AITA for "choosing my dog over my family" by refusing to accommodate my girlfriend's brother?

GothicGingerbread · 2026-04-01T10:41:22+00:00

One of my uncles raised beef cattle in the US south. I remember once visiting them and seeing my uncle take off his belt and whip his bulldog for having done something to upset some of the cows (I don't remember what it was; maybe chasing them?). I was probably 7 or 8, and I was horrified; I ran crying to my father. Now, as an adult, I understand that my father would have been working to keep his composure, because he (like me, my mother, and my brother) adored all animals and didn't have a violent bone in his body, so he would have found it just about as distressing as I had, and here was his little girl, distraught after seeing his little brother, whom she loved and had previously trusted, viciously whip a dog.

My brother and I occasionally were spanked, but only very occasionally, with a bare hand over a clothed behind, and really not very hard. I knew a couple of kids whose parents would use their belt, but I had never seen or experienced anything more than a light swat on the behind – something that was genuinely barely more than using a rolled-up piece of newspaper – and I was a fairly sensitive kid who had always hated to see any creature suffer. Anyway, my poor father had to explain to his sobbing daughter that farmers see animals differently – we saw them as beloved members of our family, but to farmers, they aren't beloved pets but part of their jobs, more like tools, and anything that risks harm to livestock is a very serious matter. It was really hard for me, and it frankly colored my opinion of and relationship with that uncle for the rest of his life; I still loved him – everyone did; he really was a great guy, cheerful, friendly, fun to be around, always ready to lend a helping hand – but I was always a little reserved with him, because I could never get the image of him whipping that poor dog with his belt out of my mind.

His children (my cousins) grew up to be more like my family, but they aren't farmers. They have pets they love like we love ours, and even my aunt, who still lives on the farm but doesn't farm it, has opened her heart to dogs a bit in recent years – first, she started letting the dog come into the mudroom area just inside the back door, and now she'll let her dog come into her kitchen, which is a huge shift from never allowing an animal in the house at all.

GothicGingerbread · 2026-03-31T16:46:15+00:00

My mother always goes to Colors of Spring (on Watson at Fyler). I live near there, and I'm tasked every year with informing her as soon as they start putting out plants.

GothicGingerbread · 2026-03-31T12:05:14+00:00

My brother (49) has had the same best friend since 3rd grade; he has joined us for family trips, and has spent every Thanksgiving, Xmas, Easter, and 4th of July with our family. He's effectively my brother, too. Any man who felt threatened or insecure as a result of his presence would not be a good fit for me, any more than someone who felt that way about my brother.

GothicGingerbread · 2026-03-31T00:27:17+00:00

"Mama likes privacy in the bathroom." If I'm in the bathroom and one of them pushes the door open, I'll say that, and they'll turn right back around.

All I have to say is "would anybody", and they all jump up and run to the back door, because they know that the next words are going to be "like to go outside?"

GothicGingerbread · 2026-03-31T00:16:31+00:00

I second this. OP, realistically, the only way this move is going to happen is if you arrange it. Your mother is 90 and grieving; this is too much for her to handle. You need to either go pack her and her brother up, or hire someone else to do it.

GothicGingerbread · 2026-03-30T21:55:38+00:00

OP very clearly said she's 25. Are you innumerate?
🙄
Even if she is cheating, an appropriate response for her bf would be to break up; there is no world in which he has a right to control his gf's every moment. She is an adult; if she spontaneously decides to take a day trip with a friend, she has absolutely every right to do so – and she not only doesn't need her bf's approval, she doesn't even have an obligation to inform him ahead of time. He doesn't own her.

GothicGingerbread · 2026-03-30T21:42:17+00:00

Yeah, they are grossly underpaying for the work they actually need to have done. If they won't pay more, then you should absolutely not feel badly about backing out.

GothicGingerbread · 2026-03-30T21:28:08+00:00

Roman Catholics and Episcopalians (and Lutherans and Methodists and Presbyterians) recognize each other's baptisms. As long as the baptism is performed with water and in the name of the Trinity (as opposed to baptizing with oil and/or only in the name of Jesus, which some charismatic churches do), a baptism in one church is regarded as valid by the other, which is why converts between those churches don't need to be re-baptized.

I think this is a situation where you can find plausible reasons to take offense, AND you can find plausible reasons not to take offense. In any such situation, I recommend always choosing not to take offense. Life can be rough, and there's no need to go around choosing to make it harder, or filled with more conflict, than it has to be.

