rSlash - r/AmITheA**hole Should I Give My Sister a Romantic Vacation?

Episode Date: January 25, 2023

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Welcome to R-slash, am I the bad guy where OP refuses to give her two-week vacation to someone else? Am I the bad guy for refusing to take my sister-in-law on a romantic getaway? Wait, what? Am I the bad guy for refusing to take my sister-in-law on a romantic getaway? Why would you take your sister-in-law on a romantic getaway? Well, let's find out, I guess. I'm a 28-year-old woman, and I've been friends with Brittany, who's 28 since we were about 5 or 6, and we're very close to this day. As part of having a friendship with me, she was around my brother, who's 30, quite a

lot as children, and their romance blossomed as teenagers. They were married 5 years ago. Unfortunately, my brother passed away 2 years ago in a tragic accident and left behind a mountain of debt for Brittany. She was eight months pregnant at the time and ended up moving in with my parents. Her and her daughter, Lilac, who's two, live with my parents this day and the family alternates watching Lilac so Brittany can get her degree. Everyone's really rallied around Brittany in such a trying time.

For Christmas, my husband bought an all-inclusive trip for him and I to explore Paris and have a romantic getaway. I've always had friends on my wish list, and I'm so grateful to him for such a wonderful gift. We leave in two weeks, and honestly, it's a dream come true. I told my parents about the gift and they then told Brittany, who called me in a flood of tears asking that I take her instead of my husband. She said that she'll never be able to experience a romantic getaway like that with her own husband, and that we, my husband and I, could just go

again another time. She said that she gave up everything to raise lilac, and she would love for us to have a girl's trip like when we were younger. I told Brittany that was not possible. This was a gift from my husband to me, and I fully expected to have a romantic get-away with him. Brittany told me that I was punishing her for being a widow, and that it was unfair that I would have a love affair in Paris while she cried at my brother's grave. Yo, what? My husband thinks that she's trying to make me feel guilty, but said that he would step out of the trip if I would like to take Brittany.

Wow! The thing is, I want to go with my husband, but my parents have since called to tell me that they would watch Lilac and that I shouldn't rub my happy marriage in Brittany's face. My mom told me that I would be selfish to leave a grieving widow over Valentine's Day. Am I being the bad guy here? OP, your husband surprised you with a dream vacation and he's actually a big enough man to offer it a step aside. He bought this for you because he wants to go with you together because he loves you because you're married. And your response to this is to even consider taking his gift and giving it to your friend. Are you nuts? Opie.

Based on the sound of this, you have a wonderful husband. Please do not throw it away just because your friend is going nuts so on you. Like, I can't even believe she even asked you that. Like, yeah, it definitely sucks that she lost her husband, but that doesn't mean that everyone around her can't have a happy marriage and enjoy their life and enjoy things just because she's sad and mopey about it. Ooh, ooh, I love this reply from Barry Snowbama. You are not the bad guy.

Tell your parents to take her and lie like on a trip if they feel that sorry for her. Right? Right? What is your trip have to do with her? Answer nothing, not a zilch zero. O.P. please don't disrespect your husband by giving away this vacation. Go with your husband, enjoy your trip, and if this ruins your relationship with your friends, then so be it. She's gone nuts so on this

one. OP, as it stands, I'm giving you zero out of five bad guys. Your friend gets three out of five bad guys. What she's asking is way unreasonable. I don't know what she's thinking. Am I wrong for telling my sister-in-law that no one in our family is named Stephanie? I can't figure out if I did anything wrong, or if so, what? Because I honestly have no idea what's going on. My brother and his wife are expecting their first girl after two boys. I love their sons Ricky and Jace, and so does my sister-in-law, but she's always wanted a girl and is very excited

to be having one. She also wants to name the girl Chloe because she loves that name. My brother hates the name Chloe and really wants to name their daughter Stephanie. They've been arguing about it for a few weeks since finding out the gender. I got to my parents' house late last night and my sister-in-law was the only person still awake. We talked for a bit and she asked me the weirdest question. She asked me if I knew any stories about Great Aunt Stephanie and I was

so confused, I literally said, who? My sister-in-law clarified that she was talking about our grandmothers older sister who died when grandma was a little girl. Our grandma did have two sisters but their names were Judy and Lynn. There's no one in our family named Stephanie as far as I know. I told as much to my sister-in-law. She changed the subject after that and we soon went to bed. This morning, my brother and his wife were both soaking during breakfast. Even the kids could tell. Ricky kept saying,

Stop being grumpy on Christmas. So it wasn't just my imagination. I got my brother alone and confronted him. He snapped at me for meddling and told me to stay out of his marriage. My brother is pissed at me, and my sister-in-law won't even talk to me. I'm afraid to say anything to my parents and drag them into this, especially since I still don't know what this is. Either my grandmother had a secret sister that I don't know about, but my brother does for some reason, or my brother lied to his wife to convince her to name their

baby Stephanie. Both options seem equally weird to me. Maybe there's a third possibility that I'm not seeing? And then O.P. post in an update. Most awkward Christmas Eve dinner ever. I gotta keep this short, there's a lot going on. Everyone now knows what my brother was doing with the kids' names, except for the kids obviously. The family is pissed. Weirdly, my mom is the most pissed. A Christmas truces in place for the kids, so no fighting on the holiday. However, the baby is definitely going to be named Chloe. My brother very quickly back down when my mom had a few choice words for him.

