Reddit Stories - The shining offspring sibling insisted I FACILITATE an INTRODUCTION with my RELATIVE'S spouse

Episode Date: November 22, 2025

#redditstories #askreddit #aita #relationships #family #introduction #siblingdrama #communicationSummary: My shining offspring sibling insisted I facilitate an introduction with my relative's spouse, causing tension and discomfort. Unsure of how to proceed, I sought advice on Reddit to navigate this delicate situation.Tags: redditstories, askreddit, reddit, aita, tifu, relationships, family, introduction, siblingdrama, communication, advice, dilemma, socialskills, etiquette, boundaries, conflictresolution, communicationissues, familydynamics, awkwardencounter, personalrelationshipsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reddit-stories--6237355/support.

I hope you enjoy this story. The Shining Offspring Sibling insisted I facilitate an introduction with my relative's spouse even though he was unsuccessful. Therefore, when I declined, my relatives arrived at my residence and labeled me as conceited. Now I've cut them all off. My brother Kevin, 30M, has always been the golden child of my parents, whatever he wants, he always gets. This time, he has been demanding that I set him up with my sister. in-law, but I put my phone down, and my parents are villainizing me for it. So I really want to know if I'm in the right here because their reactions are really messing with my head.

I, 25M, recently got engaged to my girlfriend of two years, we are about to get married by the beginning of next year. And at the engagement party, we decided to introduce both our families to each other and that's where Kevin met my sister-in-law, Janine, 21F. Throughout the party, he was only talking to her, and recently, he told us that he really liked her so he wanted me to set him up with her. But I refused, for a couple of reasons. First, he's 30, and she's 20 and she's not even out of college yet. She might be an adult, but I think it'll be kind of weird. Second, she just got out of a relationship a couple of months ago, and my fiancé Kate has already told me that she's not looking for anything right now. And thirdly, and most importantly, I don't want to set him up with

anybody at all because he's really an embarrassment to me. I guess being the golden child means that you never really learn that the world doesn't think you're special, only your parents do. He flunked out of college, then he started working for one of my dad's friends. But after working for a couple of years, he got fired for insubordination and laziness. And then, for two years, he was just sitting at home and then, he started a t-shirt business which flopped within a few months. Then he opened up a bar, and that worked out for him for a few years, but then he got into gambling, lost all his money, and had to sell the bar to clear his debts. That was one and a half years ago, and since then, he's been staying with our parents, living out of their basement and

he insists that he has some projects in the works, but I know that all he does is just play video games online with his friends. And on social media, he is a great A in cell and a misogynist of the highest degree, so I guess you can understand why I don't want to put Janine through something like that. So because of all these reasons, I declined when he asked me to set him up with her. And obviously he couldn't accept the fact that I was saying no to him since parents have taught him that nobody can ever say to him. So he threw a fit, and since we had had this discussion at my parents' house while I was visiting for dinner last week, he immediately started yelling at me and said that I was an arrogant jerk, told me that I thought too much of myself just because things had worked out for me in my life. He said that I was just

lucky, and that was what ticked me off. Because trust me, he's been far luckier than I have been. Since when we were kids, our parents have always been more supportive of him, both financially and emotionally. So whatever I was able to accomplish, it was in spite of my luck with my family and despite having all the support, both financial and emotional, he couldn't amount to anything. That's incompetence, not bad luck. So I said that to his face because I had had enough of this nonsense. I also thought that he was projecting a bit because I had never been arrogant a lot being moderately successful in my life.

I have worked hard for whatever I have today, but I've never been arrogant or egoistic about it. He's just insecure about himself, and to be honest, he should be be, because he's not exactly good at anything from being spoiled by our parents. Anyway, we got pretty loud while we were fighting, so in a couple of minutes, our parents also got involved. After Kevin explained what was going on with them, they of course took his side and said that being his brother,

this was the least that I could do for him because he was clearly going through a tough time, and if he really liked Janine, then it should be my duty to set him up with her. When I explained my reasons to them, they told me that I was being shallow and Kevin was right about calling me arrogant and thinking that I was too good for my family. I could see that there was no more to be said, so I just left and decided that I was not going to talk to them anymore.

