u/No_Demand_8884

I don’t really believe in dividing people into good people and bad people but I’ve noticed that some of the people who care the most about publicly holding others accountable seem to view themselves as morally superior. I’m not talking about serious crimes or genuinely harmful behavior but about normal human mistakes like saying something insensitive, handling a conflict poorly, making a bad decision, hurting someone’s feelings or doing basically anything you later regret.

It feels like we’ve created a culture where once someone falls below a certain moral standard they have to be permanently defined by that mistake. Even if they apologize and learn from it or change there are always people eager to remind every one of what they did. I think this mindset often comes from forgetting that we’re all capable of messing up and nobody gets through life without making mistakes or hurting people.

Wanting accountability isn’t a bad thing but some people seem far more interested in judging others than extending the same understanding they’d probably want for themselves if they were the ones who messed up. To me, being a good person isn’t about never making mistakes but being able to acknowledge them and learn from them and even allowing room for other people to do the same.

My parents divorced about six years ago. A few years later, my mom met her now husband, and they got married last year and they live together in another city now.

I actually like him, he’s a nice guy and honestly my mom has changed a lot since she started dating him, mostly for the better. Growing up, she was extremely impulsive, explosive, and unpredictable and we didn’t have a great relationship and now she’s calmer and more stable and more family-oriented.

Her husband has a daughter around 23 or 24 years old (I’m 28F). When they first got together, she lived with her mom, but after some conflict she ended up moving in with her dad and my mom. She’s a very quiet and sweet person and we get along fine. Neither she nor my stepdad have ever done anything wrong to me. But something about the whole situation bothers me, and I feel guilty even writing that.

My mom spent my entire childhood teaching me independence. She wasn’t really a family person, like she liked traveling alone, doing things alone, making decisions alone and her whole philosophy was basically that everyone should handle their own lives and not depend on anyone else, that’s what she taught me. Now it feels like she’s trying really hard to present herself as someone who has always been family oriented. Suddenly everything has to be about family activities like family trips or family traditions.

For example, she got upset when I chose to spend New Year’s with my friends instead of going on a cruise with her, her husband, and his daughter. Another time she wanted me to spend a spring break trip with them. I’m 28 years old…….. I love my mom but at this stage of my life, most of my trips are with friends not with my parents. Actually not even when I was younger and my parents were married, we never used to go on family trips, that wasn’t a thing back then, so I’m simply not used to it.

Something else that bothers me is that I never really get time alone with her anymore. If we make plans, her husband comes or his daughter comes or both and again, they’re perfectly nice people, I don’t dislike them, it just feels forced!! There’s also this expectation that I should somehow become deeply integrated into this new family unit. We have a family group chat, there are family gatherings with his relatives. People even make comments about how I should move closer to them?? One of his relatives once told me I should live closer because I was “all alone” where I am. But I’m not alone!! I still live where I’ve always lived. My mom is the one who moved away and built a new life somewhere else. And that’s totally okay with me!! But that’s not what I chose for myself.

What I struggle with is the feeling that I’m expected to fully adopt this new family as my own. For holidays I usually spend some time with my mom but I spend most of them with my dad’s side of the family. That’s where my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and family history are. My mom’s parents have passed away, and she’s not close with her brother. So her family now is essentially her husband’s family, but they aren’t automatically mine.

The other thing that makes me uncomfortable is that my stepdad sometimes seems to be trying to fill a father role that I never asked for. My dad wasn’t financially successful, he couldn’t buy me shit growing up. But I never cared about that since my mom spent years telling me that material things didn’t matter. She also never financially supported me much, despite being in a better position to do so. I grew up being taught that if someone gave you money, there were strings attached. If my mom helped me with something, it usually came with expectations so I obviously became fiercely independent. Now suddenly my mom and her husband want to help financially like lending my money for example. Or like recently I was buying books and he insisted on paying for them as a gift, and I appreciate the gesture truly but it makes me uncomfortable in a way I can’t fully explain. Part of it is probably because he’s not my dad and part of it is probably because my mom spent decades teaching me that accepting help always comes with a cost.

