rSlash - r/Bestof I Think My Brother-In-Law is a Predator

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

0:00 Intro 0:08 Creepy bro 2:41 Life manager 12:13 Comment 12:48 Bully Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to R-slash Best of Redditor updates, where O.P.'s brother tries to murder her. Our next Reddit post is from Relationships. My brother is really, really creepy. Like, really effing creepy to the point where I look at him and I have serial killer thoughts. Then I realize what I'm thinking and I feel guilty. Yesterday, for example, he picked me up at the university and was supposed to take me to the mall because I needed to buy some things. I realized the route was different and I asked him where we were.

going. He didn't say anything. I kept asking where we were going because I knew we were far away from university and he was driving faster and faster and I told him to stop but he wouldn't. Then he casually went back to the mall. I got out of the car and said he didn't need to drive me back and he just left. Sometimes on holidays I'll be alone and he'll stand behind me and scare me. I told him multiple times to stop and he didn't. He's been doing it since we were kids. Sometimes I would wake up and see him standing in front of me while I slept. Last Thanksgiving, I was sleeping and I woke up to him sitting on the edge of my bed speaking French. Sometimes he'll show up at my college and ask to talk to me. I'll get off class and then he'll just say it was nothing and go away. Sometimes I see

his car parked at my boyfriend's house. I don't understand it. I'm done with him. What can I do? Then six days later, OP posted an update. I talked to my parents and told them I was tired of my brother's behavior and that they should do something. Otherwise, I wouldn't be going home anymore. They said that I was being too extreme and that he would stop eventually, but that's been going on since we were kids and I knew he wasn't going to stop. So I gave them an ultimatum. They would talk to my brother and my brother would stop, or the three of them could have a nice life. My parents talked to him after all. My brother refused to get a value at first. He was really upset. He went over to my dorm and tried to choke me. He screamed

at me, then he tried to choke me, then he realized what he was doing and started crying and apologizing. Someone called the cops because my brother tried to end his life afterwards. Anyway, everything's okay now. I mean, not everything. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He didn't get a full written report because it's been a week and it takes time, but that was the feedback and diagnosis. I'm going to be okay. I just want to say thank you for all the advice and stuff. You know, I appreciate it. What clueless parents? How can they say he's going to grow out of it when he's old enough to drive? Our next Reddit post is from our slash relationship advice. My wife and I don't fight much, and when we do fight, we usually communicate well afterwards and things go back to normal.

I brag to my friends about how reasonable my wife is and her ability to communicate and empathize is something I deeply admire. She doesn't hold grudges. She talks me through my rough times. Until now. Due to a fire, my wife is out of work, but still earning her salary. Thanks, insurance. We decided that she would stay home with our young son while out of work. She doesn't love child rearing, which is something we knew going into having kids. Honestly, it's hard to tell. She's a great mom. She's present and loving, even when I can see she's struggling inside. I give my wife a lot of breaks. We co-parent and split bed time routines for our two kids. We both pull our weight. Yesterday was a snow day. My daughter was home with my wife and son. I was working from home downstairs all day. I helped my daughter with cyber school until noon. My wife was with my son in the snow all morning, plowing the drive and sidewalks, et cetera, just maintaining the house. My daughter joined them, and from the sound of things and some videos, she brought her friends over for playing and hot chocolate. I worked until about 5 p.m. And when I went upstairs, it was chaos. My wife was doing laundry and helping my daughter

who fell and hurt herself on the ice. She sent the friends home and we had dinner. I did the cleanup and right after finishing, keep in mind I'd been downstairs working all day, not even a bathroom break in the afternoon. I go into the playroom and my wife approaches me. The conversation goes like this. Hey, can I go lay down for a bit? I said, I haven't gone to the bathroom all day and I put cookies in the oven. I could tell that I messed up just by the face she gave me. Fine, never mind. Forget I asked. Heaven forbid. No, it's fine. I'll take care of it all. Go take a break. To my complete shock in front of our kids, who I admit aren't paying as much attention but are still close, my wife says, I said never effing mind. I've been running around

on my feet all day watching our kids and other people's kids. And heaven effing forbid I ask for 20 minutes to myself. I again say, go, take a break. I told you it was fine. But she clearly lost her marbles and is seeing red. She starts cleaning up and helping with the kids, and I do too. I tried to overcompensate, but she just took over caring for them and they listened to her. In the hall, I said, I think you forget that I work all day. And she viciously said, thanks for reminding me. I almost forgot. I feel like a turd. I get that she works hard caring for the kids. but I work hard too. I think her not having her job and escape is making her reaction to things worse. She texted me the next day with her usual communication. She expressed how upset she felt