Afterwards I blocked them because my mom had started sending me messages about how disappointing my behavior had been and that I couldn't just treat my brother like this. It's been a few days, and this is really messing with my head now. Do you guys think I am the awe for refusing to set Kevin up with Janine? Edit, okay, so a couple of things. I could very well cut my parents out of my life, I could have done that way earlier as well, but I guess anybody who has come from a family like mine will understand that it's really not that easy. Families are complicated and honestly, parents like mine are very good at manipulating us

into believing that we need to stay in touch with them. That's how it's always been, every time they screw up, they emotionally manipulate me into forgiving them at some point or the other. After all, they are my parents, and having grown up, they are my parents. up in a family like this, it becomes very difficult to escape from situations like this, and eventually, you do end up forgiving them. And then you end up getting treated like a dormat again, and the cycle continues. It's bad, I know that, but this time, I think it's my final call and I'm not going to be going back to them again after this. Now, coming to questions about

me and what I do and why exactly is Kevin insecure of me, so I'm a business major, I got hired by a pretty successful firm a few months after I graduated, and I've been working with them ever since. I get paid well, and even Kate has quite accomplished herself. In comparison to Kevin, I'm pretty sure that our lives are much better, but I have never been cocky about it or even brought it up with him to make him feel bad, because he's just not that important to me. Besides, I feel like I still have a lot left to accomplish. So I don't want to get ahead of myself and start bragging about everything that I have done already. The fact that he thinks that I'm arrogant in spite of my extremely normal behavior, I think that's a projection and honestly, sometimes you can just tell

that some people are not happy for you and are jealous. Kevin is one of these people because I'm pretty sure that he had always expected to be more successful compared to me, given all the support that he received from our parents. He had all the means to succeed, and he couldn't do anything with it. So of course he's bitter about the fact that I made something of myself when he couldn't. Anyway, that's just my opinion. Update 1, so I spoke to Kate about the situation. I have been keeping it from her, because I know that she already doesn't like Kevin, from whatever minimal interaction she has had with her and she told me that he gives off a really weird and negative vibe. So I didn't want to upset her by letting her know what he had demanded I do,

but when I told her, instead of getting upset, she literally just laughed out loud. She told me that I might as well go ahead and set up a date for them because if there is somebody who could put Kevin in his place, it would definitely be Janine. And I kind of do agree with her, she's very outspoken and blunt and doesn't take any sort of crap from anyone. Both Kate and I are kind of quiet and introverted, so she's very different from us, but I think she would be the perfect person to deal with Kevin. The fact that he even felt entitled enough to demand something like this and try and make me feel like I had to do it for him, it speaks about what kind of character he has and how he sees people around him. Before this last conversation that we had, we hardly ever spoke to each other

whenever I went over to my parents' place for dinner or whatever. This time, he had come to me only to demand that I set him up with Janine, even though I have never liked him, and he has never liked me either. The fact that we didn't have a relationship like this, where he could demand anything that he wanted from me, it made no difference to him because he was literally that entitled. And when I refused, he had the audacity to start yelling at me as if I owe this to him. Now that I think about it, I actually feel silly for thinking that I might have been wrong for what I did. Because judging by his behavior, I really think that I should have just set him up on a date with Janine and then let Janine deal with him. She really would have put him in his

place, and Kate and I even considered the idea for a while, just to be petty. But then, we decided against it, because honestly, we would never put anybody through having to interact with Kevin in any capacity whatsoever. Anyway, after speaking to her and reading the comments here, I felt reassured that I was overthinking everything. I'm 25 now, I'm old enough to realize that no matter what I do, I will just never be good enough for my parents, and Kevin will always be their golden child, their darling son. So I'm just not even going to try anymore, I'm sick of forgiving them again and again, and then being treated like crap. They have had many opportunities to fix their behavior and be better parents to me, but they have always messed it up. Because to them, nobody is