I don’t think anyone here is doing anything wrong. I think my mom is happier than she’s ever been and I’m genuinely glad for her. But sometimes I feel like she’s trying to rewrite who she was, what our relationship was, and what “family” means to me.

My parents divorced about six years ago. A few years later, my mom met her now husband, and they got married last year and they live together in another city now.

I actually like him, he’s a nice guy and honestly my mom has changed a lot since she started dating him, mostly for the better. Growing up, she was extremely impulsive, explosive, and unpredictable and we didn’t have a great relationship and now she’s calmer and more stable and more family oriented.

Her husband has a daughter around 23 or 24 years old (I’m 28F). When they first got together, she lived with her mom but after some conflict she ended up moving in with her dad and my mom. She’s a very quiet and sweet person and we get along fine. Neither she nor my stepdad have ever done anything wrong to me. But something about the whole situation bothers me and I feel guilty even writing that.

My mom spent my entire childhood teaching me independence. She wasn’t really a family person, like she liked traveling alone, doing things alone, making decisions alone and her whole philosophy was basically that everyone should handle their own lives and not depend on anyone else, that’s what she taught me. Now it feels like she’s trying really hard to present herself as someone who has always been family oriented. Suddenly everything has to be about family activities like family trips or family traditions.

For example, she got upset when I chose to spend New Year’s with my friends instead of going on a cruise with her, her husband, and his daughter. Another time she wanted me to spend a spring break trip with them. I’m 28 years old…….. I love my mom but at this stage of my life, most of my trips are with friends not with my parents. Actually not even when I was younger and my parents were married, we never used to go on family trips, that wasn’t a thing back then, so I’m simply not used to it.

Something else that bothers me is that I never really get time alone with her anymore. If we make plans, her husband comes or his daughter comes or both and again, they’re perfectly nice people, I don’t dislike them, it just feels forced!! There’s also this expectation that I should somehow become deeply integrated into this new family unit. We have a family group chat, there are family gatherings with his relatives. People even make comments about how I should move closer to them?? One of his relatives once told me I should live closer because I was “all alone” where I am. But I’m not alone!! I still live where I’ve always lived. My mom is the one who moved away and built a new life somewhere else. And that’s totally okay with me!! But that’s not what I chose for myself.

What I struggle with is the feeling that I’m expected to fully adopt this new family as my own. For holidays I usually spend some time with my mom but I spend most of them with my dad’s side of the family. That’s where my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and family history are. My mom’s parents have passed away, and she’s not close with her brother. So her family now is essentially her husband’s family, but they aren’t automatically mine.

The other thing that makes me uncomfortable is that my stepdad sometimes seems to be trying to fill a father role that I never asked for. My dad wasn’t financially successful, he couldn’t buy me shit growing up. But I never cared about that since my mom spent years telling me that material things didn’t matter. She also never financially supported me much, despite being in a better position to do so. I grew up being taught that if someone gave you money, there were strings attached. If my mom helped me with something, it usually came with expectations so I obviously became fiercely independent. Now suddenly my mom and her husband want to help financially like lending my money for example. Or like recently I was buying books and he insisted on paying for them as a gift, and I appreciate the gesture truly but it makes me uncomfortable in a way I can’t fully explain. Part of it is probably because he’s not my dad and part of it is probably because my mom spent decades teaching me that accepting help always comes with a cost.

I don’t think anyone here is doing anything wrong. I think my mom is happier than she’s ever been and I’m genuinely glad for her. But sometimes I feel like she’s trying to rewrite who she was, what our relationship was, and what “family” means to me.

Has anyone else experienced something similar with a parent who remarried later in life?

