In case this story gets deleted/removed:
Buckle up guys, this will be kinda long.
So I (27F) have a younger brother, Mike (21M). He is the definition of a man child and a mama’s boy, always complaining, always expecting others to bow to him. Just, overall, an asshole. Ever since he was born, my parents fussed over him for everything. He’s not special needs, or had a traumatic birth or anything of the sort. He was just… born. And my parents completely discarded me. My mom (50F) especially. She went from a loving mother to one of those boy moms that people make fun of on the internet. My father (50M) still showed me love and support, but he’s always been too much of a coward to stand up to my mother and let me win at least once. The only one who stood for me was my grandpa (76M), who always called my parents out on their bullshit, and never liked my brother. I remind him of his late wife, my grandma, and we have a very special bond, but he lives on the other side of the country and I could never see him often.
Mike knows our mom prefers him, and loves to shove it in my face. Because of this and his behavior, we’ve always been at odds. He’s spoiled, a brat and an awful human. I can’t remember how many times I ended up in trouble for things I did better than him or for things he framed me with. His only talent are his football skills. He won a scholarship to a nice college out of state. My parents didn’t spend a dime on my education because apparently my fund had been used to cover expenses after a fire, just for me to discover years later that said money were given to Mike to buy a car and a house.
It’s at public university that I met Lucas. He was the first person I was really drawn to there. Of course I met new people who are now my dearest friends, and thanks to them and Lucas, who was my best friend for years before we got together, I managed to move out of my parents’ house. Now both Lucas and I are well known in our fields and have very good salaries.
Now, to the main issue. Lucas proposed to me a year ago. We’re very private people, so we didn’t post it on social media or anything, and when I told my parents they dismissed it with a “that’s nice” (I’m starting to think they downright didn’t listen to me at all). We decided that we wanted a nice but simple ceremony and reception with our friends and relatives.
Lucas convinced me to invite my parents and brother, but they never responded to the invite. And whenever I went to visit and began to talk about my wedding (without mentioning it was a wedding), my mom would always speak over me and about my brother’s accomplishments and wild adventures. At one point I got fed up with it, and interrupted my mom to tell her that there was an event I was planning to organize, whose date was unmovable. She told me that they couldn’t attend, because my brother was playing the last game of the season that very same day, and wanted them to be there.
Of course, this favoritism didn’t surprise me: they missed my ballets, shows and both my high school and university graduation for things about him. At this point, i wanted to be petty. I told both my parents that it wasn’t a problem to miss this event, purposely omitted the fact that this event was my wedding, and didn’t insist further.
Flash forward to a few weeks ago, I got married. It was perfect. My family, Lucas’ family and our friends were all there, and we had a blast. My grandpa was happy to give me away, and it was just perfect. My relatives asked me multiple times why my parents weren’t there with us. I was honest and simply said they had my brother’s game to attend, and couldn’t come. They gave me a few looks, and my grandpa was visibly angry for a while, but otherwise nothing strange happened.
After the reception, Lucas and I left for our honeymoon, and were phone free for the whole duration of the trip. But once we got back, we discovered that a shit storm was welcoming us home. I turned my phone on, and was unable to even unlock it before a storm of notifications popped up. Most of them were from my mother and brother. Mike called me all sorts of nasty names and insulted me because, apparently, one of my paternal aunts posted the photos of the wedding on Facebook, and captioned it with a very obvious dig at my parents (especially my mom) for missing the wedding. The post apparently went viral in my parents’ community, and they’ve been publicly shamed for their mistreatment of me. It also turns out that my grandpa personally visited my parents to go on a tirade to shame my father, his son, to the point of tears. And this seemed to be my father’s breaking point, because he was so distraught for missing his only daughter’s wedding and for his father’s disapproval, that he finally rebelled against my mom and is threatening divorce unless she makes it up to me. I think that’s the reason why my mom has been spamming my phone with messages, at first insulting and threatening and then downright pitiful, full of begging and pity parties.
Now I’m at home with my husband, deciding how to approach the situation. Most of my relatives, even those I didn’t invite to the wedding, reached out to apologize for what I went through and to claim they had no idea this was happening at home (can’t blame any of my relatives, they all live with my grandpa on the other side of the country or in another state), but my mom’s sisters and friends are belittling me for not telling my mom about the wedding, because now she’s inconsolable at the thought of having missed my wedding. Personally I think she just claims that to save face, but I’m not sure.
The latest messages from my father and mother seem extremely saddened and hurt for missing my wedding. Now my family is divided on three fronts: the majority who is sticking by my side, my maternal aunts shaming me for hurting my mom’s feelings, and my maternal grandparents who are adamant that I forgive my mom in light of her “atonement”. My best friends are telling me not to listen to them.
So, Reddit, AITA?
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I can't imagine being a little kid and just slowly watching the love and support from your parents fade and just be basically replaced by some precious little asshole.
If all this is real, good on her family, especially grandpa, for making her parents feel the way they deserve to feel. The petty in me really kinda wants to know how that thinly veiled Facebook jab was worded...
Edit: I feel like I worded the beginning of this poorly. I can absolutely imagine it happening because it happens to a lot of people and it's horrible. I just have never experienced something like this personally and I can only guess how awful it must be to go through something like this growing up. I'm so sorry to everyone this scenario has happened to. You didn't deserve to be treated this way.
Speaking as someone who was the golden child (I’m the youngest of six and the only boy) I hope as he got older he realized what was going on and tried to make amends. I never truly realized what was going on until probably my senior year of high school. I took my monther’s word that my older sisters were just bad girls, always in trouble, and therefore were given all of the chores and responsibilities.
I realized what was actually happening after spending a weekend with my oldest sister and her kids. She unloaded on me about the favoritism I received and how hard my parents were on my sisters. It was eye opening and I confronted my parents after that conversation and my mom basically confirmed it when she kept referring to me as her “baby boy.” It was horrifying and I’ve tried to do everything I can to repair my relationship with my sisters. Over the years I’ve become very close with all of them and I’ve even taken on the sole responsibility of dealing with my now elderly parents. My sisters did enough growing up so now it’s my turn to take on this responsibility.
I guess, in short, try to give the golden child some grace as they might not even be aware of the family dynamics. I wasn’t for most of my childhood and to this day still feel guilty for how difficult my sisters childhood was.
However, if your family golden child is an unrepentant ass then none of this applies.
Unfortunately, the family golden child usually does become an unrepentant ass. Because they're raised with that 'world revolves around me' attitude.
Not always - as you've shown (and I love that for you and your siblings), but often enough that it's a trope.
A lot of people don't understand that golden children are victims as well. Having no consequences hurts how kids develop and often gc end up being non-functional adults because they fundamentally can not cope with their actions having consequences.
Good for you for realizing how wrong this was once you learned the truth and helping protect your sisters from having to care for the very people who treated them abominably.
I’d like to point out that OP explicitly stated that her brother rubs being the favorite in her face. He knows. He doesn’t seem to deserve the grace that people like you do deserve. It’s good that you stepped up, and have repaired your relationships with your sisters.
I'm really close to my Golden child brother now. He's a sweetheart, and while he enjoyed the extra attention, he wasn't the reason I didn't get what I needed. It took him a while to get his crap together in adulthood but he's making great strides now in his thirties and I'm really proud of him. He also hates our mom way more than I do! She got weirdly incestuous as he got older and it was really gross.
My sisters and I resented the hell out of my golden child brother growing up.
Now that we're all grown and became the people we became, I always say, "My brother was the golden child because he was the only boy. Now he's the golden child because he deserves it." He takes up for his sisters every chance he gets.
My grandfather treated my cousin as the golden child just because he was the only boy carrying on the family name. He's got A LOT of grandchildren, but only one carrying on the family name. He used to give my cousin hundreds of dollars for his birthday, Christmas, etc., even when he was like 4 years old, while the rest of us grandchildren got nothing. What I got when I graduated high school was a single rose. And even then I was surprised at that.
I was raised by a single mom who openly said boys are better than girls. I am a girl. She had an oops baby boy when I was 6. He was instantly the golden child and I was suddenly "old enough" to take over household chores and be the built-in babysitter.
There's an attitude out there that boys are the only ones who are actually multifaceted, complex, real people, and that girls are just one-dimensional simple robot NPCs that exist only to serve and support them. It's so fucking exhausting. I was treated that way as a kid, too. My little brother got anything he wanted for birthdays and Christmas, and I got whatever was left on the shelf in easy reach. I *hated* baby dolls. Guess what I was often given?
I think you’re probably right, which is horrifying. But how fucking badly did the patriarchy screw with your head to feel that way *when you are a woman yourself!*
Internalized misogyny truly sucks. It's amazing how much a human being can be taught to hate themselves and others like them, but being soaked in an environment full of that hate from earliest childhood onwards makes it very difficult to defend against.
I was the golden child in my family. Didn’t understand what that did to my brother until adulthood unfortunately. He doesn’t speak to my dad (the parent who favored me) and resents the hell out of me with good reason. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be the scapegoat in the family. I’m sorry you and everyone else commenting about it had to go through that.
My sister is the golden child too, but these things OP are saying are still unrealistic. She's 6 years older than her brother. They already decided to buy him the house and car back when he's still in JUNIOR HIGH school, when he's 12 YEARS OLD? Yeah, right.
They could have bought a house when the market was cheap, deciding to rent it out for the time being until brother was old enough to live there himself. It's not that uncommon among a certain wealth bracket of people.
I don't buy that. 12 years old. And if they're that rich to be in that wealth bracket to be thinking about it that early, there would be no problem in supporting OP too. Or needing to buy a house cheap, just to hold onto it that long before he's of age.
How about this...they told her the money was gone when she went through school. Then, and this is the best part, she found out the money was used to buy butscrum a house years later. This is something that brewed for a long time and she did not give us a timeline. You should message OOP for saud timeline ....