with my behavior and the way that I acted towards her. She said she was feeding and taking care of six kids all day in the snow alone and still cleaned the entire house and deep cleaned our craft room. I explained that I'm stressed at work and that I didn't get why she's so upset since I offered her a break, but she said, I don't want your pity breaks. Thanks for the apology, by the way. Which, yeah, I didn't exactly apologize, but for what? And then she asked for the number to my daughter's piano teacher. The piano teacher was the only activity that I managed for the kids. I found out that my wife texted the piano teacher asking to go through her from now on because she'd be managing the schedule. Normally, my wife would text me asking if I could get my daughter from dance

on the way home. I do this every week. All right, I got to stop here just because this is kind of subtle. Normally, my wife would text me asking if I can get my daughter from dance on the way home. I do this every week. Kind of makes you wonder, if O.P. does this every week, why does the wife need to remind him? I think O.P.'s laziness is much, much worse than he's letting on. Okay, continuing the story. I didn't hear anything. And when I got home, I found out that my wife picked her up. I confronted my wife with, I'm very present with my children. Do not make me out to be an absent father. My wife responded with, if I didn't manage and ask you for help, you'd see them a quarter of the time you do now, and I'm done managing you. I get it. I should have just smiled and agreed when she

asked for help, but this is extreme. She's having a fit and trying to ice me out of my relationship with my kids. It's so petty. It's like I don't even know this woman. Gone is the reasonable level hited communicator. So if you've made it this far, thank you, and please tell me if I'm wrong here. Yes, clearly you're wrong, O.P. Any moron can tell you that an office job sitting in front of a computer is way easier than managing six kids having snowball fights and shoveling snow. Then one week later, O.P. posted an update. After the fight, I figured things would go back to normal. They haven't.

My wife used to include me in parenting our kids. I did dance pick up most weeks and bedtime was split. I gave the baths, made dinner, all that stuff. Since our fight, my wife hasn't asked me for any help with the kids. The first morning, I woke up on what was supposed to be my morning with the kids. I figured my wife was just being nice or trying to prove a point, but it keeps happening. She didn't even send them down to say good night last night. Normally, my wife does this silly game where she sends my son to ask me to read five books,

and then we would negotiate it down to one or two and race upstairs. Last night, I heard her racing him and came up to find her doing bedtime yet again. The kids haven't even noticed. It's like she's replacing me. While we were fighting, I said something really, really dumb that's living inside me and festering. After my wife said, I'm done managing you. I defended myself and said, I'd like to see how long you can manage without me.

Consider my foot officially in my mouth. My wife has started running again. She's cooking really healthy and often. Every night I come home to my perfectly happy Stepford wife, doing it all without me and I feel empty inside. How do I fix this? There's a lot of really subtle things that I'm picking up as a father, you know, married husband with a four-year-old.

Because I also have a designated day where I watch Lily in the morning and O.P. has one too, and he says the first morning I woke up on what was supposed to be my morning with the kids, meaning he expects his wife to wake him up for the mornings that he's supposed to take care of her. Now, when I have those mornings, I set my own alarm. I wake up early so my wife can sleep in those days. Also, the wife is getting the kids ready for bid and sends them down to him. What is he doing during this time? Watching TV, playing video games, he should be upstairs with the kids and her, helping get the kid ready for bid. O.P. is saying that she's replacing him,

but that's really not the case at all. If he wanted to be involved, he would simply need to go upstairs and be involved. So Opie is desperately defending himself, I gave baths, I made dinner. But the reality is that if the wife doesn't tell him to do something,

he just doesn't do it. So I'm really feeling her frustration in this story. O.P. is what you call an unreliable narrator. Man, people are trying to like clobber some common sense into O.P. in the comments, and it's just not sticking. People are telling O.P., that he's, you know, not being a good father or a good husband, and he's like, I'm effing confused, okay? I had this perfect life with an amazing, successful wife and a great job. We juggled two careers and two kids like champions, always communicating who is where, doing what activity. Yo, perfect life for who? For you? Or for her, for both you? Sounds like a perfect life for you. And the communication, it's her telling you. you what to do. She's like a secretary. All right, this guy's, I'm starting to get annoyed by this guy. All right. More criticizing in the comments, O.P. writes,

ugh, guys, I get it. I'm a piece of trash. I'm going to make this right. Let's see if this works. My wife and I had a few nights of talking and crying that have helped make us stronger. I know everyone hates me, but I do love my wife. And had she ever expressed an unequal workload before this fight, I would have put effort into learning about it and fixing it. As it's stands, we agreed to therapy. My wife feels like her reaction to our fight was out of her norm, and she wants to start her own therapy to help. I fully support that. Anyways, I looked deep into weaponized incompetence and unequal mental workloads, and I've come to realize I'm essentially another head to manage for my wife. We agreed to be partners in this life, and somewhere

along the line, I lost that thread. She still claims she wants to manage our schedules, but I don't want to be that husband or father. I've always thought that my wife was amazing and looked up to her. I've asked to take over the parenting responsibilities 100%. I didn't realize she needed to do so much stuff. It's been eye-opening. I don't know how long we'll keep this up either. My wife isn't the biggest fan of handing over the reins. Reddit's hate has lit a fire under my butt. Having so many outside people looking into the situation and simultaneously getting the ick from me has been humbling. Then OP posted another long update, which basically just says things are going well, they're working on their issues, therapy's working, and they're improving. So I suppose all's well that ends well.

