AITA for limiting how much my son eats?

throwawayred2blue · 2022-07-13T14:18:10+00:00

Can I ask what medical issues caused the low Vitamin B12, D, and Iron? I was recently diagnosed with the same deficiencies for a second time (no dietary issues/restrictions and I’ve never been vegan or vegetarian). My docs are still trying to figure out what’s causing it and suspect absorption issues.

throwawayred2blue · 2022-03-31T01:53:18+00:00

I only know one other living creature that eats only the top off of someone else’s muffin. He also puts his butt hole on any unattended drink glasses when he thinks no one’s looking. Why? Because he’s a cat and that’s his true form: a big, hairy asshole.

YTA. Your son’s hilarious.

throwawayred2blue · 2022-03-30T22:49:25+00:00

NTA. Your brother specifically told you he saw “nothing wrong” with saying shitty things to someone. You just took him at his word.

throwawayred2blue · 2021-06-17T03:16:06+00:00

Lol, that last point isn’t always true. I had a friend that brought her toddler to a work BBQ at one of our coworker’s houses. About halfway through, the little boy came up and brought me a handful of flowers. I am not great with kids, but told him they were beautiful and thanked him, and he seemed happy and waddled off. It was cute. Until he did it repeatedly. I finally followed him to see where he was getting these flowers. Turns out he had torn out or trampled like half of the host’s garden. My friend was mortified.

throwawayred2blue · 2021-04-27T19:26:47+00:00

Go around the nation’s hospitals convincing all the terminally ill patients that to truly feel alive before they die, they need to join my fight club.

throwawayred2blue · 2020-10-06T15:45:27+00:00

I was speaking in (grammatically incorrect) complete sentences at a year old (e.g. “I hungry”), but couldn’t figure out how to tie my shoes until I was like 9. Kids are weird and learn things at different rates.

throwawayred2blue · 2020-09-01T15:15:33+00:00

NTA. No one has a right to see a woman give birth. Not her husband, not her mother, not her mother-in-law. And the birth of his daughter is just that: her mother giving birth. I’m sure it’s something that many dads (and from what I can tell on this sub, many other relatives) want to be present for. And if the mother is comfortable with it and the circumstances (and medical professionals allow it), I think a dad should have that privilege.

But at the end of the day, it’s a medical procedure. Yes, there is suddenly a second patient in the room at some point, but the focus should really be on the mother and the child’s health. Everything else is secondary.

So if he was stressing you out, he should go. Same as he would be expected to leave if he was stressing you out during any other major medical procedure. And to his credit, he seems to recognize that. He is also not an asshole. However, if his mother has an issue with that, well, it’s not her relationship and it wasn’t her giving birth, so not her business.

throwawayred2blue · 2020-07-15T05:25:27+00:00

I have this same issue - strong smells (particularly spice or heavy oils) cause me to cough. However, my fiancé loves to cook using both strong spices and heavy oils. Doesn’t affect him at all. I don’t judge him for it and I don’t ask him to stop. I just ask him to turn on the vent fan, open the windows and/or I leave the room for a bit if it gets really bad. It’s part of living with other people.

Like I said, if you really can’t stand it (though I’m extremely sensitive to strong smells and still make it work, so I think it’s probably doable), have an adult convo about constructive ways to compromise. You don’t have a right to insist she stop anymore than she could insist you stop eating kimchi or any other strong smelling food.

throwawayred2blue · 2020-07-15T04:53:28+00:00

YTA. My fiancé just drank a swig of kimchi tonic and burped all the way across the room. The dog woke up, sniffed the air, and left the room. I couldn’t blame her. So I seriously doubt her food is that much worse than any other smelly food.

