Q&As

EDIT: I am not slacking off at home while she does her chores. I work hard myself. When HER parents need help, it's I who pays for literally all of their medical expenses. When her brother needed help, it's I who gave him money.

Why? Because they are MY in-laws, and he's MY brother-in-law. I think it's my responsibility to look after their parents. She thinks it's her responsibility to look after mine in another way. It's absolutely NOT one-sided on my part.

My wife Lisa and I have been together for a while. She has a colleague named Madison (she also works from home), who visited us yesterday with her boyfriend, Ian. My parents are sick & live with us. Madison was surprised when she saw them and asked, "You didn't send them to a nursing home?" I was annoyed and said no.

She then asked who did most of the work, and I said it was Lisa. She replied, "I'm sorry she's married a misogynist like you, forcing her into slavery by making her take care of your parents." I snapped, "Didn't you divorce your husband when he lost his job? Lisa told me that."

She asked what that was supposed to mean. I said, "Someone raised in a culture that considers marriage disposable isn't someone to take advice from." She yelled, but Lisa sided with me. Ian sided with Madison. Madison said I had no right to comment on her life. I said, "Stop interfering in others' lives then."

We argued, and Ian said I couldn't talk to her like that. I called him a manchild who follows her like a puppy and told him to fuck off.

AITA?

My son and my nephew are both 6 years old and were placed in the same class at the start of this year. My sister has loved it for my nephew. He's autistic and has a lot of trouble socializing and with overstimulation. He's known to have meltdowns in class and there were times my son was asked to stay with him while the class was evacuated. I had to step in and speak to the teacher as well as the principal about this because my son was terrified. They were "seat friends" all year and they are the only two kids who never got a new seat friend. The teacher kept them together because she was worried my nephew would be bullied by other kids. But it was hard for my son. He's very shy and introverted and sometimes my nephew getting upset would upset him. My son was also used to supply my nephew with pencils and other tools when my nephew would break them.

My sister was so happy they were together. My son was miserable and I hated seeing him that way. My sister went to the school a month ago and requested they be kept together next grade. She mentioned it in passing during a family BBQ. I asked her why she did this and she told me it's working great for my nephew. I told her it wasn't working out great for my son and while I love my nephew, I don't want my son to feel like he always has to be responsible for his cousin. She told me I should think of the greater good and encourage them to stay together.

I went to the school afterward and requested the boys be placed in separate classrooms next grade. I told them my son did not deserve to have his education interrupted in order to help my nephew. I made it clear I was not okay with keeping them together. I also brought up again that I had not liked how they had handled things over the last year. The school agreed to separate them.

We got notified of the classrooms and teachers last week. My sister was furious when she realized they were separated. She asked how I could do that to my nephew. I should think of the impact this will have on him. I told her I love my nephew, always have, but I need to look out for my son. She told me it will never be as bad for my son as it will be for my nephew and we could have figured out a way to make it work better for both boys.

AITA?

My wife has been complaining recently that our kids always seem to prefer spending time with me over her. They never go to her for anything they need, it's always me.

I just answered that it's because I spend more time with them than she does. She stated that I don't so I broke it down for her just point blank.

Both kids are young and need parental supervision for everything.

They wake between 5.30am and 6am. I am the one who gets up with them every single morning.

Wife gets up at 7.30am weekdays and about 9am weekends.

Low end that's 13.5 hours I spend more with them.

I also do bedtime for both kids. That takes about 1 hour a night for baths and stories etc. that's another 7 hours a week.

Wife also says she gets stressed / touched out a lot, I often take the kids with me to the supermarket or to the park or something to let her have along bath in peace or an afternoon nap. Probably around 3.5 hours a week if we also.add in that I'm the one who also takes kids to all extra curriculars and picks them up.

She does not ever have the kids on her own, the longest she does is the time it takes me to have a shower and dressed each morning.

So I just broke it down plainly like above. I effectively spend a full actual day more a week with them. I didn't say it in any kind of a moaning way or anything like that, I do actually really enjoy spending time with them so I'm quite happy with the arrangement.

