r/CharlotteDobreYouTube

I (F30) am European and honestly Eurovision has always been a pretty big deal for me and my friends. It’s not just a cheesy music contest it feels like this weird, energetic celebration where you get to see countries showing off their music and sometimes their politics in the most over the top way possible. You get drama, camp, and chaos and if you grew up here you somehow end up emotionally invested in the whole thing. So, this year was the Eurovision’s 70th final. We decided to get together at a friend’s house to watch the show, drink, play games and chatting before the show kicked off late. One of my friends brought this American guy (M25) which none of us knew him but whatever we are always open to meeting new people.

For some context: my English is fluent, but I do have an accent, which is normal because it’s not my first language. I’ve been around Americans a lot mostly through media and college. I’ve met plenty who are really chill but honestly there’s always that occasional type who just acts weird or patronizing about non Americans especially when someone has an accent and this fit right into that category.

Throughout the evening every time someone spoke English with an accent he’d pretend not to understand words that were honestly very clear and it felt like he was deliberately highlighting our accents. It was obvious he understood he just wanted to make a point I guess.When we tried explaining Eurovision and all the participating countries he started making these comments about how certain countries sounded fake because he’d never heard of them and kept saying things like: “Wait, that’s actually a real country?” and “There’s no way that exists.” But what really got under my skin was how dismissive he was about songs in languages other than English. As soon as a non English performance started, he would roll his eyes and say stuff like "Nobody can understand this right?" and "Why don’t they just sing in English?". Someone tried to explain to him that hearing songs in different languages is what makes Eurovision unique and he just said “If you want to win internationally, you have to use a language people actually speak”. The fact that he said this with a straight face while sitting in a room full of people speaking English as their second language to accommodate him and include him in their conversations was honestly ridiculous. At first we thought he was kidding, but he kept pushing all evening. Then conversation shifted to geography at sme point and someone asked him where he was from. Instead of just saying “the US” or “America” he gave his state name. Maybe it sounds petty, but I always feel it’s a bit arrogant when Americans assume we know every US state. So at this point after hours of him being condescending I figured I’d give him a taste of his own medicine.

Me: "Where’s that? Asia?"

He looked genuinely taken aback.

Him: "No the USA"

Me: "Oh ok where is that?"

Him: "The United States of America?"

Me: "Oh so the Americas. Like Canada and Mexico?”"

My friends were trying not to laugh at this point

Him: "No it’s THE United States. You seriously don’t know what the USA is?"

Me: "I’ve heard of Mexico, is it nearby?"

Him: "You have to be kidding"

Me: "No I just don’t know much about smaller countries outside of Europe"

He actually started getting worked up while I acted totally innocent

Him: "It’s one of the most powerful countries in the world"

Me: "Good for you guys. So how many Eurovision wins do you have?"

That line had my friends crying with laughter.

He launched into this rant about how "everyone knows America" and how insane it was I’d pretend not to. Eventually I came clean and told him I was just doing what he'd been doing to us all night when we talked about European countries. After that things got a little tense in the room. Some friends thought it was hilarious, but a couple said I went too far and embarrassed him in front of strangers.

So AITA for doing this? I know I could have just ignored him, but he really was being rude for hours and it felt good to rage bait an American for once.

First time posting on here but watched a lot of Charlotte's videos reacting to Reddit stories so thought this was a safe space to share, bare with me this might be long and rambling.

(My partner uses Reddit also so I will use fake names)

I (28F) and my partner we'll call Matt (30M) have been together for 1 year and 2 months now, a few months into our relationship my partner told me he was going to meet up with a friend we'll call this friend Sam (gender neutral and it'll make sense why soon)

I've never been the sort of girlfriend to stop partners seeing friends etc so I simply asked 'oh nice where are you meeting him', Sam was a name that had been brought up previously but not much info was shared on how Matt knew them, how long they'd been friends etc so I thought this was a good a time as any to find out more. My partner simply said 'just going to the pub for a few drinks', ok nothing seemed off with the response so I dug a little deeper genuinely interested in who this friend is so I proceeded to ask 'oh how long have you known Sam for is he a friend from uni?', then boom 'Sams a girl and I used to work with her', felt a little strange that I wasn't corrected about the misgendering a little sooner but didn't think much more of it, being the kind of woman I am though I took straight to social media to look a bit deeper into Sam, managed to find her Facebook which was mostly private but saw her profile picture was her with a man and kids (later find out they are her children and the father of her children) which definitely put my mind at ease because by all appearances she was in a relationship, I trust my partner Matt 100% but he is a very handsome man and I believe he's out of my league, anyway time goes on and he meets up with her, stayed in contact with me throughout and he had a pleasant time so that was the end of that, for some context he's not a close friend of Sam's but they do keep in touch, rarely meet up but when they do it's only a quick catch-up, every now and then she'd be brought up in conversation found out dribs and drabs of information and my partner told me she'd be interested in meeting me but that's as far as that conversation went, a few months go by and they've organised to meet up for coffee on a day I'm working, again no issues with him meeting her I was working, would have been nice for it to be arranged for me to come along but hey maybe another time, after that no more meetups I suggested inviting her to his birthday back in January and she came up with some excuse not to attend, roll on another few months, they've not spoken as much as usual but out of the blue he receives a message from her saying 'do you want to come to my house', Matt messaged me and asked my opinion on wether he should go and I said 'oh will her partner be there?' to which he replied 'she doesn't have a partner', at that point I was very confused, so his single female friend has invited him to her house on her own? Obviously did not sit right with me, so I asked a few more questions 'was there any lead up to the invite?', 'how long has she been single for? Things of that nature, Matt said there was no conversation that day before the invite and SHE'D BEEN SINGLE THE WHOLE TIME, I asked him if this was something he thought he should have told me sooner? His response 'Im loyal to you and have no interest in anyone else', so I put my foot down at this point obviously upset that a woman who knows my partner is in a relationship has invited him to her house alone and said no I'm not comfortable with this, he didn't see an issue with it until I had to repeatedly explain that was blatant disrespect to me on her behalf, he's admitted to me previously he can't see flirtatious remarks/moves so I wonder if she's gotten the wrong impression from him at some point or she's been making moves he's unaware of (my partner hasn't been in many relationships), so due to this I asked to see they're most recent messages to see if she's crossed a line or he's unknowingly said something that's come across as flirty and he responded with 'I feel like you asking to go through my messages means you don't trust me', instead he deleted her from social media and deactivated his account 'to have a break from mindless scrolling', it's all left a sour taste in my mouth,I've asked a few friends who have sided with me but it's still in the back of my head, did I overreact?

My brother “Jay” (45M) was completely in love with my best friend “Selena” (36F). For almost a year, he treated her kids like they were his own. He showed up for school events, helped with everyday things, and became the stable father figure those kids had been missing. Everyone around them thought they were building a future together.

Then, out of nowhere, everything blew up.

About two months ago, Selena admitted she had been cheating on Jay with one of her guy friends…you know, the “don’t worry about him” kind. While my brother was at work trying to provide and build a future with her, she told him she had become “lonely” and unhappy enough to sleep with someone else.

Jay was devastated.

The only thing that made the breakup easier was the fact they didn’t officially live together yet, even though they had been talking about finding a place. Selena often complained that Jay would never move or rehome some of his animals to get a nicer place, and she said she wanted someone around with her more at night.

Even after all of this, I still kept in contact with Selena because she had been there for me during one of the darkest times in my life after I lost a parent. Every few weeks, she’d message me or mutual friends asking how Jay was doing. But Jay wanted nothing to do with her after finding out she betrayed him.

Then came the part that honestly made me angry for my brother.

I found out the guy she cheated with “Charlie” had moved into her house almost immediately after the breakup. Yet Selena claimed she didn’t even really want a relationship with Charlie (or could’ve been the other way around). Apparently, they had just become “best friends.”

Fast forward a little while, and Selena suddenly started reaching out through family members asking Jay to call her because she “missed him.” My brother, being the good-hearted person he is, answered. The problem is… he still loves her. So now he’s trying to see if they can make things work again.

But here’s the issue: Charlie STILL lives there.

Jay has told Selena multiple times that there’s no way trust can be rebuilt while she’s living under the same roof as the man she cheated on him with. Selena refuses to ask Charlie to leave because “he has nowhere else to go.” Somehow she genuinely doesn’t understand why this would make my brother uncomfortable.

What makes it even more frustrating is Selena is the jealous type herself. She would absolutely lose her mind if Jay were living with one of his exes while claiming they were “just friends.”

As Jay’s sister, I’m trying hard not to overstep, but it’s painful watching him hold onto someone who seems unwilling to fully let go of the other guy. I care about Selena because she was once one of my closest friends, but at the end of the day, Jay is my brother, and I hate seeing him hurt all over again.

I told Selena that if she truly wants another chance with Jay, she needs to decide what she actually wants and stop keeping both men around.

Now I’m wondering if I crossed a line. Would I be the asshole if I told Selena to make up her mind or leave my brother alone?

Throwaway account because my husband knows my main.

My (25F) husband (29M) has a sister, “Lisa” (33F). My best friend of 20 years, “Alex” (25M), is married to my soul sister “Sam” (25F). Sam and I are extremely close — we call each other “wife,” have matching rings, and she’s genuinely my person. Sam originally brought Lisa into our friend group because she had no friends.