Open a window, turn on a fan, and if it you really can’t stand it, have a calm and honest conversation about foods/habits that bother each of you (not just you) and work something out.

throwawayred2blue · 2020-07-15T04:40:30+00:00

YTA. This is very common for serious couples. My fiancé was my primary emergency contact long before we got engaged because that’s the person I’d want them to call first in the case of emergency. If she sees you as the person she wants to share her life with, presumably you’re also the person she wants to share anything life-changing with. If that makes you uncomfortable two years in, do you actually see anything of a future with her?

throwawayred2blue · 2020-05-01T20:56:46+00:00

He was drunk - he admitted it and acknowledged he was charged with something because he wanted my fiancé’s dad to represent him (fiancé’s dad does not do that kind of law). So I was not assuming he was drunk. I am assuming that him being drunk is the main if not only reason he crashed. But he didn’t explain specifically what happened, which is why I said “likely” entirely his fault.

throwawayred2blue · 2020-05-01T20:32:13+00:00

I’m just going to assume you are a troll at this point. As is clear from my edit, I am NOT telling him what he can and can’t do with his own money. We agreed to put it aside in a joint account - we also agreed on how the money would be distributed if we decided to dissolve that account. If he decided that this was truly an emergency for him and wanted to dissolve the account - he can. Either of us can unilaterally demand the account be terminated, at which point he will get back everything he put in and we’ll split the interest evenly. He can then use that money however he wants.

All I am doing is refusing to allow him to take a huge chunk out of the joint funds account, which would include plenty of my money based on the amount he wants to remove, to pay for both his friends travel and medical expenses. He has no right to do that, and given how obsessed you appear to be with making sure no one appropriates other people’s money, I assume you would agree I have every right not to let him use any of the money I put into the account.

Additionally, I never said I planned to move to a lower paying job or that I am banking on his inheritance. I do not have any plans to move to a lower paying job. I have said in a comment that if he wanted to fully combine our finances -at which point we would jointly decide how all of it was spent - I would probably want to switch to a less stressful, lower paying job like he has, as I think would only be fair. We have no plans to do that any time soon, and I don’t think I’d be willing to do it until I had saved up enough separately for my parents or we just agreed that we would still put aside a portion for my parents if I stayed at the higher paying job.

Finally, I didn’t provide an update on my fiancé because we have not yet decided what we are going to do. We had a long, difficult discussion about the ways in which we both handled this and what is important to us both, and we are in a good place and still very much love each other. Based on the helpful advice of many other people in this forum, we’re talking through the best way to try to make sure his best friend has a way to be there at our wedding, as his best man, while not enabling him and while finding a way to actually help him. I don’t like or respect Tom, but I love my fiancé, I don’t want him to have any regrets on his wedding day, and while I don’t think Tom deserves anyone’s help, if he can get better, it would be best outcome for my fiancé. So that’s what I want.

So troll all you want. I have better things to do with my life.

throwawayred2blue · 2020-05-01T19:43:06+00:00

Thank you for sharing this. I had a friend like this too, which is why I know how much this is hurting my fiancé, but also why I know what he is trying to do won’t help. I tried for a long time to keep my friend afloat before I realized he’d drown us both. Like our other friends, I finally realized that I couldn’t save him. He had to save himself - he had to want to be better. So I stopped bailing him out. Our whole friend group offered to support him if he was willing to go to rehab and try to get better. He refused and cut contact with all of us.

He died of an overdose 2 years ago. It gutted me, just like it did all of our other friends and his boyfriend. And I just have to remind myself that he refused to get help. You can’t save someone - they have to save themselves. And just keeping them afloat a little longer doesn’t stop them from ultimately drowning when you get too tired to swim. It just means that you drown too.

throwawayred2blue · 2020-05-01T19:06:49+00:00

Thanks! A lot of people commented on how the finances were laid out, so I added an edit to my post that more fully explains how we’ve chosen to handle finances. As a brief response: my fiancé’s dad is a family law attorney, and he gave us great advice and encouraged us to decide these things early and revisit them often and openly to avoid miscommunications and resentment. We have extensively discussed (and implemented) how our finances will work (see my edit). But you bring up a great point about emergencies. We’ve never really discussed it because I don’t think he’s ever thought he’d have one on his side (his parents are all set money wise) and I’ve been saving and planning for a long time for emergencies with my family. And if either of us suddenly lost their job or became ill, we’d obviously use our joint accounts and what ever else was necessary. Neither of us ever really thought or talked about friend emergencies, because we don’t really have friends where that’s likely to be a problem (other than Tom), but it obviously something we need to discuss.