I just feel that she can't complain that the kids don't want to spend time with her when she spends proportionally so much less of her time with them.

An I the asshole for pointing this out?

I had to speed up the process of actually talking to her since the story spread quickly around on the internet, inevitably reaching someone involved with friends or family and now way more people i personally know are getting the details than I'm comfortable with

Oh well my bad lol

Before I ended up chatting with her, I opened up to my parents and sister about what was happening in detail. My parents were flustered at me hiding the more unsavory details to say the least and are probably going to be checking up on me daily for the rest of the year to make sure I'm ok. My sister would probably have to be held back from thrashing her, so I had to get a friend to help with the chat since my sister would not be able to contain herself

So basically, within hours of the story going into the digital stratosphere I called my wife back as quickly as I could to finally sit down and talk. We chose a local park this morning and I had a friend of mine record the conversation from beginning to end. I was bacially ready to hear the generic affair story and get out of dodge

But of course it got complicated.

We met at a section with picnic tables and picked one as far away from other people to avoid them getting wrapped up in any awkwardness. She looked terrible. Haggard, stressed, and thankfully without the baby. She tried to have the big emotional chat and what not. I wasn't tearing up or acting like the hardened badass. I frankly was just wanting to figure out what this was all for

I didn't even get to ask the question before the floodgates spilled. I'm going to attempt to relay this story as best as I can because even looking back on the recording it's a mess, but also, it's because I don't 100% believe it, so fair warning, it could all be fake

This all started with her mother. As I said before my wife's father was absent. He sarted off well, having 2 sons with her mother before herm l. When her mother got pregnant with her, her father went from being the picture perfect guy he was at first and slowly changed into a negligent, abusive, unfaithful, and unsupportive jackass, ending with him disappearing when her mother was delivering. He's been in and out of prison since. No one knows why he did it. The impression her mother always gave was a strong resilient woman who withstood anything life threw at her and did anything for her kids. She has claimed to be in therapy for years. In reality, she has managed to conceal a deep hatred for men outside of her sons, but according to my wife there was favoritism towards her. My wife also found out she stopped therapy almost a decade ago but never told anyone.

Her mother seemed to always have some slight against me and now i know why. She was never hostile, but certainly wasn't warm to me, and hearing about her secret hatred, I kinda knew where this was going. Roughly about half a year before she got pregnant, my MIL slowly began sowing seeds of doubt and bitterness into my wife. Apparently she had a full mental break. She told her about me staying late at work possibly hiding an affair. Or that myself providing majority on the income setting her up for a hard divorce. Everything my MILs husband did to her, she convinced my wife I would do to her, and she pumped this poison into her for months. My wife always idolized her mother, and compounding that with anxiety she's suffered from for years, she dove in deep.

As soon as she got pregnant, like on the dot, she fell into a mental hole within days. And that's when her mother got hold of her again. Hearing about her pregnancy apparently triggered something fierce in my MIL and it spiraled from there. She had my wife fully convinced it was happening again

Every single thing my wife did to hurt me was at the behest of my MIL. Combined with pregnancy hormones, an undiagnosed mental illness she claims to have (no confirmation), and stress, she completely lost her mind. She 100% believed I would bail, so she was punishing me first, culminating in her moving in with her mother and leaving me out of the birth

While I was sending the papers and started the divorce proceedings, she kicked into full blown post partum depression. And when her mother finally got her, when she finally beat me, which I guess was her victory over her ex (did I mention she's fucking crazy), she had no more use of my wife. The family involved in the birth included my MILs sister and my wife's brothers. While my MIL and her sister knew what was going on, my BILs got fed the bs narrative my MIL spun. When my MIL was done with her plan, the entire facade came down and my BILs found out everything upon questioning my wife. They were horrified.