Last November 2025, at their housewarming party, Lisa got too drunk to drive, so Sam offered her their couch. The next day, Sam had to go visit her grandmother in hospice. She specifically asked Alex if anything would happen with Lisa. He promised nothing would. As soon as Sam left, they had sex on the futon outside to avoid the cameras.

Two weeks later, Sam discovered months of flirty messages where they were bragging about the sex, not using protection, etc. She confronted him that night and locked him out of their bedroom. The next day Sam told Alex he had to tell everyone. Alex waited until Tuesday to tell my husband, then made him sit with that knowledge for a full day before telling me five minutes before I started work on Wednesday. Both Alex and Lisa originally claimed it was just a “one-time drunken mistake.”

A few days later my husband and I took Sam to dinner. On the drive home she showed us the actual messages, revealing months of flirting. In those messages, you could clearly see a couple of times where Alex was trying to shut it down or pull away, and Lisa was the one who pulled him back into it. That’s why her later claim that she was “uncomfortable the whole time” makes no sense to me.
I immediately cut Lisa off.

There’s an 8-year age gap between them. We had seen them flirting but assumed it was just friendly like the rest of the group. My husband had even pulled Lisa aside once and reminded her, “There’s an eight-year difference between you and him.”

Alex started therapy shortly after and has been doing serious work on his trauma, anger issues, and need for validation. We’ve seen real progress.

Here’s where it gets suspicious:

In early January, Alex messaged Lisa once after a confusing New Year’s Eve encounter with Sam, asking for a woman’s perspective. She shut it down. He didn’t message her again until April.
• April 4th: Alex messages Lisa saying he misses their friendship and hopes she’s okay. No reply.
• April 8th: My husband posts a happy group photo of the four of us at the San Diego zoo.
• April 14th: Alex messages Lisa again. Still no reply.
• April 16th: Alex has a therapy session, tells his therapist about the messages, deletes the app, blocks Lisa on everything, and plans to tell Sam after her show.
• April 17th: While we’re at Disneyland celebrating our 7-year anniversary, Lisa messages my husband saying they need to talk.
• April 18th: The next day — and two days before Sam’s first musical performance in five years — Lisa has a two-and-a-half-hour conversation with my husband.

During that conversation, Lisa claimed she had been uncomfortable the entire time, that there were 5 or 6 additional kissing/makeout incidents that were never in any of the messages we saw, and some of her details didn’t match what we already know. She also acted hurt that no one had gotten “her side.”

My husband now mostly believes Lisa. I think the timing is incredibly calculated — she saw that Alex was happy in that group photo while she’s miserable and alone, and she doesn’t think he deserves to be happy after what he did. So she waited for the perfect moment to try and blow up his marriage.

AITA for believing she had malicious intent with when and how she chose to drop all of this?

I want to be clear: I am not defending Alex’s actions in any way. What he did was awful and inexcusable. My main issue is that he has been actively doing therapy, working through his trauma, and has shown real, consistent improvement, while Lisa has done absolutely nothing to better herself. She’s spent the last six months sitting at home feeling sorry for herself and posting vague attention-seeking things on Instagram and Facebook.

I (20F) and my bf (22M) have been together 2 years and 7 months. Lately we’ve been clashing a lot over what feels like a fundamental difference in how we view relationships.

For context, we met through work and then quickly found out we had the same friends. My friends told him how I was, they told me how he was, etc. I grew up very sheltered with strict parents, he grew up with full control of himself. (Parties, skipped school) Classic Bad boy and “Weird” Girl cliche. However, before we dated, i was quite serious about not being traditional and loving my independence. I believe a partner is there for companionship and love rather than providing and protection.

About 4 months ago, I moved away for school for the first time. My parents actually encouraged me to step out of my comfort zone, go out with friends, and experience things as long as I kept my priorities straight. I’ve done exactly that. I have a great group of friends, I go out occasionally, I respect my boundaries, and I’ve maintained a 3.9 GPA.

Recently, there was a fundraiser at a club (which I had never been to one before). It was supposed to be Justin Bieber throwbacks for charity, honestly just a fun, harmless experience because what sane girl will say no to peak JB? My boyfriend said he didn’t like the idea of me going, but I had already agreed and didn’t see anything wrong with it. We didn’t even stay long due to the DJ not playing JB as stated and ended up going back to our usual spots. But after that, things blew up.

He started talking about “wife behaviors” and said he wants a future wife who respects how he feels and adjusts accordingly. I told him I want a relationship like what I’ve seen growing up, where my mom would have girls’ nights without it being an issue. He shut that down and said no wife of his would be doing that.

What’s confusing is that I used to feel like he trusted me. Now it feels like that’s gone. He questions things like me going to the gym, and it feels like there’s always some suspicion. He also hates the idea that I want to be a doctor despite it being my dream since I can remember, and yes he has known about it. He wants a family as soon as possible. I want to wait, and we had talked about this before even becoming official. He doesn’t think we can have a family if I’m in med school. We had a miscarriage, and while that was hard, he talks more about the family we could’ve had because “I could’ve stayed home instead of going away for school.” He now wants a stay-at-home wife, but I don’t want that. No hate to those who do, but I have my own goals. He always talks about mutual submission, but isn’t mutual submission when it’s both people? I have never once stopped him from doing something or going anywhere, never got jealous about conversing with a girl, encouraged him when his coworkers and friends invited him out, even dropped him off and picked him up from a party. He, however, has never done the same.

Listen, I acknowledge his feelings, but I don’t think respecting someone means giving up your autonomy or changing who you are to fit their comfort zone. I feel like I’m being asked to shrink parts of myself to prove I care, and that doesn’t sit right with me. At the same time, I don’t want to dismiss his feelings or make him feel insecure. So now I’m stuck. I care about him, but I also don’t want a relationship where I feel controlled or like I have to earn trust by limiting my own life.

Am I the asshole for wanting to keep my independence even if it makes him uncomfortable? Or am I being selfish and not respecting my partner the way I should?

For context, my husband and I aren't poor, but we aren't "living high on the hog" either. My husband's hobby is motorcycles. He has a very nice one. He paid somewhere between 5 to 7 thousand for it initially. It was a great deal. It has required some work here and there. He recently had to pay 700 to have something repaired on it.

I've recently gotten into the tcg game; collecting cards. The whole purpose was to see if I could turn them into a profit to help pay bills. I can only work part-time at the moment because of family issues. I'm looking into better jobs that work around our needs.

The goal is to contribute and collect some cards I like on the side. I recently made my first big sale. Close to 100 for 1 card. 🎉

Now, onto the drama. I found a graded card on sale for a STEAL. About 25 dollars, including shipping. I could easily turn it into a 30 profit. It would also be something I'd personally like to have for my collection. I've been working hard, so I started to think I deserved it. (My mistake) Also, I could always sell it if we needed the money.

I start to bring it up to my husband. Before I even get out half of what I'm saying, he cuts me off and tells me I can't buy it because we have bills coming up. His tone upsets me because I just made a completely free 100 dollars. The card I sold has been in my collection since I was a kid, so it was totally unaccounted for money in the first place. I didn't even get to tell him how much the card that I was considering cost or the profit it could make. He just completely shut me down by saying, "Make money, sure. But it doesn't do us any good if you spend it."

Would I be the asshole if I asked him, "Can I not have a hobby? Even if I pay for it myself?"

Honestly, I've met some cool people, and I've had a lot of fun since I got involved in this. I haven't gotten to enjoy something like this that's mine in a long time. I don't have a lot of time for my own fun anymore. I have to squeeze this in as it is.

Meanwhile, he just went on a long ride to a cool place with a friend (gas is expensive, yall!), and bought some small, but also kind of expensivy souvenirs. He rides whenever he can. To work, to the grocery store, or just a short ride. Occasionally, he takes a long one like recently. I don't want to make him feel bad. He deserves it for how hard he works, but a part of me wants to ask, "Don't I deserve to have something too? It's not like I'm spending hundreds of dollars." (Hint. Hint.)

His bike is better on gas than our vehicles, so there's that. It can be practical, but I feel like if I have to do without, why does he get to have his hobby? What makes him more deserving than me?

Am I just thinking childishly, being selfish or plain stupid? Half of me feels stupid, but the other half is kind of mad. Is all this stuff I'm feeling justified or an overreaction?

I (30F) immigrated to the UK from Eastern Europe as a teenager (19) with absolutely nothing. I grew up in a struggling family, living in a small, overcrowded flat throughout my childhood—a living situation he later made nasty, disparaging comments about. My flat was small and I had to share the room until I move out, but it was always kept clean and tidy and was well looked after. To get to the UK, I worked crazy hours during my summer holidays just to save up enough money for a ticket. Once here, I worked low-level jobs, used my last savings for extra English classes (I knew English a bit, but it was super different to hear it in person comparing to school classes), and put myself through university. I was super determined to make it: during my BSc, I worked full-time (5 days a week) and studied full-time (3 full days of classes plus hitting the books every single night after work). I pushed through the exhaustion and scored high marks across both my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees.

I say all this because my ex used to constantly complain that he "never had opportunities" in life. Nothing was ever his fault. The reality? He was British, grew up with his own room, and had full, native access to the entire education system and job market. On top of that, he was 7 years older than me, meaning he had been in the workforce for a long time and had every opportunity to build a solid savings account. Instead, he chose to play incompetence. He literally claimed he didn't get an education because he "wanted his brother to have it"—which makes absolutely zero sense in the UK system and was just a ridiculous excuse to sound noble while doing nothing. He acted like a toddler who I constantly had to nag just to use deodorant and clean up after himself.

