Woman sets coworker up with brother, they marry and, oops, she hates her. AITA?
'AITA for telling my sister-in-law that she was being unreasonable?'
Three years ago, I (36M) set my coworker “Dani” (25F) up with my brother “Phil” (27M) and the two hit it off. Now, the two are newlyweds and Dani is 7 months pregnant with their first child. I consider Dani a friend, as well as family... She and I work incredibly well together but don’t talk about family stuff while at work.
Last weekend, the two had a combined baby shower/gender reveal party for their baby. I think that they had planned to have a gender reveal party separately from the baby shower, but things just worked out this way instead.
Anyway, everything seemed fine on the day of the party and everyone was having a good time. At the gender reveal, everyone found out that they were having a girl.
They both reacted well at first and it was sweet until later when I saw that Dani was visibly upset... crying, hyperventilating, etc. At one point, four people were trying to console her.
I ran into her on the way to the bathroom and asked her if she was feeling any better, instant tears. When I asked her what was wrong, she told me that even though she knows it was stupid, she thought she was having a boy and was unsure if she was ready for a girl.
I told her as a friend, that she has a lot to be grateful for regardless... that it is completely unreasonable to be so upset about her child’s gender and let her negative feelings overshadow the fact that she and her baby are completely healthy and have a support system that other women would be happy to have.
By this point, she was bawling even worse, and I didn’t know what to do (I am not a very touchy-feely person). I went and found Phil and he calmed her down.
Dani was standoffish at work the following week and not her usual self. Like not outwardly rude but she’s usually a lot nicer. I asked her in my office if something was wrong, and she said that I made her feel like sh*t at the party and that she was still kind of upset with me.
My gut is telling me that I should apologize, but on the other hand, I feel like she was being ungrateful at the party in many ways (also I'm not even sure she would care).
To me, even as someone without kids I know that just the fact Dani has a healthy family so far and the finances to support a child is more than most people have, so literally freaking out because you aren’t having a boy just seems kind of a**hole-ish.
Here were the top comments from readers:
In theory, you're not wrong. But in practice YTA. She's 7 months pregnant. She just needed a minute to deal with her feelings, not to be judged for not being able to control her feelings on hormones.
And it's not like she said anything really wrong, like 'I don't want a girl.' She just clearly had been assuming it was a boy and was a little shaken by having to rethink her expectations.
Right. She said she was unsure if she was ready for a girl. She's a first time mom who is probably already overwhelmed with the huge change That is parenthood. She thought it was going to look one way but now it's different and she's hormonal.
There's nothing to indicate that she will have these feelings permanently. It's very likely that this would be one of the stories that she looks back and laughs about because she now has this beautiful kid and how could she have been so upset? Now she's got the memory of her bil*** calling her ungrateful because she didn't react perfectly from the jump.
You told a crying 7-month pregnant woman she was being unreasonable about her visualizing her child's gender, and then gave her *advice* about it when she found out it was different from what she visualized, when clearly what she wanted was *sympathy*? YTA.
I think YTA. You straight up dismissed her emotions because you felt like she had nothing to be upset about in your eyes. And you also didn't apologize for making her even more upset.