Q&As

A while back I posted a picture to my IG Stories of my cat sitting NEXT TO my counter as I was cooking. On his own stool. He was watching. Again, he was NEXT TO my counter. Not anywhere near the food. He doesn’t go on counters. He doesn’t go near the food.

My “friend” Rose reposted it with her own caption, a puke face emoji and “You can’t eat everybody house”

I ignored it and went about my business. She is very much the type of person who just regurgitates whatever popular phrases she sees on social media. Pineapple on pizza = monsters, raisins in cookies are why I have trust issues, I don’t trust people who don’t like dogs, “hot girl” walks, “hot girl” books, delulu, I’m going to hold your hand while I tell you this, is the X in the room with us right now, etc etc.

She has other traits that make up for it, but truthfully I do tend to avoid one-on-one time with her.

About a month ago I hosted a small get together… to show off some Le Creuset cookware I obtained (getting older is weird). I had a whole little shindig with home prepared food, lots of fun times between pals. I didn’t invite Rose.

She found out after folks posted on their IG stories and confronted me over it, saying that I was “giving high school mean girl vibes.” I told her that she has made it clear she doesn’t eat at the homes of people who have cats, so why would I have invited her to a dinner party?

She got defensive and said that she could have just come and not eaten anything. I said that in the future, maybe she should be more careful about what she says, because to me it was very clear.

Rose has continued to tell people I’m giving “high school mean girl to nurse pipeline” (...I’m an accountant) and all that. Am I really the asshole for not inviting her? Why would she have wanted to come?

Not a long story here. I (F32) was changing our baby’s diaper when my husband (M37) snuck up behind me and pulled my pants down (just the pants, not the underwear - he wanted me to include this part). He did it to make me laugh.

I elbowed him and yelled at him. (I apologized for elbowing him, it was just a reaction). I asked him to never do it again and now he won’t agree and keeps laughing. He says I’m overreacting but I’m really just asking him not to do again and I’m worried he’s going to do it all the time now.

He says he’ll stop if the internet agrees with me but he is confident you will all think he’s hilarious.

I really don’t want to deal with this anymore. Please just say “it’s funny once but not again”.

Update:. You guys really need to chill lol. I’m not going to divorce my husband because he made a joke that didn’t land. That’s not how marriage works.

In an ironic twist I have decided we are now a pantsing house. I will pants him as often as humanly possible and I will be wearing dresses to make myself invincible. Thanks for the terrible advice (although I do agree that no means no, I just don’t think it’s that’s deep here.)

My husband is a really good guy and is genuinely hilarious making the whole family laugh, so I’m going to let him do his thing.

My daughter is 24 (Kelly) and my younger daughter is 23 (Sara). They both had very different high school experiences. Kelly was very social and in different sports. Sara was very academic and had a small group of friends.

Kelly got a sport scholarship for college but soon dropped out of college after she failed multiple classes. She basically partied and did her sport and nothing else. Sara went on to finish her degree and is doing well in life.

Kelly has a jealously issue, and I have talked with her beofore about it. She is never happy when Sara has an accomplishment.

Today Sara told us that she is going on a cruise for her vacation this year. Kelly always wanted to go on a cruise and couldn't afford it with her waiter job.

In the car she blew up saying that Sara was a loser in highschool so it isn't fair that she has all this now. She went on for a bit when I had enough.

I told her that life isn't like highschool and it if was she was the loser now. This started and agruement and she called me a bitch

My mom - passed away

My dad (Henry)- 53

My brothers - 23/25 in the military

Me - F28

My dad's wife (Helen) - 30

Her son - 8 currently with her and her affair partner

My half brothers - 6/3 currently with my dad

Okay now that all the relevant people are listed it's a very simple situation.

After my mom passed away my dad married a woman half his age who had a child already and started having children.

I had already been acting as a mom to my brothers and had no interest in continuing. Helen was a SAHM. I went away for college and never went back. My brothers joined the military as soon as they could.

Helen had an affair and took her son, leaving my half brothers with my father. I guess their prenup means she won't get support and child support won't be enough. So she decided to leave them so my dad has to take care of them.

He wants me to move back to help him out because "I owe him".

