'AITA for not apologizing to my daughter's BF for viewing photos of his house online?'

"AITA for not apologizing to my daughter's BF for viewing photos of his house on a real estate sight without his permission?"

Four years ago, my youngest daughter (then 23), (call her Nadia), met up with a guy she’d gone to high school with. Call him Ray (then 24). They were just friends in HS, went to different colleges and hadn’t kept in touch. As fate would have it, they ended up in taking jobs in the same city and found each other via social media and started meeting up.

During that time Nadia rented a room in shared house and Ray rented an apartment. Ray had been house shopping and decided the time was right buy a home. By this time, Nadia and Ray had been seeing each other for about 6 months and they planned to move into the new house together.

Ray was proud of being a new homeowner and posted a pic of himself on the front porch of the house on Facebook. My daughter, Nadia, was also happy about the new house and we chatted about what things she/they may need and what the neighborhood was like and the proximity of the house to her work.

During the conversation, Nadia mentioned the street name but not the actual address because the house purchase had not gone to closing yet and they hadn’t moved in.

Several weeks went by, and they did eventually move into the new house together. The city where they lived is about a 6 -7 hour drive from where my husband and I live and we weren’t able to go visit them due to our work schedules. At the time, my husband and I had been looking at homes on the various internet sites because were planning to downsize since we’re now empty-nesters.

We were exploring housing options in several different states. One day, it occurred to me that since I knew the city and street of Ray’s house, I might be able to do virtual tour online if the listing was still up. I looked it up on a real estate site under “recently sold."

I found a few homes in the right area and quickly recognized the correct one because Ray had posted that photo of himself on the front porch on Facebook which showed the house number. My husband and I looked at the house photos on the real estate website and thought it looked small but very nice. We were happy for them!

Around that time, one of my son’s texted to ask me for Nadia & Ray’s address so he could send them a housewarming gift. Since I knew the address both from Ray’s Facebook post and from the real estate site, I gave it to him.

Two weeks later I got a call from Nadia, just to chat – or so I thought. After the “how are you doing” back and forth, she said: “So we got a package from ____(her brother) but I don’t know how he got our address since we didn’t give it to him.” I volunteered that he had asked me and I gave it to him. In a slightly severe tone she asked: “How did YOU get out address?!”

A bit taken aback, I told her exactly what I just shared in this post. She then confessed that she had suspected that and proceeded to scold me for giving out her address without her permission and for having looked up their house without asking for Ray’s permission first.

Her level of “outrage” seemed very strange and out of character. I asked her if I had called and asked for her address would she have given it to me? She said, “Yes, but the point is you didn’t ask!” To which I replied, “Because I already knew your address, so I had no reason to call and ask for it.” As I said, the conversation was weird.

(Pertinent info here because I know people will be speculating.) Nadia, her sister and her two brothers all love each other and have very good relationships. We spend holidays together when we can and keep in touch via calls and text throughout the year. There are no hard feelings or awkward situations that would make Nadia NOT want any of her siblings to know where she lived.

No. The BIG PROBLEM here is that Ray was offended and angry because, as my daughter explained: “He is shy and a very private person.“ (FYI: I don’t think Nadia would have blinked an eye at my giving her brother her address or us looking at the online photos. I believe she was just trying to supportive of BF.)

I feel like I need to clarify again: Her BF was mad at us because we didn’t ask his permission before we looked at the real estate listing of his recently purchased house posted on a public website and because we gave out their mailing address to Nadia’s brother so he could send them a nice housewarming gift.

As a result, Nadia told me that Ray believed we needed to apologize both for looking at the house photos and for giving their address to her brother. I said we’d call them back.

After my husband and I discussed it, we set up a phone call with Ray and we did apologize for giving out the address without asking because that may have been out of order. But we defended ourselves by saying that it never occurred to us that either of them would want to keep their address secret from the family. However, we did NOT actually apologize for looking at the house photos.

We told him we were very sorry that it made him feel like his privacy had been invaded and that it was never our intention to hurt or upset him. We explained that while we were already looking at photos of dozens of homes on the real estate site, we looked to see if his house was still in the listings out of general curiosity.

And we didn’t think that it was wrong to be curious about the house our daughter was living in. We again said, “We’re very sorry that this upset you and we hope you’ll accept our apology.” He seemed OK at the end of the phone call but this did not satisfy him. He was still angry because we would not say “It was wrong of us to look at the house pictures without your permission.”

Even now, four years later, -- after he married our daughter (a wedding we helped pay for), has attended a few family get-togethers at our house, and received nothing but kindness from us, he still won’t speak to us directly and when we come to visit, he makes sure he’s out of the house when we arrive.

So AITAH for not apologizing specifically for looking up my daughter & BF's house and viewing the photos online without asking his permission?

This is what people had to say to OP:

Embarrassed_Hat_2904 said:

He’s not very private if he’s posting pics of his house online. Google images is pretty accurate…just sayin.

ThisWeekInTheRegency said:

NTA. Who wouldn't do this? (No one in my family, for sure, because we're all obsessed with real estate.)

Don't allow him to isolate your daughter from you. He sounds very controlling.

Glittering_Towel8434 said:

NTA. If it’s on a real estate site, any real estate site, it’s public info. He sounds very strange though. Just be there for your daughter, I have a feeling she’s going to need family sooner rather than later.

jrm1102 said:

NTA - so wait he’s now your son in law and still wont speak to you because of this?! 4 years later?! Yeah he’s overreacting big time.

RawrBez said:

Yiiiiiiikes. It was listed on a public website!!!!! Sure, giving out the address was maaaaybe crossing a line but if your kids were close I wouldn’t see it as a big deal.

He’s an @$$ though. Not talking to you directly four years later is immature af. But yeah, he’s a walking red flag and I wouldn’t be shocked if they ended in divorce or if he isn’t already abusing her emotionally. Needing that level of control is crazy.