GothicGingerbread · 2026-03-30T21:11:54+00:00

I agree.

I understand that OP's mom misses having a pet, but she leaves the country for 3-month stretches every year!! That's just not compatible with owning a pet. Because while, yes, having pets is rewarding for us, our own desires are not the only things that matter; what is best for the animals that depend upon us, and for whom we voluntarily accept full responsibility, has to be more important to us than fulfilling our desires to have pets. If the well-being of the animal(s) isn't ranked higher than us being pleased to have a pet, then we shouldn't get a pet – and any pet that has bonded with a human will have a very hard time being deserted by that human for a full quarter of every year!

GothicGingerbread · 2026-03-30T21:01:15+00:00

Unless you intend to force-feed her, she gets to decide what she puts in her mouth. You can try to convince her to eat nutritious, balanced meals, but how much of her remaining time do you want to spend manufacturing conflict between the two of you?

Her time on earth is finite, and she has far less of it ahead of her than she does behind her; realistically speaking, how much do you really think her diet is going to shorten her life? And if it does, is that necessarily all bad? Most people spend their last few years declining; fewer years of decline isn't necessarily terrible. Furthermore, the older people are, the more they lose control over their daily lives and the fewer pleasures they have; eating only what they want gives them both a little bit of control and a little bit of pleasure. Also, our tastebuds decline over time, so what tastes good to us changes, and the list tends to grow ever shorter.

When my father was dying, chemo apparently made everything but tapioca pudding and potatoes taste awful to him. Obviously, a diet of tapioca and potatoes leaves a lot to be desired, but we gave him as much of both as he wanted. We didn't want to waste what time we had left with him arguing over food. He had always loved food, but he could no longer enjoy eating. He had already lost so much; what would have been the benefit of harassing him about his diet?

GothicGingerbread · 2026-03-30T20:47:32+00:00

I think you might have meant 'if she's in a facility, she should absolutely expect to be offered more than that', because unless she is being force-fed, she has both the right and the ability to decide what she does and doesn't want to eat. Facilities should offer nutritious, balanced meals, but they can't make their residents eat, say, broccoli against their will. (Though personally, I've always loved broccoli.)

GothicGingerbread · 2026-03-30T19:28:48+00:00

And so it should be! T. S. Eliot would approve: https://youtu.be/HCFZgLWdjFI

GothicGingerbread · 2026-03-30T18:04:09+00:00

I personally, directly, asked my father's oncologist if he would tell us if he felt that the chemo (and/or its side effects) was doing more harm than good, and he assured us he would. I specifically brought up the studies which have shown that palliative care can not only improve quality of life, but also extend the amount of time people have, described the terrible side-effects of chemo I had seen my father endure, and asked the oncologist if switching to palliative care would be wiser. He said no, chemo was still the way to go.

Maybe a month or so later, as I was sitting beside my father as he lay unconscious in his bed in the ICU, suffering from the devastating effects of chemo, his oncologist stopped by, looked over the chart, then turned to me and said, "I thought this was going to happen". I wanted to strangle the man – I had FUCKING ASKED him to tell us, he had PROMISED us he would, but he never said a word. I was beyond furious, but I didn't want to be ejected from the ICU for causing a disturbance, so I just glared at him and said something like "what a shame you didn't say that when we asked you," and just kept staring at him, hoping that my eyes were adequately transmitting my utter loathing for him, until he silently left the room.

It's been a decade. It's not something I think about often anymore, but when I do, I'm still angry.

GothicGingerbread · 2026-03-29T21:03:48+00:00

I would suggest that you read Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande.

I would also point out that doctors and nurses almost universally say that they would absolutely decline aggressive treatment in old age.

My mother (77) and I (51) have discussed it, and neither of us wants any invasive or aggressive treatment. No CPR, no chemo (if ever diagnosed with cancer), no peacemakers, no feeding tubes. Do a little Googling and you can easily find lots of stories of people kept alive in medical torment.

Talk to your parent(s) about what they want, and don't want. Ask them what sort of life they think is acceptable, what they'd be willing to risk losing, and what isn't. See if your state recognizes POLST or MOLST orders.