I asked him for an invoice of anything he did for me that wasn't required by law.

He thinks I'm being petty and vindictive because I never approved of his marriage. He is probably right but I don't think that means I need to give up my life. He can hire a nanny. It will cost less than child support.

I found out after she died when her best friend kissed me and asked me to marry her. Then she trauma dumped the truth that my wife was cheating with multiple partners for at least 12 years.

I have three teenage daughters, I’m a single dad now, and my marriage was a lie.

Maybe you want details, maybe you want to know how I cope. AMA

My MIL (59) fell ill last year and basically begged my husband to move us (him, me and our 4 children) in to her 6 bedroom farmhouse to help her with bills and her basic needs. I didn't want to do this under any circumstances but my husband pushed the issue. I felt I had zero say whatsoever but I have continuously made my distaste known. We moved in in November and she signed the deed to the house over to my husband. All the other bills are still in her name (water, heat, electric).

I do not work currently. Our youngest is 8 months old and I have been a SAHM for 6 years now (our other children are 5yo twins and 3yo - I have been home since I got pregnant with the twins, as it was a high risk pregnancy). I DO have income however doing hobby work. I make and sell customized quilts and make a decent amount of money off of it. My husband is currently paying nearly $2800 a month here AND I pay for all of the food. His mother literally only contributes by cleaning and maybe $400 a month, despite working full time and making around $4k monthly. She basically says that she's putting all of her money in to her retirement fund (which is damn near non-existent).

Well, 2 months ago my MIL started really pushing the fact that she wants me to put my younger children in daycare full time and get a "real job" so I can contribute to the remainder of her bills because she feels too weak to work and wants to quit her job. I have refused. For starters, I am not putting my children in daycare (my husband agrees, I also breastfeed the baby). And I also made it abundantly clear that I wouldn't be responsible for any of her bills because I didn't want to be here. My husband told me from day 1 that I would be responsible for nothing outside of food, which I have held up on. So MIL is eating for free and having 90% of her bills paid for by my husband. She doesn't need anything else from us. But last night she started screaming at my husband about how she apparently wanted us to come here so she can retire early and that the "least we could do" is pay for everything here, since she signed over the house to us and said that I needed to "get off my ass" and contribute because he shouldn't be made to pay for everything when I'm "more than capable". I walk in and tell her she had best stop running her mouth about me when I'm not in the room to defend myself and that I am not putting my children in daycare to make her life more cushy than she already has it. I told her if she wants to retire than there are plenty of retirement homes OR we could move out and she can pay for 100% of her bills as she was before but I refuse to do anything more than I'm doing. My husband told me I should have stayed out of it and let him handle it but his way of handling it is by saying "I know mom, I get what you're saying" and nothing more. AITA?

Ok this all took place last weekend.

Family barbecue was supposed to take place, in laws, extended family, and family is coming over and all that jazz. BIL drives a huge pickup truck by the way, and I have a 911. Decent size difference.

I see them pull in right, and BIL is the driver and he's on his phone. Because of that, he looks right at my car, and as he's pulling in, he's still on his phone, and he hits my car. I guess he thought he was a lot farther than he actually was.

Well, car's totaled. This is when people are just starting to show up too, and I'm basically steaming. I was not in barbecue mood at the time, so I told everyone to take themselves and go home, and that it is cancelled. Still waiting on the insurance payout. Also, I bought the car just last year so it's not even paid off.

That day after everyone left, my wife is now mad at ME because soem of her family drove 3-5 hours to come, just to be send home on arrival. And I lost $225,000. I don't care. But my wife seems to though, so I'm asking here to see if I'm the asshole.

I (34M) and my wife (32F) have been together for 8 years, married for 4. About a year ago, my wife brought up the idea of opening our marriage. She said she had been feeling like she needed to explore her sexuality and connections with others, and that she might consider divorce if we didn't try this. I was completely against the idea. But after a month of her bringing it up constantly, I agreed, thinking maybe it could bring some new energy into our relationship too.