We were together for five years in total, and looking back, that guy was a walking red flag hiding behind a "Nice Guy" mask and I missed tej signs. He had a massive "Knight in Shining Armor" complex and was a total chameleon boyfriend—he completely changed his personality, hobbies, and values depending on who he was hanging out with or who he was dating just to be liked. We had been friends for years first, and he played the supportive, caring friend while I was trying to get out of a previous bad relationship. He desperately tried to play my "rescuer" at the time, but I completely shut that down, broke things off with my horrible ex on my own, and spent time alone to heal before we ever started dating. Because of this, he knew my entire history. As our relationship progressed and he saw that I was highly driven, successful, and didn't actually need a savior, his insecurity got worse. There was no vulnerability left for him to exploit to make himself feel superior, and his "good guy" act quickly deteriorated.

Two years into the relationship, we were living at his mother’s house (I moved during covid time). I was earning well working in recycling at the time, and I actually paid more towards her household bills than her own son was contributing. Despite this, his mother was incredibly overbearing and constantly criticised how I spent my money, something that was not her business at all. It was completely absurd—I was financially independent, had great savings, and was actively contributing to the house, while her 30-something son was undercontributing. Just to point I was in my mid twenties by that time.

It was during this time at his mom's that I caught him text-cheating and flirting with other girls on secret Instagram and Snapchat accounts. When confronted, he threw a massive pity party, cried, and promised change. I gave him another chance, but I naturally became bitter and stopped doing things like cooking for him or using pet names. I was also more snappy and moody with him, and of course pretty paranoid. It is not something I am proud of, but I also didn’t know how to cope with my feelings, being hurt and in an „enemy” (of course his mum was kind of on his side) territory, and didn’t have family or friends around to talk to.

Hoping a fresh start would fix things, we finally moved out into our own place. Instead, it just got worse. Not only did I have to push him to maintain basic hygiene, but I caught him hiding things again. I found saved pictures and messages with a woman he had been sexting behind my back.

Then, I found long FaceTime calls at odd hours to an old female "friend" of his while I was waiting in bed for him. He had deleted all the text messages between them, which made me even more suspicious. When confronted, he swore nothing was happening and mocked her to my face, saying he’d "never get with her" because she had four kids by three different dads. None of the women he sneaked around with had good jobs or were educated.

During the period leading up to our breakup, I was diagnosed with ASD. Even though I had known my entire life that I was different and the diagnosis explained so much, it was a lot to process. I had spent my whole life just wanting to be like everybody else, and on a subconscious level, the diagnosis initially made me feel emotional and inferior. It was a difficult time of learning about myself, and I desperately needed stability. Instead, my ex constantly created uncertainty, did random things without warning, and completely refused to communicate with me—even though he knew exactly how much it upset and triggered me.

To make matters worse, I had previously struggled with severe panic attacks following my past bad relationship. Even though I sat him down and explicitly explained exactly what anxiety attacks are, how they affect me, and what they mean, he would completely mock me during moments of distress, rolling his eyes and sneering that I was just "panicking." He deliberately twisted my reactions, minimized my mental health, and actively weaponised my anxiety and my diagnosis against me which is one of many strange things he would do.

Towards the end of our relationahip I was writing my Master's thesis while already working in a good, but highly emotionally demanding job within the justice system. I was completely running on fumes, completely exhausted, and my anxiety was through the roof. I was emotionally checked out of the relationship but subconsciously "stalling" the breakup because my brain simply couldn't handle the thought of moving out and looking for new place on top of everything else. During this final stretch, his behavior became absurd and just ridiculous. He claimed I was "starving him" if I made a dinner where he didn't like a single side dish (even though the fridge was full), and started to listen to red pill content and would talk about frequencies and universe fate.

To top it all off, we had an agreement where I paid the rent, and he was supposed to cover groceries and utilities. When I finally insisted on looking at the numbers as things were not adding up and setting up spreadsheets to split everything right down the middle, the truth came out: his share was costing him significantly less than mine. He had been shortchanging me by £300 to £400 a month, which is a lot.

His mother magically stopped talking about my bank account and shifted to nitpicking our home. I love painting and creating things, and I would occasionally leave my art supplies out while working. I am a total clean freak on the verge of OCD—I scrub the house down every few days, genuinely go crazy if things are dirty, and absolutely detest clutter. Yet, his mother would come over, criticise how I was decorating the house, and passive-aggressively claim that we were going to "live in a total mess" just because of a few paint tubes. Slowly he was creeping back to his mom's house for "sleepovers" just to see the FaceTime girl anyway. He finally dumped me—a stable, loyal, deeply committed person—to chase a new lady in distress. After five years, it was finally over.

The Petty Revenge and The Glorious Karma:

Since I couldn't stand the sight of him and wanted him out, I volunteered to pack his things. I deliberately packed his moving boxes incredibly heavy—mixing dense items so they were absolute backbreakers. He had to painfully lug them out and repack half of them just to move. I also used his boxes as a trash chute to get rid of random junk I didn’t want to deal with discarding myself. Win-win.

Literally seconds after moving out, he ran straight to that exact FaceTime girl he had just mocked (of course, after claiming I had nothing to worry about). She had a toxic ex, a history of cheating, and no real stability, so my ex immediately shifted into a new chameleon persona to play her "knight in shining armor." He even used her drama to avoid his own responsibilities. He would pick conversations with me about the FaceTime girl and her kids, using them as pathetic excuses for why he couldn't come over and help clean the house we had to vacate, or why he failed to pick up his moving boxes on time. He told me he had to stay at her house because her ex was causing chaos. Of course, because she was a known cheater, he never actually trusted her and it came with extra issues.

I also moved on (pretty fast, which I know is not always good) and met an incredible man, but I waited to post any pictures of us. Right around the time his new "affair partner" dumped my ex after a whopping three ish months for another guy, I finally posted a picture with my new partner. My ex immediately blocked me out of spite, despite spending weeks trying to creep on my updates. I heard from mutual connections that he then went on a year-long social media spiral of sad, victim-mentality posts mourning her betrayal.

During those short three months they were together, she constantly posted Facebook photos showcasing an absolute disaster zone of household clutter in the background. She even made a public post praising my ex for staying up late at night to clean up her mess (I know, I was just petty snoopy lol). The ultimate cosmic joke is that for a guy who couldn't even bother to spray deodorant or pick up his own trash when he lived with a literal clean freak, he was reduced to a midnight maid just to survive the hoarding environment he landed himself in. I'm sure his mother was absolutely thrilled with the view.

Today, he is in a deeply rocky, miserable relationship with a new woman (I hear gossips here and there). True to form, he found her while she was literally engaged to another man and completely homewrecked her relationship just so he could morph into a savior role again. Irony of ironies: she also has multiple kids with different fathers, works a low-level job with no higher education, and because of how they started, they are both completely paranoid that the other is cheating on them. They have zero trust, a toxic environment, and an incredibly unstable life.

Meanwhile, my life is a literal dream. I am now so glad I got my diagnosis because it allowed me to put proper boundaries in place and structure my life to be completely ASD-friendly, which has been amazing for my emotional well-being. My partner is incredibly supportive, close to my age (!), helps keep our routines perfectly in place, and ensures I function at my absolute best.

He is educated, incredibly ambitious, and works in law enforcement, while I work in the justice system. I just landed a big job upgrade, which is both scary and exciting. We rent a beautiful, big house in a great neighborhood, have two dogs, and are completely financially stable and equitable. We have a total open-phone policy (something my partner brought up to make me feel secure after my last relationship), but we never even feel the need to check because the trust is there. He treats me like a treasure, protects me from any family drama, cooks for us, and supports my dreams. We are great friends and are planning to get married within the next few years and possibly start a family, something I never considered before.

Sometimes, losing a loser is the biggest upgrade you’ll ever get. Looking at where we both ended up, my only regret is not leaving sooner and letting an Ahole like that make me feel insecure and worthless. However, if I had to go through all of this again just to be where I am now, I would 1000 times.

So this actually happened a couple of years ago but I’m finally ready to share and it’s WILD

I 30F have 2 children (F&M) with my husband (30M), both under 5 at the time this happened. Specifically our youngest was under 1, I was in the final year of my degree - which may I add I smashed through despite young children, pregnancy and birth - and it was the year I was graduating, an immensely proud moment for me. My kids had a good relationship with my parents, they had them regularly, we had some teething issues with my son because there was some overt favouritism to our eldest that we addressed, this is an important factor to this story.

Another important fact to note, before I was pregnant with our youngest my folks had told us they were getting IVF but they’d failed some necessary tests, not getting into that but they were refused it in the country we live in as a result by the clinic, at the point this happened THEY WERE TOO OLD TO GET IT DONE HERE! Now I already have a sister who’s a couple years younger than me so it’s not like they didn’t already have kids and when they told me I was understandably furious about the whole thing mainly because what are their plans when they are inevitably too old to look after a child (one over 60, the other late 50s) but it all went quiet and my husband, sister and I naively believed it was all put to rest. We were so so wrong.

