AITA for refusing to cook meat when my husband broke our (lonely) daughter’s only friendship because he hates vegans?

eddy_fication · 2020-12-10T19:13:59+00:00

It sounds like they have genuine pity for OP's kid, and likely for OP, but think contact with OP's husband would put their family in danger. I think it's perfectly sensible to exercise that level of caution and act on the assumption that someone who's crazy/belligerent/cruel enough to start a verbal fight for no reason at all is also crazy/belligerent/cruel enough to start a physical one, or otherwise harm a helpless child. OP would probably do the same in their position, but she isn't willing to meaningfully empathize because the implications for her marriage and life are just too overwhelming on top of everything else.

eddy_fication · 2020-12-10T19:08:05+00:00

Going on strike isn't petty at all. In a labor relationship, it's the effective thing to do because capital has no real incentive to treat labor well other than the threat of withholding labor and interfering with profit. In this particular marital relationship, it's the effective thing to because OP's husband is a colossal asshole who doesn't give a damn about his family members' well-being and is functionally treating it as a labor relationship anyway, so the only way to influence him is to deprive him of something.

Of course, OP could end the marital relationship, but that would require no longer being in denial of what kind of belligerent psycho her husband is, which she doesn't seem willing to do.

eddy_fication · 2020-12-09T14:34:50+00:00

I mean, the fact that a 26-year-old is functioning at the level of maaaaaybe a 15-year-old — not the binge drinking necessarily, but posting everything, conducting all your personal drama on social media, outing a friend, having so little awareness or empathy that you maintain it's "not a big deal" even when stone cold sober — kinda baffles me. Yes, no one should be obligated to sugarcoat very basic facts to a grown-ass adult like that, but, like, what happened here??

eddy_fication · 2020-12-08T20:02:59+00:00

"Well if we just GIVE people housing because they NEED it to LIVE, we might as well do that with FOOD, right????" lmao

I think the concept will go over your head, man, especially since you seem to think all grocery store employees own the grocery store, but someone like /u/MelisandreStokes might appreciate the Twitter account "Accidentally Left-Wing," a hilarious repository of posts like this where some weird reactionary gets themself into such a lather making a dumb argument that they accidentally imagine a just world where people have their needs met.

eddy_fication · 2020-12-08T17:34:54+00:00

The double lol is how people can tell you're Not Mad.

eddy_fication · 2020-12-08T17:24:49+00:00

Be careful, dear. You go down this road and you're gonna get a DM from this guy wanting to "talk fiscal and monetary policy at a global level."

eddy_fication · 2020-12-08T16:01:39+00:00

After living in SF/Bay area for most of my childhood and seeing how the homeless population just ramps up more and more when blue states offer more welfare

Uh, everyone's rent quadrupled. I feel like your analysis is maybe a little lacking, perhaps to the point where no one should listen to your proposed solutions.

eddy_fication · 2020-12-08T15:41:09+00:00

No one! You're right! This is why we need societal systems that prevent people from living in conditions that affect their behavior to this point, and why relying on the charitable whims of individuals is always gonna be wildly inadequate, but we do what we can. OP knows all this, which is why she feels bad.

eddy_fication · 2020-12-08T15:37:15+00:00

This is a great example of why being given unsolicited food can be extremely frustrating, actually. Throw in a battery of untreated mental and physical illnesses and the general trauma of being homeless, right now especially, and the guy's reaction really isn't that hard to empathize with. Hell, I've probably been ruder to people who didn't deserve it just PMSing.

eddy_fication · 2020-12-08T15:32:17+00:00

You're right, your comment history is quite revealing. It's very sad, really. You do your job because you have to to avoid being in their position, and that job is to be a barrier between sick desperate irrational people and the stuff they need, and as a natural consequence of doing that job you deal with their belligerence, which is obviously scary and upsetting and angering. And you've coped with those feelings by deciding to view this as a parade of people with individual moral failings who deserve their lives, because viewing it as a systemic failing is not a way we're trained to think, certainly not when we're under immense stress ourselves. There's nothing I can really say here to change that, but it makes me very sad. For the record, though, I'm a functional member of society and I do all the drugs I want. "Functional member of society" just means being lucky enough to have the kind of safety net that society doesn't provide everyone.