Since we opened up, she's met several men and seems to be enjoying the freedom. I struggled initially. I didn't have any matches or success on dating apps, and it really started to affect my self-esteem. But about six months into this, I met Amanda at a work party. Amanda is aware of my open marriage, and we've really hit it off. We've been seeing each other quite frequently, and honestly, she's fantastic. I've discovered a new side of myself with her, and the no-strings-attached arrangement is something I've come to really enjoy.

Here's the issue: my wife has become increasingly jealous and uncomfortable with my relationship with Amanda. Despite her ongoing connections with other men, she's asked me to close our marriage again. She even apologized for pressuring me into opening it up in the first place and admitted she thought it would be different. She thinks I'm in love with Amanda which is clearly not the case. Amanda is seeing other people too but she is not exclusive with any one as far as I can tell.

Now, my wife wants to go back to being exclusive, but I don't want to. Amanda has been great for me in ways I hadn't anticipated, my self-esteem is really through the roof and the sex has been the best I had in my life and I feel like I'm finally experiencing something that I didn't even know I was missing. My wife is really mad about it and insists we close our marriage immediately.

So, AITA for not wanting to close our marriage now that I've found someone who makes me happy, even though it was originally my wife's idea to open it?

I’ve been in the hospital past few days with my grandmother. Shes on life support and it isn’t looking good. I’ve gotten probably 6 hours of sleep combined within the past 3 days so I’m pretty cranky. I have a four month old that I’ve been avoiding taking to the hospital because of germs but i had to bring her for an hour while my mom came to get her.

We stayed in the waiting room because i dont think babies can be in the icu plus i wouldnt want her there anyways. A little girl maybe 2 or 3 was in the waiting room too. It was just my family and hers and there was about 4 or 5 people in her group and 15 in mine. I know its alot but we thought my grandmother was about to pass any moment at this time.

Anyways this little girl started taking my neices dolls at first and not giving them back. Then screaming her head off and trying to go into the icu. Her family would just tell her to come back to them and she would for a moment then go right back to it. She started crawling on top of my brother in law and he was getting super annoyed. Then she noticed me holding my baby and came to look at her which i didn’t mind. My baby is 4 months now and loves grabbing at toys and chewing on everything . Now this little girl started pulling the toys out of my babies hands repeatedly and her mom from across the room just kepts saying “ lana give it back” but she wasn’t listening. This went on for like five minutes until she grabbed my babies hand again and very roughly tried pulling her fingers from off her toy. Babies always have a tight grip on everything so she started pulling hard. I said loudly and pretty pissed off “ no this isnt yours go back to your mom.” She started crying a little and ran to her mom who was obviously pissed off and she said “ You have no right talking to my daughter that way” and i replied. “ if you would watch your kid I wouldn’t have to.”

And that was that. My family is on my side because they was getting pretty annoyed too. She also threw one of those hard water balls at my elderly uncle and it hit him in the chest. I feel like I’m in the right but i have the really bad guilt feeling in my chest for talking to somebody elses kid like that and making them cry. AITAH?

Edit. Also forgot to mention that the mom was on her phone the entire time and who I assume was her parents and husband was sitting there talking.

I will soon have to go on a businesses trip to one our office locations located in a country where being gay is illegal and could land me in prison or risk me getting attacked/hostilities by locals. Can I legally refuse to go or could this get me fired?

I (49M) was married to my wife for 20 years. I lost her in a car accident 8 years ago. We had two beautiful daughters together, Maeve (18 now, 10 when her mother passed) and Alex (16 now, 8 when her mother passed).

I am very close with my daughters but they were both definitely mama’s girls. My wife was a magnetic woman. She was beautiful, intelligent, kind, and people were drawn to her.

An important thing to know about my wife is that she had a passion for writing. She was unfortunately in a profession where she didn’t write much so, she did a lot on her own time. One of her favorite things to write was letters. She wanted people to know that she cared about them.

After she had each of my daughters, she wrote them a letter. She wrote each within days after their births and wanted to give them away on their graduation days. She put them in the fire box in our basement to avoid losing or forgetting about them. She wrote the letters with the intention of giving them to our daughters herself 18 years later as a sort of time capsule type of thing. Both letters contained mostly words of wisdom and information about what was going on when they were born.