Needless to say, postpartum, facing a very grueling divorce on her side, no longer welcome in our home, and having done everything to alienate me from my son at the behest of a broken lunatic, reality hit her like a truck. She torched her entire life because her mother is a broken shell of a human who used her to enact her own sense of justice. The very mother who washed her hands of her after she got what she wanted

Or at least this is the story she gave me

Frankly, there are many holes in her story. The starting point of the pattern of abuse, the claims of who was involved in the delivery, me being absent from appointments, the friend (who she confirmed is female) she's staying with, and of course, my alleged sons paternity.

It seems way too fucking crazy to be made up. Who the hell would go to the effort to make this up facing what she's facing?

As soon as she finished, she said she's setting up a paternity test and gave me the info I need. Within luck it should be done in roughly a week or so once i do my part. She gave the most sincere apologies any human being has ever given. She's begged for another chance. I was frankly, to stunned to say anything, so she left and promised to call soon

I don't think I can give her another chance. I don't think I can ever risk anything like this again.

God I'm still hoping she's just being a cheating psycho and spinning a sympathy story to try and throw me off, because this got way too complicated

Im slept at my parents summer home last night because my wife chose alcohol over me and my family, she refuses to get any help and I told her I was leaving her if she didnt make efforts three weeks ago.

She hasn't and shes been lying about it. We have a 13 and 10 year old girls. Im heartbroken. We were supposed to spend the weekend camping with her family. Camper is all set up for them but I wont be going. She probably wont either because she will have to explain or lie about why im not there.

Everyone was expecting me. But I just cant sit and watch her drink all weekend and be ok with it. She hides and drinks during the week i constantly find bottles stashed around the house or in the trash. She thinks she is hiding it from me and I keep on showing her she is not. She absolutely refuses to see anyone.

I have tried everything! Im mostly sad for my girls the 11 year old is so sweet. My 13 wont come out of her room because, I feel, my wife digs at her constantly about her grades and wont let up. So utterly betrayed by the person i married and had beautiful children with.

I turned off my phone as she was blowing it up. Shes texting how she is going to call someone for help but I'm so pissed at her. She just wants to have everything her way.

Oh its her birthday tomorrow as well. Great timing! AITA for ignoring her calls and not participating this weekend?

My husband and I haven't been on any dates since I gave birth to our baby (7mo). I had PPD (might still) and I was really isolated for a lot of my pregnancy and pretty much the entire time since the baby has been here. I'm alone for at least 16hrs a day and when my husband is home, we have about a half hour to an hour before he goes to sleep for work and during that time, he soaks up as much baby time as possible, which is understandable. We have sex but that's just about as far as it goes and some weeks he works 7 days a week. He literally busts his ass for us and I do appreciate it so much. I really do. I'm just feeling really alone is all. So I communicated that to him a week ago and he said he was going to make time for me and that he would borrow his buddies boat and bring me out while his mom watched the baby for the day. I was stupid excited.

So, the day before yesterday he came home from work early to bring me out shopping to grab stuff we needed, as he planned it for the next day (yesterday). We bought food, the essentials and he told me to pick out a fishing pole because his plan was to bring me fishing for the entire day (I had been asking to go for 3 years but we never had time). He doesn't even like fishing so I asked if he was sure and he specifically said "yes, this is for you. You need it, so I'm going to make it happen". I went to bed so excited. Could hardly sleep. We headed out around 8am the next day.

