Woman ruins Thanksgiving by airing family's dirty laundry; says 'they started it.'
"AITA for calling out step-family’s dirty laundry at Thanksgiving after they criticized me for being unmarried?"
I’m still getting s@*t for this from my family so it’s possible I may be a bit of the AH here.
I’m 29F. The players are my mom, step-dad, and four step-siblings (35M, 37M, 40F, 42M) and their families. I’m the black sheep in that I’m the only one not married with kids, but that’s by my preference. I love living alone, I don’t want kids, and having a partner just isn’t that important to me.
My family has been asking me when I’m going to get a boyfriend and settle down since I was 19 and the answer has always been “ew, never”. I was going to skip Thanksgiving, but my mom insisted that she wanted everyone home this year if possible so I went. It was the usual drill, but youngest step-brother and his wife are having another kid so that was the big announcement.
This was fine until around the end of dinner one of the SSILs asks if I’m not anxious to have kids since I’m almost 30 and time is running out. I laughed and said “Nah, I’m good.” That led to one of the step-brothers saying that every family needs an old maiden aunt and some other comments I didn’t appreciate. I said let’s move on, but my mom said “We’re just worried about you.”
This is where I’m possibly the AH. I know all the family dirt so I said, “Well, I’m the only person at this table that’s not an alcoholic, a cheater, or constantly broke af because I have more kids than I can afford so I’m not the one to worry about.”
And that’s how I brought Thanksgiving to a dead halt and no one said a thing for the rest of dinner, but my texts are radioactive still. I feel like it was probably riding the line, and my mom says this has caused a lot of problems among the siblings, but also they kinda started it.
Here's what people thought in the comments:
rncikwb asked:
INFO: Where were the kids when you said this? eg. The part about being broke because they have more kids than they can afford. If this was said in front of the kids then that would be a unfair as it might make them feel like a burden. Even though the fault lies with the parents, the kids might still internalize this.
But if you said it with just the adults there then definite NTA.
throw_93758 OP responded:
The kids were eating in the living room with Christmas movies so pretty sure they weren’t paying attention.
SnooDoughnuts4691 writes:
NTA - Hands down the best Thanksgiving showstopper ever. They fucked around and found out! 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Gorilla1969 writes:
Absolutely. And I guarantee that nobody is going to be asking her about her choices any more. They like to dish it out, but can't take it.
FunkyOrangePenguin writes:
NTA. They were being unnecessarily rude for no reason. Why dish it out if you can’t take it?
misssassysamosa writes:
NTA, but now I need to know who’s the alcoholic, the cheater and whose broke.
tartymae writes:
Don't assume those are mutually exclusive categories.