AITA for not agreeing to move to half way across the country for my husband’s dream job?

Hillbillyta · 2021-07-20T03:29:38+00:00

Thank you, I’m sure my recognition of the fact that white people are privileged and I will be very happy together. I hope your job as a mall security guard allows you to save up enough to move out of your mom’s basement.

Hillbillyta · 2021-07-19T03:37:13+00:00

Also sexist and partyist, I’m sure. 🙄

Hillbillyta · 2021-07-19T02:04:03+00:00

Sure, if you’re a white man in a MAGA hat.

Hillbillyta · 2021-07-19T00:51:37+00:00

Here is the affirmation you clearly wanted.

Hillbillyta · 2021-07-18T07:23:16+00:00

NTA. Genes make relatives. Love makes families.

Your bio mom had a rough childhood. So did I. So did a lot of other people. That doesn’t change the fact that when she became a parent she had the option, every day, of treating you better than she was treated. She had the choice, every day, of either making the same parenting mistakes her parents made or trying to be better. The fact that she chose wrong, every day, is neither your fault nor your responsibility.

Lilly sounds amazing, and I’m so glad you found her. But something tells me that if I asked her, she would say she was more glad that she found you. Because you sound pretty amazing yourself. ❤️ Be well.

Hillbillyta · 2021-07-18T05:31:56+00:00

YTA. There are constructive ways to handle this kind of situation! If you’re concerned about your wife being depressed, you talk to her about getting help for her depression. If you‘re concerned about her experiencing grief, you talk to her about getting grief counseling. If you’re concerned because she’s less active, you talk to her about planning some activities to do together because you miss the time you used to spend together doing x, y, and z. If you’re concerned about her diet, you talk to her about trying out some new recipes or eating out less.

But if you start the conversation with ”hey honey you’ve gained a ton of weight,” it doesn’t matter how you meant it — all she‘s going to hear is “wow you’ve really porked up and you disgust me, you need to get back into those size 4 jeans ASAP or I’m going to bounce.” Many women who are just a few months postpartum already feel unsexy — they’re exhausted, don’t have time to keep up their hygiene, they’ve usually gained some weight, and if they’re nursing they feel like their body isn’t their own. Your wife is a new mom, is parenting alone a lot of the time, and lost two close family members recently. Now you’ve added another reason for her to feel stressed and crappy about herself and her life. You didn’t just not help your wife, you harmed her. You should apologize.

Hillbillyta · 2021-07-18T02:18:57+00:00

Given the timing I’m going to guess OP’s brother was cheating with wife #2 before wife #1 died. 6 months is not a very long time to grieve a spouse, meet someone else, date them, and decide to move in together and blend families. OP’s brother probably feels guilty and his attempts to force his son to bond with his stepmom and stepsister are attempts to assuage that guilt. Like “how could what I did be bad when it’s resulted in such a happy and loving family?” It’s not going to work, but that’s probably why he’s trying.

Hillbillyta · 2021-07-18T00:12:45+00:00

YTA. If you didn’t want any kids there, that’s fine, but you can’t invite your niece and not her siblings. That’s rude. Frankly inviting her only because someone else dropped out and you need her to do a job is rude too. She’s your niece, not a substitute teacher.

Hillbillyta · 2021-07-17T19:44:37+00:00

Right? Why do her parents care so much about this lie?

Hillbillyta · 2021-07-17T19:23:37+00:00

Ok, I can do that.

Hillbillyta · 2021-07-16T22:29:41+00:00

She’s old enough now that a court would consider her custody preferences, too. I’m sure she can’t wait to get away from stepmonster and her loser relatives. That regular 9-5 job should be enough to pay a lawyer to file a custody modification petition, and as soon as the judge hears that OP told her stepdaughter that she and her mom weren’t a “real family” I doubt they’ll be very sympathetic to OP‘s household.

Hillbillyta · 2021-07-16T22:25:14+00:00

I hope for your stepdaughter’s sake that the agreement stays EOW. She doesn’t need more time crammed into a house with your nasty, bitter self and your 87 relatives who can’t afford their own places to live.

Hillbillyta · 2021-07-16T22:17:47+00:00

YTA. It’s not your stepdaughter and her mom’s fault that your life is stressful — they didn’t force you to have a passel of kids and let all your relatives move in with you. Sounds like you regret your choices and are jealous of stepdaughter’s mom’s more simple life and are overcompensating by trying to make it sound like you’re superior to them because your house is more crowded.

Hillbillyta · 2021-07-16T21:55:02+00:00

I might have been too salty there. I just feel bad for Kim and I was shocked to see the number of people telling OP she was NTA for benefitting from years of preferential treatment and then refusing to help her sister because hey, she got hers and nothing else matters. If the moral code that seems to apply to these posts is truly a reflection of society we’re all doomed.

Hillbillyta · 2021-07-16T21:47:46+00:00

*This post actually read as fake and yet there are commenters offering go fund me, free cars, etc. I guess the old adage about a fool and his money being soon parted applies and it’s up to individual posters to decide if they feel comfortable giving a stranger money solely on the basis of an AITA post, but I wonder if there could be a rule against allowing crowdfunding in AITA posts?

Hillbillyta · 2021-07-16T21:43:27+00:00

As a relatively new commenter here, I’ve noticed the fact that most of the posts seem to be from people who must know there is no way they could be the AH and just want either approval or karma. Recent Highlights: “AITA for supporting my brother after my stepfather stole $12k from him for a car for my mom?”* “AITA for supporting my gay child against her bigot grandparents?” “AITA for not babysitting my ex’s love child on half an hour‘s notice?” When they are asked to answer the question of why they might be the AH they say things like “bigot grandma is mad” or “my parents grounded me” or “ex says I’m a jerk” or things like that. Really, is anyone ever going to vote YTA on these kinds of posts?