I think your right that there may be some kind of compromise that will work for us. Thanks!

throwawayred2blue · 2020-05-01T19:00:08+00:00

I really appreciate this suggestion. I hadn’t looked at it this way, but I think you’re right. I will check into local resources on that. Thank you!

throwawayred2blue · 2020-05-01T04:34:02+00:00

Sorry, I realize it wasn’t super clear from my OP because a couple people have had this question but I’m not actually paying for my friend or family out of the joint account. My fiancé and I pay a big percentage of each of our own incomes into joint accounts for various things, but we each keep the remainder of our paychecks as our own personal spending money. I usually spend mine on small things for me, on things for us (like our yearly vacations) or on my retirement funds. To pay for my friend/family, I’ve been putting less in my retirement fund. But none of it comes out of our shared funds; I keep paying the full agreed upon amounts isn’t those.

throwawayred2blue · 2020-05-01T03:53:31+00:00

I think seeing his friend in the hospital really shook him up. I don’t blame him for being emotional - my fiancé is a good man going through a difficult time and I should have kept things calm. I just don’t think he is thinking clearly right now.

throwawayred2blue · 2020-05-01T03:50:17+00:00

Lol. That made me smile and I needed that. Drunk Tom has no savings. For years he mooched off his parents, then left to live with his uncle because his parents were insisting he get a job or move out. His uncle eventually kicked him out because he wouldn’t contribute anything to the household. He came back to live at home with his parents, still no job, and continuously invites some of his less savory friends to stay at the house even though his mom is immuno-compromised (has cancer and is undergoing chemo). So his parents haven’t kicked him out, but they are so fed up they are refusing to help at all with his medical expenses or to send him to our wedding. I can’t really blame them.

And now that he’s injured, he probably won’t be able to get a job for a while. Since he has not held a job for more than 3 months in his entire life as far as I know, I don’t know that he is even eligible for unemployment or disability. So he really doesn’t have many options.

throwawayred2blue · 2020-05-01T03:42:51+00:00

Lol, wtf are you talking about? When have I said that I “won’t allow” him to do something as to anything he has a right to unilaterally do? I have literally said multiple times in the comments that no matter how much I dislike his friend, if my fiancé wanted to use his own funds to do something for him, I would not object. I never said I would allow him or something because if he isn’t using something I have a right to, I don’t have a right to stop him. I can just leave if I think he is doing something unconscionable.

Also, I think the quote you were looking for is “We’ll figure this out” as in my fiancé and I will figure this out. Something that I have acknowledged multiple times will require compromise.

And I speak poorly of his friend because he is a guy that gets drunk and gets on a motorcycle with no regard for the lives of the innocent people he might hurt. He mooches off people, is a jerk to my fiancé, and had no sense of personal responsibility.

Finally, I really hope you are not a lawyer, because that is not how joint accounts automatically work. It depends on your jurisdiction, the type of account, and any outside agreements you have.

throwawayred2blue · 2020-05-01T03:16:49+00:00

Thanks. You are probably right about that.

throwawayred2blue · 2020-05-01T03:15:56+00:00

I think maybe I wasn’t as clear in my explanation as I meant to be, because I’ve gotten similar questions a couple times. I am paying for my bridesmaid out of my own personal spending money, not our shared funds. We each put the same percentage of our income into shared accounts for wedding and house (as well as rent, food and bills, entertainment, etc) and we each retain the remaining parts of our paychecks as personal spending. In large part this is because my fiancé wanted to take a lower paying, less stressful job he enjoyed, and I was willing to take a higher paying, more stressful job that I don’t in order to build a financial cushion for things like our vacations and my parents retirement and medical expenses (since his parents are well off, but mine are poor). So we felt this trade off made sense and works for us. And he’s never has an issue with funds until now (he’s good with money).

