u/lilac_vibesss

Im 23, my girlfriend is 22, weve been together for two years and live about half an hour apart. Around the same time we started dating I got really into baking, kind of obsessively, and its honestly the only hobby Ive stuck with for more than a few months. I end up baking something new at least once a week, sometimes more, and the funny thing is I dont actually like eating sweet stuff that much, the part I love is the process.

My girlfriend, on the other hand, loves desserts. So pretty much from the start whatever I bake ends up at her place. She has tried every single thing Ive made over these two years and gives me proper notes and ratings on each one.

Last weekend she had me over for dinner and after we ate she handed me a scrapbook she had clearly been working on for ages. Every single bake Id ever made for her was in it, photographed, dated, with a paragraph she had written about how it tasted and what she remembered about the day she had it. She gave it to me after I dropped off the hundredth one earlier that week, and there was a long letter at the back about how proud she was of me and how much she loved me. I genuinely cried at her kitchen table.

I went home buzzing and showed it to my mum and my older sister, who I see most weekends. I expected them to find it sweet but they both went weirdly quiet, and then my sister started in about how thats a hundred things Ive baked for someone else and how many of those have I baked for them in two years, which is honestly maybe five. My mum joined in saying she hadnt realised I had been doing this so much without ever once thinking of her.

I tried to explain that my girlfriend is the one who actually loves sweets and that theyve never asked me to bake for them, but they kept circling back to the count and how that felt. By the time I left my mum was barely speaking to me, and my sister sent me a message later saying she hoped I understood why they were hurt and that they felt second to my girlfriend in something that should be a family thing.

I dont know what to do with this, I genuinely love baking and I love that my girlfriend made me feel seen for it, but I also dont want my mum sitting at home thinking I value her less because Ive been giving most of it to my girlfriend. AITA for not having baked more for them all this time?

ill keep this as short as i can. my dad passed away four years ago, he was a contractor and he left me his entire tool collection. a full professional setup he built over four decades, a lot of it pre 2000s when this stuff was made to last, plus a few pieces from his own dad. the whole thing is appraised at just over thirty thousand. i keep it all in a dedicated room in my basement.

my best friend and ive known each other since we were 18 and weve had keys to each others places for years. she knew the story of the tools and what they meant to me. a few months ago i had to fly out for a family medical thing for two weeks, so i asked her to stay and watch the dog. shes done it plenty of times.

i got home, dog fine, house normal, but the basement felt off the second i walked in. about 70 percent of the collection was gone. the big stuff was still there, cabinets and saws on stands, but every drawer in the rolling chest was empty. all the smaller hand tools, the vintage planes my granddad bought new in the 50s, the engraved set my dad got when he retired. just gone.

i asked her that evening, calm at first, thinking maybe shed moved things. she said shed sold most of it through an estate sale company her cousin works at. she said the room was depressing me, that i never used them, and that shed planned to surprise me with a trip for us. she had four thousand dollars cash on her counter when she told me. four thousand. for a collection appraised at thirty.

i told her to leave and i havent spoken to her since. that was three weeks ago.

ive got a lawyer, the appraisals, the inventory lists my dad and i put together a year before he passed, and security footage of the estate sale crew carrying things out over two days. my lawyer thinks i have a strong civil case and possibly a criminal one too, since she didnt own any of what she sold.

her family and our mutual friends keep saying she meant well, that suing her will destroy her financially and end a friendship thats lasted half my life. they keep saying its just stuff and my dad wouldnt have wanted me to lose her over stuff.

but those tools werent just stuff, and shes a 33 year old woman who knew exactly what she was doing. she just figured the surprise trip would be big enough that id forgive the rest.

AITA?

I worked as a freelance contractor for a company for about two years and in that time I was paid late more often than I was paid on time. Not slightly late, sometimes weeks late, and always with a different excuse. I kept going back because the work itself was good and I kept telling myself it would get better.

It did not get better and eventually I stopped taking work from them.

A few months after I stopped working with them I left an honest review on a professional platform. I was not angry when I wrote it, I just described my experience factually, including the payment issues. I did not think much of it at the time.

Recently someone from the company reached out and told me the review had been getting a lot of attention from people considering working with them and was affecting their ability to bring on new contractors. They asked me to take it down or at least edit out the payment stuff.

I did not rush to respond. I thought about it for a few days.

When I did respond I asked them how they planned to address the fact that I was paid late on almost every single invoice I ever sent them. They said they would look into making it right. I asked them for specifics. They did not have any.

I have not taken it down and I am thinking about leaving it up.

WIBTA?

My living situation with my dad has never been particularly warm. He has never really shown up for me and since moving in I have mostly been getting by on my own, covering my own costs and keeping out of everyone's way.

Last Saturday I had a day off and was just planning to be at home and relax.

My dad left early and his girlfriend came to find me and basically told me I was watching her kids for the next six hours because they had things on.

Nobody asked. Nobody checked whether I was free or even willing. She just started running me through the schedule like it was already decided.

I said no and walked out before she could say anything else.

I came back that evening and both of them were waiting and went straight into yelling at me about leaving the kids without a sitter. I pointed out that their mum had been home the whole time. They said that was not the point.

I told them it was exactly the point and that I would not be babysitting now or at any point in the future so they needed to make proper arrangements because I would walk out every single time.

Her sister then showed up specifically to tell me what a terrible person I was for ruining the girlfriend's plans. I packed a bag and left for the night.

AITA for refusing to be the backup plan nobody actually asked me to be?

there was a major life event coming up. one of those once only events. i had very clear ideas about how i wanted it to go and i made them known. more than once. more than twice. we had a whole conversation well before where i told him in plain words what i needed, what i was scared of, what i was asking him to do. he heard me. he agreed.

then in the actual lead up he started talking over me. dismissing my concerns. bringing in other people who agreed with him to pressure me. and somehow we ended up in the version he wanted.

i want to be specific about that. it wasnt that he won an argument and i conceded. it was that the version i had clearly said i did not want happened while i was saying i did not want it while it was happening to me.

it was one of the worst experiences of my life. i was scared the whole way through. i was alone in a room full of people treating my feelings like a tantrum. i cried for most of it. it went on longer than it should have. by the end i had nothing left.

afterward i told him how it felt. careful words. not yelling. his response was essentially that i needed to be stronger. that other people go through harder things. like i was being graded on my coping after he created the thing i was coping with.

ive told him a few times since that he ruined that for me. and i mean ruined. it happens once. his behavior is what i remember about it.

he rolls his eyes now when i bring it up.

a few days ago i told him that if anything similar ever happens again i am making my own decisions regardless of what he thinks. his response word for word was we will see.

i have been chewing on those three words for a week.

i love this person. but im eight weeks out and somehow angrier now than i was the day after. and his we will see is basically telling me he will do it again.

am i the asshole for not letting this go. or for thinking we will see was a sentence i could just keep walking past.

AITAH?