more important than Kevin, so now, I'm officially done. That was actually the real reason that I had been feeling guilty and having second thoughts in the first place, because of whatever my parents had said. Whatever Kevin says, I don't care about him anyway, but I realized that it was my parents' words that had gotten to me. Like they always do, and I just can't allow this to happen anymore. Because I'm about to get married, and then, in a few years, I'll have kids and stuff and if I want to be better parents to them, I'll have to start standing up for myself. Even before that, if I want to be a good husband to Kate, I'll have to learn how to stand

up for myself and not let my parents get to me so much. I have blocked my parents several times before as well, but they have always managed to come by, manipulate me emotionally with tears and nostalgia, and then get me to forgive them. But this time, they are staying blocked. I have had enough, I'm not taking more of their crap. Update 2, hey, so it's been nine days since I had that fight with my parents and Kevin. Since then, they have been blocked and like I had said in my last post, I had no intention of unblocking them. So even this time, when my parents showed up at my house last evening, I refused to even let them in. I told them that I was not entertaining this ever again, that I was

done with them and it was about time that they stopped trying to emotionally manipulate me just to get their way over and over again. They have done this in the past as well, they screw up, they come to me, they apologize and then I keep getting stuck in this cycle. But I'm not going to let this happen anymore. And I told them that they needed to leave. Instead of leaving, they of course stayed put and started telling me that I was being ridiculous and also disrespectful. So I needed to open the door and let them in so we could sit down and have a civil conversation about whatever had happened the other day. Kate was also at home, and when they started arguing with me, she told me to just ignore them and not bother replying. Eventually, they would get tired and leave on their own. So that's what

I did, I just stopped responding to them and they kept trying to get me to open up. Instead of getting tired, though, they just kept getting agitated, and eventually, they started resorting to making personal remarks against me and Kate. It started off with taking digs at whatever I owed them, saying that they had helped me pay for college and now, this is how I had chosen to be grateful to them, by locking them out of the house and refusing to even let them in after a petty little fight. Then, they even said the same things that they had last time, that clearly Kevin was right about me and I had turned into an arrogant and egoistic brat who had no respect for family and thought

I was too good for them because otherwise, I would not be treating my own parents with such disrespect. All that, I was able to ignore pretty easily because I had made up my mind that I was not going to let their remarks get under my skin. And then, they started attacking Kate, and that's when things started getting difficult for me because I'm fine with whatever they have to say to me, I don't care about it anymore. But Kate, they have no right to say anything about her. They had heard Kate telling me to just ignore them, and they would go away on their own.

So they picked that up and started making it seem like Kate was manipulating and brainwashing me against my own parents. That's not the case, we all know that this is a decision that I had made by myself, and she was just helping me stick to it by talking to me, calming me down and telling me helpful way to deal with the situation at hand. But they took it out of context and said that they had heard what Kate had said, so now they had a pretty good idea of what kind of a person she was. They claimed that even before the incident, they had judged that she was not the kind of girl that they would want as a part of the family because clearly, she didn't care much

about my family and now, she was manipulating me into treating them badly as well so she could isolate me and then make me her puppet. I started getting annoyed at that point, but Kate held on to me and just told me to let it go because they were blabbering nonsense. But I screamed at them from the inside and told them that this was getting on my nerves now, so if they didn't leave, I would be calling the cops. Until then, I hadn't done that because I just wanted to avoid drama at any cost, but this was really getting too difficult for me to deal with. But then, a couple of seconds after I said that, they said that they were thankful that I had refused to set Kevin up with Janine because it was bad enough that I was marrying somebody