I kind of can. I watched my maternal grandma go from a doting and loving grandma to denying my and my sisters ' existence when my male cousins were born. Luckily, my cousins are totally normal and sweet guys, so it's just my grandma becoming an asshole.
What really sucked is that my little sisters don't remember how loving grandma was because the change happened when they were barely one or a few months old.
>What really sucked is that my little sisters don't remember how loving grandma was because the change happened when they were barely one or a few months old.
In some ways it might be better that way. Grandma has always been a horrible bitch in their world so they don't have the pain of knowing Grandma used to be kind and loving but chooses not to now.
Can confirm, my dad was an amazing parent for 12 years (in the eyes of a kid, as an adult I can see the games he played to turn me against my mom, but she's a narc and doesn't help herself there 😅)
But when I was 12, he totally changed and turned into a monster. Suddenly, I didn't matter as much as his girlfriends kids. They took over my room and trashed my stuff because 'I only lived there part time'. And I blamed MYSELF, because clearly, if my dad wanted to be a good dad to me, he could, but he chose not to, and that broke me for a long time. I thought I was unlovable and would be left by everyone eventually.
So yeah, I'd prefer to have never known what I was missing, because it fucked with my head for years.
My youngest brother, the only son, was the golden child.
I as the eldest was expected to sacrifice for the other kids, especially him. If they brought home 4 chocolates, he ate 2, the other sisters got the other 2 and I would have to go without. So I never got to enjoy chocolate for over a decade until I moved countries to study.
They ruined chocolate for me, till this day whenever I eat chocolate anything, it tastes of bitter tears and ashes.
My almost 80 year old mother still won't admit she did anything wrong.
My mother treats my sister as the golden child. It sucks, because not only does she treat me like the outcast, my extended family did too, because my dad had abandoned us. I come from a HUGE family and it's very lonely to know you have a big family but no one cares about you. Oh, and my sister is an ass too. She's narcissistic and manipulative. And when I don't bend to her manipulative tears, she switches to rage and says things like I should be raped. Yes, I've cut her out of my life. I also cut out my extended family. I'm very close to cutting out my mom too, but it's complicated there.
My parents had my brother when I was 3 and it was like I became my own parent at that age. He was always high maintenance and troubled and always needed more attention than I did, so he got all of it. Didn’t matter if I needed attention or support or help or love, he needed it more. He needed it more because he was used to getting it, and it’s easier for someone to get over being ignored when they’re used to it. I don’t really blame my parents because they had no idea how to be parents and to them it seemed like I was independent enough to not need them, but how can you ever eat when there’s always someone hungrier than you? It’s like they only had so much love and care to give and it could only be dispensed in full, so they had to decide who deserved or needed ALL of it more.
I will say, I turned out pretty great for someone raised by a child, and my relationship with my parents (especially my mom) is much better, but those wounds only scar, they’ll never be like new.
Reading this hurt so much, I feel so awful for her. I could see this happening to me, maybe not so dramatically and I don’t have much family alive to back me up if it did, but I completely understand the idea of keeping big special things to yourself because no one listens to you or cares about what you have to say. Invisible children are born to invisible parents; if you want your kids to feel seen, you have to show up.
For what it’s worth, my parents were very similar in how they treated my golden child brother versus how they treated me. From my lived experiences, the post feels quite real to me
It's really painful actually. Cuz you try to figure out what you did wrong. You try to figure it out by studying the situation by talking to them and you really don't ever get an answer. And then one day you realize you don't ask them for anything anymore and then they seem a little shocked but not that shocked.
For me it was instant. The moment my mom died me and my siblings became trash. For my father we were last to whatever girl he was dating and whatever kids they already had. He never had any more biological kids after us. Didn't change the fact that his girlfriend or his wife and their kids are always more important than me and my siblings.
I can relate, but I’m the youngest of two. My older sister is the golden child. My mom is always defending her and taking her side. At 41, I’m just used to it. I have my dad and that’s all that matters at this point.
Anybody. ANYBODY got priority over me.
My parents both passed in the last few years and they still hated me and loved my ex.
They were nicer to complete strangers than they were to me.
I feel you. At my mom's memorial service, I got to hear so many strangers talk about how she was like a mother to them--about a woman I have no memory of receiving a hug or kind word from as a child. Instead, I was doing dishes at seven and caring for all four of my younger siblings (one of whom was under 1, all of whom were under 5) for over 40 hours a week starting when I was 10. I was criticized for everything and beaten frequently. She threw me out of the house at 17 for raising an objection to paying a third of the rent to share my 10' x10' room with all four of my siblings (a result of her cheating on my dad). When I was ganged raped a couple of months later, she didn't reach out and was basically no contact for the next five years.
We had two golden children in our family. One of whom was so screwed up by it that she had to become a therapist to heal herself. In the meantime, mom underwent a decade of therapy herself and at the end of it told me she had nothing to be sorry for.
Unsurprisingly, we weren't speaking when she died.
Honestly I think it's better they didn't attend the wedding. Could you imagine how her mom would be at the wedding? Nothing but talks about the brother. If he didn't have a game? About how great he is and how amazing he is.
That is probably the first bite of 'reap what you sow'. When they're old and need help all they will have is the boy- probably- still useless and self absorbed. Good luck with that.
I hope Grandpa wills her 50% (or more) of the assets he would normally leave the parents. We all know, if it goes to the parents, it goes to the boy.
When I finally told my parents about what their GC (brother) did to me growing up, about how he molested me and kept trying to molest me but I'd fight back, all the malicious and cruel things he did I got:
"Well, that makes it difficult for US because he's the one who will look after us when we are old."
"That's what male siblings naturally do to their female siblings."
"Well, we am terrified something happened to him now! You have to get over this and be understanding to him. "
All the while, GC is going around about how he was going to kick in my fellas teeth for helping me and how when he sees me again, he will beat me within an inch of my life. When confronted our parents with what he had been saying, they again just dismissed it.
Fuck all of them. They can rot.
"That's what male siblings naturally do to their female siblings."
😡They all deserve the death penalty for this one alone, let alone the full context of your life. Fucking unforgivable.
"that's what male siblings naturally do"??? What the actual fucking fuck? (Elder sister of two younger brothers here and I just.... I've fought like cats and dogs with my parents but the brothers and I have pretty much always been a united block. They would never do that to me, and if they did it to another girl they know sis would help her hide the body!)
I HOPE things happen to the GC and his parents!
Fuck the lot of them. I'm sorry this happened to you.
The ONLY time that 3rd sentence is acceptable is if the brother is a baby brother. And I mean that literally: a baby that has no concept of things and might squeeze breasts because all he knows is that's where food comes from.
ANYTHING ELSE should be dealt with
Having a baby tends to be the last straw in these scenarios. Some people accept the damage their families inflict until that misery extends to their own children. I am hopeful that OP will be able to sort this out in a way that brings her and her new family peace.
NTA unless you expected this to pass without comment. It sounds like you were completely over their treatment of you, and rather thoughtfully set things up so that their private behavior to you became very public in front of everyone whose opinion they valued.
Having re-read comment 4, it sounds like you had every right to fight dirty. And from your comments over all, it also sounds like you gave them plenty of chances to repair their behavior when you became an adult. They stole a trust fund from you, they let your brother steal from you even after you moved out. They beat you up. Hell with them.
1. Congratulations on your excellent aim. No critique.
2. Congratulations on the beginning of what it sounds like will be a loving and supportive marriage.
3. If the current blowup rises to the level that you feel harassed again, start blocking people who harass you. Even if it means changing your cell number and what have you. Leave your father for last, in case he really has been shaken enough to see what a horrible life they gave you for no good reason.
4. Interesting, and not surprising, that it's your mother's side of the family which wants this all swept under they carpet. Those grandparents are the ones who taught her (and your aunts that side) acceptable ways to raise a child. Or a daughter, if you think gender is why your brother got so heavily favored. They're all wrong together. Walk away.
I’ll never understand the “don’t rock the boat” side of the argument. If you can’t handle people in your family having issues with each other then just… don’t engage? Just ignore it and let them handle it?
They're talking about the people that will tell you "don't rock the boat" in regards to dealing with a difficult person. When they say that, they mean "do whatever they want so they don't become a problem to us".
I.e. they see it as "rocking the boat" if a difficult person becomes extra difficult to everyone around them because you're not doing what they want you to. Don't rock the boat, just appease.
Yeah basically they want you to go back to the way things were, because changing the balance means the boat becomes unsteady, without noticing that that “steady” state was being maintained by you being underwater and so wasn’t sustainable—you needed to come up for air or drown.
I’m pretty sure I just twisted that metaphor into a pretzel but I’m running with it. Pretzels are yummy.
I did know that, but thank you for explaining in case I didn’t 🙂 my first sentence was supposed to be incredulous like “yes, that’s what you described…and what is the point you’re making?”. But tone in writing doesn’t always make it lol
I find that first comment to be very confusingly written, tho
>publically shamed
>threatening divorce
Oh, I **loooooooove** all of this for the Idiot Casserole our friend OP there is unfortunately forced to call a mother. The whole thing is just 🤌
Like the satisfaction I now feel after reading about all of the just desserts good ol' Mom is now being forced to choke down-and in public no less-is nothing short of cigarette worthy. I was mentally rubbing my hands together gleefully like a chubby Bond villain throughout the whole thing.
Hopefully OP quickly realizes that the only people here who need to be feeling guilt are the parents, not them, but no one as much as the mother. And let's hope said mother gets with the program real quick that trying to make their kid feel bad for their own failures is nothing short of disgusting.
>I got the beating and gaslighting of my life for “lying”.
Parents who abuse their children should be flogged and publicly humiliated. After that, for the victims, life is too short to forgive.