This topic is completely banned for the rest of the holiday, so for now at least they've tied a bow in the situation. Okay, I'm glad the update happened because I didn't want to be the person to say, come on OP, you're not that dumb, are you? Obviously your brother is lying to gaslight his wife into getting the name of the baby that he wants. Opie, I'm giving you zero out of five on the wrong scale. It's incredibly stupid for your brother to expect you to uphold a lie that you didn't even know about in the first place. And even if you did know, it's unfair of him to expect you to uphold that lie anyways. I'm giving your brother one out of five on the wrong scale.

Am I wrong for giving my daughter a better present than my son? Our son is 22 and our daughter is 26. She bought a house in July. We know that moving into a new home always comes with unexpected costs right after you've probably depleted most of your funds. So for Christmas, we gave our daughter $4,000. Our son gave a few different gifts, totaling somewhere around 800 bucks. Our daughter had to work on Christmas, but we did Christmas on the 26th, and she stayed with us for the holidays from then until yesterday. Our son still lives with us. And today, he told us both that he didn't want to say anything while his sister was there,

but his feelings were hurt by the disparity in the value of the gifts. We explained that the gifts that we got him were tailored to his interests, but his sister had just passed a big life milestone where money is more important to her right now than sentiment. He said it's still hurtful because it feels like we're more proud of her than him. My wife got really frustrated when he said that and asked why he would choose the least charitable interpretation of our actions. He said that's just how he felt and that he couldn't control it. I said that we didn't give her money because we're more proud, but because we had

experience being new homeowners and knowing that something always breaks in that first six months and it's always expensive. He said that was all fine and good, but it's still hurt to get a worst present and he felt like an afterthought. My wife asked it's so hurt to get a worse present, and he felt like an afterthought. My wife asked if he expected us to get him $4,000 worth of gifts. He said no, but he expected the gifts between him and his sister to be equal. My wife said that's the same thing, and my son said that it isn't. He said that we could have given her the monetary equivalent of what we gave him.

I told him that it isn't really fair for him to decide how much we spend on someone else's gift. Furthermore, cash is less personal than gifts, so giving her a cash equivalent to what he got would be her getting the worst gift. He said that we weren't listening to him, just justifying. My wife said that we didn't need to justify anything and he was being entitled. At this point, he said that he didn't want to talk unless everyone was civil and he went to his room. He skipped lunch, and when he left for work, he didn't say goodbye even though I was right by the door. My wife is irritated and my son is clearly resenting us.

I can't really decide if we're in the wrong here. On the one hand, we should be able to give our money to whoever we want. On the other, I never want to hurt my son's feelings. Were we wrong? There's two problems here, OP. First is the gift thing. Since you did this during Christmas, you're kind of automatically creating a comparison between your son and your daughter, whether or not you intend to.

What you should have done was just get your daughter and your son an equal level of gifts, like let's say 800 bucks, and then separately from that tell your daughter, hey, since you're moving into your new place, we're gonna give you $3,200 in case something breaks or whatever. And then later tell your son, hey, so we gave your sister extra money

because she's moving into her first place, but don't worry, once you move into your first place, we'll give you that much money too. Like, that'd be fair, reasonable, and it wouldn't create this weird, uncomfortable discrepancy during Christmas. So like, okay, that was a slip up, it's not a big deal. If the story ended there, I'd give you zero out of five on the wrong scale, because it's just sort of like a stupid mistake on your part. But the second problem and the bigger problem here is that your son approached both of you in like a very logical, calm and diplomatic way and he was just like, hey, so that was kind of unfair.

Obviously, she got more than me and I feel kind of upset by it. And he should feel upset by it because it is unfair, but your response isn't to say, oh, you're right, that was inconsiderate of us. That that's our bad. Here's a situation we'll give you money in the future when you move in, but we didn't handle that situation well. No, you argued with them. And he's right, you did try to justify things.

You just like, you just argued with them. So your son came to you and expressed how he's hurt. And your response is to hurt his feelings even more by not listening to him. So your son feels doubly not seen. He feels not seen because the gifts were unfair and then he feels not listened to because you're not actually hearing the words that he's saying. So your son should be upset.