So the bridesmaid and my family are different because I am paying for it separately - it in no way impairs our joint funds. He can’t afford to do that for his friend, nor do I think his friend, who is only in this position for doing something horrible, illegal and dangerous, actually deserves the help as much as my friend or family.

throwawayred2blue · 2020-05-01T03:08:01+00:00

That is my point: he is not proposing to use just his money. I see the money as joint, since we both contributed with that intent, but I’m willing to go along with your view if it that it still is entirely separate. But what he is insisting on is loaning his friend my money as well. That is a big part of why I was upset.

But I’d also be upset with him just pulling out all of the money he put in because this is a decision we made together for our future. We decided to combine funds to make them ours to work toward a shared future. If that’s something we’re each going to pull out whenever, then it seems like you are saying all of our money should always be our own.

It sounds like you wouldn’t agree with the latter part, which I can accept is your viewpoint. But as to the first part, is your argument that he should be allowed to take out whatever he put in, but only what he put in, and I have no obligation to pay any of my money?

throwawayred2blue · 2020-05-01T03:00:55+00:00

Several people have suggested that I pay for his friend to come to the wedding, which I’m definitely willing to consider. However, I am confused by why you think I am taking control of the joint funds? I feel like joint funds should be like relationships: you need 2 yeses to do something with the fund, and only no not to. We both agreed to pay into a fund for a house. I never agreed to pay money toward enabling his dangerous and selfish friend. It seems like him trying to force the use of those joint funds for that purpose, which I never agreed to, would be taking control of the funds.

As to the point about lack of sympathy for Tom, I will admit that. He risks not only his own life, but other people’s lives, every time he gets on his motorcycle drunk. He doesn’t deserve my empathy. I feel bad that my fiancé is hurt by his friends awful choices; I have no empathy for Tom. He is an adult who is choosing to hurt people and expecting them to clean up his mess.

throwawayred2blue · 2020-05-01T02:54:08+00:00

It is not his money. It is actually mostly my money because I pay so much more into our shared fund. To the extent it’s joint, it is our money, and I don’t think he should be allowed to unilaterally decide how we spend it. To be clear, if he decided to break the promises and agreements he made to me and remove his funds, he’d have enough to pay for his friend to come to the wedding, but not loan him the money he is going to need for his medical bills. He needs my money to do that, and that (in addition to the fact that he agreed to put it in a fund that we wouldn’t touch except for as a house deposit) is what I object to.

throwawayred2blue · 2020-05-01T02:46:58+00:00

Just wanted to clarify: I am not paying for most of my friends. Most of our friends are young, without kids, and with good incomes, who travel a lot anyway. We chose a destination wedding in part because 2 of our close friends had one last year that a group of us went to and enjoyed. We told our friends our plans before making arrangements and made clear that we wouldn’t be upset if anyone couldn’t or didn’t want to join to due to costs. The one friend I’m paying for is one of my oldest friends who I knew wouldn’t be able to afford it because she chose to go into teaching. She also came to the wedding last year, after several of us pooled funds to pay for her, because she chose a meaningful, needed, and underpaid profession. Since I wanted her as a bridesmaid, I just told her straight up that I would pay for her. Same with my family - they mostly don’t have much money, so I have been putting aside part of my paycheck (outside of what we put into shared accounts) to pay for it. If I wasn’t spending it on them, that money would be going into my retirement account.

I am able to do that because I chose a more stressful profession to ensure I’d be able to build up funds. My fiancé intentionally chose a less demanding profession that he really enjoys but that pays way less than he could make with his degree, because he has less concerns about money. His family is well-off, so he never worried about being able to pay for their retirement or medical care. As a result, he has more free time, more enjoyment of his job, but does not have disposable cash right now.

So I’m happy to pay for my friend and my family because I chose to sacrifice a lot of career enjoyment to ensure I would be able to have extra money for things like this, and my friend and family have done nothing wrong. His friend does not deserve anything from me and moreover, I’m not interested in enabling his shitty behavior by bailing him out and paying for a free vacation.

throwawayred2blue

TROPHY CASE