My family is all on my cousins side for this issue, and I wanted some outside judgement.

My cousin (25m) has always been the golden child of our generation. He’s funny, good looking, and out going, not to mention a boy amongst girls. He’s always loved to mess around and play pranks. For the record, I really dislike this cousin. I think he’s irresponsible, childish, and annoying.

I have had hearing problems for years. I recently got a $6,000 pair of hearing aides.

Recently at my grandmothers birthday party we were all eating and drinking on the back porch. My grandmother has a pool. My cousin decided he was going to throw me in the pool because it would be funny to ruin my hair that I just got done that day. I repeatedly told him to stop and put me down, in a very serious and not playful at all tone.

He threw me in the pool, and my hearing aides were ruined. Afterwords when I told him what happened he basically said whoops, didn’t know you had hearing aides now. When I told him the cost of them and that he would have to replace them he freaked out, and said no way.

My family didn’t want me to make him pay for them because i significantly out earn him and also everyone else in the family. He was in college at the time, barely making ends meet in a call center job. His girlfriend and him have a baby and they live in a one bedroom apartment.

He refused to pay, so I took him to court. I won. He refused to make the payments after, so I took him back to court and his wages are now being garnished for the maximum amount, which is 20% of his total wages. It pushed him over the edge of what he could afford, so he’s had to work extra and drop out of college to be able to pay their rent.

My family is absolutely fuming at me. I think he made one bad choice after the other, and he has never given a sincere apology during this whole ordeal. Had he gave a real apology after the incident and asked if he could wait till he finished school to pay me back I would’ve been fine with it. But the entitled little prick is digging his feet in at every move.

AITAH? The only reason I could see me maybe being the asshole is because it’s affecting his child and girlfriend.

Throw away of course.

About six months ago I noticed an undershirt folded up in my dresser drawer. The weird thing was that the label wasn’t from any of the brands that I have, and there was only one of that kind. I tried it on, and it clearly didn’t fit me.

I assumed that it was an old shirt of mine that somehow got brought out of storage, and tossed it.

Two months later, I find a pair of men’s jeans, clearly not my size, folded on the top of the dresser. This was after I was at a conference for a few days. The conference was in my town, but I was gone from 6am-11pm pretty much every day. I asked my wife about it and family who had visited recently. Nobody had any idea where they came from. I started to suspect something was up, but decided that it was in the best interest of my relationship to just ask once and then trust my wife’s response. I tossed the jeans and moved on.

This morning, I found a men’s polo shirt hanging in my closet. Not my size, and is has brand from a store that I don’t shop at, and haven’t even stepped foot into for nearly a decade. This, only days after I returned from an out of town work trip. I confronted my wife demanding answers. She claims that she knows nothing.

I started by asking her why she thinks I’m upset. She jumped straight to “you think I’m cheating”.

I asked her to put herself in my shoes and try to explain how else I could interpret this pattern (me being gone, men’s clothing showing up in my house). She never answered the question.

We went back and forth (never screaming or throwing things) for about an hour, with the shirt lying on the table between us. I kept saying that “I don’t know, is not an acceptable answer” - she ended with “or what?”

I said that I needed answers one more time and got straight up from the table and left to go back to work.

Historically, I do trust her. But I can see how easily lies come out of her mouth when speaking to her family, over seemingly small things. She grew up in an overbearing household and she knows how to cover her tracks. During the conversation I asked if I could go through her cell phone - something I have NEVER done before or even tried to do. Of course nothing of note.

SOMETHING is happening. The pattern is clear to me.

Am I over reacting? How should I proceed?

Edit: Thanks for the insight folks.

I’ve been internalizing all of this and trying to remain objective. It’s easy to jump to a conclusion about cheating, and yes, the evidence does seem damning.

There is some advice in the comments about next steps, and many with differing perspectives on what else could have happened. This has certainly helped me step back and assess the situation more clearly.

We had a multiple hour long conversation, she called my in-laws about the clothing, I called my folks with the same questions, I was given her phone to go through again, I even did some digging with the ISP to get connected devices and websites, texts from Cell, etc.

No answers anywhere.

At the end of the day, I chose to not blow up my entire life (walk out, lawyer, take the kids and run) and instead chose to “proceed with caution”.

If she is cheating, she knows she is going to be heavily scrutinized and will eventually be caught with actual evidence.

If not, I avoided destroying my family over nothing.

Lots of you will disagree with me I’m sure. But this is my life and there are nuances at play here that haven’t been (and won’t be) shared.