Their treatment of me during my second pregnancy was honestly awful, I was told to lift my shirt when I was around 10 weeks along after a colleague commented I looked like I had a small cute bump showing and their response was to have me turn around and say “well I see no difference” and dismiss me from the room. We’d gone away with them when I was past halfway and I was napping while hubby and eldest were out playing and was woken up to being screamed at, told to “fuck off” and called a whole host of names I won’t put here. The reason? Hubby had taken eldest swimming in the pool and they wanted to be there to see the first time 🙃 this was the THIRD pool of this holiday (we moved around to a few places) and they’d been out for 4 hours when they’d said 1, try keeping a toddler cooped up that long when they don’t need to be. These are just some of the worst examples.

Two weeks before my graduation, I had the tickets for my parents, sister and husband, childcare sorted etc. My husband is working and my folks ask to meet, nothing abnormal there. We go to a cafe, I’m there with the kids and they drop the bombshell “WE’RE PREGNANT”…tumble weeds. My shocked butt is just like “congrats I guess how far along?” 14 weeks - 14 WEEKS 🙃 fury was building, and I’m flabbergasted, they had travelled to a Baltic state to get it done, I thought they’d just gone on holiday, I quickly run to call hubby who thinks I’m having him on before he realised I was crying.

I somehow leave with the kids and they think all is okay, I kind of blasted them on our group chat and they call to ask to have a conversation. Hubby comes as mediator though he is just as angry and upset over the whole thing, however, much better at keeping a level head. There’s a lot that happens in this conversation but the second I say I am disgusted by what they’ve done, mainly because I could not fathom doing it to my own children, mother runs away and proceeds to call my sister. Nothing is resolved because how can it be? But that pone call she made accused me of causing her so much stress she’d have a miscarriage 🙃 purely because I thought what they’d done was disgusting and selfish now my reasons for this:

1. They believe they’ll be fine and won’t ever need anyone to take the child so therefore have no plans in place for this. It’s something even my husband and I have in place but it’s obviously more likely for them.
2. They wanted to lie to my kids about the relation and say the baby was a cousin, absolutely not. Zero consideration on long term impact for them with that narrative.
3. There was zero consideration on the impact of our (hubby, sister and mine) decisions going forward because even if they were naive enough to believe everything would be fine we were realistic.
4. No consideration for the child who may have to watch their parents die at a young age or the medical issues that may arise from their ages.

Safe to say it completely ruined my graduation experience, I nearly revoked their tickets but decided not to, however, she just complained about how hard pregnancy was, ya don’t say. The timing of them telling us felt very significant because they knew how I felt and they still went ahead and told me before I graduated, something I had worked incredibly hard for and made about them it completely dampened the day for me, my sister being who she is did her best as did hubby but I struggled to enjoy it as much as I should have. We left with minimal celebration.

We minimised contact with our children because we honestly no longer trusted their decision making and we no longer felt comfortable letting them have them without supervision, we didn’t know how to address this with the kids and we needed to decide how to manage that without them running their own narrative behind our backs.

Unfortunately baby’s birth was incredibly complicated, mum had to remain under 24/hr monitoring for a week after, baby needed surgery asap to build something that hadn’t formed and will need ongoing surgeries for the rest of his life to manage it. I hold no resentment for the baby, I live him like my own not as a brother, I no longer see my parents as parents, though I’m not sure what now. I get calls asking for advice which is ridiculous really.

On a more positive note they really understand boundaries now, they’ve earned back access to the kids because I don’t want to take away from my children unnecessarily and the initial concerns about narrative are gone now. I can’t really fault them as grandparents, as parent yes, but grandparents not really. My relationship with them will never be the same and quite frankly I don’t want it to because they’ve destroyed trust in a way I never believed possible. Honestly hubby and myself have felt for a while they’re constantly competing with us, which is so stupid, but any win typically gets “well we’ve done this blah blah blah”.

So yes this is my ridiculous story, my best friend makes the joke that my life is a soap opera that she would honestly watch on TV with how ridiculously dramatic it is. For those reading, don’t be them, you’ll wreck the relationships with your current children, we are too forgiving I think because many I know say they would have gone scorched earth, I’d be interested in your thoughts about this and what you would have done!

I think I need to add some clarifying points after confusion in the comments:

- They were always allowed access whenever they wished but after pushing for a false narrative and the previous point about one of my kids being favoured over another they weren’t trusted to be around them alone until these were addressed, I won’t allow anyone I don’t trust around our kids. With standing respect for our boundaries, their treatment of me and my son improving has allowed them their access back.

- The health conditions he has were as a result of the age of my mother this was an area of tension before he was born because I knew it was likely but they refused to accept it, they also have continued to refuse that’s why when we were told by medical professionals.

- Although their “we wouldn’t expect that from you” sounds lovely, the reality is our family is incredibly small. No one else could take him, the other alternative is care which they knew we’d never let happen. So although they said that the reality is they knew it would fall on us, they didn’t care about our lives in this. Our decisions since have had to always take this into account.

- I stated about the way they’ve treated me so that you understand what his life will likely look like, we’ve remained very prominent in his life so that he will always have a safe place to land.

- My concerns about the future are incredibly valid and this is something I should have mentioned but no woman on my mothers side has lived past mid 60s due to a hereditary condition, my concerns about his life and whether they will be around are valid and based in fact.

- They have the belief they’ll never die, they’ll never get sick, despite the fact they’ve had multiple scares since and haven’t put anything in place for him. The competing part comes from them knowing we were buying a house, they chose to buy one that was bigger and needed significant work because “well you are” they’ll be mortgaged till they’re nearly 80. The house didn’t have a functioning bathroom or kitchen, the bathroom was finished about a month ago, the kitchen hasn’t had any work done yet but somewhat functions with a microwave and a sink with an air fryer too. They haven’t ever really been happy with us having kids because it ruined “their plans” with having him which is another difficult thing to deal with when you’re in that position for us. We were expected to put our lives on hold.

I realise now I should have added these clarifying points before it occurred to me after some confusion.

So I (18F at the time, now 19) had a best friend we will call Clarissa (17F at the time, now 18). We met at church and instantly hit it off. We hung out all the time, and she was seriously the best friend I had always looked for. I loved spending time with her.

We were friends for about a year, and during that time she had been in and out of many relationships. Eventually, she admitted to me that she liked my brother. I know most people wouldn’t like the idea of their best friend and brother dating, but honestly I was so happy at the thought of her potentially becoming my sister-in-law, because we already did everything together.

I kept it a secret for a while, and eventually my brother expressed interest in her to me as well. She is about a year older than my brother for context. Once I put the pieces together, I basically played Cupid and told him she also liked him. Once he knew, he expressed his interest to her.

Now, Clarissa was a very messy person because of her family life, at least from what she always told me, and I felt horrible for her. She kept jumping between being serious about my brother and not being serious about him. He, on the other hand, was completely head over heels in love with her. She is extremely pretty, very nice, and very outgoing.

Eventually, she got more serious about him. The three of us started hanging out everywhere. He even started coming on our shopping trips and everything, and I was okay with it because it helped me grow closer to my brother.

And this is where things get interesting, and honestly confusing.

I went to lunch with her and another friend, and she said she had “tea” and seemed really excited. She told me she had been on Omegle and had canoodled on the phone with another guy, if you know what I mean.

I was in complete shock and didn’t really know how to react. The strange part was that she seemed happy about it.

I kept the peace and, for some reason, continued the friendship. Like I said, she was an amazing friend, but you did NOT want to get on her bad side. She absolutely loved drama. I hate drama and didn’t want any, so I didn’t say anything directly to her.

I called my boyfriend because I wasn’t sure what to do, and he told me I needed to tell my brother. So that’s exactly what I did.

As you can imagine, that ripped that relationship apart. The next day I got a very angry call from Clarissa saying I shouldn’t have told him and that I was a horrible friend. She eventually calmed down, and we continued being friends.

I stayed her friend because I genuinely saw the good in her and felt so bad for her and her family situation. For context, she is adopted, and her biological mother was allegedly very horrible to her and even stalking her, as she had told me.

But this is not where the story ends.

She continued in and out of relationships and eventually met a sweet guy we will call Bob. Her and Bob hit it off immediately. He was kind, made a lot of money, and overall seemed like a very good guy for her. I even tagged along sometimes, and it genuinely seemed like she had met her match after all the “bad” guys she had been with.

One night I came over and spent the night at her house. Earlier that day, I had some drama with my boyfriend, so I was crying and venting to her. I really needed someone, and she was there for me. Normally I was always the one there for her, so this was different for me.

Later that night, she said, “I need to tell you something, but I’m scared you won’t approve.”

I told her, “I will never judge you. You know that. What’s up?”

She hesitated and then said, “I’ve been cheating on Bob for a month with Joe.”

I was completely in disbelief. I really thought she had changed, but it all started to make sense. She was wearing a necklace with a “J” on it, and when I had asked her about it before, she said it was for Bob’s last name.

But this wasn’t even the worst part.

She continued, “He’s 24, he’s like a real man, he’s so sweet, I love him, and he’s divorcing his wife.”

All I could say, from shock and exhaustion, was, “You need to tell Bob.”

She kept saying she would, but she never did.

Eventually, I convinced her to at least break up with him, which she reluctantly did. Even after that, she stayed friends with him, and I knew her well enough to know she would probably try to get back with him.