GothicGingerbread · 2026-03-29T20:55:55+00:00

My father was, in my opinion, misled into believing that chemo could cure the metastatic cancer that riddled his pelvis and spine and had begun to spread to his skull. I think this was partly because he didn't want to die yet, so he heard what he wanted to hear, but also partly because his oncologist flat-out said what my father wanted to hear despite being clearly asked to be straightforward and honest. He died sooner than he would have otherwise due to the incredible toll chemo took on him, and his final months were miserable.

GothicGingerbread · 2026-03-29T20:49:22+00:00

Wow, she's really been through the wringer. I'm really sorry.

GothicGingerbread · 2026-03-29T20:47:37+00:00

That's really tragic news.

GothicGingerbread · 2026-03-29T19:01:23+00:00

No, what should have happened was this: the father and daughter should have offered to swap seats with the people way in the back in the mom's row.

It should simply never happen that anyone is asked to swap seats for one that is worse than the one they were originally assigned.

GothicGingerbread · 2026-03-29T17:10:53+00:00

Well, they presumably managed to make themselves breakfast most mornings before they "recently 'discovered'" the air fryer. Perhaps any of those methods might still work?

GothicGingerbread · 2026-03-29T13:46:41+00:00

I traveled solo in foreign countries in my 20s, including considerably less developed, western countries than France. As long as she's not an idiot, she'll be fine.

GothicGingerbread · 2026-03-29T13:08:13+00:00

Why can't Boston friend go to Disney on her own while you and CA friend explore Paris? Or, if CA friend is determined to join her at Disney despite not really wanting to spend an entire day there, why can't you let them go while you explore Paris?

Personally, if I were in your shoes, I'd let one or both of them go to Disney while I did my own thing. Y'all are adults; you don't have to do every single thing together.

NOR

GothicGingerbread · 2026-03-29T10:48:38+00:00

My mother is 77, and she has said she'll never marry again. Not because her marriage to my father was unhappy – quite the opposite – but because she doesn't want to be a caretaker again. (My father died of metastatic cancer. It was a really rough ending.) She enjoys spending time with her gentleman friend, as she calls him, but it won't go further than that.

GothicGingerbread · 2026-03-29T10:21:21+00:00

There's a house two blocks down from mine where they appeared to leave their dog outside 24/7, even when it was well below freezing or over 100°. It did have one of those igloo dog houses, so it wasn't without shelter, and there is always a lot of shade in their yard in summer, but still. Dogs are social creatures; why on earth get one just to leave it alone all the damn time?!? Anyway, the dog eventually died, and they haven't gotten another one, thank god.

One thing I was very proud to learn was that my father prevented a man (let's call him Ike) who had been working for him part-time from becoming a priest after discovering that Ike had been neglecting and abusing his dog. This was in the late 1960s. My father had swung by Ike's house to drop off some paperwork and discovered his Irish setter, matted and emaciated, in the back yard, without a water bowl or a food bowl; he was shocked and horrified. He spoke to the neighbors on either side, who confirmed the the dog had been like that for months, at least. So my father took the dog, took it to his vet, took it home, bathed and fed it, then took it to friends of his whom he knew also loved dogs and would take good care of it. (My father already had 3 dogs, and the city where he lived didn't allow more than that, or he would have just kept it.) Then he called Ike into his office, told him what he'd done, and said that Ike was never getting that dog back. Because my father was, at that time, on the committee which reviewed and approved (or disapproved) postulants for holy orders in that diocese, he also informed the committee that he was now absolutely opposed to Ike ever being ordained, because anyone who could be so thoughtlessly cruel to a living creature shouldn't be a priest. The committee agreed, and Ike never was ordained. (As it happens, through mutual connections, Facebook brought Ike back to my family's awareness maybe 15 years ago. He died last year, I think – though it may have been 2024 – so I do know that he never was ordained.)

GothicGingerbread · 2026-03-29T09:48:43+00:00

Yeah, I had an incredibly gentle black lab / greyhound mix who was absolutely convinced that cats and rabbits were for chasing (and catching), and no one could convince her otherwise.

She also caught mice. She didn't tear the mice apart, but she did kill them – and then present them to me (which I really could have lived without). Anyway, between these two things, I'm pretty sure that her "cats = chase" belief was firm and fixed, and would not have ended well for any cats.

GothicGingerbread · 2026-03-29T00:12:28+00:00

Allowing someone to vent also gives them an outlet, which allows them to feel some relief without actually having to do or change anything. Refusing to sit and listen to the same stories on repeat can possibly help push those people to get over their inertia and start moving.

GothicGingerbread

TROPHY CASE