I (28F) feel awful about this and need some outside opinions. My mom is turning 59 this week and she wants to celebrate her birthday on the same day as my country’s first World Cup match. For context in my culture World Cup games are a huge deal, people even take time off work to watch them. My mom’s actual birthday isn’t on that day but that’s the day she chose for her celebration. I already had plans that day but she’s my mom so I canceled them and decided to attend her birthday instead. The problem is that she seems to expect everyone else to do the same…..

A little background: my parents divorced when I was 23. My mom remarried last year and moved to another city. Her husband is a lovely person and I’m genuinely happy for them. My mom and I also weren’t particularly close when I was growing up and we weren’t the type of family that regularly celebrated birthdays together. In fact she usually preferred spending her birthdays with friends and most of those friendships faded after she moved away btw. Recently she has been making a bigger effort to connect with me (which I appreciate) but sometimes it feels like she’s trying to create a level of family closeness that never really existed before

The conflict started because she invited my best friend and my best friend’s boyfriend to her birthday celebration. My best friend already had plans that day bc one of our close friends is celebrating his birthday, and a group of our friends are getting together to watch the game at his house. When my mom asked if my best friend was coming I told her no because she already had plans. My mom said: “But it’s my birthday.” I explained that it was also our friend’s birthday and that she had already committed to those plans. My mom kept insisting that I should invite her anyway. Despite me telling her this multiple times, my mom messaged my best friend directly and my friend politely declined. Later my mom called me and said she didn’t understand why my friend wouldn’t come. She kept talking about how much food they were making and how fun it would be. I finally got frustrated and said that it’s not that she doesn’t want to come, she already has plans. My mom got upset and said So I can’t invite the people I want? which had absolutely zero context in what I was saying so that’s when I snapped and said: “You’re not as important to these people’s lives as you think you are”

She immediately got very hurt and now she’s barely speaking to me and says I was unnecessarily cruel. The thing is I wasn’t trying to say she isn’t important, she is obviously very important to me!! But what I meant was that she seems unable to accept that other adults have their own lives and commitments and priorities that don’t revolve around her and that’s an issue that has been going (at least for me) for 28 years

Still I know what I said was harsh especially since it’s her birthday week. AITA?

Hi everyone!! Here’s the link to my original post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/s/MWVG2G3c78

First I wanted to clear up something because I think a few people misunderstood my original post. A lot of comments seemed to think I was considering asking my dad to give the records back or somehow taking back a gift. That’s not really what was happening, my dad owns a small record store and I help him out whenever I can so sometimes if I come across records that seem like a good deal, I’ll buy them and send them to him. He doesn’t pay me back and I don’t get a percentage when he sells them, I’m basically just helping my dad out with inventory so no I wasn’t trying to take a gift back from my dad haha he was completely aware of the situation and actually encouraged me to contact the seller btw, which is exactly what I did.

I messaged the guy and basically told him that after my dad looked through everything, there were a few records in the box that seemed to be worth more than either of us originally thought. The difference wasn’t life changing or anything but it was enough that I felt weird about it and wanted to make sure he knew. I told him that I wanted to give him the chance to look into it and we could figure something out if he felt that was fair. He was honestly pretty surprised that I even reached out. Apparently his father had been sick for years and had Alzheimer’s and because of that the records hadn’t really been touched or cared for in a long time. He said the box I bought had basically been sitting around collecting dust for years and he genuinely wasn’t sure what condition the records were in, which is part of why he priced them the way he did. He did know what records were in the box though, he just didn’t know whether they still had much value because they had been sitting untouched for so long.

Then he told me that apparently he has another box of records that he always assumed was the more valuable collection because they’re in much better condition. He’d been trying to sell those too but was having a hard time figuring out pricing and cataloging everything. At that point he asked if he could get my dad’s contact information so I gave him my dad’s number, gave my dad a heads up and they’ve been talking ever since. Funny enough my dad literally texted me today and told me that this guy apparently went to school with my uncle (my dad’s brother) who passed away over ten years ago, so that was a nice surprise!!