Down in the comments, we have this story from cyber. I had a coworker once telling me that his wife wasn't letting him teach his son basketball. I asked, how could she possibly stop him? He said something to the effect of her not getting the kid ready or making the time to go to the court or getting the kid's shoes. His mind was blown when I pointed out that he could take his son and go get all this stuff. You're acting like a man's man here and you're sending your wife who's never played to pick out basketball equipment for your firstborn son? He acted like I was being ridiculous. Our next credit post is from our slash legal advice. This last weekend, my 9-year-old son was playing basketball with my 10-year-old daughter in the driveway. I was inside making dinner.

My son ran inside the house to use the bathroom, leaving his sister shooting hoops outside alone. One of the neighborhood boys, who's 12, rode by on his bike with a couple of his friends, and started teasing and hassling my daughter. He's done this many times before at their school, and has been warned against it by the teachers. He's also come into my driveway before calling my daughter dirty names and pushing her, basically being a bully. I've caught him before, and warned him away for my property. I even mentioned it to his parents at a recent school event, but they either didn't care or didn't believe me or both.

Well, the bully came onto my driveway and started calling my daughter names and pushing her and actually punched her in the arm and chest. She tried to defend herself by pushing back, but she's very small for her age, and he's quite big for his. My son, who's also big for his nine years, sees this as he comes back outside and runs at the bully and blind. He pushes the bully causing him to fall onto his bike. There's lots of blood coming from the bully's mouth. By this time, my daughter is screaming, my son is crying, and the bully is hovering

between crying and getting angry, and I hear all the commotion and run outside. I ask what happened, and I get two contradictory stories. The bully basically says that he was hit by my son unprovoked, and my kid says otherwise. I tell the bully to stay there, and I run inside to get a clean towel and some water to help clean him up. When I get back outside, he's gone, home presumably. I call my kids down, clean them up, and take them inside to eat. Afterwards, I reviewed the security cam footage that's running 24-7 showing the front of the house and driveway. The video pretty much 100% confirms my kid's story. Last night, which is several days after the event, the bully's father knocks on my door and tells me that he had to take his son to the ER because his teeth were broken, and then later to the

dentist. He wants me to pay for all these expenses, plus $1,000 for pain and suffering. Otherwise, he's going to go to the cops and press charges against my son for hitting his son, and then sue me. I told him I had video of the event that showed his 12-year-old son on my property, despite being warned previously to not ever come back, pushing and hitting my daughter who's younger and smaller than the bully, and my 9-year-old son running up to push the bully to stop him from hitting her. His son fell onto the bike, which was the cause of the broken teeth because of the push. I then told him to pound sand and get off my property. Am I liable for covering this? Then one and a half years later, O.P. posted an update. I refused to pay the father any money for his son's medical

expenses and ignored the certified letter he sent me demanding payment. As far as I know, he's not suing me. I did decide to go to the principal and complain again about the constant bullying, and I showed her the video of the incident. She made sympathetic comments and said that she would investigate, but I could tell that she just wanted me out of her office. She said that she couldn't do anything that occurred away from the school, and she would talk to the bully and his teachers and deal with him appropriately. She spoke to my daughter and the bully, and then nothing happened. I spoke to the teacher, and she told me the principal doesn't do discipline well, and only cares about district politics. To be honest, I didn't care because the bully stopped picking on my daughter and moved on to a

another victim. I felt bad, but what could I do? A few days after I went to the principal, the cops showed up at my house to speak to me and the kids about the incident. I refused to let them in the house or to answer their questions. But I did offer to email the cop videos of the incident and the father's threats to pay the medical bills or else he'd call the cops. I never heard back from them. Since then, my daughter and bully both started middle school. Unfortunately, the principal was promoted to be the principal of that middle school and transferred when my kids did. It turns out, the latest victim of the bully was another girl who had no older siblings or younger brothers. It wasn't generally known, but it also turns out this girl was the granddaughter

of the principal. I don't know all the details, but it seems that since the bullying involved the principal's granddaughter, much more stringent discipline was available. The bully was suspended from school and transferred to a school in the district for problem kids. So he's now another school's problem. I guess if my daughter had been related to the principal, this fix could have happened a year ago. It just shows it's all about who you know. In case you're interested, my daughter and son have both started Taekwondo and they absolutely love it. That was our slash best of Redditor updates. And if you like this content, be sure to follow my podcast because I put out new Reddit podcast episodes every single day.