from a family, who clearly didn't care about raising their daughters well enough to respect their in-laws, they didn't want another son marrying a woman like that. Even that, I could have let it pass, but my mom screamed and used a really nasty cuss word for Kate that I don't even want to repeat here. And that's when I finally lost it because I had been holding onto my temper for a while until then, but that was too much for me to take. Kate tried to get me to stop. but I just rushed through the door, opened it and started screaming at my parents at the top of my lungs. I told my mom that she had to apologize to Kate immediately, or I would make sure that she regretted this for the rest of her life. My dad tried to intervene, but I told him that

there was no way I was going to let them get away with what they had just said. They have been running their mouths off about me, and that was fine because I didn't care about what they thought of me anymore, but they had no right to say anything about Kate, so they could either and walk away without a problem because honestly, I don't want to interact with them at all, or they could choose not to apologize and I would make sure that both of them ended up regretting this. I could tell that both of them are scared, because I'm not the kind of person who loses my cool very easily, especially in the way that I lost it at them. But honestly, when I'm around either my parents or Kevin, they just make it so difficult for me to keep my temper under

control that I end up acting like that. Anyway, after I started screaming at them and demanded that they apologize, they got a bit scared, and I could see that, but they are too egotistical to apologize and accept the fact that they had said or done anything wrong. So they immediately got defensive and told me that they were not apologizing for anything at all, and I could go ahead and do whatever I wanted to, they were not scared of me and my empty threats. I was still screaming at them, but by then, Kate had come to my side and she was dragging me back inside the house and was telling my parents to leave where she would call the cops, she didn't want any drama and that's why she hadn't done that until now, but they didn't

have any right to come and disrupt our peace like this. So my mom started cussing Kate out again, and I guess that's when my dad realized that if he did not take her away, then the situation would only spiral out of control. And he dragged my mom back to his car and they drove away, and Kate pulled me back inside the house and started trying to calm me down because I had gotten really worked up. Like I had mentioned above, only my parents and Kevin know exactly which nerve to touch to rile me up like this, and they always do it. Kevin did it the last time that we had a fight at my parents' house, and this time, it was my parents here, but I don't have to take it from them anymore, and like I had promised them, I was going to make sure that

they regretted this. Because I'm about to marry Kate, they know exactly how serious I have always been about her and how much I love her, and yet they chose to drag her into this and curse at her. That is simply not acceptable, and I'm going to show them that they picked the wrong fight here. I've already written out an email with all the details of what has happened, and I'm going to send it out to the entire family to expose my parents. Kate has told me to hold on to it for a couple of days because they might apologize, and just to honor her, I have agreed. But if they don't apologize within three days, I'll be sending out the this email and everybody in the family will know exactly what kind of people they are. Because I have

had enough of this, I'm definitely not letting them get away with this anymore, not after this incident. Update 3, hey, so like I had said in my previous update four days back, I waited for them to apologize somehow. Kate had not blocked them, so they could have reached out to her and apologized to her, but they didn't. And so, this morning, I decided to send out an email to everybody in the family about what had happened. Since then, I have been receiving messages non-stop. My phone has been buzzing all morning and everybody has a lot of questions about what exactly is going on. So far, I haven't exactly responded to anyone, because I just want to take this day for myself and since it's the weekend, I just want to spend some time with Kate at home

before we go back to work again. I have already done what I had to do, and I'm pretty sure that my parents are not going to be happy about this because I know the family is gossiping about them right now. And probably about me as well, but I don't particularly care about that because at least I'm not coming off as the bad guy in this incident. I have a couple of the messages, even though I haven't responded to them. And although there are a lot of questions that I have to answer about this, most people are completely on my side and are appalled by my parents' behavior. Nobody is surprised that the fight with Kevin about setting him up with Janine was where this all started. Everybody thinks he's a loser and that's why nobody's asking about him or even talking about him.