As for the records, they worked out an arrangement themselves. The seller didn’t want to sell the second collection outright because he wasn’t sure what everything was worth, and my dad obviously didn’t want to undervalue anything. So they agreed that my dad would help sell the records individually through the store. My dad will keep 60% and the seller will receive 40% of whatever sells. The seller said he’d rather do that than let the collection sit around indefinitely and he also told my dad something that honestly made me feel really good about reaching out. He said that if the records were going to leave the family anyway, he thinks his father would have preferred them ending up with someone who genuinely understands and loves records.

It turned into a really nice conversation, my dad may have made a new friend, and somehow we discovered that this guy knew my uncle years ago hahah Alsooo for some of the people in the comments who were absolutely convinced this man was going to sue me or accuse me of fraud, demand everything back or launch some kind of legal crusade over a box of dusty records….. I don’t really know what to tell you….. sometimes people are just decent

Anyway thank you to everyone who encouraged me to reach out. I’m really glad I did!!

TL;DR: I reached out to the seller and told him some of the records might be worth more than we originally thought. He appreciated the honesty and ended up connecting directly with my dad. They worked out a deal for another collection of records he was trying to sell and somehow we discovered he went to school with my late uncle.

So this is less of a “I did something stupid” and more of a “I did something unknowingly shady and now I can’t sleep”. Some context my dad (64M) went through a rough divorce about 5 years ago and lost a lot in the process. He’s doing way better now and recently turned his lifelong passion for vinyl into a small online record store. I’m 28F and whenever I can, I help him out like buying used records at thrift stores and flea markets that kind of thing.

Last week I spotted someone selling a box of used records on Facebook Marketplace. I knew what was inside of the box but I didn’t know how much it was actually worth it since I’m not an expert like my dad is and shipped it straight to my dad’s place because the guy seemed pretty solid.

So yeah about that….. Turns out the box had almost the entire Beatles discography, Queen, Michael Jackson, and apparently some pretty rare stuff my dad couldn’t even fully price on the spot. The seller was a young guy whose father had just passed away and was clearing out his things. He had no idea what he had and neither did I honestly but my dad sure did, and his first reaction was to ask me if I knew what was in there and took advantage of the guy. I didn’t obviously but that question has been living in my head rent free since.

I’m genuinely considering reaching back out to the seller and offering him more money. Not the full market value (my dad does need to make a profit and I definitely don’t have money for that) but something that feels fair and doesn’t make me feel like I robbed a grieving man. I just don’t want to be that person who capitalized on someone’s loss….. What would you do?

Edit: Just posted an update https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/s/JN3uLKBLQy

TL;DR: Bought a mystery box of records from a guy clearing out his late father’s stuff, turned out to be worth way more than I paid, and now I feel terrible about it and can’t decide whether to reach back out and offer him more money.

i feel kind of silly writing this, but i wanted to get it off my chest somewhere people might understand.

first i want to say that i think i have a pretty healthy relationship with kpop. i’ve never been someone who genuinely believes i know idols personally and i don’t think i’ve ever had the kind of parasocial attachment people usually talk about. at the end of the day they’re strangers and i’ve always known that.

but heeseung leaving enhypen affected me way more than i wanted it to. part of it is obvious he was my bias. actually he shared that spot with jungwon for me but he was always one of my bias. when everything first happened i was shocked and like a lot of people, i initially felt uncomfortable because it genuinely looked like he had been pushed out rather than leaving on his own terms. the truth is that none of us know what happened maybe we never will. and honestly i don’t think we’re entitled to know every detail, there are things that happen behind closed doors that fans simply aren’t meant to have access to and that’s okay.

what’s been harder for me isn’t even his departure itself, it’s what happened to the fandom afterward.

i never really liked engenes in general before all of this but it feels like everyone split into opposing sides overnight. people are constantly fighting constantly trying to prove they know the truth and constantly analyzing every word, every interaction, i have friends who like kpop too and suddenly i found myself surrounded by people speaking negatively about someone who had been my bias for years.