At first everything was good. We launched the boat and start heading off. We are talking and laughing, which hasn't happened in so long. Around 9:30 he pulls off to the sand bar and I'm a little confused because you can't go fishing here. But that's when I noticed we were pulling up on 4 other boats. His friends, coworkers and their children. About 9 other people. I asked him what we were doing and he said "well I told them we were going out on the boat and they wanted to join us". I asked for how long, because he told me he was bringing me fishing and this was a day for us and he says "well I figured I would bring you fishing before we leave for the day". I was immediately disappointed. For hours I sat in the same spot, watching my husband talk to everyone else or just sat along while he followed these guys to random locations (all beach, where you can't fish). Then they all start drinking. They offered me some but I was just defeated at this point (maybe 1-2pm). I asked my husband to bring me back to shore. He said "wait, no, why?" I didn't answer him. He then goes "no, babe I will bring you fishing, we can leave right now." So I said "no thanks, I don't want to be here." He brought me back to shore in silence, where I already had someone waiting to pick me up. He asks why I am leaving with them and that he could drive me home and leave with me. I said "no, it's fine. Go hang out. You obviously need it." And left. He came back 40 minutes later and was irritated. He was apologizing but at this point you just tell that he was angry so it was more snappy and exasperated than anything. Says that he figured I would appreciate socializing, since I never do. I told him this was never about my lack of social life but my lack of spending time with him and I had told him that when I had talked to him about it a week ago. So he did this for him, not me. So he said "yup, sorry I fucked up your day" and left to go get the baby. When he came back he didn't say much of anything to me and when he left for work this morning he just said "see you later". AITA?

And for the record, he literally works on the water all day every day WITH the guys that he invited. So every single day is a boat day and hang out day for them because they only have (at most) 4 jobs a day and most of the time it's just him hanging out on a boat, waiting for a call. He often jokes that he gets a "2-fer" because when he's working, it's social hour with all his good friends.

ETA: I'm honestly growing tired of repeating this so I'm just going to make it known that my social life is not the problem in this equation. I have friends and I see them as often as I want/need to. My problem is with my husband and I not connecting. We do not speak, kiss, nothing. The point of the trip was to reconnect as a couple, not have me socialize with a bunch of drunks. For the record, there was only one woman there. A woman that quite happily gets tossed around the group, who has zero interest in conversing with me. I have no desire to hang out with small children either. My husband knows this. I DID try to talk to people there. I was spoken over, several times.

As someone who was born in 1997 and is therefore too young to remember 9/11 happening despite being alive when it did, and who also isn’t American, this is something I’ve always wondered. I totally get for example adults at home or people in office jobs wanting to know wtf was going on and therefore putting the news on, and I totally get that due to it being pre-social media the news as to what was actually happening didn’t spread quickly and there was a lot of fear and confusion as to what was happening. However I don’t understand why there are accounts of so many school children across the USA witnessing the second plane impact, or the towers collapsing, on live TV as their teachers had put the news on and had them all watching it.

Not only is it really odd to me to stop an entire class to do this, unless maybe you were in the closer NY area so were trying to find information out for safety/potential transport disruption, I also don’t understand why even if you were in that area, why you would want to get a bunch of often very young children sit and watch something that could’ve been quite scary or upsetting for them. Especially because at the beginning when the first plane hit, a lot of people seemed to just think it was a legitimate accidental plane crash before the second plane hit. I genuinely just want to understand the reasonings behind teachers and schools deciding to do this.

At least when the challenger exploded it made sense why kids were watching. With 9/11 I’m still scratching my head.

Me and my husband have been together for over nine years and separating our finances never occurred to me until this past year.

I'm the saver and he's the spender. In the beginning it didn't bother me because we had two incomes and wasn't rich but lived comfortably.

His family has always "borrowed" money from us but rarely ever pay that money back. I personally don't lend money not even to family but I do not stop him from lending to his.

A few years ago my husband was in a bad car wreck and can no longer work so I became the sole breadwinner. He now gets disability but that was a four year process. In that time we dwindled our savings to nothing and came close to losing everything. Our debt mounted and there was nothing I could do.

When he received his back pay I only asked him to pay off his vehicle a loan in which I've paid over 50 grand on in the last few years and put some in savings.

He did neither. Instead he blew the money. Loaning over 10 grand to his family and paying nothing towards the debt we created.

During this time I was able to save some money from my paycheck but not much and had plans to pay some debts off once I have enough saved. He knew I was saving to do this.

About a month ago I noticed over 700 missing out our savings and I asked him what happened!?! He replied with I loaned it to my parents. I asked when he was going to receive it back because that money was already spent and I needed it. He said I don't know when they can afford to.

