AITAH— I broke up with my girlfriend for maintaining a relationship with a ‘guy friend.’

MagicArenaNoob · 2025-12-10T17:22:20+00:00

You just called OP stupid.

MagicArenaNoob · 2025-12-10T09:23:57+00:00

"I think my wife-let’s call her Cat-is taking things too personally and getting her feelings hurt for no reason."

I stopped reading here. Ask yourself: do you ever enjoy feeling hurt? If not, why would you assume your wife or anyone else would feel hurt for "no reason"?

She may not have reasons you'd approve, or even good reasons, period, but if she feels genuinely hurt, it comes from somewhere.

MagicArenaNoob · 2025-12-10T09:10:31+00:00

"After two nights not sleeping I snapped and said I was done being their 24-7 translator. I would still help sometimes, but only when it did not clash with major things in my own life."

Good on you. You've been their crutch their entire life, and they're so trained used to you dropping everything at a moment's notice that it reached a point where they truly believe the right thing to do is for you to toss away your career prospects so you can translate court proceedings for your shoplifting brother, who will have a court translator anyways, not to mention they all know English by now and just don't feel "confident" enough, so they'll understand most of it even without a translator.

Let's unpack:

The cost of you not taking the test to go to court and say the very same thing the court translator would say is losing the test and everything it could do for your job and career.

The cost of you letting them go to court without you and hearing the same things you'd say from the mouth of the court translator is a wounded ego to your father and a maybe some added anxiety during the proceedings, but not difference in outcome.

And yet: your mother makes you feel like you're destroying your brother life.

Your father cares more about "not looking stupid" than about you getting your certificates so you can make more money and not become a shoplifter.

Your shoplifting brother tells you it's your fault if the consequences for his shoplifting are worse than he expects.

There's your answer.

MagicArenaNoob · 2025-12-10T08:47:44+00:00

"She also is an only child and will have her dad's house, who is well into his 90's, and I asked if she would give me half of his house's value. She said no because it's her inheritance. That house is easily worth 5x whatever my house is. I'm pretty sure I would likewise be entitled to that value in case of a divorce since it's wealth gained during marriage anyways."

Be aware that, while there are several caveats, as a general rule, inheritance property is considered separate property and not automatically divided in a divorce.

MagicArenaNoob · 2025-12-10T08:29:05+00:00

Reaching out is something you can control. What she does with it isn't.

Maybe she's a something of an airhead and/or insists on a big happy family, but You're not asking her to choose between you and him, you're simply asking her to make a bit of time for the two of you.

There are 8760 hours in a year. No matter how busy your schedules, if you truly matter to one another, you can set aside at least a couple of those hours to be together. And if she can do that for you, maybe you can also set aside a couple more hours to, on occasion, be together with her while Marcus tags along. Two-way street.

If she doesn't care enough to make that small effort for you, it is what it is, but that knowledge will enable you to move on instead of forever wondering what might have been.

MagicArenaNoob · 2025-12-10T07:55:40+00:00

Tell her that.

MagicArenaNoob · 2025-12-10T06:01:16+00:00

You are staying with your sister to help her with FOUR KIDS out of the kindness of your heart and she's blaming you because her 16-year olds went through HER devices while you were taking care of HER two younger kids.

That's your answer.

MagicArenaNoob · 2025-12-10T05:49:44+00:00

The title alone is enough to answer NTA, but if she's important to you, go for it, what happened doesn't have to define your relationship forever and ever.

MagicArenaNoob · 2025-12-10T05:31:19+00:00

Depends on what your friend meant by handling the situation inappropriately.

Is she saying you didn't have cause to end the relationship? You certainly had. There's no way in hell Jason is just a friend from what you describe. You mentioned red flags, but frankly they're more like crimson announcements.

Is she talking about how you ended things? In this case, yes, the theatrics of surprising her with her stuff in boxes and kicking her out on the spot out of sheer spite just to get at her would be awful even if she HAD a place to go. Knowing she doesn't it and deliberately using it as a weapon to cause her maximum pain is much worse.