The breakup itself honestly disturbed me. She fake cried on the call, and right after she hung up, she laughed and said, “I’m such a good actor.”

That was the moment I realized I couldn’t keep excusing everything anymore.

I ended the friendship.

And it was like I had awakened a dragon. She completely showed her true colors.

I eventually told Bob the truth because I knew she never would. He wasn’t happy, but he also wasn’t shocked, and he thanked me for telling him.

And this is not where the story ends.

Six months later, I had moved to a different state to be closer to my boyfriend, and I had no contact with her. Then one day at work, I got a Facebook Messenger DM from her.

It was Clarissa apologizing and asking to be friends again.

I didn’t fully trust her, but I do believe in second chances, so I slowly let her back into my life.

She told me she had broken up with Joe because he was abusive, yelled at her, snuck into her house, and controlled her. She said she felt trapped and scared, and I felt horrible for her.

Eventually, things started to feel normal again. I even saw her when I visited home, and everything seemed fine.

Then one day while we were shopping and getting our nails done, she said she had news.

I asked her what it was.

She said, “I’m talking to Joe again. Don’t freak out. I believe people can change, and he’s been to therapy. He’s different now.”

I was shocked, but I just told her, “Please be safe and take things slow.”

A month later, she called me excited saying she had big news and needed me to call her.

So I did.

She told me she was engaged to him.

For context, she was 18, still living with her parents, and they didn’t even know.

I congratulated her, but after that everything changed again. Every time we talked, she was doing drugs or talking about her relationship in detail, even though I had boundaries and didn’t want those conversations.

On top of that, she constantly tried to convince me to leave my boyfriend whenever I had even small issues, and she would talk badly about him.

Eventually, I realized we were on completely different paths in life.

So I told her, in a kind way, that I didn’t think we should be friends anymore because we were going in different directions.

And once again, the dragon came out.

She told me I was no better than her, that she had no choice in what she did, and that she couldn’t help how she was raised.

I told her she needed to take accountability instead of always playing the victim.

She said, “I’m not playing the victim. I am the victim.”

She also told me I was her only friend and that I was abandoning her during the worst time in her life.

Classic manipulation.

I ended the friendship.

A month later, I found out on Instagram that she and Joe had gotten married after only being engaged for a month.

Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t last, but that’s no longer my problem.

Looking back, I realize there were always red flags. Even while in relationships, she would flirt with other guys on purpose and call them attractive just for attention.

Throwaway for reasons that will become obvious.

I (45F) exposed my husband’s friend without anyone knowing it was me.

When we were newly married, in our early 30s with one baby and one toddler, I worked part-time as a waitress to earn my own money and bring in a little extra for the family.

My husband had been friends with this guy since high school. I was never particularly keen on him. He lied constantly, my husband would eventually find out and confront him, and then somehow everything would go back to normal again.

I spoke to my husband about it many times — more in a “keep your eyes open and be careful” kind of way. We’ve always been very open with each other and respected each other’s friendships and personal space.

This guy — we’ll call him “Robert” — was married with a 2- or 3-year-old son. He and his wife, “Joan,” got married after finding out she was pregnant. It was very much a “religious family, had to get married” situation.

They were struggling financially. They had massive debt, and he kept convincing her to take on more debt to help with the existing debt. They were drowning.

She worked full-time and also started waitressing part-time with me to earn extra money. While she worked, Robert would sometimes watch their son, but most of the time he’d get a babysitter and go out with “the boys” or play poker for money.

Their marriage was struggling, but she was genuinely trying to make it work.

One day while I was driving us to work, Joan mentioned that things were finally going well between them. She said they were working through their issues and their marriage was in a good place.

Then she told me Robert had suggested they get divorced so they could separate their debt. The plan was to put all the debt in his name, clear her credit record, and then eventually remarry and “start fresh.”

Alarm bells immediately went off for me. It sounded like a terrible idea. I voiced my concerns, but apparently they had it “all figured out.”

That evening I mentioned it to my husband, and he told me something weird had happened at the pub.

Robert had brought another woman with him.

He told everyone that he and Joan were getting divorced and were only still living together temporarily for the sake of their son.

I was floored.

I told my husband he needed to confront Robert and that I was going to tell Joan.

The next day, my husband said he didn’t want to get involved. He has childhood trauma related to cheating and conflict, and he just wanted no part of it.

I argued that this wasn’t fair to Joan. He was making a complete fool of her.

We discussed it for days. I told him that, to me, staying silent felt dangerously close to condoning it. He said we already had two small children and enough stress in our lives, and he didn’t want to bring more drama into it.

In the end, after many conversations about why this was so triggering for me — I had previously been cheated on repeatedly while mutual friends stayed silent — I agreed to respect his decision.

I still felt awful about it.

Joan and I weren’t friends. Honestly, I could barely tolerate her. But nobody deserved this.

The following weekend at work, Joan casually mentioned how they had dropped their son off with one of Robert’s colleagues overnight so they could spend time together.

Yes. You guessed it.

The colleague was the mistress.

I felt physically ill.

The entire shift, I felt like the worst person alive. I went home and told my husband again that we had to say something. He begged me to leave it alone.

I agreed.

For about five minutes.

That week I called my best friend and told her I couldn’t live with this anymore. It was eating me alive.

So I created a throwaway email address.

My friend helped me write an anonymous email to Joan, pretending to be another colleague who had witnessed what was happening and felt she deserved to know. We intentionally made it sound like a nosy older woman who inserted herself into everyone’s business.

And then I sent it.

Two days later, absolute chaos erupted.

My husband showed me messages from “Robert” asking all his friends who knew about the affair.

Except it wasn’t Robert.

It was Joan pretending to be him so she could find out who had known and kept quiet.

My husband got caught directly in the fallout. After a few messages, she absolutely tore into him for knowing and saying nothing.

Honestly, I couldn’t even blame her.

I did feel bad for my husband, but I also told him I understood exactly why she was furious because I knew how much that kind of betrayal hurts.

Even he admitted afterward that we probably should have told her.

About two weeks later, Joan filled me in on what had actually happened after receiving the email.

Once she knew, a lot of small things suddenly made sense to her. Robert had become extremely protective of his phone, constantly texting someone, sleeping with his phone under his pillow, and acting suspicious in general.

That night, she made supper, slipped a sleeping tablet into his drink, and waited.

When he finally fell asleep, she went through his phone.

What she found was horrifying.

The mistress had also been told that Robert and Joan were already separating. The phone was full of explicit messages, photos, and videos.

Joan called her brother, and while Robert slept, they packed up all his belongings.

Early the next morning, she woke him up and told him she knew everything and that he needed to leave.

He tried to grab his phone, but she refused to give it back because the contract was in her name.

After he left, she used his phone to message his friends and find out who knew what.

The divorce happened quickly.

Robert acted like nothing had happened. At one point he even brought the mistress and her children to my house for a visit.

I took one look at the situation, picked up my baby, and stayed in the bedroom. There was absolutely no way I was making polite conversation with that woman.

Their relationship didn’t last very long anyway.

The following year, Joan met another man at work. At first they just talked about the divorce drama, then about life in general, and eventually they fell in love.

She later fell pregnant, and although they initially weren’t planning to marry, she realized this relationship was completely different. She loved him and wanted to marry him.

They’re still together and very happy.

And the little boy caught in the middle of all of this?

Robert barely paid maintenance, constantly missed visitation, and by the time the child was around 10 years old, he told his mother he was done trying because his father clearly wasn’t interested.

Thankfully, he has a new dad now — one who genuinely loves him.

And my husband will never know how I exposed his 'friend'. And they are not friends anymore.

Hi Charlotte and all the glorious sassy potatoes here. I’m a long-time follower and thought I’d post as I am needing some advice. I apologize now as this is a long one due to back story.

On NYE 2025 heading into 2026 my fiancé(M29) and I(F36) found out we were pregnant with our first, we are very excited (due mid September). To say the least the first trimester was a tad bit of a roller coaster, I was pretty sick throughout. Come week 15 and I finally started feeling myself, woohoo! I work very casually and was planning on jumping back into more work this year, however this very much halted that. Luckily my fiancé has a great stable job.

We are very private people, and I am very adamant on keeping my peace throughout this journey. We told his family and some very close friends in February. However, I have not told ANY of my family.

I grew up without a father, just a mother (21 when she had me), I was an accident and also felt like one, she also never had any more children. I didn’t have the best relationship with my mother, and this has consistently deteriorated as time goes on. I strongly stand by the fact my Gran raised me. I also wonder if my gran is the only reason I'm here, as it's pretty clear that my mum wasn't meant to be a mum. Now we weren’t a conventional family growing up so our household consisted of my Gran and her 3 children: my uncle, aunt and my mother being her youngest. My mother worked during my entire childhood through till about my early teens. Late primary school my mother met her partner and shortly after my gran kicked my mother and I out as she was spending all her time with him and none with me, gran thought this would fix this, spoiler alert it didn’t. During this time, I rebelled a lot and developed a not-so-great coping mechanism. My mother and her partner would travel up and down the coast a bit in either a bus or caravan whatever they had at the time, but they would always leave me behind even when I’d say I wanted to go with them. My mother and I would fight quiet a lot, and she said some things that in all honestly, I can’t forget and sometimes also relating to my coping mechanism. I ended up running away from home and living back with my Gran. After this they officially left to go out west. Safe to say we didn’t communicate much during this. I officially left home/my grans at 18.