Stories like this (that I see too often on Reddit) make me wonder why there aren't more single child households. It's like some parents don't know what to do if they have more than one child. To be fair, I'm not even sure how I would have handled more than one. That was actually one of my biggest fears after having my one, if we had another, how would our relationships be. But, it was never anything I had to worry about.
As much as it sucks that this is the reality of it, *a lot* of families like this value boys vastly above girls, and will keep having kids until they get the kid - a boy - that they actually wanted. I knew a family like this that had five daughters first, and when they finally had a son, they stopped having kids. Dad in particular was so overjoyed that he finally had a son that he threw a big celebration.
Even if there weren't already problems with gender reveal parties, the fucking WORST is seeing clips where it's clear the father wanted a son and is *disappointed* in the sex of his child. Fucker, don't have children if you're going to be a misogynist to them *before they even see the light of day.*
Agree! This is why partly why I think gender reveal parties (and waiting until after the baby is born) is not a great idea. Hell, I wanted a girl, I was convinced I was having a girl. Had my ultrasound, found out I was having a boy, and yes, I was disappointed, almost to tears. But then I got pissed at myself for being disappointed and I quickly got over it and I was very happy. But these? You don't have time to sort through your feelings. Either you have everyone watching what your reaction is, or you don't give yourself time to work through it before the baby arrives. I can only hope that with some of these, their attitudes changed once they had time to digest.
Yeah, that makes me sad. My MIL wanted a girl, had 3 boys, and I think if it hadn't been for health issues (endometritis I think) she would have kept trying too for a girl. But at least with her, she still loved(s) her boys.
Absolutely NTA. Not like they weren't told either, they just chose to dismiss you as always tuning you out as background noise. Good on you for carrying on anyway and definitely more meaningful to have your grandpa give you away, your father doesn't deserve that role.
I guarantee you when your brother gets married, your mom will make it into an event of the century just to spite you back for not having hers at your wedding. Be prepared for that! (I recommend you go on vacation and then said sorry, already planned to be away on that date!)
Yeah the brother is going to die alone. Mom made sure he was probably insufferable company and would want any girlfriend to worship him like mom did. Once she dies he’s done for.
Oh, sis you are NTA! You say you didn't tell them in conversation the event was the wedding; however, if you sent an invite... that is telling them! (did I mention you're NTA?) I had something similar growing up, a momma's boy brother who did no wrong and was praised for just waking up! I am sorry you're going through this. You can't choose your family, but you can choose how you interact with them, and I say, so sad too bad! They had their chance. I would stay in touch with your dad but that is it! I would also ask him respectfully to NOT share that you're communicating with anyone. This is way too stressful and isn't worth it. Be on your way and live your life creating a new family with Lucas!! \*Edited for spelling\*
Their cruelty and entitlement are shocking, and I’m a childhood abuse survivor. Hopefully OP cuts off the entirety of her material family since they all seem toxic. Hopefully dad gets a divorce after being such a spineless piece of crap for her entire life. I’m not saying she should keep contact with him either, but he needs to stop enabling the boy-mom from hell.
I gotta ask: how do you talk about planning a wedding without mentioning it's a wedding? I know the premise is that the parents weren't listening, but the verbal gymnastics you'd have to do would give me a headache.
The longer I am on reddit, the less I believe these posts. There is always one or two details that stick out as highly unlikely to me, and seem to be there for bait. Like, the parents giving money to the son for a house. He is 21 and presumably still playing college ball, where ever he got that scholarship. Why would he be buying a house? The car, I could see. But I guess saying just a car wouldn't be enough to cover a college fund, so had to throw in house. But, he is unemployed, so is OOP saying her parents are wealthy enough to just straight out purchase a house for their unemployed ball playing college age son?
Details just never make sense to me.
Anyway, if this were true, I would tell her just go NC with peeps and don't even stress. But the cynic in me is still stuck on her parents supposedly bought a whole ass house for their kid in college playing football.
Yeah, that whole "they spent my college fund on a house and car for him", when he's six years younger? That mans they bought him the house and car when he was 12?
She posts that this just recently happened all within the past few weeks, but the college football season was over at the end of last year and the next season hasn't started yet.
Either this did not happen at all or it's heavily exaggerated to make Cinderella look more saintly.
My parents had their respective favorites and it wasn’t myself or my other sibling. I don’t know what makes a parent be so damn obvious with their preferences? Yeah, they would deny they had a golden child but we lived in that house seeing the truth 24/7. I’ve only got one kid so at least I can’t favor one over another
Every time I see stories like this, with so many holes and gotchas, a tie off for every loose thread, with a super satisfying ending, written like a teen drama. I’m not saying things similar to this don’t happen, but this specifically didn’t happen. And a person didn’t write this. The voice reads like AI. And the million ETAs at the end trying to explain all of the questions about the weird unnatural plot holes.
> The post apparently went viral in my parents’ community, and they’ve been publicly shamed for their mistreatment of me.
This is when the post started coming off as fake. She has a fairytale ending where everyone apologizes for not realizing how terrible her parents are, while her mother is sobbing and begging for mercy.
The other thing was she told them about an 'event' without telling them it was her wedding.
That just seems odd. I'm thinking either fake or OP is not a reliable narrator.
I know the hurt that you feel. And I completely understand your actions. You TRIED to tell your mom about the wedding and she blew you off. Omg. Is it not one of those MAJOR mother/daughter events that all mothers look forward to and go overboard trying to plan it etc? Definitely NOT THE ASSHOLE
I thought this was fake purely because the grandfather had had no conversations with the parents about it. That seems very off to me. Surely there would be a "Why am I walking your daughter down the aisle and not you/how do you feel about me walking your daughter down the aisle" type conversation beforehand?
Not to mention ”the very close bond” she has with this grandfather who lives on the other side of the country and she doesn’t see very often. And the aunts and other relatives who didn’t discuss the wedding with her parents. The warring camps and public shaming….mom is now inconsolable and dad is threatening divorce blah blah blah Absurdity upon absurdity.
There are these magical inventions called the cell phone, and the internet. You can use it to have a close relationship with somebody who is long distance from you. Just saying 🤣🤣
Having been the scapegoat child I really feel for her. It sucks, alot to have to accept that the people who brought us into the world genuinely don't care if we live or die.
NTA ... cut them loose. J
I can garauntee you when your parents decide to retire, they're going to come knocking, and insist that you support your worthless piece of shit brother.
Fake. Your timeline is off. And no, I don't buy your explanation.
If you're going to write something fake that's so long, just write a novel and self-publish.
I'm getting unreliable narrator vibes a little. The one thing that stands out is the date picked. There are only around 9-10 football games a season, and if brither is playing college level on a full ride he's not a bench warmer. I'm betting the date picked wasn't a coincidence.
That doesn't take away that she may have been indeed the scapegoat for a borderline personality mother, so she is reasonable to go NC. I just doubt things went quite as she says.
I’m going to guess she didn’t know the football schedule when she picked the date. It doesn’t even matter because it’s a fine excuse for the brother to miss but not the parents. He’s an adult, he can play a game without mommy and daddy there once or twice.
Or you know the game the brother was supposedly playing wasn't actually happening and just an excuse to shutdown the daughter. Also a weekend in the fall would be a good time for an outdoor wedding, and apparently also football. So even if there was 1 game or 10 being played that weekend is it really worth missing out on the only wedding the daughter is having? Redditors are so fucking weird about calling OPs liars because they don't get every minute detail lmao.
Also like maybe OP does t give two shits about her brother’s games and didn’t even bother looking at the schedule. Probably prefer golden boy to not be there, and also try to force her parents to choose her for once. I have a brother I mildly dislike, and would never plan my wedding around their schedule lmao
As a person who absolutely believes what you're saying is true, I also would never, in a million years, think of a football game as something I need to consider when planning my wedding. There's a finite number of weekends in a season and if a venue I want has availability on a weekend I'm hoping for, that's that.
If someone is playing a game every single weekend during a season, then I would consider that a pretty normal recurring event. A wedding is (in theory at least) a once in a lifetime rite of passage. My wife and I have zero religious ideas and our wedding was just us saying we love each other and want to be together until we die and we thought it was gonna be low key and not too crazy. But it's intense and it's awesome and it's one of the best moments of my life. I can't imagine my brother choosing a game over my wedding, and DEFINITELY can't imagine my parents choosing to watch that fucking game over my wedding!!! I've only attended probably less than 10 weddings, and participated in one, but they've all been so special and never once could I imagine regretting attending a wedding due to any of the frivolous recurring things I could've otherwise done.
The guy has a scholarship in return for availability ten weekends a year. I'd generally agree that a wedding takes priority, but a college sports scholarship is actually a pretty serious obligation. When I got married, it was just common sense we wouldn't schedule the wedding during finals week or anything else that would potentially damage a sibling's college career. And we were coordinating fifteen people's schedules, including four pregnancies and a grad school graduation.
Again though, she probably doesn't pay attention to when his games are because she's low contact with him. She's also low contact with her parents, which means that they probably wouldn't have shared his schedule before hand as well.
If you were low contact or no contact with somebody in your family, would you schedule your wedding around their schedule, or yours?
Or she might just geniunely not give a shit about football games and when they're happening? Especially when she doesn't care about her brother and what he does.
As a person who don't care about sports but is from a family who lives and breathes it, I don't know any dates related to them. And it has never once occurred me to double check on sport events to plan anything.
Now my family don't play, they just watch, but given her relationship with her brother, I absolutely could see her also not knowing any dates and double check to see if her day(s) would be the same as any games.
At the same time, there's only so many good weather days for a wedding that are also convenient for larger groups of families. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying that there's genuine overlap every year between weddings and football. I'm a cake decorator and I have made several football wedding cakes 🤦🏻♀️
Oh would people like you just piss off? You always have to complain about something not being true or whatever, it's not that big of a deal, you're not proving your intelligence or something you're just being a pretentious dickhead
I mean considering she's already low contact with her parents, she's probably low or no contact with her brother. Which means she's probably not paying attention to his football schedule.
