Neighbour upset with us AITAH
TDLR AITAH? Have I been in a neighbour war for 10 years without knowing because my husband and I are antisocial?
I hope this is the right place for this but I am baffled and can’t think of a better place to get opinions. My husband and I have lived in our house for about 13 years. Since buying this place, we got a dog (who is 11) and had three kids (they are 10, 9 and 7 now). Most of our neighbours are older and retired, it feels like ours are the only small kids around.
We have nice, cordial relationships with everyone in the houses around us (albeit pretty surface level) and everyone has been nice to our kids. My husband has always been a little socially avoidant (due to a little anxiety, in my opinion). And after having my kids so close together, becoming a SAHM while they were little, and Covid, I feel like my social skills took a severe hit as well, which is what has me questioning what’s going on here. I always say hi or wave if I see a neighbour on the street and will always stop to chat if they initiate.
10 or so years ago, an older couple moved in behind us, we share half a fence, with another neighbour beside them who we share the other half with. I have always remembered him as pretty indifferent to us- we have never spoken but I know my husband originally said hello over the fence one time and got no response so we kind of figured they were the type that liked to keep to themselves which suited us fine. I also felt like maybe they didn’t have/like kids as they have never spoken to our kids and I have never seen any there, which is fine- kids are certainly not everyone’s cup of tea! We hadn’t thought about them much more than that.
To give a bit of context: we have a trampoline which I don’t allow my kids on before 9am or past 9pm. Our dog and our neighbour on the other side’s dog will bark at each other but I watch my dog carefully to prevent it. If he is outside without me and they start barking, I go out immediately and bring him in- my neighbours are the same and call their dogs in right away also.
When we got our dog, he dug any loose dirt- so I had the idea to pull up the gardens and just have all grass in the backyard. It worked well for the kids to play on too. Last year, I started to get really into gardening and pulled up the grass all around the border of the yard and planted flowers. I also planted a few trees along the fence line, for a couple reasons. I was tired of looking at an ugly fence, the kids’ balls do sometimes go over the fence and I thought the trees would give a bit of a buffer, but mostly, the yard is smoking hot in the afternoon and I want more shade.
Anyways, cue to today. I go out into the backyard to sit with my flowers before I start some chores and see a cardboard sign hung up, facing our yard, in the older couple’s yard. Written in black sharpie, it says,
It may disturb your vow of NO CONTACT but a conversation about fence tree branches is needed soon!
The words NO CONTACT and soon were underlined in red sharpie. I was so confused. I have spoken to the wife back there once, maybe two times at the most. The one time I remember, she was mentioning how much our kids love the trampoline and seemed kind. But neither my husband nor I have had any contact with the husband whatsoever. He is often out gardening and so am I, however not close enough that you would be able to chat without yelling or calling the person over.
Anyways, I wrote down mine and my husband’s names and phone numbers and walked around to this neighbours road (we are in a cul de sac that doesn’t connect to a main road, so it’s about 5 minutes to walk there). I was thinking there was some
mistake but figured I better give them our contact info.
I knocked on the door and the husband answered looking angry already. It felt like he was expecting a fight. I said, I hope I’m not bothering you, I live in the brown house behind you. Was that note for us (he also shares half his back fence with the neighbor beside us- not the one with the dog, the one on the other side)?
He was pretty condescending and asked what I thought was going to happen as the trees grew. I didn’t know what he wanted to hear, because I obviously thought they would get taller and give some shade/privacy and look better than the bare fence but those seemed too obvious to be what he was looking for.
He said they are going to spread and the branches will grow. I asked if he felt the trees I had planted were too close to the fence and offered to move them if he was worried. I had wondered myself after planting them if I should have moved them out more than 2 feet from the fence but wanted to save as much open yard for the kids as I could. There are only 4 along his part of the fence and I just planted them last year so I don’t feel like it would be that big of a deal to move them. Right away he was saying No, no I’m not here to tell you what to do or plant. There are three options when trees grow over a fence: you trim them, I trim them, or a professional trims them.
To be honest, I would be fine with any of those options, but I told him I chose columnar type trees specifically so that they wouldn’t spread over to his side of the fence. He then said, I really want to know what your intentions were when you planted those trees. All I could think at the time to say was that it was super hot in the yard and we were hoping for more shade.
He then launched into a bit of a tirade about how sometimes people “plant to annoy or aggravate.” And that he had a neighbour he didn’t have a good relationship with that planted a huge tree that came over his side of the fence and then built a playhouse on it. I assured him that I would make certain that no branches came over his side and that if he had any issues at all, just call or text my husband or I and we would address it. Then he began to let me know he couldn’t believe that in 10 years, we hadn’t had any contact with him or introduced ourselves or anything. When I mentioned that I had spoken to his wife before, he scoffed and said No, you didn’t. Maybe that was her- pointing to the lady that lives beside him. I said, No- I know Neighbour (she worked at my kids school for years and lives alone with her elderly mother and I have chatted with her at school and over the fence many, many times, so I was not confused). He said I highly doubt that in a really rude tone, shutting me right down.
The way he was talking was like we have been in some feud for the past 10 years and I planted those trees specifically to bother him? I honestly thought they would be glad to have trees between the yards. I could tell I wasn’t probably going to convince him otherwise, but still didn’t want him to worry about it and tried to be nice and cordial. The conversation ended and I walked back home.
AITAH? Have I been in a neighbour war for 10 years without knowing because my husband and I are antisocial?