Once I hit my late teens to 20s it came very apparent my mother kind of just used me for things when she needed. To say it nicely the first ever holiday I had with my mum was in my early 20s when we travelled to spread her late partners ashes… since his passing she got worse in general and moved back to my grans. I believe she needed therapy but that never happened. Once my mother’s best friend had kids, she would constantly be involved with them and doing things for them especially once her best friend and her husband divorced. She has a habit of making everyone else’s problems hers and injecting herself into things she doesn’t need to be involved in. She also over shares things that isn’t hers to share. Safe to say that besides the fact that she is my mother she is not the type of person I wish to associate with. My gran sees this, but I do keep the peace with my mother for my gran’s sake.

I moved from my hometown roughly 7 years ago now and met my amazing fiancé. He is the most supportive and beautiful person. Last year my gran and mum came for a visit and stayed with us. During the visit my mother stayed with us exclusively, but my gran did go see other family. During that time my mother managed to piss both myself and fiancé off in our own home. She was super lazy the whole time, when I took her out, she embarrassed me, my fiancés brother came over briefly and she just sat on the couch and barely acknowledged him (this was the first time meeting him), honestly the list goes on. She also has a habit of calling me angel, baby, child etc. like wtf? I am a 36-yr old woman. I feel like she is now trying to be a parent but as far as I am concerned, she is at least 20 yrs too late. She also makes comments like how are my puppies (we have 2 dogs a 16yr old and a 1 yr old). Girl they aren’t yours, only ever enforced bad habits and used to over feed the 16-yr old when we lived in the same town. She can very much be a Karen, seem overly entitled and has a bit of a victim mentality.

I suppose what I’m thinking is at the end of the day she was just never a mother to me and I really don’t want to deal with her bullshit during my pregnancy, nor have her inserting herself into it or telling people that really don’t need to know. I can just see her being too much and overstepping boundaries. The only thing is because my mother lives with my gran, it also means that if I tell my gran my mother will find out and it really hurts me because my gran means so much to me. I honestly don’t really know how to feel as this will also be my grans first and only great grandchild. Part of me just wants to be like, surprise look what we made, after baby girl arrives. Has anyone else been in a similar situation, any advice would be appreciated. AITA?

So I (middle school) used to be friends with two girls, Bella and Kaylee. At one sleepover at my house, we were messing around and because Bella does wrestling, things got kind of physical. They made me hang from a bar as a “penalty” game, and then they pantsed me in front of everyone. It was really embarrassing and I wasn’t wearing underwear because I was getting ready for bed.

At another sleepover at Bella’s house, they kept making rude comments and joking at my expense. I started crying and told them they were hurting my feelings, but instead of stopping, they laughed and kept going. I ended up sleeping alone on the couch while they stayed together.

The next morning I acted like everything was fine because I didn’t want drama or to involve my parents.

After that I stopped being friends with them and went back to my old friend group. Later, Bella and Kaylee told people not to be friends with me and said I was talking badly about them. Eventually, I ended up kind of pretending everything was okay just to avoid more drama.

Then one day they called me and accused me of things like “choking” them during joking around, which I don’t think is true. They also called me names like “psycho” and “satanic.”

Now they act like we’re friends again, but I don’t really trust them anymore and plan to distance myself in middle school.

The issue is that Bella keeps bringing up the underwear thing and making fun of me for it, so I wanted to repost a TikTok saying it’s actually normal and fine not to wear underwear to bed.

Would I be the AH for posting that, or should I just leave it alone?

I, (43)M live in England for more than 10 years now, where I have set up my life with a successful business and a man that I am going to marry soon. I consider myself quite wealthy and I know I worked hard for it.

My sister and her husband live back in my country of origin and have two teenage kids, (16)M and (14)F. I love these kids like I would do my own but I do not get along with my sister and her husband as they do not approve of the “immoral” life that I “chose” to live. This is one of the reasons I decided to get away from my little conservative town and find a better life abroad. So, I hadn’t spoken with my sister for more than 5 years.

My sister’s husband had a brother that lived in the apartment just above my sister's. Unfortunately, that brother and his wife recently had a deadly car accident from which they both did not make it. They left behind two young boys of 8 and 7 years old.

My sister and her husband are the only relatives left to these kids as there are no grandparents or other uncles or aunts to them. The kids went through the local social services checks in order for them to be adopted by my sister. Unfortunately, her and her husband were disqualified as they live in a very small place that they rent and they financially struggle. Plus my brother in law has personal mental health issues. So the other option is for these kids to go to foster families.

Mind you that when I finally spoke with my sister a few years ago I offered to help them financially and even buy for them a better place, if not for them, for their children. They rejected my offer in the most rude way as they specifically said they don’t need my “f****t money” and they don’t want my nephew and my niece to have anything to do with me. Nevertheless, without my sister’s knowledge I have opened trust funds for both of them that they will have access to when they are 30.

Back to the main story now, I was approached by my sister and was asked to adopt the two kids as I am the only one left (!). Allow me to make something clear. I do not consider myself a children’s person. I feel very uncomfortable around children and having thought about it I do not think I am what one would call parent material. I have a certain lifestyle and mentality that would never allow me to pay proper attention to raising children. In the end I feel that it is my right to just don’t want to. Plus, I travel a lot for work and the little time that I have back home I spend with my partner. When I spoke with the social services lady, she also told me that the children have to stay in my home country as they need to be monitored. I live in a different country 2000 miles away.

I refused but even offered to help my sister financially in order for them to qualify and adopt the kids and even contribute to their welfare by covering any necessary expenses until they reach 18.  Well, I got more or less the same answer as I got in the past. So that brings the kids to the foster care system.

My sister and her very angry husband told my that I’m being selfish, that I have no heart and that I should be ashamed watching all this from my “high throne”…oh! and that god has a special place in hell for my kind. They also had a couple of their friends send me messages telling me what a c**t I am.

I do feel sorry for these kids but I don’t feel that they are my responsibility at all. I’d never even met their parents. AITA?

Original post

Since my last post, I've spoken with my mother, even though most of your advice was to go NC or VLC. I think I got all the answers I need now in order to go NC.

Some of you reminded me that I'm actually not the parent in this relationship, and it's not my job to regulate my mother or make up after what happened. I want to say thank you to all of you for the support, insight and advice given.

The days after the wedding have been a mix of joy and sadness. I have so many good memories from the wedding itself and I'm so happy to be with my husband, but my parents behavior has made this time feel somewhat bitter. I wish it didn't affect me this much, but it does.

As many of you suggested, this has been my parents behavior my whole life and it's normalized to me, which makes it hard to navigate. It's sometimes difficult to know what's okay and what's not. So writing on this subreddit has been very helpful.

And no, I don't believe my mother has bipolar disorder like I do, but she most definitely have a type of personality disorder like some of you suggested.

Now for the actual update on my mother. The call was mostly my mother hating on my husband, telling me she cannot believe that I married him. To her, he talks too much, he lies (not true), and is too open about his own past experiences, which she thinks he should keep to himself.

She also claims my husband threatened her. I was there when that "happened", and it's just not true, it didn't happen. But she strongly believe it did. What happened was that my husband told her to leave, that he had enough of her insults, something my mother perceived as an indirect threat to her.

My mother also spoke about trust, that she cannot trust us anymore, because we told other guests (our close friends) about how upset she got and that she yelled at us the day after the wedding. My mother claims that issues should only be dealt with within the family, that it's not other people's business what happens between us. This last point honestly gives me anxiety, especially since I made this reddit post. Well, now its on the internet, mother.

I stay calm the whole conversation, disagreeing with her on all her points. That upset her, and she says that we will never ever reach an agreement. Something I agree with.

It's upsetting how things ended, but I'll learn to live without them. Again, thank you all for your support.

My husband and I bought our first home. The night we closed on our house my best friend and her husband, and also my in-laws came to see the home. It was empty at this point since it was during the week and we weren’t moving in until the weekend. When we were leaving for the night we turned off all the lights and locked the doors. Mind you it was dark outside and we did not see any lights on when we left. The next morning I came back with my Mom so she could see it and help me deep clean before moving our stuff in. When we got there the hallway light was on. I just thought maybe we forgot to turn it off even though my husband, my best friend, and me triple checked and swore everything was off.

Fast forward to the next day, we had our locks changed. Once the locksmith was done I went back to apartment for the day. Again because we hadn’t moved in fully yet.

The following morning I was outside and just carrying in some small things when I ran into my new neighbor. Well turns out it is the neighbors Mom who doesn’t actually live next to us but is there basically every single day to help with their kids and dog. She didn’t introduce herself and called me over and asked “did you have your locks changed?” I replied “yes, we just weren’t sure who all had keys and felt better just starting with new locks” her response was “well what am I supposed to do with MY key now?” I was SHOCKED. I wanted to say “this is why we changed the locks” but instead I just said “I’m not really sure.” She then explained how sometimes should would house sit for the previous owners which is why she had the key. She noticed we had a dog and asked “for a new key so she could let our dog out while we are working during the day” and I kindly told her that it’s okay since he is used to being home during the day, I’m part time, and on longer days we send him to doggy daycare.