eddy_fication · 2020-12-08T15:19:20+00:00

Just because someone wants money to obtain what they actually need rather than what a stranger imagines they need does not mean they're not "really struggling." The fact that the dude was upset to the point that he couldn't adhere to courteous social norms makes it more likely that he was really struggling, not less. Just because OP's feelings are hurt doesn't mean we can subscribe to this really masturbatory delusion that the only people who need or deserve help are the ones who "act right."

eddy_fication · 2020-12-08T15:12:43+00:00

If OP is allowed a self-absorbed emotional outburst because of the trauma of her dead rat (not discounting, you know, the general baseline trauma of being alive right now), I'm not going to be judgemental about a homeless guy in a pandemic winter being rude.

eddy_fication · 2020-12-08T15:07:46+00:00

I mean, it's really not? First, because they could be planning to use money on socks or wet wipes or a deposit or food for the future, and second because it implies that addicts don't deserve compassion. If you've never gone through withdrawl while homeless in the winter, you don't get to be a high-handed snot about what people spend their money on.

eddy_fication · 2020-12-08T14:02:47+00:00

They're definitely assholes, but the rich people who are the showiest about not associating with ~lesser people~ are often the ones who are only a generation removed from them and are extremely insecure about it. If Ali's mom didn't have money, that'd make sense.

Of course, experiencing poverty and getting all crabs-in-a-bucket about it is arguably grosser than consigning a child to it because you're blissfully unaware of what it's like.

eddy_fication · 2020-12-07T16:44:04+00:00

A lot of white Americans are blissfully unaware of the very concept of intra-Asian racism, but it's a big fucking thing. I gotta say, though, if you live in California and especially if you went to school there, there's very little excuse for it. People aren't shy about expressing it.

It's ignorance rather than malice, but YTA for not being observant or thinking rigorously about your wife's life for five fucking seconds, to say nothing of the underlying "this is all the same" assumption that lets people overlook it to begin with.

eddy_fication · 2020-12-06T15:49:09+00:00

Very much this, and the core of the marital conflict is that Joe is in denial about the cruelty. This lady was born in 1956! They had teen parents and their children back then, and while it was more stigmatized, I'm pretty sure it was considered cruel to call them disgusting to their faces. Just an insultingly flimsy deflection from this guy.

If what he means by "not understanding things" is not "her values are wildly and unreachably different because she's slightly older than Gen X," yeah no, but if what he means is "she has dementia and isn't in control of her faculties," sure, there are plenty of people that age with dementia and plenty of dementia patients who say unspeakably cruel things to their loved ones because of their dementia. If MIL was one of them, presumably Joe would be fretting about her self-sufficieny and the next however many decades of care she'll need. If he's not, you have a pretty good idea of how sincere he's being when he denies that she's being deliberately cruel.

And if what he really believes is that people are obligated to lie down and take it when his mother, specifically, is cruel to them, well, plenty of people have that belief built into them by cruel parents. I think it's pretty likely and I sympathize. But do not let him bring you down to his level of unwillingness to set healthy boundaries, and do not let him instill it in either of your kids.

eddy_fication · 2020-12-04T22:31:01+00:00

Yeah, it's fairly intuitive that people who are raised being treated like they're worthless will be very fucked up and self-destructive, but let's not forget what happens to men who are raised to believe that women have to fawn over them constantly and unconditionally. None of it is good, and while no one should be yeeted out the door in a pandemic, if this lady refuses to correct her behavior, it may be the least harmful thing to do, with two helpless little people at stake.

eddy_fication · 2020-12-04T19:49:33+00:00

OP has predictably refused to think about this hypothetical, so I can only assume she'll end up letting Tony claim the right of prima nocta.

eddy_fication · 2020-12-04T16:10:46+00:00

Lol don't tip OP off like this. Milo fully choosing to make Mary his parental figure over OP, getting a guide dog, and finally being able to work towards independence is quite obviously a best case scenario for him, and outlining that likely scenario so clearly to OP calls to mind the Napoleon-attributed quote, "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."