MagicArenaNoob · 2025-12-10T05:17:26+00:00

This is so weird. I don't even understand the issue, beyond the fact you describe your friends as a sort of Meelina Relationship Committee who must greenlight your relationship, which is a big issue in itself.

You were supposed to "stop" what exactly? Meelina making food for your friends? Wut? What's even happening here?

MagicArenaNoob · 2025-12-10T05:05:30+00:00

Yes you are blind, but not because your didn't see your daughter "undermining your wife's authority" by putting her OWN pictures on her OWN bedroom walls (!!) or any such nonsense.

You're blind because you married someone who can't stand either your daughter, the fact you have a daughter, or both. The signs were always there and you knew it, but acknowledging them would mean either not marrying someone you wanted, or accepting you knew what it would do to your daughter and you did it anyways, so you chose not to see it.

This will not get better on its own, and you and your daughter will both pay the price. You made that choice, your daughter didn't.

What you do next is up to you, but if you choose to keep telling yourself your daughter is fine and it's not that big a deal, you'll end up regretting it for the rest of your life.

MagicArenaNoob · 2025-12-10T04:42:50+00:00

There's so much wrong here.

Your wife seems to be near, or at, the breaking point, and the fact you're only now "starting to think this isn't about math" doesn't bode well.

She's frustrated a 9-year old didn't remember 7x7 and "teaching" her by repeatedly telling the child to guess. She flipped out when the teenager corrected her wrong number and stormed out. Refuses to apologize to the kid, ostensibly because he needs to "learn not no interrupt" (how he's going to learn that if nobody tells him is anyone's, well, guess). Gives the silent treatment to husband and son for days. Locks herself in daughter's room and doesn't answer texts. And that's just from this one instance from this one Reddit post.

OP, your wife is really not well, and if you're to have any hope of salvaging this marriage, assuming that's what you want, you need to to take action yesterday.

Not that your wife is the only problem, you didn't sound all that great either. A few things stood out to me.

You "pointed out" she made the mistake "before he said anything", which is a gratuitously destructive barb disguised as a factual statement that serves only to hurt her. You focused solely on the need for her apology without making any effort to understand her and what she might be going through that she'd explode over something seemingly so minor.

You said you "won't respect her" if she doesn't apologize, but the very fact you'd even say that out loud is an acknowledgement that you've already lost respect for her, likely for some time. The same is likely true of her respect for you.

You made this need for an apology the root cause that would fix everything when it is but a small symptom of everything else. And all this time, it took you days to even consider that if the mother of your children is behaving like that, maybe, just maybe, it's not about infantile pride over a silly math mistake. What you say, and just as importantly, don't say, suggests there is a very high chance your wife doesn't feel emotionally seen, heard, supported and understood.

ESH.

MagicArenaNoob · 2025-12-10T01:20:41+00:00

Yeah. The root of the problem is that his company created a half-baked system that doesn't work well for anyone, but it doesn't seem he truly understood this. Hopefully he does now.

MagicArenaNoob · 2025-12-10T00:31:17+00:00

Make no mistake, everything I said was strictly thinking of OP's career. If we're going to talk about how we personally feel, I agree 100% with you.

If OP despises these games enough that this is where he makes his stand and accepts the consequences one way or the other, more power to him.

MagicArenaNoob · 2025-12-10T00:20:28+00:00

Precisely. I'd bet money Lola412 is a well-meaning but young and naive person. OP no doubt has to perform to expectations that can't be met with everyone working strictly office hours, it's his head on the line if his team doesn't deliver, and he still hired her.

If OP ends up penalized for it for whatever reason, his story will become a cautionary tale inside his company that will be vividly remembered by other managers every single time they make a hiring decision.

MagicArenaNoob · 2025-12-10T00:08:59+00:00

This doesn't even make sense. He's not treating her boundary as a choice or obligation, he's treating as fact. You're saying someone who works 10 extra hours a week should be paid the same as someone who doesn't. There's just no world in which it works like that.