But my parents' behavior has come at the shop because they always like to pretend that they are so sophisticated and refined in front of people, as if they are so perfect. But this is their reality, they have no class, they cuss nastily at people that they can't agree with and they like to baby their 30-year-old son and treat their other son like absolute crap. I'm glad that the truth is finally out now because at some point, people needed to see through how phony they were. And I know that their reputation means a lot to them, their image is everything, that's why they had even sent me to college on their own money because otherwise, if I blabbed about it, it would make them look bad. That's why my dad had even gotten my brother a job in the first place, knowing that he was capable of absolutely nothing, because it would look bad for the family if he didn't have one. Even now, I know that my parents would love to keep him at home all the time and make sure that he doesn't have to work a day in his life, but they still try to talk him into finding a job or starting something again, simply because that would look better for the family.

So I know that their image and reputation means more to them than anything else, even more than Kevin, probably, and that's why I chose to hit them where it'll hurt. So far, they haven't tried to contact me yet. or maybe it's just because they haven't been able to find a way, since I have blocked them everywhere, but I'm sure that they will either show up, or they will contact me through another number, or they might make some new accounts on social media just to get through to me. Whatever it is, I'm pretty sure that it's just a matter of time before they get in touch with me and try to get me to go back on my board. But that's definitely not happening. I think it was important for everyone to know what a bunch of fakes my parents are, and now that

it's done, it's done. It might be petty and vindictive, but having done this, I just feel so relieved and light. I feel like I finally managed to get back at them for all the years of trauma and mistreatment. Maybe not exactly get back at them, I don't think that's the right phrase to use, but at least I've done something about the situation instead of just forgiving them and letting it go. Because honestly, that's all I have been doing for the past many years, and I was getting sick of it. And I had promised them that I was going to make them regret it, and I'm pretty sure that they are regretting it right now. So I guess I would call this a mission accomplished, and I'm really happy about it. Now, of course, with the wedding coming up and everything,

Kate and I have already spoken about it, and we are not going to be inviting my parents. After what happened recently, I don't think that's even a possibility anymore because they clearly have no respect for either me or Kate. All they care about is that they're not. They're themselves and their son, so they can stick to that now. The invitations are going to be sent out in a couple of months, and I'm going to make sure that I invite the rest of my family, whoever I'm close to, but not them, not even if they beg on their knees. Especially after what has happened recently, I'm pretty sure that they won't even be expecting to be invited. And if they do, they are going to be the biggest and most delusional fools in the world. Anyway, enough about them.

Kate and I have already started planning the wedding and stuff, and it's going pretty well. Not to mention the fact that she is very happy that I literally went above and beyond while standing up for her. She's been very happy about it, and the past few days have been total bliss. Oh, and we also told Janine about whatever Kevin had been saying, about wanting to be set up with her. And of course, she literally laughed it off just like Kate had when I told her. She told me that she was glad that we hadn't even bothered to tell her about it, because she definitely would have just been creeped out and nothing else. She even told us that on the day of the engagement party, she didn't even want to talk to him, but he just kept trying to talk to her and was just being overall weird. She was not interested in him at all, and actually found it very strange that he, being 30, didn't care about his age and wanted to go after the 20-year-old who was still in college, which is also exactly what I had said.

And then we told her about the whole situation with my parents and stuff, and she told me that I had done the right thing and said that I should have just called the cops that day, which I really think I should have done. Would have saved us a lot of time and drama, but well, it's done now. Update 4 So it's been a couple of weeks since my last update and surprisingly, contrary to what I had expected, my parents did not actually try to get in touch with me. But they did get in touch with all the other relatives who had received my email. telling them that I was just making everything up, that nothing of the sort has happened, and that I am just an arrogant attention seeer who can't stand to see my family happy. Obviously nobody bought any of that, since I had already spoken to people in the family,

answered all their questions and queries, and now they're all caught up. They know everything that I've been through right for my childhood, and nobody has any sympathy to spare for my parents or Kevin. So they have completely ostracized my family and I think my parents realize that no matter what they say or do now, the damage has already been done, and apart from a few people on their side, nobody wants to talk to them anymore. So coming after me is not going to help them out. Good for them, it's nice that they are leaving me alone because I don't want to interact with them at all and quite frankly, I'm happy with the situation as of now.