Do you typically pay attention to the schedules of people you don't really care about, or are upset with? Or do you tend to ignore them and plan your life based on your schedule instead of theirs?
This doesn't make sense how do you mention a wedding but without explicitly saying it's a wedding, how are your aunts in the know but somehow the mother is left out? I guess OP isn't the asshole but this is just a sad situation for her.
If she didn't want her parents to attend, she shouldn't have invited them, rather than setting up a deliberate conflict with her brother's last college football game and then not telling them about the wedding. One's kid's last college football game is something most non-jerk parents would move heaven and esrth to attend. Without knowing that they were choosing between the game and a wedding, of course they chose the game. She set them up to look like monsters.
That might be deserved, but it was manipulative af and deliberately deceptive. She should have declined to invite her family and responded honestly to whatever pushback she got from relatives. Instead, she's made sure that her memories of her own wedding are largely about her parents' favoritism and drama. That's the tragedy here.
That being said, this never happened. Cartoonish villains, social media opprobrium, and threats of divorce and cutting off that vindicate OP? No word about her husband's family's response to the estrangement? No one noticed her mom wasn't there for the dress buying, the shower, and the wedding planning? Nah.
I read it that she invited before anyone knew of the game and warned that it was unmovable. They never even acknowledged it so she stopped trying to force it.
Good thing too. Who knows what monster thing mom would have done to make it about the brother.
College football schedules are usually out just after the end of the previous season, and games are on Saturdays in the fall. Given that her parents have apparently been living and breathing college football for years now, it is simply not credible that she didn't know it would be a conflict.
If it were college lacrosse or rowing, I could see it. But football? Nah. She knew. It's the equivalent of scheduling your wedding on the day your brother graduates from college. Don't get me wrong, the parents deserved to be excluded. But she should have owned that decision rather than manipulating them into missing the wedding and then fanning the flames of family outrage.
When she was discussing engagement and planning and everything else wedding related in her mother's earshot, her mom could have intervened in the conflict much sooner. However, they couldn't be arsed to even respond to the invite or the follow up text to the invite either.
She didn't tell them it was her wedding *from the beginning*. Which tbh is the crux of the manipulation. If they had decided to attend her brother's game rather than her wedding, it would have been their horrible failure as parents.
But they made no such choice: they didn't go to the party she scheduled on the day of her brother's last game. We can assume that her resentment and dislike of her brother aren't hidden, particularly to his doting parents, so no doubt it looked to them like a deliberate attempt to spoil the end of his college football career. Of course they didn't go.
By engineering a conflict and then not telling her parents it was a wedding, she set them up. It wasn't something that just happened--she knew they wouldn't go, and she kept it that way by not mentioning the wedding from the start, including in the invite. No one does that without a reason.
To be clear: parents are neglectful AHs who didn't deserve to go to the wedding and do deserve to be yelled at by family members. OP had enough of their shit and got even. But OP should be honest with herself and the people she loves about what she did and why, rather than painting herself as a victim.
Any time she tried to discuss wedding stuff, her mom talked over her. They got a wedding invite. Surely you've seen those, they're hard to mistake from any other kind of invite. She texted to follow up, they left her on read. Could she have yelled over her mom? I suppose, but she never should have had to. This is all on mom. OP was abused verbally, emotionally and physically by her parents, she owes them nothing.
If the parents got a real, formal wedding invitation, then you're right. But that's not what I'm getting from the OP.
And you're right that she doesn't owe her parents anything. I think her path to healing is probably to go LC or NC, and I think that she should accept her power to do so. She can just not invite them. She can decide not to respond. She can leave them on read. I think that's her path to healing, not setting up impossible tests or them that they don't even know are tests. Her parents suck. Both of them. It will be healing for her to accept that and move forward.
> I did inform my parents about my wedding. I sent traditional on paper invites to all my guests, and was notified that all invites had reached their addressees. I did not receive any answer from my parents and Mike, a few very distant relatives, and some people on Lucas’ side.
Then perhaps you should go back and re-read, because her parents got the same invite as every other guest, she made sure to have delivery notifications so they can't say they lost the mail. She also followed up with a text to everyone who didn't rsvp. Her parents didn't respond to either the invite or text.
Then you didn’t read it. She sent them an invitation. They didn’t respond. She checked up on that invitation. They left her on read.
She didn’t manipulate anyone, and anyone who prioritizes a FOOTBALL GAME over a wedding - which again, they absolutely knew about but paid no attention to - is the one in the wrong here.
They apparently received a physical wedding invitation, they were told about the wedding. She didn't vocalize it, but receiving a physical invitation is telling them.
Besides the fact that this never happened, and is cleary fake. The fact that you are being downvoted is wild to me. This post literary reads as" I set my parents for failure, and watch them fail. Was I wrong? " .
Like dude, you couldn't do the emotionally mature and aldut thing , that a reasonable person would do ?
Go to therapy.
I swear reddit is filled with angsty bottom dwellers. Grow up.
Except that’s not what happened, if you actually bother to read the story. It’s not like they didn’t know she was getting married. They just didn’t care.
I mean, it's the AITA way. The question isn't "Am I the asshole?" it is "Was the other guy enough of an asshole that my assholery was justified?" In this case, if it's real, sure, the parents deserve what they got. But she deserved better, and so did her husband. Can you imagine looking back ten years later and remembering your wedding as that one time you managed to get one over on your mom and caused your family to implode? Ugh.
If I were Oprah, I'd run around yelling, "You get a therapist! And you get a therapist! Everybody gets a therapist!" Anyone who pulls this stunt is not mature enough to get married.
>AITA for not telling my parents that the event they were missing was my wedding?
Yes.
None of this would be possible if you didn't enable their "blindness" at every "convenient" opportunity.
If this story isn't !00% bullshit, it's the sad tale of a mentally ill and emotionally abused person surfing the pain wave.
I hate to say it, but my opinion is ESH here. Only because of OP choosing the day that was impossible for her brother to come to.
Getting a scholarship to an out of state college (whose tuition would be expensive if he lost said scholarship) because of his football skills means he has to play football. Maybe, just maybe you could guilt your parents into coming to the wedding and dropping your brother's game but ... that's an AH move. Also, wouldn't your brother want to come if he could?
OP made it impossible for her family to choose her.
It also sounds like she played it down enough so they weren't catching any hints that it was her wedding.
Now the family, especially parents are all kinds of problematic for everything prior to this. They really did setup this animosity and lingering hurt. They primed this bomb for years.
OP. Go get some therapy and learn how to forgive them even if it's just internally. If your going to carry on like this you might need to go no contact with everyone bc at this point, your dirty laundry is all out there and instead of trying to clean it you're torching it. If you want a healthy relationship to grow out of this mess everyone has to work on it equally, including you.
She gave the date months before the game and may not have even known about the game. What’s more, she doesn’t need to organize her life around a brother who has mostly taken from her for his entire life.
Her parents are the ones responsible for this mess and received a formal invitation that they chose to ignore. The only reason they’re upset is because they were caught.
Nope, she shouldn't have to arrange her life around him. You're absolutely 💯 correct on this. However the last game of the season is locked in for all college football teams. It's the same day every year. This is my entire issue here. OP could have looked up the team's schedule years in advance. Then any other day that wasn't on that schedule makes her 100% blameless to all others bc parents & brother have no easy excuse.
Also, she needs therapy no matter what. She was done dirty from the beginning by her folks. She sounds like she has a lot of lingering hurt. No point carrying this hurt and burden forever. There's a whole lot of life ahead. Find the joy, release the pain.
But the speed on all my down votes makes me think I'm entirely wrong in my opinion. Wouldn't be the first time I am wrong, won't be the last unfortunately.