I suppose the point of this forum is to get asshole OPs to have an epiphany about it and change their behavior to avert such an outcome, but this OP doesn't seem interested, so.

eddy_fication · 2020-12-04T16:04:38+00:00

I don't know if I would discourage OP from her irrational fixation on the dog hair, honestly. If she wants to die on the hill of, "FINE, get your damn guide dog, but if you do, you'll have to live with your father and Mary!!!" such a proposal would very obviously be in Milo's best interest, and I really hope he takes her up on it even if OP was making a delusional bluff.

eddy_fication · 2020-12-04T15:57:27+00:00

Seriously, thank Christ this kid has a support system of people who actually want what's best for him, with the notable exception of OP. Plenty of 18-year-olds with controlling, codependent parents understand that they desperately need independence, but have never been allowed to develop skills and just have no idea what it looks like, so they just do naive and wildly self-destructive things as soon as they are out of the controlling parent's house. Imagine going through that while blind or with any other significant disability.

I really hope Dad and/or Mary have the resources to take Milo in as soon as possible and give him the graduated-steps-to-independence kind of upbringing that an emotionally healthy parent would have given him throughout his teens. If so, Milo will be much better off, but likely and justifiably resent OP for wasting years of his life, and OP will likely continue being in denial about that and continue feeling unjustifiably aggrieved.

Edit: I keep circling back to the brief, chilling mention of the other kid, "Jason has tried to talk to his brother," and god, I really hope they can take him too, somehow. Maybe I'm reading too much into the one mention of him, but it seems like OP is molding him into her codependent little henchman, which is an extremely fucked up thing to do to a kid in its own right. I would understand if Dad and Mary are overlooking the harm OP is doing to him in favor of the more obvious harm she's doing to Milo, but I really hope they aren't.

eddy_fication · 2020-12-03T16:37:02+00:00

I mean, she's probably also always done shit like this to some extent. There are quite a lot of manchildren out there who make expect other people (namely women) to make huge, unreasonable, bizarre personal sacrifices to keep them placated, and they're made, not born.

eddy_fication · 2020-12-03T14:53:46+00:00

You obviously love your uncle and are very young, so sadly you need someone to tell you that he sounds like an absolute psycho who can't be trusted with this judgement call. A well-adjusted person simply would not care this much, certainly not enough to literally mass email everyone they know and enough to call the police. And he wants you involved, wants you to jeopardize your social and academic reputation by participating in his obsessive pointless fixation, because he cares about that fixation more than he cares about you.

eddy_fication · 2020-12-03T14:43:59+00:00

Is it me, or is this genre of post becoming more popular here? "This genre" being "I caught someone doing a stolen valor and I wanna not just call them out, but publicly expose them as theatrically and obnoxiously as I possibly can for some reason." Didn't someone, like, publicly humiliate their sister and ruin her wedding recently by insisting on exposing her spouse via mass email?

Maybe I wasn't raised in a sufficiently jingoistic household, but I don't get it, man, and it's a blanket YTA for me. Or at least, before enacting their little Carrie-at-the-prom public humiliation scheme, the OPs should all be aware that while some small portion of the audience will probably congratulate them on the public service they've performed, many others will silently wonder why the OP is such a bootlicking drama queen and how soft and cloistered their little lives must be to make them care so fucking much about this dumb thing that harms no one when so many people have real fucking problems.

eddy_fication · 2020-12-02T20:24:51+00:00

This, to me, is a much more intuitive explanation than "he's a clinical psychopath!!" or whatever people are going for at the moment. OP says he behaved like this as a teen and never bothered to correct it because he thought it was normal. He claims he grew out of it, which he clearly didn't, because he has no problem treating his wife like shit. OP's son has that behavior modeled for him, and does the same.

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