for them and wish them much success.

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The thing is it's probably true.

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That's why he said it He must know what he was doing by saying

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that because if their family is extremely catholic

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And then you say this at their wedding that she let loose Then that just implies one thing.

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I feel like he definitely knew what he was doing The

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husband also has a right to know what she did But the husband also has a right to know,

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you know, since it's gonna be his wife

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The audience for the most part was laughing throughout my speech and seemed to enjoy it.

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And given how me, Colleen and Mike hung out a lot and how we all had a crude sense of humor,

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I thought they would appreciate it.

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Okay, so by the sounds of it,

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he was saying it more in a joking manner.

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Oh, she let loose in university,

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but he calmed her down.

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I didn't realize this was a big deal until later on in the wedding.

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I went up to the table Colleen's parents were sitting at,

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but they shunned me away very quickly.

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I went up to Colleen and Mike to ask them if her parents were okay.

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They immediately told me, we need to talk.

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They took me into the back of the venue and asked me about the speech.

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I told them that most people enjoyed it

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and they should understand college is a time for going a little crazy and figuring yourself out.

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Colleen yelled at me and said I had no right.

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She was screaming so hard that Mike had to calm her down.

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She ended up leaving and Mike said look it was a funny story

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but try to keep it between us three next time.

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So Mike seems like a really chill guy

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and Colleen kind of seems like she just didn't want her

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personal business to be told to her entire extremely religious family which honestly I don't blame her.

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Since then, I've tried texting Colleen back,

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but she blocked me everywhere.

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Mike hasn't been responding either.

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Given that most people in the audience enjoyed it and probably forgot about it now,

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I don't know why this is a big deal.

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I think it's a big deal because,

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yeah, maybe most people in the audience don't remember because they're not that close to Colleen or that close to Mike.

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But the people that do remember will be her parents and his parents.

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So they will remember.

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And that's the most important people that she probably didn't want them to know that that's why it's a big deal.

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Remember guys, give me a summary of the story and I want you to take a video

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because in a month or two,

202

you can look back at this video and see how much your pronunciation,

203

your accent, your rhythm, and your confidence has improved.

204

Am I the a-hole for refusing to give up my wedding dress the day after the wedding?

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So first, some context.

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I'm getting married this Saturday,

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and my fiancé and I are paying the wedding ourselves.

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Well, most of it.

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There's been some presents here and there,

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like the liquor from my parents, they insisted.

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And in from my aunt,

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whom I have a bit of a tense relationship with,

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she gave me my wedding gown.

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The thing about the wedding gown is it used to belong to my cousin,

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which is one of my bridesmaids.

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She was about to get married,

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but they broke things off because he was cheating.

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But that's another story.

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My aunt bought this wedding dress for her and it was brand new.

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It was never used and they had it sitting on their closet for about a year or two.

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When she found out I was getting married,

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she got as excited as if I was her daughter as well and told me about the dress,

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asking me if I wanted it.

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It's not the dress I envisioned,

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but since we are paying the wedding ourselves and my fiance said

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that I was going to have to rent a dress

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because we don't have the money to buy one

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and i was really sad about that

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because i wanted to own my own dress i said yes

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and once i tried it on i fell in love with it she gave me

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that dress as a gift and to alter as i saw fit

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but like i said i fell in love with it as it was

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but i should have known

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that dress came with strings yesterday i was coming back from a trip visiting my parents

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and when i got off the plane i found a voicemail from my aunt she told me

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that another of my cousins is getting married and she was asking

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if i could give her my dress the day after the wedding

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so she could tear it apart and take the lace off it

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and do with the dress as she wanted for her wedding and it broke me.

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This cousin in particular is the favorite of everyone sometimes,

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even of my own parents when we were younger.

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Mostly because she's really charismatic and also she's white and blonde and I'm a little on the darker side,

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you can imagine.

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I don't have any rivalry with her.

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I adore her and I knew she wouldn't want this wedding dress

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because I already talked to her about the style of the wedding

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that she wanted and how she wanted something more bohemian on the beach

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so I know she wasn't the one to ask for this.

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It was just my aunt.

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Still my wedding is this Saturday

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and I feel like it's the worst timing for my aunt to say this

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because I wouldn't be against sharing my wedding dress.

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I was dreaming of maybe someday I can give it to one of my cousins or maybe to my goddaughter.

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Someone that like me wasn't able to buy their own wedding dress and they can have this one.

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And to have that option taken away from me

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and to feel like I was given something just to be taken away even before I could use it.

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I don't know if I'm being irrational here but this has given me a lot of sadness.

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Now when I think about the wedding dress and

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when I think of my wedding and I'm trying really hard to be happy and be excited.

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This is my wedding week for God's sake.

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Oh, and on top of that,

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my cousin lives in another country and will be leaving like three days after the wedding.

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So my aunt wanted me to give it to her the day after I get married.

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And I think that also affects me because I don't get to have my wedding dress the day after the wedding.

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I just wanted to be able to take my wedding dress back to my home

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and have it in my closet and I know it's stupid,

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but I've always wanted to have my wedding dress and be able to decide what to do with it.

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So what do y'all think?

269

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Join today in the description.

280

So, so far, my thoughts are you can't give a gift to someone and then take it back.

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Once you give it to someone, it's there.

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So you can't ask for a gift back.

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That's why it's a gift.

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It's not like a loan.

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You're not loaning them something.

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So the aunt is in the wrong here for asking something back just to give to someone else.

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It's it's wrong.

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We have an update, though.

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So I did as some suggested and spoke directly with my cousin first

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and as expected she had no idea nor did she want the dress at all.

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She's not counting pennies to do the wedding of her dreams like I did

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so she really doesn't need it and as I mentioned she wants a beach wedding

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and the style of the dress doesn't match.

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After that, I sent a text to my aunt saying I spoke to my cousin

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and that she didn't want the dress and that I also wanted to keep my wedding dress.

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She just replied with an, uh, okay.

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Knowing her, she's upset, but I really don't care.

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Now I'm trying to recompose myself and feel like I can be excited again.

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Hopefully I'll stop feeling this pit in my chest.

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Remember, if you want to get the 3,000 most common English words PDF,

301

it's in the description.

302

bye guys

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What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

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Speak English fluently using the Shadowing technique. Listen to native YouTube videos, repeat sentence by sentence, and build real pronunciation and fluency — used by IELTS learners worldwide.

Shadowing Practice: Real-Life English Stories From Native Speakers | A1–B2 Listening Practice - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing Practice: Real-Life English Stories From Native Speakers | A1–B2 Listening Practice - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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Why practice speaking with this video?

Grammar & Expressions in Context

Common Pronunciation Traps

What is the Shadowing Technique?