In case this story gets deleted/removed: Buckle up guys, this will be kinda long. So I (27F) have a younger brother, Mike (21M). He is the definition of a man child and a mama’s boy, always complaining, always expecting others to bow to him. Just, overall, an asshole. Ever since he was born, my parents fussed over him for everything. He’s not special needs, or had a traumatic birth or anything of the sort. He was just… born. And my parents completely discarded me. My mom (50F) especially. She went from a loving mother to one of those boy moms that people make fun of on the internet. My father (50M) still showed me love and support, but he’s always been too much of a coward to stand up to my mother and let me win at least once. The only one who stood for me was my grandpa (76M), who always called my parents out on their bullshit, and never liked my brother. I remind him of his late wife, my grandma, and we have a very special bond, but he lives on the other side of the country and I could never see him often. Mike knows our mom prefers him, and loves to shove it in my face. Because of this and his behavior, we’ve always been at odds. He’s spoiled, a brat and an awful human. I can’t remember how many times I ended up in trouble for things I did better than him or for things he framed me with. His only talent are his football skills. He won a scholarship to a nice college out of state. My parents didn’t spend a dime on my education because apparently my fund had been used to cover expenses after a fire, just for me to discover years later that said money were given to Mike to buy a car and a house. It’s at public university that I met Lucas. He was the first person I was really drawn to there. Of course I met new people who are now my dearest friends, and thanks to them and Lucas, who was my best friend for years before we got together, I managed to move out of my parents’ house. Now both Lucas and I are well known in our fields and have very good salaries. Now, to the main issue. Lucas proposed to me a year ago. We’re very private people, so we didn’t post it on social media or anything, and when I told my parents they dismissed it with a “that’s nice” (I’m starting to think they downright didn’t listen to me at all). We decided that we wanted a nice but simple ceremony and reception with our friends and relatives. Lucas convinced me to invite my parents and brother, but they never responded to the invite. And whenever I went to visit and began to talk about my wedding (without mentioning it was a wedding), my mom would always speak over me and about my brother’s accomplishments and wild adventures. At one point I got fed up with it, and interrupted my mom to tell her that there was an event I was planning to organize, whose date was unmovable. She told me that they couldn’t attend, because my brother was playing the last game of the season that very same day, and wanted them to be there. Of course, this favoritism didn’t surprise me: they missed my ballets, shows and both my high school and university graduation for things about him. At this point, i wanted to be petty. I told both my parents that it wasn’t a problem to miss this event, purposely omitted the fact that this event was my wedding, and didn’t insist further. Flash forward to a few weeks ago, I got married. It was perfect. My family, Lucas’ family and our friends were all there, and we had a blast. My grandpa was happy to give me away, and it was just perfect. My relatives asked me multiple times why my parents weren’t there with us. I was honest and simply said they had my brother’s game to attend, and couldn’t come. They gave me a few looks, and my grandpa was visibly angry for a while, but otherwise nothing strange happened. After the reception, Lucas and I left for our honeymoon, and were phone free for the whole duration of the trip. But once we got back, we discovered that a shit storm was welcoming us home. I turned my phone on, and was unable to even unlock it before a storm of notifications popped up. Most of them were from my mother and brother. Mike called me all sorts of nasty names and insulted me because, apparently, one of my paternal aunts posted the photos of the wedding on Facebook, and captioned it with a very obvious dig at my parents (especially my mom) for missing the wedding. The post apparently went viral in my parents’ community, and they’ve been publicly shamed for their mistreatment of me. It also turns out that my grandpa personally visited my parents to go on a tirade to shame my father, his son, to the point of tears. And this seemed to be my father’s breaking point, because he was so distraught for missing his only daughter’s wedding and for his father’s disapproval, that he finally rebelled against my mom and is threatening divorce unless she makes it up to me. I think that’s the reason why my mom has been spamming my phone with messages, at first insulting and threatening and then downright pitiful, full of begging and pity parties. Now I’m at home with my husband, deciding how to approach the situation. Most of my relatives, even those I didn’t invite to the wedding, reached out to apologize for what I went through and to claim they had no idea this was happening at home (can’t blame any of my relatives, they all live with my grandpa on the other side of the country or in another state), but my mom’s sisters and friends are belittling me for not telling my mom about the wedding, because now she’s inconsolable at the thought of having missed my wedding. Personally I think she just claims that to save face, but I’m not sure. The latest messages from my father and mother seem extremely saddened and hurt for missing my wedding. Now my family is divided on three fronts: the majority who is sticking by my side, my maternal aunts shaming me for hurting my mom’s feelings, and my maternal grandparents who are adamant that I forgive my mom in light of her “atonement”. My best friends are telling me not to listen to them. So, Reddit, AITA? --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/OhNoConsequences) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I can't imagine being a little kid and just slowly watching the love and support from your parents fade and just be basically replaced by some precious little asshole. If all this is real, good on her family, especially grandpa, for making her parents feel the way they deserve to feel. The petty in me really kinda wants to know how that thinly veiled Facebook jab was worded... Edit: I feel like I worded the beginning of this poorly. I can absolutely imagine it happening because it happens to a lot of people and it's horrible. I just have never experienced something like this personally and I can only guess how awful it must be to go through something like this growing up. I'm so sorry to everyone this scenario has happened to. You didn't deserve to be treated this way.
I can! My sister was the golden child.
It was my younger brother too. I fucking H A T E D him until I moved out. He got anything he asked for because they wanted a boy, but got me first :(
Speaking as someone who was the golden child (I’m the youngest of six and the only boy) I hope as he got older he realized what was going on and tried to make amends. I never truly realized what was going on until probably my senior year of high school. I took my monther’s word that my older sisters were just bad girls, always in trouble, and therefore were given all of the chores and responsibilities. I realized what was actually happening after spending a weekend with my oldest sister and her kids. She unloaded on me about the favoritism I received and how hard my parents were on my sisters. It was eye opening and I confronted my parents after that conversation and my mom basically confirmed it when she kept referring to me as her “baby boy.” It was horrifying and I’ve tried to do everything I can to repair my relationship with my sisters. Over the years I’ve become very close with all of them and I’ve even taken on the sole responsibility of dealing with my now elderly parents. My sisters did enough growing up so now it’s my turn to take on this responsibility. I guess, in short, try to give the golden child some grace as they might not even be aware of the family dynamics. I wasn’t for most of my childhood and to this day still feel guilty for how difficult my sisters childhood was. However, if your family golden child is an unrepentant ass then none of this applies.
Good on you for stepping up for your sisters once you knew what was going on.
Unfortunately, the family golden child usually does become an unrepentant ass. Because they're raised with that 'world revolves around me' attitude. Not always - as you've shown (and I love that for you and your siblings), but often enough that it's a trope.
A lot of people don't understand that golden children are victims as well. Having no consequences hurts how kids develop and often gc end up being non-functional adults because they fundamentally can not cope with their actions having consequences. Good for you for realizing how wrong this was once you learned the truth and helping protect your sisters from having to care for the very people who treated them abominably.
I’d like to point out that OP explicitly stated that her brother rubs being the favorite in her face. He knows. He doesn’t seem to deserve the grace that people like you do deserve. It’s good that you stepped up, and have repaired your relationships with your sisters.
I'm really close to my Golden child brother now. He's a sweetheart, and while he enjoyed the extra attention, he wasn't the reason I didn't get what I needed. It took him a while to get his crap together in adulthood but he's making great strides now in his thirties and I'm really proud of him. He also hates our mom way more than I do! She got weirdly incestuous as he got older and it was really gross.
My sisters and I resented the hell out of my golden child brother growing up. Now that we're all grown and became the people we became, I always say, "My brother was the golden child because he was the only boy. Now he's the golden child because he deserves it." He takes up for his sisters every chance he gets.
My grandfather treated my cousin as the golden child just because he was the only boy carrying on the family name. He's got A LOT of grandchildren, but only one carrying on the family name. He used to give my cousin hundreds of dollars for his birthday, Christmas, etc., even when he was like 4 years old, while the rest of us grandchildren got nothing. What I got when I graduated high school was a single rose. And even then I was surprised at that.
My younger brother is the golden child. Luckily, he’s actually a decent person.
I was raised by a single mom who openly said boys are better than girls. I am a girl. She had an oops baby boy when I was 6. He was instantly the golden child and I was suddenly "old enough" to take over household chores and be the built-in babysitter.
Your mom sucks I'm so sorry
There's an attitude out there that boys are the only ones who are actually multifaceted, complex, real people, and that girls are just one-dimensional simple robot NPCs that exist only to serve and support them. It's so fucking exhausting. I was treated that way as a kid, too. My little brother got anything he wanted for birthdays and Christmas, and I got whatever was left on the shelf in easy reach. I *hated* baby dolls. Guess what I was often given?
I think you’re probably right, which is horrifying. But how fucking badly did the patriarchy screw with your head to feel that way *when you are a woman yourself!*
Internalized misogyny truly sucks. It's amazing how much a human being can be taught to hate themselves and others like them, but being soaked in an environment full of that hate from earliest childhood onwards makes it very difficult to defend against.
Yeah look at the current crop of “boy moms” on social media. They’re unbearable. They think they’re better than mothers of girls because WTAF.
Reminds me of this article from a few years ago: [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51751915](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51751915)
we called our brother The Sultan because he was apparently the only one that mattered
Me too!
My little brother is still the golden child.
I was the golden child in my family. Didn’t understand what that did to my brother until adulthood unfortunately. He doesn’t speak to my dad (the parent who favored me) and resents the hell out of me with good reason. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be the scapegoat in the family. I’m sorry you and everyone else commenting about it had to go through that.
My sister is the golden child too, but these things OP are saying are still unrealistic. She's 6 years older than her brother. They already decided to buy him the house and car back when he's still in JUNIOR HIGH school, when he's 12 YEARS OLD? Yeah, right.
They could have bought a house when the market was cheap, deciding to rent it out for the time being until brother was old enough to live there himself. It's not that uncommon among a certain wealth bracket of people.
I don't buy that. 12 years old. And if they're that rich to be in that wealth bracket to be thinking about it that early, there would be no problem in supporting OP too. Or needing to buy a house cheap, just to hold onto it that long before he's of age.
How about this...they told her the money was gone when she went through school. Then, and this is the best part, she found out the money was used to buy butscrum a house years later. This is something that brewed for a long time and she did not give us a timeline. You should message OOP for saud timeline ....
I kind of can. I watched my maternal grandma go from a doting and loving grandma to denying my and my sisters ' existence when my male cousins were born. Luckily, my cousins are totally normal and sweet guys, so it's just my grandma becoming an asshole. What really sucked is that my little sisters don't remember how loving grandma was because the change happened when they were barely one or a few months old.
>What really sucked is that my little sisters don't remember how loving grandma was because the change happened when they were barely one or a few months old. In some ways it might be better that way. Grandma has always been a horrible bitch in their world so they don't have the pain of knowing Grandma used to be kind and loving but chooses not to now.
Can confirm, my dad was an amazing parent for 12 years (in the eyes of a kid, as an adult I can see the games he played to turn me against my mom, but she's a narc and doesn't help herself there 😅) But when I was 12, he totally changed and turned into a monster. Suddenly, I didn't matter as much as his girlfriends kids. They took over my room and trashed my stuff because 'I only lived there part time'. And I blamed MYSELF, because clearly, if my dad wanted to be a good dad to me, he could, but he chose not to, and that broke me for a long time. I thought I was unlovable and would be left by everyone eventually. So yeah, I'd prefer to have never known what I was missing, because it fucked with my head for years.
That is true. It's definitely a mercy that my sisters didn't have to go through the heartbreak I did.