Maeve graduated from high school today and I went to her room with the letter tonight. I let her cry on my shoulder as she read it and at first she seemed happy to have her something directly from her mother. However after she read it she turned to me looking surprisingly angry. She asked why I had waited so long to give it to her. She had so many rough moments and heartbreak in the last 8 years where all she wanted was her mother’s wisdom and I withheld the letter.

I told her that I was just doing what her mother had said she wanted and Maeve shot back that her mother also hadn’t planned on being in the accident. Alex heard the shouting and came into the room and Maeve told her about the letter.

Now they’re both upset and don’t want to talk to me. I feel so awful about this whole situation. I was raised by my single mother after my own dad took off so on one hand, I’ve always wanted to be the best father I can and I feel terrible that I withheld something that would’ve brought them comfort. On the other hand, my wife had very specific instructions about her intentions with the letters and I just wanted to follow through with that. So now I’m very conflicted and I just want to know, AITA?

I am currently renting in Kentucky. I went to leave my unit this morning and there is a barrier blocking my door saying I can’t leave due to work being done in the hallway. There was no notice that any work was being done today, and I’m being told I cannot leave the unit.

What do I do in this situation? There’s no way this is legal. I have things I need to do outside of my apartment today.

So a couple of weeks ago, my little sister came to me, telling me about this creepy old dude living nearby who had been sending her nasty texts and images on Facebook. She’s only 14, and this asshole was relentless. She’d block him, but he’d just create new accounts and keep at it... promising her money and flashy things if she’d meet him. It was beyond disgusting.

At first, I tried to handle it by reporting his accounts, but nothing was happening fast enough. He even sent her a message saying he saw her walking home from school, which freaked her out even more. I knew I had to do something. Blocking him wasn’t cutting it. So, I came up with a plan.

I told my sister to play along with him for a bit, make him think she was interested. It made my skin crawl asking her to do that, but we needed to catch him. We agreed that she’d set up a meeting spot near our house. The sick bastard fell for it and showed up.

Instead of jumping him, I decided to take a different route. I took pictures of him at the meeting spot, and recorded his nasty messages and our conversations. Then, I found out where he worked, who his family was, and started compiling all the evidence.

I made sure his wife and kids knew what he was doing. Sent them all the screenshots and recordings. I also sent everything to his boss and HR at his job. He got fired within days. His wife kicked him out and filed for divorce. To top it off, I reported everything to the police, who started their own investigation.

My sister is relieved, but I’m wondering if I handled it the right way. It’s not like I regret what I did, but maybe I went too far by ruining his entire life. But then again, he’s a predator who was harassing my little sister and God knows how many other kids. I couldn’t just sit back and let this perv get away with it.

We even found out from some neighbors that this guy had a reputation for being creepy with other kids in the area, but no one had done anything about it. That just made me feel more justified in what I did.

This is so petty but maybe I went too far.

I (26f) have an older sister Jade (28f) who is not in a relationship, is not pregnant and is not planning to have kids anytime soon. While I had my son a few days ago. I'm not close to my family. There's a very big golden child thing with Jade and my parents really should have stopped at their one perfect darling kid (what they call her) because I got the short end of the stick with them always.

So when they found out my son's name is Finnick, Jade came and told me I could not call him Finnick and needed to rename my son because Finnick is on her baby boy name list so she's going to use it one day and not me. I laughed in her face and told her to leave and dismissed her request by saying she had no authority in this.

My parents decided to jump in the next day and they told me I should listen to my sister and choose another name to be a good sister to Jade. They said to think about how Jade would feel and she prides herself on that list. I decided to bring some snark into this and my response was simply that if Jade wants to own the rights to names then she better get rich fast and buy those names because otherwise she cannot stop people from using the ones on her list, not even me. For the record, I know it doesn't work like that.

My parents started to freak out over this and basically told me I was being a bully saying things like that and how dare I dismiss Jade. I threw them out too. And what followed was texts from Jade and my parents saying I had no reason to treat them so rudely. I blocked them. I might be done. But did I go too far?

AITA?