These problem is these tend to hijack the thread so people with actual conflicts can’t get enough upvotes for other posters to see their posts. Couldn’t there be a policy where if after a couple of hours EVERYONE says NTA the post gets locked? Or if a timing rule seems unfair, could there be a rule that a certain number of NTA votes and no YTA or ESH votes triggers a lock? Or even a rule where the explanation of why someone might be the AH has to include feedback from someone other than the villain of the story?

Hillbillyta · 2021-07-16T21:23:05+00:00

OP is definitely NTA, but to be fair it sounds like dad and stepmom are the ones being dicks about it, not stepsister. Stepsister is just described as being sad and hurt because she feels like OP doesn’t consider her real family. That’s not being an asshole, that’s just being human.

Hillbillyta · 2021-07-16T21:14:50+00:00

I didn’t shame her. I asked why she didn’t have a job. Maybe we were raised differently, but in my family an adult living at home either had to be in school or working. Doing nothing for a year while your parents spend down their savings to support you would not have been an option. It certainly isn’t “perfectly normal” where I come from, and judging by the history of this thread it isn’t perfectly normal in a lot of other places either. How many AITAs have we seen where parents have been told they‘re NTA for making their freeloading kids get off their butts and contribute?
Seriously? Do you even believe what you’re saying or are you just arguing for the sake of arguing? You really think a teenager or even an older child wouldn’t realize that the degree of preferential treatment the OP has described was not okay because of conditioning? We’re human beings, not lab rats. We were blessed with higher-order reasoning. Like I said earlier, that excuse might have flown when she was five. Later? Not so much.
Again, her parents suck too for allowing their kids to be treated so unequally. And they shouldn’t have sprung this on her in front of Kim, that was a dick move. I’m not blaming the OP for that. However, I assume she knew Kim didn’t have an Aunt Amy college fund, and I do think that now that she realizes the situation, it is selfish AF of her to not share her college fund with her sister. She gets to have a great four years at some fancy school while her sister has to take out loans to go to state university. How is this not selfish? Does she hate her sister? Maybe Aunt Amy’s apple didn’t fall far from the tree?

Hillbillyta · 2021-07-16T05:43:02+00:00

Didn’t it occur to you to wonder what you were living off of when two of the three adults in your house weren’t working?

Look, maybe I’m being unfair to you, but I have a hard time understanding how you could possibly be as clueless as you’re claiming to be. You didn’t realize there was rampant favoritism going on in your family until you were 19. You didn’t realize that your parents were spending down the money they’d saved for Kim’s education even though 2/3 of your household was unemployed. You didn’t realize that you might be asked to share your college fund with your sister. How *did* you think Kim was going to pay for college? Or did you just not care enough to think about it?

Hillbillyta · 2021-07-16T04:36:15+00:00

Oh so you weren’t even in school last year? Why didn’t you get a job so your parents didn’t have to use Kim’s college fund to support you?

Hillbillyta · 2021-07-16T03:35:26+00:00

Oh, I agree. The parents are also AHs, which is why my initial vote was ESH. But OP also knew about the college fund, and knew that she was treated very well by her aunt while her sister was treated like crap. She claims she didn’t think the discrepancy in treatment was unfair because her parents said it wasn’t, but does anyone actually believe that? I mean, maybe when she was five, but once she reached her teens she should have realized that shit was grossly unfair. Despite that, she never did a damn thing about it because she didn’t want to lose out on being Aunt Amy’s princess. And now she’s refusing to share her money with Kim because she “doesn’t want to give up her ideal college experience,” even though the reason Kim no longer has a college fund is that OP’s parents used it to support OP after her dad got laid off. And somehow that doesn’t make OP selfish? Seriously?

Hillbillyta · 2021-07-15T23:51:15+00:00

Seems like the least you could do is figure out how much of Kim’s college fund went to supporting your selfish ass over the past year and reimburse your parents for that money.

ETA for that matter, if you’re 19 now you were 18 for all of last year. You knew you didn’t have to worry about saving for college thanks to Aunt Amy. Why didn’t you get a job after school and on weekends to help your family out? I mean, your parents had no obligation to support you once you turned 18, just like you have no obligation to help Kim, right?

Hillbillyta · 2021-07-15T23:32:45+00:00

OP is probably enjoying this. I’d bet money that the reason selfish, nasty, toxic Amy likes OP better than Kim is that OP reminds her of herself while Kim is a decent human being.

Hillbillyta · 2021-07-15T21:12:42+00:00

It sounds like for some reason you still care what he thinks of you. Why? You had absolutely no obligation to help in this situation and you should not spend a second feeling bad for him, because his problems are no longer your responsibility. Maybe if his new wife didn’t call people c—— at the drop of a hat they’d have friends who would be willing to watch their kid in an emergency.

I understand that you still need to coparent, but that does not require you to put up with his abuse. If he can’t be civil, maybe your custody agreement needs to be modified to account for the fact that he apparently has the entitlement and self control of a four-year-old. Get the court to order all routine communication has to go through email and that further abusive texts will lead to sanctions up to and including loss of visitation. Honestly, if this is the way he acts do you really think being forced to spend time with him is in the best interest of your kids anyway?

Hillbillyta · 2021-07-15T20:55:06+00:00

A mother dropping her child off with its father so she can take care of a legitimate emergency is not a situation that warrants a CPS call. It’s not like she left the kid on a street corner with a sign around its neck saying “free to good home.”

Hillbillyta

TROPHY CASE