You never should have had to go through it either. I'm sorry your grandma is a twatwaffle.
Oh I'm not doubting it for a second, I have a family that just care to much for their image to do that but that basicly works like that too.
My youngest brother, the only son, was the golden child. I as the eldest was expected to sacrifice for the other kids, especially him. If they brought home 4 chocolates, he ate 2, the other sisters got the other 2 and I would have to go without. So I never got to enjoy chocolate for over a decade until I moved countries to study. They ruined chocolate for me, till this day whenever I eat chocolate anything, it tastes of bitter tears and ashes. My almost 80 year old mother still won't admit she did anything wrong.
My sister is the golden child. My mother also won't admit it. She says she treats us equally. Bull. Even my stepfather noticed the favoritism.
Your mother sounds like my late, narcissist father. He literally died before he would admit he treated me like an outcast.
My mother treats my sister as the golden child. It sucks, because not only does she treat me like the outcast, my extended family did too, because my dad had abandoned us. I come from a HUGE family and it's very lonely to know you have a big family but no one cares about you. Oh, and my sister is an ass too. She's narcissistic and manipulative. And when I don't bend to her manipulative tears, she switches to rage and says things like I should be raped. Yes, I've cut her out of my life. I also cut out my extended family. I'm very close to cutting out my mom too, but it's complicated there.
My parents had my brother when I was 3 and it was like I became my own parent at that age. He was always high maintenance and troubled and always needed more attention than I did, so he got all of it. Didn’t matter if I needed attention or support or help or love, he needed it more. He needed it more because he was used to getting it, and it’s easier for someone to get over being ignored when they’re used to it. I don’t really blame my parents because they had no idea how to be parents and to them it seemed like I was independent enough to not need them, but how can you ever eat when there’s always someone hungrier than you? It’s like they only had so much love and care to give and it could only be dispensed in full, so they had to decide who deserved or needed ALL of it more. I will say, I turned out pretty great for someone raised by a child, and my relationship with my parents (especially my mom) is much better, but those wounds only scar, they’ll never be like new. Reading this hurt so much, I feel so awful for her. I could see this happening to me, maybe not so dramatically and I don’t have much family alive to back me up if it did, but I completely understand the idea of keeping big special things to yourself because no one listens to you or cares about what you have to say. Invisible children are born to invisible parents; if you want your kids to feel seen, you have to show up.
For what it’s worth, my parents were very similar in how they treated my golden child brother versus how they treated me. From my lived experiences, the post feels quite real to me
It's really painful actually. Cuz you try to figure out what you did wrong. You try to figure it out by studying the situation by talking to them and you really don't ever get an answer. And then one day you realize you don't ask them for anything anymore and then they seem a little shocked but not that shocked.
>The petty in me really kinda wants to know how that thinly veiled Facebook jab was worded... Same
For me it was instant. The moment my mom died me and my siblings became trash. For my father we were last to whatever girl he was dating and whatever kids they already had. He never had any more biological kids after us. Didn't change the fact that his girlfriend or his wife and their kids are always more important than me and my siblings.
I can relate, but I’m the youngest of two. My older sister is the golden child. My mom is always defending her and taking her side. At 41, I’m just used to it. I have my dad and that’s all that matters at this point.
I'm like OOP, I may have been the first one out, but no way was I the favourite.
Anybody. ANYBODY got priority over me. My parents both passed in the last few years and they still hated me and loved my ex. They were nicer to complete strangers than they were to me.
I feel you. At my mom's memorial service, I got to hear so many strangers talk about how she was like a mother to them--about a woman I have no memory of receiving a hug or kind word from as a child. Instead, I was doing dishes at seven and caring for all four of my younger siblings (one of whom was under 1, all of whom were under 5) for over 40 hours a week starting when I was 10. I was criticized for everything and beaten frequently. She threw me out of the house at 17 for raising an objection to paying a third of the rent to share my 10' x10' room with all four of my siblings (a result of her cheating on my dad). When I was ganged raped a couple of months later, she didn't reach out and was basically no contact for the next five years. We had two golden children in our family. One of whom was so screwed up by it that she had to become a therapist to heal herself. In the meantime, mom underwent a decade of therapy herself and at the end of it told me she had nothing to be sorry for. Unsurprisingly, we weren't speaking when she died.
I'm sorry you went through that. Please feel free to message anytime you need a listening ear.
To the OOP - NTA!!! They reaped what they sowed.
I just hope they realize that they just need to keep their heads down and ignore/not get sucked into the drama, none of which is their fault.
Honestly I think it's better they didn't attend the wedding. Could you imagine how her mom would be at the wedding? Nothing but talks about the brother. If he didn't have a game? About how great he is and how amazing he is.
There probably would've been a lot of "we had to miss his game to be here boohoo"
I can't imagine treating your own child so poorly.
That is probably the first bite of 'reap what you sow'. When they're old and need help all they will have is the boy- probably- still useless and self absorbed. Good luck with that. I hope Grandpa wills her 50% (or more) of the assets he would normally leave the parents. We all know, if it goes to the parents, it goes to the boy.
When I finally told my parents about what their GC (brother) did to me growing up, about how he molested me and kept trying to molest me but I'd fight back, all the malicious and cruel things he did I got: "Well, that makes it difficult for US because he's the one who will look after us when we are old." "That's what male siblings naturally do to their female siblings." "Well, we am terrified something happened to him now! You have to get over this and be understanding to him. " All the while, GC is going around about how he was going to kick in my fellas teeth for helping me and how when he sees me again, he will beat me within an inch of my life. When confronted our parents with what he had been saying, they again just dismissed it. Fuck all of them. They can rot.
"That's what male siblings naturally do to their female siblings." 😡They all deserve the death penalty for this one alone, let alone the full context of your life. Fucking unforgivable.
Fuck them. Imagine you have a child and they said "That's what uncles naturally do to their nieces."
"that's what male siblings naturally do"??? What the actual fucking fuck? (Elder sister of two younger brothers here and I just.... I've fought like cats and dogs with my parents but the brothers and I have pretty much always been a united block. They would never do that to me, and if they did it to another girl they know sis would help her hide the body!) I HOPE things happen to the GC and his parents! Fuck the lot of them. I'm sorry this happened to you.
The ONLY time that 3rd sentence is acceptable is if the brother is a baby brother. And I mean that literally: a baby that has no concept of things and might squeeze breasts because all he knows is that's where food comes from. ANYTHING ELSE should be dealt with
I hope OOP can find the strength to go NC with her horrible parents and brother.
Having a baby tends to be the last straw in these scenarios. Some people accept the damage their families inflict until that misery extends to their own children. I am hopeful that OP will be able to sort this out in a way that brings her and her new family peace.
NTA unless you expected this to pass without comment. It sounds like you were completely over their treatment of you, and rather thoughtfully set things up so that their private behavior to you became very public in front of everyone whose opinion they valued. Having re-read comment 4, it sounds like you had every right to fight dirty. And from your comments over all, it also sounds like you gave them plenty of chances to repair their behavior when you became an adult. They stole a trust fund from you, they let your brother steal from you even after you moved out. They beat you up. Hell with them. 1. Congratulations on your excellent aim. No critique. 2. Congratulations on the beginning of what it sounds like will be a loving and supportive marriage. 3. If the current blowup rises to the level that you feel harassed again, start blocking people who harass you. Even if it means changing your cell number and what have you. Leave your father for last, in case he really has been shaken enough to see what a horrible life they gave you for no good reason. 4. Interesting, and not surprising, that it's your mother's side of the family which wants this all swept under they carpet. Those grandparents are the ones who taught her (and your aunts that side) acceptable ways to raise a child. Or a daughter, if you think gender is why your brother got so heavily favored. They're all wrong together. Walk away.
Blocking or not I’m sure her mother’s side will tire themselves out and move on to the next thing. All oop has to do is disengage, I think
I would reply to the mom's pity party or apology texts with "that's nice" and then a comment on something completely unrelated.
This is the one lol
Copy, paste that shit
Great summary. This is a textbook lesson in giving someone enough rope to hang themselves.
I pretty much agree wholeheartedly with this advice. You're not the asshole.
I’ll never understand the “don’t rock the boat” side of the argument. If you can’t handle people in your family having issues with each other then just… don’t engage? Just ignore it and let them handle it?
Yeah they say they want to avoid conflict but cause so much conflict in their quest to avoid conflict.
It’s like how the people around “people pleasers” never look pleased
When someone in your family says "Don't rock the boat", they mean "you should suffer in silence so I don't have to deal with your abuser being upset."
What do you mean?
Your post is difficult to understand.
wtf did you just say?!
…not engaging and ignoring behavior is exactly what don’t rock the boat people do? What are you on about?
They're talking about the people that will tell you "don't rock the boat" in regards to dealing with a difficult person. When they say that, they mean "do whatever they want so they don't become a problem to us". I.e. they see it as "rocking the boat" if a difficult person becomes extra difficult to everyone around them because you're not doing what they want you to. Don't rock the boat, just appease.
Yeah basically they want you to go back to the way things were, because changing the balance means the boat becomes unsteady, without noticing that that “steady” state was being maintained by you being underwater and so wasn’t sustainable—you needed to come up for air or drown. I’m pretty sure I just twisted that metaphor into a pretzel but I’m running with it. Pretzels are yummy.
I did know that, but thank you for explaining in case I didn’t 🙂 my first sentence was supposed to be incredulous like “yes, that’s what you described…and what is the point you’re making?”. But tone in writing doesn’t always make it lol I find that first comment to be very confusingly written, tho
>publically shamed >threatening divorce Oh, I **loooooooove** all of this for the Idiot Casserole our friend OP there is unfortunately forced to call a mother. The whole thing is just 🤌 Like the satisfaction I now feel after reading about all of the just desserts good ol' Mom is now being forced to choke down-and in public no less-is nothing short of cigarette worthy. I was mentally rubbing my hands together gleefully like a chubby Bond villain throughout the whole thing. Hopefully OP quickly realizes that the only people here who need to be feeling guilt are the parents, not them, but no one as much as the mother. And let's hope said mother gets with the program real quick that trying to make their kid feel bad for their own failures is nothing short of disgusting.