Not proud of it. Embarrassing and I don’t tell people. Like 2-3 of my closest friends know and that’s it. I’m average looking. Probably like a 4-5 if I'm being honest. Lost my virginity at age 27. I had a 49 year old friend at the time who told me "every woman has boobs, you just have to ask to touch em.’ I lived by that for the next decade and it worked. Along with an insane amount of rejections, which you get numb to very quickly surprisingly. The part that kept me going was (a) every boob really feels different and more importantly (b) the adrenaline rush of not knowing if I’m about to get rejected or not. I would feel super high even after getting rejected as opposed to just disappointed in myself if I didn’t try.

After a decade I started getting paranoid that asking to touch random women's boobs at bus stops, super markets, fairs, the dmv, and elsewehere made me look like a creepy weirdo. But I persisted knowing that one day I would be able to tell this totally not made up story on the internet to others.

I see a lot of conceptions from men and women about people who make false claims about people who have touched a lot of boobs. It’s especially hard in person because I can’t just be like, ‘well counting my mom I’ve actually had over 1,293 separate boobs in my hand, so actually…’ because I’m an average looking guy and it’s just like yeah right dude. (You can tell how smoothe I am with the ladies by my strong grammar and writing skills)

Fun fact. When I was 33, my best friend and I drew sketches of all the boobs I have touched and I had drawn well over 1000 separate boobs. I put that notebook in my glovebox and forgot about it. A week or so later I noticed it was missing. My mom had a history of checking my drawers and shit my whole life so I know she found it. Never brought it up. It was just gone. No clue what she thought.

AMA

Edit: Woahh......getting like lots of responses. Guys, I told you I am ashamed of this very real fact about myself. It is why I made a thread in "AMA" telling all of you to "ask me anything" about it.

Edit 2: Some people have pointed out similarities between this thread and another very real thread that was posted earlier. I assure you that all similarities are pure coincidence. Why is it so hard to believe that two very clearly awesome dudes who totally respect females have similar rates of very high success? Go talk to women, fellas. Stop trying to meet women through sharing mutual interests, through friends, or by developing hobbies and interesting things about yourself and start accosting them at Barnes and Noble with awkward and direct propositions. Women love it!

Something like a mandatory holiday, so everybody has a chance.

Throwaway. All names are fake.

My brother recently turned 45. He threw a birthday barbecue at his beach house, which I attended with my wife and our kids, Sam (8M) and Emily (5F). We live pretty far away, so we stayed at the house for four days.

Less than a week before the party, we found out Emily had an ear infection. Her pediatrician told us she'd have to avoid getting her ears wet. The only reason we still went to the party was because the kids were still excited about it. We told Emily that she could still go in the water, but not dive.

Also in attendance were my cousin Greg, his wife Julie and his kids Mike (7M) and Chloe (17F). They live in a different state, and were also staying at my brother's house. I hadn't seen them since Mike was a toddler, but it quickly became clear that he had no intention of getting along with my kids.

For whatever reason, Mike decided Emily was faking her ear infection, and started misbehaving over it. During the first two days of our visit, he tried throwing sand at her, hiding her toys and, on one occasion, stealing her medicine. Whenever me or my wife tried to berate him, Julie would claim he was "just having fun" and we had no right to scream at her son. She'd say he wouldn't do it again, and that should be enough.

During the actual party, the kids were playing in the pool (Chloe was watching them) while we were eating. Some time later, Emily and Mike came to us crying. Both were completely wet. Mike told us that Sam had pushed him into the pool.

We got the full story from Chloe. She was playing with Emily on the shallow-ish end (chest-level from Emily's perspective). When she left the pool to get a glass of water, Mike showed up and pushed Emily's head underwater. Chloe ran back, but Sam pushed Mike into the pool before she got there. Mike wasn't hurt.

My wife and I gave Sam the "violence isn't the answer" talk, but we didn't punish him any further. He was protecting his sister. Julie and Greg wanted us to ground him, as he had gotten physical with a younger child. They insisted that Mike's actions were innocent, and he didn't deserve to be "attacked" over them.

They told us to either ground Sam, take away his electronics (he doesn't have any) or forbid him from going to the pool. We refused to do any of these things.

We returned home a couple weeks ago, and they're still messaging us calling us bad parents. They've gotten some of our family members on their side. I don't usually care about these things, but I'm not used to my family calling me entitled, so I'm wondering whether I'm in the wrong here.

AITA?