I blew up an lost my shit. He didn't ask me, we didn't speak about it. He did it behind my back because he knew it would piss me off and I would say no if he asked. We had a huge fight. I figured after that fight he would stop. But no...

Yesterday I checked my account and another thousand dollars was gone. Gone where u ask? He gave it his parents. I'm so mad I see red.

I flat out told him that as of today I'm done with his parents. I'll pay half the household bills buy our food and that's it. If he wants to lend all his disability to them fine but I'm not gonna go bust my ass 60 hours a week so he can keep giving our money away.

So AITA for going to the bank and withdrawing all the money I put there and opening a new account he don't have access to? He seems to think I am and says that I should want to make his parents happy. I would like to see them happy I just don't want to pay for that happiness.

My ex husband cheated on me 5 years ago and I found out when he texted me instead of her. That ended our marriage but the divorce was amicable. I told him that I couldn’t forgive him and he said he was sorry and we moved on. By that time he had worked a small fortune, a company, three commercial properties and a lake house. I got half of everything and I am a silent partner in his company, getting returns twice a year. As an apology he also gave me our apartment and the lake house. It goes without saying that I don’t need to work but I still do because I love my career.

He moved on with his affair gf. I don’t know much about them since it still pains me but all I know is that they’re still together. She contacted me on LinkedIn telling me that since the divorce has cost him so much money he has told her that he never wanted to get married again, nor move in together. And she blames me because I took everything. She is now pregnant but according to her my ex said that this wouldn’t change his attitude towards moving in together or marriage. So now she is accusing me of being a theif who is basically stealing her baby’s chances of having a family. I didn’t need the money because I have a good job and everything was my ex husband’s. I took advantage of him because he felt guilty.

I haven’t spoken to my ex in 5 years. I haven’t even had the strength to answer him back every new year to tell him to stop texting me “happy new year” because that’s when we met. I don’t know what to do. Is she right? Or should I ignore her?

Edit: thank you everyone for the fast response. I was considering one of three options, tell her off, tell him/forward her message to him or ignore and block her. The majority are suggesting the latter and I am inclined towards that too

Thanks and have a great weekend. I will try to read all your comments but they’re coming too fast. Sorry

I am marking this as landlord tenant housing because I am unsure what else it could be classified as.

A little backstory me(27) and my husband (28) inherited a property from his late uncle (95). Near the end of his life my husband's mother (50s?) at the time was going over and helping him because she was not working. Her house had caught on fire about a year and a half ago so she moved in with the uncle while she waited for her house to be renovated. The problem is she is a hoarder. It is taken this long just to clean her house out to get it renovated, and it is still not ready. The Uncle passed away 11 months ago and left my husband and I his property and she is currently still living on that property. she is making it extremely difficult to get into the property to start doing repairs on the water heater/ well pump or anything else that is broken. She is completely destroying the property in the process of trying to get her property prepared to live in again. She is not paying us rent and there never was a lease in place. She was the Executor of the will and held onto the estate of the property as long as possible and only just recently signed it over. We are giving her a 24-hour notice every time we try to bring a contracter over to give us a quote to do an addition or to repair something that is broken and she will scream at us that we are pushing her to fast. We just want to renovate the property to live on but she is making it extremely hard and destroying the property at the same time. What are some things that we can do? I feel like we need to evict her to get anything done. We tried to have some builders come in to give us an estimate and she stood next to us the entire time demanding her opinion be heard even though she is not paying for any part of it. Anytime we help her clean out the inherited property she just buys more stuff to add to it. She almost refused to give us a key to the house but thankfully my husband and his brother were able to get a copy.

I am lost at what we should do. Has anyone else gone through something like this? It is extremely hard because if we evict her she will be living out of her car until her house is done. If we let her keep living in the house, at this rate it will take one phone call and it will become condemned and cost us even more to get it up to code to do an addition. Any advice would be so helpful thank you.

