Man refuses to spend holidays with pregnant wife's parents. AITA?
When this man is upset with his in-laws, he asks Reddit:
"AITA for not wanting my family to spend holidays with wife's parents?"
I (27 m) refuse to agree to travel to my wife's (25f) parents for Christmas. I posted here once about 2 years ago and reddit tore me apart, but hopefully this time my perspective can be seen a little better since it's regarding a different type of issue.
Anyway, my girl and I have always split Christmas with each of our families. One year we spend Christmas with my folk, the next with hers. You know the deal.
The issue is that her parents live in a different province than we do. My family lives a couple hours drive, hers lives 4 hours plane ride. So she pretty much only sees them once every other year on account of how costly and time consuming it is to travel that far.
We had a son a couple years ago and he's never spent a Christmas with my wife' family. My parents got a double Christmas with him because we traveled there last year for her sister's wedding so I wasn't really interested in traveling again for Christmas.
Technically that makes this Christmas my parents turn again, but more so than that my wife is pregnant with our second child. She'll be 7 1/2 months along by the time the holidays roll around and because of that I said it wasn't smart for us to fly.
We've been arguing about it on and off for weeks now and I've been getting mixed opinions from friends and family. My family agrees with me, a few friends have mixed opinions and her family thinks I'm being a completely 'selfish' (like looking out for my wife's health is selfish...)
The arguments about this are escalating to her just pointing out or bringing up every example of me doing something she thinks is wrong.
It's getting on my nerves because 1) the whole trip will be paid for on my dime so I should get a say in how I want to spend my pay cheques 2) not wanting to travel when she'll be that heavily pregnant has nothing to do with how many chores I do...
or how often I help with our kid 3) I'm literally just thinking about her and our new baby 4) If something happens and she gives birth over the holidays what are we meant to do? Spend a whole month extra out there??
I'm getting so tired of these arguments I'm almost tempted to just say I'm not participating in Christmas at all this year. I won't obviously because my son deserves gifts and festivities and all. But the temptation is there.
Anyway. Am I being the AH here by not agreeing to travel for Christmas or is she being the AH by trying to push something I'm uncomfortable with? AITA?
Let's see what readers thought.
stardustshana writes:
This may be against the grain but YTA All she wants is to be with her family for christmas which she hasn't been able to do for years. You didn't wanna travel last year so you didn't and now you can buck up and go to her family's.
Talk to her doctor about the safest way to do it or try to find a way to bring her family to you. There's a way to make this work for you both if you just approach the problem as something to compromise through.
And feeling like you want to cancel Christmas if you don't get what you want is very childish. She already has one kid and another on the way, don't become her third.
gadgetgirl writes:
YTA It’s clear that this isn’t about her safety as much as you are proud of yourself for coming up with a plausible reason to not have to spend Christmas with her family. Except you don’t have a doctor backing you up.
It’s just speculation on your part to get out of something you don’t want to do or pay for. Too bad. Grow up and understand your wife should get to spend as many Christmases with her family as you do with yours.
clearplatform writes:
YTA. It really seems you don't want to do anything just because you don't want to and you're blind and deaf when it comes to any reason. Your parent got double Christmas so do you get just how much you girl spend time with her family in recent years?
None, and part of that was bc you're not interested in traveling. Now I don't know if it's safe to fly 7 months pregnant but still YTA for the way you act.
I'm surprised she's still with you and you're having another baby on the way coz you really selfish person and you're acting like you didn't really care about her.