Opie, I'm giving you and your wife one out of five on the wrong scale and I'm giving your son zero out of five on the wrong scale. Am I wrong for snitching and causing my friend to lose her scholarship and dream college acceptance? I'm a 19 year old girl and a sophomore in college and I have a friend, Tia, who's in high school and applying for colleges and scholarships. I helped her throughout the college process and she ended up getting an early decision for her top college and she got a full scholarship.

I was happy for her until recently. I was talking to a mutual friend of ours, and she started gushing about how Tia's essay was so heartful and beautiful. I asked to see it because I thought that she had just forgotten to show me, but as I was reading it, I was completely taken aback. That essay was one of my college essay drafts which I shown to TF for reference on writing techniques only. I made this clear to her. I was livid. That essay was really personal and she barely even changed it. It was almost entirely copied and pasted. I trusted her with it and this is what she did.

In a fit of rage, I gathered all the evidence of me helping her with the college process, including evidence of me sending the specific assay to her. Then I showed it to her school. She not only lost her scholarship, but she also lost her seat in the school. Now people are calling me dramatic and shaming me for robbing her of her education. She's the only person in her family to get into college and receive an academic and athletic scholarship, so everyone was rooting for her, including me at one time. And while I didn't expect the outcome to be so severe, it was. Right now,

I feel bad. I feel terrible. I feel like she took advantage of me, but I didn't want to be the cause of something so horrible. I did myself justice, but at the cost of someone else's dreams. Now I'm wondering if what I did was justified or not. Am I wrong here? Okay, this story made me feel really complicated, and, you know, it's OP feels complicated, too, obviously. So I went through the comments, and predictably everyone saying, not wrong here, not wrong, this is plagiarism, she got in under false pretenses, but I found one post that I think really goes to the heart of what I was thinking with this.

It comes from, I call the big one, Bidey. Look, all of these, you're not wrong votes are probably right in an objective, strictly right and wrong sense, but in reality, the world is more complicated than that. Your friend was absolutely in the wrong to submit your essay without telling you, and you were 100% justified in being angry with her. But what do you think was gonna happen by turning her in like that? That the school would just tell her not to do that in the future and move on? It sounds like you did it purely to get her in trouble, which again, you were fully justified to do if you wanted.

But did you expect her and your friends to applaud you for it and for no one to be mad at you for getting an amazing opportunity in her life taken away because you were mad that she violated your trust? Everyone on here is saying that your friend is simply facing the consequences of her actions. Well, so are you. And those consequences are knowing that your actions help contribute to your friend losing this opportunity, and in turn, piss off your other friends. And it sounds like you're feeling guilty because you're starting to feel like you may be overreacted by going fully scorched earth without fully considering what the ramifications

of doing that would be. Yeah, I agree with that. This is really complicated because OP is 100% justified in what she did. But at the same time, I don't really feel like the punishment matches the crime here. I mean, a full scholarship we're talking, probably $100,000, $200,000, the first person in her family to go to college. And I'm just guessing here, I really can't back this up, but I would imagine that T.S. family is probably on a lower income bracket, so this is honestly a once in a lifetime opportunity for her

and her family to elevate her whole family's income level. And like, yeah, what Tia did was wrong, but honestly, let's be, let's be 100% real. Who hasn't cheated before? One memory that always stuck with me was, I think in like seventh grade, we had some math homework that I didn't want to do and I was copying my friend's homework in class and the teacher found out about it and I got in trouble and my friend got in trouble and, you know, I apologize and you kind of move on from it. But like, that's the thing. You know, everyone cheats in school once or twice, here or there.

You shouldn't do it, it's wrong, but would it be fair for me because I copied my friend's math homework to not go to college as a result of that? Kinda, yeah, you could make the argument that because I was academically dishonest, I shouldn't go to college. But just because it's technically right, does that make it like realistically right

in the real world? Is that really super fair and reasonable? Kind of, kind of not. Okay, so reading Red-Up Post, it's really easy to be like objective and dry, and get like, justice boners over someone getting their just desserts. But the reality is life is more nuanced and complicated than that. And I do kind of feel like OP went too far here. Justified, but just because it's justified and technically right doesn't mean it's

right if you know what I mean. If you disagree with me, I 100% understand why you disagree with me. If you think that she deserves to lose her scholarship and her place in college, I'm not going to argue. I think that you're 100% correct to take that stance. I just think that going full scorched earth and ruining this girl's future because she stole your essay, it's just a bit much. So, begrudgingly, I'm going to give OP 0 out of 5 on the wrong scale. She did nothing wrong, it's just not how I wanted the story to go. I'm giving the friend one out of five on the wrong scale. Because she did do something wrong, she just, I think she got overly punished if you ask me.

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