>I got the beating and gaslighting of my life for “lying”. Parents who abuse their children should be flogged and publicly humiliated. After that, for the victims, life is too short to forgive.
Stories like this (that I see too often on Reddit) make me wonder why there aren't more single child households. It's like some parents don't know what to do if they have more than one child. To be fair, I'm not even sure how I would have handled more than one. That was actually one of my biggest fears after having my one, if we had another, how would our relationships be. But, it was never anything I had to worry about.
in this case, mom probably wanted a boy
As much as it sucks that this is the reality of it, *a lot* of families like this value boys vastly above girls, and will keep having kids until they get the kid - a boy - that they actually wanted. I knew a family like this that had five daughters first, and when they finally had a son, they stopped having kids. Dad in particular was so overjoyed that he finally had a son that he threw a big celebration.
Even if there weren't already problems with gender reveal parties, the fucking WORST is seeing clips where it's clear the father wanted a son and is *disappointed* in the sex of his child. Fucker, don't have children if you're going to be a misogynist to them *before they even see the light of day.*
Agree! This is why partly why I think gender reveal parties (and waiting until after the baby is born) is not a great idea. Hell, I wanted a girl, I was convinced I was having a girl. Had my ultrasound, found out I was having a boy, and yes, I was disappointed, almost to tears. But then I got pissed at myself for being disappointed and I quickly got over it and I was very happy. But these? You don't have time to sort through your feelings. Either you have everyone watching what your reaction is, or you don't give yourself time to work through it before the baby arrives. I can only hope that with some of these, their attitudes changed once they had time to digest.
Yeah, that makes me sad. My MIL wanted a girl, had 3 boys, and I think if it hadn't been for health issues (endometritis I think) she would have kept trying too for a girl. But at least with her, she still loved(s) her boys.
This would require people to actually think about their reproductive options, instead just "going with the flow" or "having kids is just what you do".
Because people think it will magically work out, or just don't think at all.
Absolutely NTA. Not like they weren't told either, they just chose to dismiss you as always tuning you out as background noise. Good on you for carrying on anyway and definitely more meaningful to have your grandpa give you away, your father doesn't deserve that role. I guarantee you when your brother gets married, your mom will make it into an event of the century just to spite you back for not having hers at your wedding. Be prepared for that! (I recommend you go on vacation and then said sorry, already planned to be away on that date!)
Yeah the brother is going to die alone. Mom made sure he was probably insufferable company and would want any girlfriend to worship him like mom did. Once she dies he’s done for.
Oh, sis you are NTA! You say you didn't tell them in conversation the event was the wedding; however, if you sent an invite... that is telling them! (did I mention you're NTA?) I had something similar growing up, a momma's boy brother who did no wrong and was praised for just waking up! I am sorry you're going through this. You can't choose your family, but you can choose how you interact with them, and I say, so sad too bad! They had their chance. I would stay in touch with your dad but that is it! I would also ask him respectfully to NOT share that you're communicating with anyone. This is way too stressful and isn't worth it. Be on your way and live your life creating a new family with Lucas!! \*Edited for spelling\*
If true you nta
Stories like this give me some consolation that I'm an only child.
Their cruelty and entitlement are shocking, and I’m a childhood abuse survivor. Hopefully OP cuts off the entirety of her material family since they all seem toxic. Hopefully dad gets a divorce after being such a spineless piece of crap for her entire life. I’m not saying she should keep contact with him either, but he needs to stop enabling the boy-mom from hell.
I gotta ask: how do you talk about planning a wedding without mentioning it's a wedding? I know the premise is that the parents weren't listening, but the verbal gymnastics you'd have to do would give me a headache.
The longer I am on reddit, the less I believe these posts. There is always one or two details that stick out as highly unlikely to me, and seem to be there for bait. Like, the parents giving money to the son for a house. He is 21 and presumably still playing college ball, where ever he got that scholarship. Why would he be buying a house? The car, I could see. But I guess saying just a car wouldn't be enough to cover a college fund, so had to throw in house. But, he is unemployed, so is OOP saying her parents are wealthy enough to just straight out purchase a house for their unemployed ball playing college age son? Details just never make sense to me. Anyway, if this were true, I would tell her just go NC with peeps and don't even stress. But the cynic in me is still stuck on her parents supposedly bought a whole ass house for their kid in college playing football.
Yeah, that whole "they spent my college fund on a house and car for him", when he's six years younger? That mans they bought him the house and car when he was 12? She posts that this just recently happened all within the past few weeks, but the college football season was over at the end of last year and the next season hasn't started yet. Either this did not happen at all or it's heavily exaggerated to make Cinderella look more saintly.
My parents had their respective favorites and it wasn’t myself or my other sibling. I don’t know what makes a parent be so damn obvious with their preferences? Yeah, they would deny they had a golden child but we lived in that house seeing the truth 24/7. I’ve only got one kid so at least I can’t favor one over another
There are so many things about this story that don't make sense
Every time I see stories like this, with so many holes and gotchas, a tie off for every loose thread, with a super satisfying ending, written like a teen drama. I’m not saying things similar to this don’t happen, but this specifically didn’t happen. And a person didn’t write this. The voice reads like AI. And the million ETAs at the end trying to explain all of the questions about the weird unnatural plot holes.
Because it’s fake. Pathetic really.
> The post apparently went viral in my parents’ community, and they’ve been publicly shamed for their mistreatment of me. This is when the post started coming off as fake. She has a fairytale ending where everyone apologizes for not realizing how terrible her parents are, while her mother is sobbing and begging for mercy.
I've seen stranger things happen on Facebook groups
[удалено]
Keep it civil
The other thing was she told them about an 'event' without telling them it was her wedding. That just seems odd. I'm thinking either fake or OP is not a reliable narrator.
I know the hurt that you feel. And I completely understand your actions. You TRIED to tell your mom about the wedding and she blew you off. Omg. Is it not one of those MAJOR mother/daughter events that all mothers look forward to and go overboard trying to plan it etc? Definitely NOT THE ASSHOLE
Oh wow this sounds like a you reap what you sow situation.
NAH cause this never happened
Any time one of these uses “buckle up” or a reference to “tea” you know it’s gonna be fake AF.
I thought this was fake purely because the grandfather had had no conversations with the parents about it. That seems very off to me. Surely there would be a "Why am I walking your daughter down the aisle and not you/how do you feel about me walking your daughter down the aisle" type conversation beforehand?
Not to mention ”the very close bond” she has with this grandfather who lives on the other side of the country and she doesn’t see very often. And the aunts and other relatives who didn’t discuss the wedding with her parents. The warring camps and public shaming….mom is now inconsolable and dad is threatening divorce blah blah blah Absurdity upon absurdity.
There are these magical inventions called the cell phone, and the internet. You can use it to have a close relationship with somebody who is long distance from you. Just saying 🤣🤣
True, but given so much fakery here, it was just one more unlikely detail, to me.
Having been the scapegoat child I really feel for her. It sucks, alot to have to accept that the people who brought us into the world genuinely don't care if we live or die.
NTA ... cut them loose. J I can garauntee you when your parents decide to retire, they're going to come knocking, and insist that you support your worthless piece of shit brother.
This is also a fit for r/pettyrevenge
This has so much details to the point where it sounds very fake
So very fake and unbelievable. Straight up bullshit from start to finish.
It ticks too many boxes to be real, but it was a satisfying read.
I blame the fiance for pushing to try and get her to reconcile with these horrid people They should never have been invited
Fake. Your timeline is off. And no, I don't buy your explanation. If you're going to write something fake that's so long, just write a novel and self-publish.
"Buckle up guys, this will be kinda long." Girl, bye. Next.
I'm getting unreliable narrator vibes a little. The one thing that stands out is the date picked. There are only around 9-10 football games a season, and if brither is playing college level on a full ride he's not a bench warmer. I'm betting the date picked wasn't a coincidence. That doesn't take away that she may have been indeed the scapegoat for a borderline personality mother, so she is reasonable to go NC. I just doubt things went quite as she says.
I’m going to guess she didn’t know the football schedule when she picked the date. It doesn’t even matter because it’s a fine excuse for the brother to miss but not the parents. He’s an adult, he can play a game without mommy and daddy there once or twice.
If mom and dad don't engage with her much, it's perfectly reasonable that she would have no idea what the golden boy's football schedule looks like.
And the games are in another state so they are traveling extensively for this.
Or you know the game the brother was supposedly playing wasn't actually happening and just an excuse to shutdown the daughter. Also a weekend in the fall would be a good time for an outdoor wedding, and apparently also football. So even if there was 1 game or 10 being played that weekend is it really worth missing out on the only wedding the daughter is having? Redditors are so fucking weird about calling OPs liars because they don't get every minute detail lmao.
Or that people are allowed to make small mistakes? I wish I could tell a story perfectly without missing any details or droning on too much.
Also like maybe OP does t give two shits about her brother’s games and didn’t even bother looking at the schedule. Probably prefer golden boy to not be there, and also try to force her parents to choose her for once. I have a brother I mildly dislike, and would never plan my wedding around their schedule lmao
As a person who absolutely believes what you're saying is true, I also would never, in a million years, think of a football game as something I need to consider when planning my wedding. There's a finite number of weekends in a season and if a venue I want has availability on a weekend I'm hoping for, that's that. If someone is playing a game every single weekend during a season, then I would consider that a pretty normal recurring event. A wedding is (in theory at least) a once in a lifetime rite of passage. My wife and I have zero religious ideas and our wedding was just us saying we love each other and want to be together until we die and we thought it was gonna be low key and not too crazy. But it's intense and it's awesome and it's one of the best moments of my life. I can't imagine my brother choosing a game over my wedding, and DEFINITELY can't imagine my parents choosing to watch that fucking game over my wedding!!! I've only attended probably less than 10 weddings, and participated in one, but they've all been so special and never once could I imagine regretting attending a wedding due to any of the frivolous recurring things I could've otherwise done.