I told my husband about this and we both think maybe the night we first closed on the home and swore all the lights were off the she was in our house? We can’t be certain but I find it weird that within 24 hours of having our locks changed she noticed. The truck the locksmith drove was not specifically labeled for being a locksmith company and also was parked in our driveway which has our house blocking it from the neighbors view.

The neighbor has come to our door for various reasons now and asked to come inside, we politely decline because we are busy moving in etc. Some reasons she has knocked on our door include: asking if we are going to get a collar for the invisible fence since then our dogs can play together, came to give me more information on the company for the invisible fence, asking for her grandson to come use our basketball hoop, giving us old fridge filters the previous owners gave her etc.

Any time we go outside she tries to have a 30 minute conversation with us about random things. My husband and I are at the point where we ignore her. We wave/say hi but then keep walking inside. If she comes to our door we don’t answer. I don’t want to come off as rude because we are new to the neighborhood but also I feel like she is overstepping boundaries.

Again when I say neighbor I am referring to the true owner’s Mom/grandma to the kids and she doesn’t even live in the home. She just is helping every single day.

I (28F) got my first job at a company where my dad used to work. I come from a South Asian background, while my boss, who was from an African background let's call yucky, worked in HR and I was the assistant. As I gradually settled into the company, I started to understand what kind of person he was.

He would often start conversations by talking about how his wife was “lazy” and how she didn’t cook or clean. Keep in mind, they had house help. His wife was also caring for a special needs child and a newborn daughter recovering from a heart defect. At first, many people, including me, felt sorry for him because it sounded like a difficult situation.

However, I started noticing a pattern.

He seemed to seek sympathy, especially from women, and would often ask them to go out during work breaks or after office hours. We had three different receptionists during my time there, and I strongly believe he was one of the reasons they left. They were all fun, friendly Asian women, and the situation always seemed uncomfortable around him. So, i became besties with my friend (31F) she didn't like his advances and thought he was disgusting. Everyone at work knew about it. Including me. I used to never talk to him alone because of this weird behavior he had. He was a bit racist.

To make things worse, not once but twice he said, “Why can’t she move back to where she came from?” despite the fact that I was born in this country and he wasn’t. Yes, my family originally comes from another country, but we have lived here since 1975. My parents depend on me and my sibling, which made those comments feel even more upsetting and unfair.

I was eventually terminated in November, but that is another story. My friend Dia and Yuckyq, would sometimes come to work early. Since I am disabled, I occasionally had to take days off for doctor appointments and emergencies. On days I wasn’t there, my friend would panic and tell me about his behavior. She even started keeping recordings because of how inappropriate he was. I personally witnessed some of it too. He would purposely hug her, find excuses to shake hands, and ask her out on dates even though she was engaged and loved her boyfriend.

Apparently, everyone knew what was going on, but no one said anything. I wanted to speak up, but we were all afraid we might get terminated.

Over time, everyone gradually started avoiding him because of the way he behaved, and we started talking less. One day, he asked me why I was acting weird. I said I believe in social distancing because I can technically say that since I'm a disabled person and get sick often. He hated that we didn't laugh and talk to him about about normal sutff. Just work-related stuff. Someone at work told me that Yucky thought we were all being A-holes for not including him in our jokes and avoiding him.

Over time, Yucky's behavior changed, and he got a promotion, but I didn't, despite the fact that I did everything there. He got a great promotion and finally asked my friend dia to go out s** outing and she refused. Then 2025 came and he got a side chick. Who btw stole my job.🙃 I'm still jobless right now. He got rid of dia because she didn't agree to him so she went on a vacation in june and when she came back she got fired and had a replacement of hers. And my replacement aka his gf stole my job and said i didn't know to work and it's sad that I'm sick otherwise i could find a job.

And I am traumatized with what happened to me. I can't do legal stuff because I'm broke🤧

Hi Charlotte and lovely potatoes!! I’m really grateful to be able to share this story here because I’ve been watching Charlotte for years and am ready to share this story. Literally can’t believe this was my life.

I (29F) have been married to my incredible husband (29M) for a few years now, and I am so glad I can finally air out this family drama. I didn’t invite my aunts and uncles to my wedding, and my cousins went no-contact because of it.

FOR CONTEXT: My cousins and I were always close growing up. I was the youngest of 9 cousins on my mom’s side, and my older cousins were more like siblings since I was an only child. Our parents (5 siblings total plus their spouses) did NOT get along, many of them struggled with addiction, and my cousins and I kind of trauma bonded because our family was such a hot mess. Honestly some of my best memories from childhood were because of my cousins and how we got through so much together.

Outside of the relationship with my cousins, I’ve always been the black sheep of the family. My mom’s family is white middle-class and my dad is brown and grew up in poverty. My dad and I were the only non-white people in my mom’s family. They made it a point to bring it up often and reminded us that we would never be good enough for them. One of my aunts (we’ll call her “Rachel”) even told my dad to his face that she would never like him because he’s brown. I am also the only person in the family who is openly part of the LGBTQ+ community. Some of the fights my mom and her siblings had with each other were because they wouldn’t accept my dad and me, and eventually my mom’s sister began doing some awful things to me to the extent that I landed in the ER. My mom had a heart attack around the time I graduated from college, and the only person who went to go see her was my dad (and they had been divorced for over a year at that point). He essentially begged my mom’s siblings to come visit her in the hospital, and they all refused. After seeing (and living) how my mom’s siblings treated all three of us, I began to limit my contact with all of them.

My then-fiance (who for context is Asian and also part of the LGBTQ+ community) proposed in 2021 after getting both of my parents’ blessings, which was really important to all three of us. Sadly, my mom passed away less than a year later, and we had a small but meaningful funeral service limited to her family, a few select friends, my dad, my fiance, and me. I planned the entire funeral by myself, and my dad fronted the money for it because I was about to start medical school and was pretty broke. Remember that at that point, my parents had been divorced for several years, and my dad was the only one who helped me with my mom’s funeral. Her own family didn’t chip in (not like they had ever though). My mom was very covid-conscious during the pandemic, and I specifically planned her funeral without a party afterwards, mostly because I didn’t think she would want one when the risk of getting covid was still so high and my grandmother was elderly and frail. My mom’s sister Rachel planned a party at my grandmother’s house and chose not to invite me, my dad, or my fiance. The only reason I found out was because I went to go see my grandmother after the funeral to make sure she was okay and to spend some time remembering my mom together, and my mom’s siblings were all living it up at a brunch buffet in my grandma’s backyard. They wouldn’t speak to the three of us. From that day on, we’ve been no contact and my life has been better than ever.

Now for the wedding drama: here’s where things get interesting. My then-fiance and I live in the Midwest and most of my family is on the coast. My fiancé’s family is much smaller than mine and is scattered across the globe, so we decided to have our wedding near my family to make things easier for them, especially for my cousins and their spouses and kids. This also meant we planned our entire wedding remotely and had to fit our outfits, favors, decorations, etc. into a suitcase. We could have just as easily had the wedding closer to where we live, but we chose not to because it was important for as much of our families to be there as possible. My mom’s siblings were not invited to the wedding, as we were already no-contact at that point. We sent our save-the-dates as early as we could, which was about 11 months before the wedding.

Five of my eight cousins replied relatively early on and were very excited to attend. I asked one of those five, we’ll call him “Evan” to be my man of honor, and he was so excited to accept. Evan is a few years older than me and we are the two youngest cousins. He is like my older brother and has supported me through absolutely everything, and it only made sense for him to be by my side. As the RSVP deadline approached, the only three I had yet to hear from were the three oldest, aunt Rachel’s kids (we’ll call them “Brittney”, “Michelle”, and “Steve”) along with their spouses and kids. They all lived no more than an hour from our wedding venue, and we had a kid-friendly wedding specifically so they wouldn’t need to find childcare. We even got a special allergen-free wedding cake because one of Brittney’s kids was allergic to eggs and dairy. Another important detail here is that Steve and Evan were very close growing up because they were the only two boys of the nine cousins.

The first of the three oldest to RSVP was Michelle. She RSVP’d “No” with no explanation, no apology, no conversation. It was kind of odd, but I didn’t think anything of it. That is, until Brittney RSVP’d the next day. She RSVP’d “No” with an elaborate email message explaining how she had a vacation planned for the same weekend as our wedding that she couldn’t reschedule. Mind you, our save-the-dates had gone out almost a year in advance and I’ve never known Brittney to plan a vacation that far ahead.

The RSVP that hurt the most though was Steve’s. Steve and I were pretty close growing up and I always felt like I could count on him and look up to him. He didn’t like how his mom Rachel treated the people in our family (including trying to kidnap our grandma!!) and did his best to stand up to her, which is more than I can say for Brittney and Michelle. So when he RSVP’d “No” and told me that he had just started a new job and had a “big project” to work on during my wedding day, that broke me a little bit. That was when I realized that Rachel had likely coerced her kids into not going to my wedding (and honestly had probably threatened them with something). This was later confirmed by Evan. I was so hurt, and I decided that if I didn’t mean enough to my cousins for them to show up for one of the most important days of my life, that maybe they shouldn’t mean as much to me as I was giving them credit for. I cut contact with them, and my wedding party, including Evan, made a hilarious and beautiful plan to protect me from any family drama that could get in the way of our wedding day. The wedding itself was beautiful and exactly what we wanted, no drama, just fun, love, and lots of rainbows.

