AITAH for Throwing Food In My Brother In Laws Face?
My girlfriend (29) and I (32) have been together for just about 5 years. About a year into our relationship we were living together already and she received a call from her mom saying her younger brother (18) was in the darkest place mentally and was talking about self deleting. Knowing their family history we volunteered for him to move in with us. We live in my 515sq foot condo with my, at the time, 4 year old son, that both her and I worked out of, but he had never had a positive male role model in his life and his family asked me to help guide him, which I was more than happy to do.
We taught him how to be a functioning adult. I taught him how to get a job, save money, manage his emotions, manage his mental health, and how to be self sustaining. We ended up moving into a 2 bedroom house and he pays us $1000 a month and we cover everything else (≈$4000). He is a very to himself kind of guy with a big heart, but he was severely abused as a child by his dad and abandoned by both of his parents when he was a teenager. Their mom made my girlfriend raise all 6 of her siblings with no help from her stepdad and minimal with her mom, and they never taught him how to deal with multiple frustrations happening at once. He start hitting, throwing, slamming, and destroying his things over some of the most minor inconveniences and it really scares my girlfriend, causes tension, and causes her and I to argue over how to handle it.
My girlfriend and I have been feeling extremely distant lately because 2 years ago we were blessed with a beautiful baby girl who unfortunately is pretty severe special needs. Between all of her appointments and commuting 4 1/2 hours a day picking and dropping my son off at school, we don’t have much time for ourselves. We aren’t able to get a babysitter because we simply don’t trust someone else to maintain my daughters needs except for my brother-in-law who has seen how to handle and take care of her. Maybe 5 times a year we get to go on a date with just us, so we take every opportunity we can when the baby is asleep for him watch the baby so that we can run quick errands together.
He normally works long days and doesn’t eat very much so we are always buying food for him, cooking for him, cleaning the house by ourselves, and making sure he has the household essentials he needs to be ready for work. For months he really hasn’t given any extra money to help towards the groceries, we mind, but not enough to make anything of it because he treats the family to dinner every so often. My girlfriend just got the baby down and I got to a good pause point on my homework and she wanted to go on a quick date to get boba 🧋 and to pick up Panda Express for the family. The ride started off good but quickly escalated into an argument over her being scared of her brother and not wanting to live with him because he’s dirty, rages, and makes us have to walk on eggshells around him. This was brought up because last week he was banging and hitting things because he got mad over a video game, as well as a few days ago when his bedframe collapsed while he was sleeping , because he broke it months before during another rage incident, and he destroyed thousands of dollars of his Collectible Gundams he’s bought.
She tells me that she feels like our relationship would be so much better if it was just us and the kids and I told her that we can’t abandon her brother because we took responsibility for him and I don’t want him to feel like he’s unwanted. We stopped arguing and just sat in the driveway in silence for 10-15 minutes to reset ourselves before we went inside with the food. She’s passing out the plates and asked me to look for a fork. I checked the sink and drawers and there were zero forks. Her brother was behind me and I said that they may be in his room with all of the rest of the dishes because he literally has a pile of dishes stacked on his dresser. He got mad by the comment and went into his room and my girlfriend told me to just give him one of the baby forks because it was just for his chicken.
I tried to bring him the fork but he ignored me so I placed it on top of his hand and he started hitting and slamming things. I told him that he needs to stop because that was the exact behavior that his sister was talking about and that if he kept doing this in the next house that he’s going to have to leave. He decided, in my face, to take the food we had just gotten him, and slam it all over the ground. I have never been so livid. I told him he’s going to pick the food up or we are going to have a fucking problem and he ignored me, so I told him I am about to beat the shit out of him if he didn’t get up and clean it up. He decided to be a smart ass and say he was still going to eat it anyways and that set me way tf off. I grabbed a fat handful of the chow mein and threw it at him, I did that twice. I lost it on him and told him that we dont deserve that disrespect when all we do is take care of you. I have ALWAYS been on your side and advocated for you EVERY SINGLE TIME, ALWAYS. Fuck you. And I walked out.
My girlfriend said I was in the wrong for confronting him while he was already mad and I tried to tell her that we have talked to him many times calmly about the same thing and tonight, after we went out of our way to get him food because he’s broke, he disrespected US by throwing it on the ground.
AITAH for reacting the way I did?
Edit:
Let me clarify, as of this event he is now 22 years old and was doing well for a longer period of time before all of this happened.
We have been telling him he needs to go to therapy for YEARS.
I am a Certified Behavioral Change Specialist, Wellness Coach, and an RBT. I personally have gone through years of therapy myself and have a minor in Psychology.
Not once EVER has he ever done this in front of my kids, they love him and he’s never done anything but love them.