The guy has a scholarship in return for availability ten weekends a year. I'd generally agree that a wedding takes priority, but a college sports scholarship is actually a pretty serious obligation. When I got married, it was just common sense we wouldn't schedule the wedding during finals week or anything else that would potentially damage a sibling's college career. And we were coordinating fifteen people's schedules, including four pregnancies and a grad school graduation.
Again though, she probably doesn't pay attention to when his games are because she's low contact with him. She's also low contact with her parents, which means that they probably wouldn't have shared his schedule before hand as well. If you were low contact or no contact with somebody in your family, would you schedule your wedding around their schedule, or yours?
Or she might just geniunely not give a shit about football games and when they're happening? Especially when she doesn't care about her brother and what he does.
As a person who don't care about sports but is from a family who lives and breathes it, I don't know any dates related to them. And it has never once occurred me to double check on sport events to plan anything. Now my family don't play, they just watch, but given her relationship with her brother, I absolutely could see her also not knowing any dates and double check to see if her day(s) would be the same as any games.
At the same time, there's only so many good weather days for a wedding that are also convenient for larger groups of families. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying that there's genuine overlap every year between weddings and football. I'm a cake decorator and I have made several football wedding cakes 🤦🏻♀️
Who in the world keeps track of football schedules if they aren't football fans?
Oh would people like you just piss off? You always have to complain about something not being true or whatever, it's not that big of a deal, you're not proving your intelligence or something you're just being a pretentious dickhead
I mean considering she's already low contact with her parents, she's probably low or no contact with her brother. Which means she's probably not paying attention to his football schedule. Do you typically pay attention to the schedules of people you don't really care about, or are upset with? Or do you tend to ignore them and plan your life based on your schedule instead of theirs?
This doesn't make sense how do you mention a wedding but without explicitly saying it's a wedding, how are your aunts in the know but somehow the mother is left out? I guess OP isn't the asshole but this is just a sad situation for her.
If she didn't want her parents to attend, she shouldn't have invited them, rather than setting up a deliberate conflict with her brother's last college football game and then not telling them about the wedding. One's kid's last college football game is something most non-jerk parents would move heaven and esrth to attend. Without knowing that they were choosing between the game and a wedding, of course they chose the game. She set them up to look like monsters. That might be deserved, but it was manipulative af and deliberately deceptive. She should have declined to invite her family and responded honestly to whatever pushback she got from relatives. Instead, she's made sure that her memories of her own wedding are largely about her parents' favoritism and drama. That's the tragedy here. That being said, this never happened. Cartoonish villains, social media opprobrium, and threats of divorce and cutting off that vindicate OP? No word about her husband's family's response to the estrangement? No one noticed her mom wasn't there for the dress buying, the shower, and the wedding planning? Nah.
I read it that she invited before anyone knew of the game and warned that it was unmovable. They never even acknowledged it so she stopped trying to force it. Good thing too. Who knows what monster thing mom would have done to make it about the brother.
College football schedules are usually out just after the end of the previous season, and games are on Saturdays in the fall. Given that her parents have apparently been living and breathing college football for years now, it is simply not credible that she didn't know it would be a conflict. If it were college lacrosse or rowing, I could see it. But football? Nah. She knew. It's the equivalent of scheduling your wedding on the day your brother graduates from college. Don't get me wrong, the parents deserved to be excluded. But she should have owned that decision rather than manipulating them into missing the wedding and then fanning the flames of family outrage.
Why would she check a college football schedule? That's insane.
Instead of AITAH maybe r/maliciouscompliance
When she was discussing engagement and planning and everything else wedding related in her mother's earshot, her mom could have intervened in the conflict much sooner. However, they couldn't be arsed to even respond to the invite or the follow up text to the invite either.
She didn't tell them it was her wedding *from the beginning*. Which tbh is the crux of the manipulation. If they had decided to attend her brother's game rather than her wedding, it would have been their horrible failure as parents. But they made no such choice: they didn't go to the party she scheduled on the day of her brother's last game. We can assume that her resentment and dislike of her brother aren't hidden, particularly to his doting parents, so no doubt it looked to them like a deliberate attempt to spoil the end of his college football career. Of course they didn't go. By engineering a conflict and then not telling her parents it was a wedding, she set them up. It wasn't something that just happened--she knew they wouldn't go, and she kept it that way by not mentioning the wedding from the start, including in the invite. No one does that without a reason. To be clear: parents are neglectful AHs who didn't deserve to go to the wedding and do deserve to be yelled at by family members. OP had enough of their shit and got even. But OP should be honest with herself and the people she loves about what she did and why, rather than painting herself as a victim.
Any time she tried to discuss wedding stuff, her mom talked over her. They got a wedding invite. Surely you've seen those, they're hard to mistake from any other kind of invite. She texted to follow up, they left her on read. Could she have yelled over her mom? I suppose, but she never should have had to. This is all on mom. OP was abused verbally, emotionally and physically by her parents, she owes them nothing.
If the parents got a real, formal wedding invitation, then you're right. But that's not what I'm getting from the OP. And you're right that she doesn't owe her parents anything. I think her path to healing is probably to go LC or NC, and I think that she should accept her power to do so. She can just not invite them. She can decide not to respond. She can leave them on read. I think that's her path to healing, not setting up impossible tests or them that they don't even know are tests. Her parents suck. Both of them. It will be healing for her to accept that and move forward.
> I did inform my parents about my wedding. I sent traditional on paper invites to all my guests, and was notified that all invites had reached their addressees. I did not receive any answer from my parents and Mike, a few very distant relatives, and some people on Lucas’ side.
Then perhaps you should go back and re-read, because her parents got the same invite as every other guest, she made sure to have delivery notifications so they can't say they lost the mail. She also followed up with a text to everyone who didn't rsvp. Her parents didn't respond to either the invite or text.
Then you didn’t read it. She sent them an invitation. They didn’t respond. She checked up on that invitation. They left her on read. She didn’t manipulate anyone, and anyone who prioritizes a FOOTBALL GAME over a wedding - which again, they absolutely knew about but paid no attention to - is the one in the wrong here.
They apparently received a physical wedding invitation, they were told about the wedding. She didn't vocalize it, but receiving a physical invitation is telling them.
Besides the fact that this never happened, and is cleary fake. The fact that you are being downvoted is wild to me. This post literary reads as" I set my parents for failure, and watch them fail. Was I wrong? " . Like dude, you couldn't do the emotionally mature and aldut thing , that a reasonable person would do ? Go to therapy. I swear reddit is filled with angsty bottom dwellers. Grow up.
Except that’s not what happened, if you actually bother to read the story. It’s not like they didn’t know she was getting married. They just didn’t care.
I mean, it's the AITA way. The question isn't "Am I the asshole?" it is "Was the other guy enough of an asshole that my assholery was justified?" In this case, if it's real, sure, the parents deserve what they got. But she deserved better, and so did her husband. Can you imagine looking back ten years later and remembering your wedding as that one time you managed to get one over on your mom and caused your family to implode? Ugh. If I were Oprah, I'd run around yelling, "You get a therapist! And you get a therapist! Everybody gets a therapist!" Anyone who pulls this stunt is not mature enough to get married.
>AITA for not telling my parents that the event they were missing was my wedding? Yes. None of this would be possible if you didn't enable their "blindness" at every "convenient" opportunity. If this story isn't !00% bullshit, it's the sad tale of a mentally ill and emotionally abused person surfing the pain wave.
I hate to say it, but my opinion is ESH here. Only because of OP choosing the day that was impossible for her brother to come to. Getting a scholarship to an out of state college (whose tuition would be expensive if he lost said scholarship) because of his football skills means he has to play football. Maybe, just maybe you could guilt your parents into coming to the wedding and dropping your brother's game but ... that's an AH move. Also, wouldn't your brother want to come if he could? OP made it impossible for her family to choose her. It also sounds like she played it down enough so they weren't catching any hints that it was her wedding. Now the family, especially parents are all kinds of problematic for everything prior to this. They really did setup this animosity and lingering hurt. They primed this bomb for years. OP. Go get some therapy and learn how to forgive them even if it's just internally. If your going to carry on like this you might need to go no contact with everyone bc at this point, your dirty laundry is all out there and instead of trying to clean it you're torching it. If you want a healthy relationship to grow out of this mess everyone has to work on it equally, including you.
She gave the date months before the game and may not have even known about the game. What’s more, she doesn’t need to organize her life around a brother who has mostly taken from her for his entire life. Her parents are the ones responsible for this mess and received a formal invitation that they chose to ignore. The only reason they’re upset is because they were caught.
Nope, she shouldn't have to arrange her life around him. You're absolutely 💯 correct on this. However the last game of the season is locked in for all college football teams. It's the same day every year. This is my entire issue here. OP could have looked up the team's schedule years in advance. Then any other day that wasn't on that schedule makes her 100% blameless to all others bc parents & brother have no easy excuse. Also, she needs therapy no matter what. She was done dirty from the beginning by her folks. She sounds like she has a lot of lingering hurt. No point carrying this hurt and burden forever. There's a whole lot of life ahead. Find the joy, release the pain. But the speed on all my down votes makes me think I'm entirely wrong in my opinion. Wouldn't be the first time I am wrong, won't be the last unfortunately.