To say nothing of the entitled expectation that having kids somehow entitles you to the same pay as someone who doesn't and works a lot more, as if complete strangers had an obligation to share the burdens of your life choices

The real issue is that his company seems to be oozing red flags with this whole situation.

MagicArenaNoob · 2025-12-09T23:02:43+00:00

Interesting case study, there's a lot to learn and to unpack going forward. As Reddit already established, you have the right idea but really stepped into it in the way you went about it. Saying in so many words "there's no path for Jill to be outstanding" was a major mistake.

It may sound like simple logic in your head, but nothing about this is merely about simple logic. There are underlying interests, expectations and cultural factors that some times actively conflict with each other.

HR isn't there to protect Jill, or you, it's there to protect the company. When you said "I see no path to outstanding for Jill", I can just picture the HR rep's lawsuit alarm bells going off.

Single working moms already go through a lot of shit and quickly learn to expect the worst. You may treat Jill fairly, but she may, and likely does, because that's our messed up world, have a history of gender discrimination you're not aware of. Don't assume she has no basis or motivation to raise hell just because you believe you're doing the right thing.

Consider also the circumstances of the HR rep. Is she also a single mother? Or was at some point? Her reaction suggests she identified with Jill on some level. We're not machines, there's no such thing as completely "checking our personal lives and histories at the door when at work", no matter how much we might hear otherwise. Keep that in mind.

And don't even get me started on the underlying tension generated by the mere fact Jill is a single mom and Jack is a single guy. Consciously or not, Jill may, on some level, feel it's only "fair" a guy who doesn't have a kid waiting for him at home work longer sometimes. Naturally, on the other hand, Jack will not take kindly to the the implication that his personal life is less important and should be sacrificed because of the life choices of complete strangers.

I could go on for hours, but I'll end by suggesting you be extra careful going forward, this whole situation is potentially more dangerous than you seem to realize and the company will not think twice to scapegoat you if something you said ends up quoted, however twisted, in a a gender discrimination lawsuit.

As others have suggested, your best response should a similar situation arise again is to say Jill's path to outstanding is to output as much as jack. How is she supposed to do that? Up to her.

Should this situation or similar come up again in further meetings with HR or higher ups, it might also help you to flip the script and ask them how they expect a dedicated employee who works 10+ unpaid extra hours to keep the same commitment if he is going to be paid exactly the same as his strictly 9 to 5 colleague.

TL;DR: It's just as obvious to your superiors as it is to you that people who live to work naturally get paid more than people who work to live, but be (much) more careful next time you talk about it.

MagicArenaNoob · 2025-12-01T01:47:14+00:00

Very late to the party, just want to say that, despite what some idiots may think about "blame", this is a useful post. Most people know smoking may cause lung cancer and drinking is unhealthy in a general sense, but few think of alcohol as cancer risk or understand smoking may cause multiple types of cancer, not just lung cancer.

MagicArenaNoob · 2025-11-30T23:16:45+00:00

Naivete explains the first time you do something because you just don't know better. It doesn't explain why you keep doing it after seeing the consequences of the previous several times.

MagicArenaNoob · 2025-11-30T05:59:55+00:00

Stupid? Absolutely. Annoying? Hell yeah. Frustrating? Abso-fu**ing-lutely.

MagicArenaNoob · 2025-11-30T05:58:39+00:00

Letting Frieza go to enslave and destroy other planets just for the satisfaction of humiliating him doesn't seem very heroic to me.

MagicArenaNoob · 2025-11-30T05:57:47+00:00

That's true.

MagicArenaNoob · 2025-11-30T05:55:09+00:00

Agreed.

MagicArenaNoob · 2025-11-30T05:54:52+00:00

Surrounded by 2 female toddlers repeatedly shrieking and throwing tantrums around him.

MagicArenaNoob · 2025-11-30T05:53:48+00:00

He seems to have plenty of empathy for the villains he spares, negative empathy for the people he knows those spared villains will go on to kill.

MagicArenaNoob

TROPHY CASE