Edit I saw a comment stating I needed to post the area I live in sorry about that my state I live in is Wisconsin

I also had to make a correction. She is not the beneficiary but the executor of the estate

So when my parents were expecting me my mom decided to name me Catherine Elizabeth. My mom felt strongly about the name Catherine and Elizabeth was a family name on both sides so it was a kind of compromise name. Neither loved it but mom didn't like any of my dad's choices for middle name and my dad didn't like Catherine and with mom saying no to the middle name they decided to use a mutual family name. During my birth my mom suffered many complications. She was rushed for an emergency c-section and ended up needing multiple blood transfusions and was out of it for a couple of weeks. During that time dad decided he was going to name me what he wanted since my mom cut him out of choosing my first name. And I ended up with a name my dad loved but my mom hated it. She had no say in the name. By the time she was healthy enough, they were told they would need to pay to change it. Mom was bitter. My parents are still married but never recovered from it and I 100% get it. My mom was betrayed and is angry that he went against what she wanted while she was at her lowest point.

The thing in all of this is I love my first name. I got the middle name Elizabeth still. I don't care for that either way. But I love my first name. Even though my mom hates it. She always wanted me to be Catherine. And after I turned 18 a few weeks ago she asked me to let her pay now for me to change my name. She said she regrets not doing it when I was a baby. But she admitted my name makes her so angry and brings the betrayal up to the front of her memory. So she would love for me to wear the name she chose now... But I hate Catherine. I don't want to be Catherine.

This really upset my mom. She thinks my name is dumb. It's unique and not common in the US as a name. And I admit it's not for everyone but it is for me. I'm glad I ended up with my name over Catherine. But I know my mom is struggling with that realization. She really thought I would want to be Catherine when I turned 18 and would be glad to do it with her offer to pay. And she told me how disappointed she was and she asked me if I would consider it for her. I told her if I did it would make me unhappy. She got kinda mad at me and she implied she felt betrayed all over again.

AITA?

My sister Leigh (28f) is getting married to Daniel (30m) in two weeks. Daniel has an 8 year old son called Kingsley. Last week Leigh asked me if I (20m) would babysit Kingsley during the wedding. She said Daniel's parents were supposed to do it but they were refusing and it had become such a big argument that she thought of me. I asked her why Daniel's parents were saying no and she said they were worried about Kingsley's behavior. I asked her why she'd think I would want to and she told me because I want her to enjoy her wedding(?) and because I'm a great little brother and to think about it as bonding with my almost nephew. I told her I didn't want to deal with his anger and tantrums and that there was no way we'd be bonding when he doesn't want his dad to get married again. Leigh told me they needed someone to do it because if he makes a scene it would delay the whole wedding if she or Daniel has to deal with it. She told me he might not be happy, he might be missing his mom (Kingsley's mom died), but she and Daniel are doing everything to help him through this and to show him that he has a bigger family now and doesn't need to chase her off or reject her. She said she is showing him that she will always be around even if he hates it right now. And for things to go well she needs me to come through for her.

I still said no and Leigh was upset. She and Daniel called me two days later and asked if I would reconsider if they paid me. I told them I wouldn't and suggested they use that money and hire someone if they really want Kingsley to have a babysitter.

Leigh tried begging but Daniel was pissed at that point and told me I was throwing away the chance to help my sister and get to know his son.

AITA?

I’ve recently visited the US for the first time. I saw lots and lots of really big cars on the streets (like Ford Ranger, Chevrolet Silverado and so on), even in big cities! Their trunks were empty in 99% of cases, so it’s not like people are hauling cargo all the time. And there was only one person in the car most of the time.

I checked that the engines on those things are enormous, I can’t imagine how much the gas must cost.

What do Americans need such huge cars for, especially in the cities?

EDIT: well, that was enlightening! So from your responses I gather that the primary reasons are:

• small dicks

• arms race on the road, getting bigger vehicles to be safer

• freedom

• chickens

• cheap gas

• comfort while driving long distances

• some people actually need such large car for work or they have big families

• regulations which make a big car the best choice

• some people live in places where the conditions require this

EDIT2: with Ford Ranger I meant something like