and it’s not even that people disagree with me, disagreement is normal, what bothers me is the hostility. every conversation feels aggressive now every statement gets turned into evidence every member’s words get dissected and interpreted in the worst possible way and honestly i’m exhausted. i know this might sound dramatic, but one thing that’s been difficult for me is realizing how little we actually know. i always understood that logically, but emotionally i still consumed content from a group that in my mind genuinely cared about each other. now there’s this possibility that things weren’t what they seemed and while i know that’s normal, it’s still unsettling, not because i think anyone lied to me but because it forces you to confront the reality that you really don’t know these people at all and somehow that realization hit me harder than i expected.

these days i find myself opening twitter and immediately wondering what the next discourse will be. what new rumor will appear what new comment section will make me feel worse and i don’t feel like i belong anywhere anymore. it feels like half the fandom hates him, the other half hates enhypen, and very few people are willing to sit with the fact that we simply don’t know enough to make the kinds of conclusions everyone is making.

i don’t want him back in the group and i don’t want to boycott anyone i don’t think i’m on a side i’m just sad. sad that something that used to be a hobby now feels stressful sad that listening to music sometimes hurts when it used to make me happy. sad that a community i felt comfortable in suddenly feels unwelcoming.

the thing that damaged my relationship with kpop wasn’t heeseung leaving but it was watching the people around me turn something we all loved into a battlefield.

i feel kind of silly writing this, but i wanted to get it off my chest somewhere people might understand.

first i want to say that i think i have a pretty healthy relationship with kpop. i’ve never been someone who genuinely believes i know idols personally and i don’t think i’ve ever had the kind of parasocial attachment people usually talk about. at the end of the day they’re strangers and i’ve always known that.

but heeseung leaving enhypen affected me way more than i wanted it to. part of it is obvious he was my bias. actually he shared that spot with jungwon for me but he was always one of my bias. when everything first happened i was shocked and like a lot of people, i initially felt uncomfortable because it genuinely looked like he had been pushed out rather than leaving on his own terms. the truth is that none of us know what happened maybe we never will. and honestly i don’t think we’re entitled to know every detail, there are things that happen behind closed doors that fans simply aren’t meant to have access to and that’s okay.

what’s been harder for me isn’t even his departure itself, it’s what happened to the fandom afterward.

i never really liked engenes in general before all of this but it feels like everyone split into opposing sides overnight. people are constantly fighting constantly trying to prove they know the truth and constantly analyzing every word, every interaction, i have friends who like kpop too and suddenly i found myself surrounded by people speaking negatively about someone who had been my bias for years.

and it’s not even that people disagree with me, disagreement is normal, what bothers me is the hostility. every conversation feels aggressive now every statement gets turned into evidence every member’s words get dissected and interpreted in the worst possible way and honestly i’m exhausted. i know this might sound dramatic, but one thing that’s been difficult for me is realizing how little we actually know. i always understood that logically, but emotionally i still consumed content from a group that in my mind genuinely cared about each other. now there’s this possibility that things weren’t what they seemed and while i know that’s normal, it’s still unsettling, not because i think anyone lied to me but because it forces you to confront the reality that you really don’t know these people at all and somehow that realization hit me harder than i expected.

these days i find myself opening twitter and immediately wondering what the next discourse will be. what new rumor will appear what new comment section will make me feel worse and i don’t feel like i belong anywhere anymore. it feels like half the fandom hates him, the other half hates enhypen, and very few people are willing to sit with the fact that we simply don’t know enough to make the kinds of conclusions everyone is making.

i don’t want him back in the group and i don’t want to boycott anyone i don’t think i’m on a side i’m just sad. sad that something that used to be a hobby now feels stressful sad that listening to music sometimes hurts when it used to make me happy. sad that a community i felt comfortable in suddenly feels unwelcoming.

the thing that damaged my relationship with kpop wasn’t heeseung leaving but it was watching the people around me turn something we all loved into a battlefield.