A few months later, I had a break from med school and went to visit Evan and his girlfriend for a night. Evan and I got breakfast the next morning and he filled me in on all the family drama that had transpired since the wedding. Basically, the family fell apart. I don’t remember too much about the details of this, but the one thing I do remember hearing was that Steve and Evan had stopped talking to each other after my wedding. Evan was really upset with Steve for not only choosing not to go to my wedding but for lying to me about why, and Evan told me he didn’t want a relationship with someone who would treat his (effectively) little sister that way. To this day I still feel bad that Evan and Steve went no contact because of me, but it meant a lot that Evan stood up for me, especially since Steve wouldn’t.

Long story short, I’ve now graduated from medical school and became a doctor, I’m married to my best friend, and we are preparing to start our family soon. I’m living the life I had always dreamed of, and it’s even more beautiful knowing my mom’s racist and homophobic family won’t be part of it. I feel like I’ve finally found peace away from them.

As much as my life is great at this point, I still feel guilty for not inviting my mom’s family and that Steve and Evan stopped talking. AITA?

English is not my first language.

I 27F, I work as the sole ICT. I am the youngest in my office, so I am not taken seriously. Most employees have kids my age.

In 2022, a sponsor helped set up a lab in my workplace. We use a Financial System, an upgrade from the old paperwork.

The lab is used to train users across various departments on how to use the system.
Different trainers from the head office come and use the lab; if it is full, they book hotel conference rooms.

For the past 5 weeks, since the start of the new financial year, there have been training sessions, even one overlapping with another. I do not do the planning; my job is to ensure that the lab is functional.

I will focus on the last 3 weeks of training, which were directed by Mr. S. He is an accountant at the head office.
I have helped with his training a few times before, but never closely, until now.

This was what I noticed.

1. He never pays our office cleaners an allowance for cleaning the lab, yet he expects it to be clean.
2. During his three weeks, he paid me for two, yet expects ICT support.
3. Does not provide breaktime or Teatime between training, usually at 10 am, the trainees were hungry, I sold $20 of sweets (which is 35K in our currency).
4. For lunch, they were served minimal food, with no drinks, just water, because Mr. S did not pay the Hotel enough for that.
5. He finishes the training late; our offices close at 4:30, and he wants to go beyond that, more than an hour. Overtime is not refused, as long as transport is arranged.

I am emphasizing the final point.
Our office is some distance from the city, a fifteen-minute walk.
But during late hours, the route can get dangerous. A few years ago, one of our colleagues was stabbed in the ear after leaving late.

This is where I started to get upset. Last Tuesday, at 4:30, I announced that it was closing time.
Training was over, but some trainees were still doing their trial balance and also wanted to use the system.
System access closes at 5:00 pm, but they contacted the head office to keep it open.
I told them I had to go home; it was getting late, dark, and I could miss my bus.

They pleaded, and Mr. S said, "Do not worry, the people will drop you off in town so you can take your bus."
He asked my boss for an extended time.
My boss agreed, left me the keys, and left.

I waited until 5:30, and the guys were done. I realized Mr. S was not with them; he had left.
I closed up the office and went for the ride. I was told the car was full. So I had to walk to town with my phone and laptop.
Fortunately, there was no harm. I got my bus and got home late.

I was angry. The next day, I got to work and cut the network to the lab; no one uses the system. The class was going Acapella; if anyone asked, the response was that the network was down.

The training stretched to overtime again, and at 5:00 pm, I went downstairs, looked at the switchboard, let the dark thoughts take over, and pulled it down. Cutting the power.

And guess what, this guy went on with the class. Even his students, his trainees, were tired of him repeating the same thing.
And when it finally ended, he wanted the class representatives to give a speech. Like Dude!

I went downstairs and told my boss about the power outage. Because I was not taking the keys, he was; he has no car at the moment. The office car was away making payments, and he did not bring his personal car for reasons only he knows. My boss is a quiet guy, chill dude; he might look like he is okay with Mr. S, but internally, he is not.

And on Mr. S, he does this on purpose because he is selfish. He receives the full budget training to cover a week, which includes allowances for support staff involved, i.e., the cleaning staff and me.
He also receives the budget for food and refreshments.

Where does the money go?
His pocket.

Since he trains multiple people, they can't notice it. He manages the payments; he is the guy who goes to the bank and sends the money, so on paper, it says I got paid 3 weeks, but in reality, it was two.

The trainees will complain about the poor hotel service giving them minimal food, but in reality, they got minimal money. So what Mr. S paid is what they delivered.

At the Hotel serving us, they do have excellent service because a different trainer used them for training, and also hired staff to cater for an office trip. The food was enough.

Mr. S makes Krabs look like a saint because these are government funds.
Mr. S can have the training for a full week; he chooses to squeeze it between three days, making us local staff work overtime.

Next time, I will just lock them in, since he likes the office so much, I will not be held hostage by responsibility. And his poor planning does not constitute an emergency.

Hi Charlotte! I was watching an Am I the Devil with you and Mike and thought of this story and had to share.

I (34 nb) was 9 at the time and in third grade. I was an A/B student, followed rules like crazy, but this teacher seemed to not like me. We will call her Mrs. R. Mrs. R had a weekly conduct grade where she kept a wall of letter grades for everyone and if she considered you misbehaving, she would tell you to "flip a card" where you had to get up, go to the wall, and move your laminated letter card to the back and lower your conduct grade by half a letter. As I previously mentioned, I was an A/B student, so my conduct never got that low, but I think the week this happened, I was at a B/B-. Not great, but obviously I could be worse.

For context, my mom (66 f now, 41 then), we'll call her D, is the "boss" of the family for lack of a better term. She is an accountant, is the main breadwinner, and was the one who handled discipline. I always found it funny when people would say they would have to ask their dads for permission because for me and my sister, that was Mom. She also has been a firm believer in following up authority figures punishments with ones at home to show she agreed with that if I did something wrong. As such, each week when the weekly conduct forms came home, she would be the one I had to get sign it so she could discuss my behavior if it was bad or commend me if it was good. However, she had annual business trips she would need to go on and they could be a few days or up to a week. That week, she was out of town on her business trip.

Now for my dad. Dad (66m now, 41 then again), we'll call him P, has terrible handwriting. He's an electrician, but would give a doctor a run for his money. I *also* have not great penmanship. D's is very elegant and pretty. So I bring my conduct paper to him Sunday night as I always do. He looks at it, tells me I will have to talk to my mom about it during our nightly call we were about to have with her, and signs in his normal chicken scratch. We call my mom, she admonishes me, but we move on and she says she will be home the next day and we will discuss it further then.

So I go into school the next day, go about my normal routine, and as we are going out to recess, Mrs. R pulls me aside.

"OP, I know you forged that signature on your conduct sheet," she tells me. No asking. No debate. Instant accusation. She has the most serious voice and is staring me down like the criminal she thinks I am. "What does 'forged' mean?" I ask, terrified of this accusation and not even knowing what crimes I am being accused of at this moment. "It means you wrote your dad's name. I know you did that. Don't lie to me," she responds. I am gutted. I immediately tell her that no, I didn't and that my dad did indeed sign that and why would she not believe me? "No one writes that poorly as an adult and if you don't stop lying to me, I am going to have you flip a whole letter grade and you won't get to have recess." I am floored. I also have always been a crier. I hate it, but I get stressed, I cry. So I am openly sobbing in the hallway trying to convince my teacher I am not lying. She calls me on my "bluff" and makes me do as she says. So I go and flip my cards and sit at my desk, crying because I did nothing wrong and knowing I will also get in trouble when I get home cause Mrs. R said she is sending me home with a note about my "forgery."

When I get picked up by my parents, D is concerned by the fact I am instantly crying as I see her. She and P get me in the car and I attempt to tell them what happened through sobs. I am getting ready to get told I am grounded or whatever Mom is going to do as she normally did when I was bad at school, but she is comforting me and telling me how sorry she is that I went through that. P is also agreeing that I was not wrong but that Mrs. R is and that it is not fair what she did to me. I was shocked for the second time that day! D promised me she was going to call Mrs. R AND the Principal about this because I didn't even know what forgery was that day, let alone thought to try it. My punishment for the last week was also forgotten because clearly this woman had already punished me enough. D was in Mama Bear mode now.

The next day, she did as promised. She called the principal first and asked her why a teacher was accusing third graders of forgery instead of calling a parent and asking about the issue first. She then demanded a written apology for me AND P as we were both insulted from Mrs. R. The principal agreed and said she would get to the bottom of the situation.

Principal caught Mrs. R as we were going to PE and was told to follow her to her office where D was still on the phone. D apparently told her off for not only accusing me of forgery but for saying no adult should have that bad of handwriting for P. That was none of her business and frankly a bad attempt at evidence. She also once again asked why she didn't call her or P to ask what happened instead of just jumping to forgery. The woman stuttered about how she had always seen D signing things and thought it was strange that all of a sudden P did. D said that while it was NONE of Mrs. R's business, but she had been out of town and couldn't sign. Again, still not a good enough reason to accuse a 9 year old of forgery to the point of crying and punishing when told that they did not do the crime. She said I needed my conduct grade fixed, I needed a formal apology letter, and so did P. Mrs. R agreed.

I came back from PE to find my grade was fixed, there was a note on my desk and at the end of the day, I was given a second note for P. It was a very wild 2 days, but I never felt so vindicated.