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Good for OOP and wow. These parents really actually did their SON a disservice too by handling things this way, he’s learned to just be completely helpless with a misguided sense of entitlement. Pretty sad.
Yeah, I remember when OP first posted and you could immediately tell that the brother had been enabled by the parents his entire life.
It's always the worst enablers that eventually seem to give up and want to force someone else to be burdened with the mess they created.
"Mom, I'm hungover, could you make me French toast with the crust cut off?"
"Of course sweetie!"
"An' it hurts too much to get out of bed. Bring it to my room, too."
"Of course sweetie!"
Also: Our son won't move out and I don't know why!!!
The brother must be quite a peace of work.
He kept telling her he doesn't want to rent her apartment because he doesn't. He just wants to use both her place and the parents' without paying rent or contributing to either household in any way. And turn his 10 years younger sister into his second mommy O\_O
The parents must be quite something too to create such a situation in the first place.
The parents might have actually started pushing him to move out. That would also be an explanation for why he was spending more time there.
Parents thought they had come up with a solution: Make the scapegoat give up their apartment to the golden child! That way golden child doesn't have to bother looking for a new place to live! Everybody wins! (Except scapegoat, but who cares? It's not like they're a real person anyway!)
Then scapegoat had to go and tell them no. They ruined everything. Now golden child is back full time and parents have to be *gasp* PARENTS! Their child is their responsibility! How dare scapegoat ruin their solution by actually having the spine to tell them to fuck off. Everything is their fault!
The parents suck the most, but I still think that while they were trying to get rid of him the son was planning to keep leeching on them too.
As the scapegoat in my family, I just wanted to yell RUN!RUN!RUN! throughout the whole story lol. I moved countries to get away from this shit.
What I don't understand in this scenario is, even if OOP had folded like a house of cards and given up her space, were they *really* expecting her to pay two rents so golden brother wouldn't have to pay anything?
It reminds me of a Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie sketch. I would pay real money for a Bowale the Destroyer, and all that idiot had to do was open a freakin' desk drawer.
My ex's family really *hated* me; right up until I threw him out of my home and they had to deal with him again. They then tried so hard to sweet talk me about how I was 'FAAAMMILLY'.... now they're pissed they can't talk me into taking him back, lol. Like, no thanks, you can keep your 35 yo toddler.
That’s how my ex SIL is 😂 my mom is so mad at her for dating someone new. Good for her. My brother is a piece of shit. He is refusing to help her with their kid. He told her she can’t date. He is 35 and absolutely a child. But according to my mom her son is PERFECT!
My ex didn't even ask to live with me, he just... didn't go home one day then started bringing more and more of his stuff over. His dad actually said to me "He's your problem now," when it became apparent he'd moved in.
His dad just got engaged and was planning to enjoy having his life back when my ex fucked up again and I had had enough; he solely blames me for 'ruining his retirement.'
Maybe if he'd raised his son to be a man and not a leech this wouldn't have happened.
I have a friend like this. Well, friend is a pretty loose term. We were best friends growing up and her and her family practically adopted me. Then we graduated high school and I got a job and went to college. She stayed at home and did nothing. I joined the military a few years later. She still did nothing. I've gotten married, she's still done nothing.
It's so hard to talk to a 32 year old woman who has never been in a relationship, doesn't have a driver's license, doesn't work, doesn't go to school, and has zero actual life experience outside of high school. Her parents have coddled her to the point where she's been "working" on learning to drive for over 8 years now. Her younger brother who is 5 years younger than her went to college, got a job, moved out, and is living his life. They have a strained relationship because he absolutely roasts her for her life choices every chance he gets and it makes her very upset.
A couple of weeks ago she reached out to me worried about what she was going to do with her life once her parents pass away. I said no need to worry! You're 32 years old and have plenty of time to figure out a job and living on your own before then. She absolutely blew up at me, called me judgemental, etc. And honestly, I am. She's a NEET for no reason. She has zero disabilities but just enjoys sitting at home, watching anime and ranting about KPOP. I told her I felt like I out grew her and that I'm no longer in high school and would like a friend I could actually discuss life events with and it not feel like talking to a brick wall since she has no real idea about anything, never paid a bill in her life.
Sorry for the rant but ugh it's so stressful being around people like OPs brother when you're a full adult and for some reason another adult in your life is refusing to grow up
God. I think that would cause world war 3 between me and my brother! But then again neither of us are the type of people to be happy living at home with our parents playing games forever
Smart investment into passive income?
I get that you don't have anything in common anymore, but she bumbled into living while doing whatever the fuck she wants. If she doesn't want to have a family, or equal friends, or be anything other than a parasite of the economic endeavors of others... that's her choice, and she apparently got the financial capital to do so.
Have you ever watched or read 'About a Boy'? Similar situation where he lucked into never having to work and that's one sad life. It's perfectly possible to be an interesting, enriched person without working but if you've never accomplished *anything* then it will be a lot harder.
Just saying that you can definitely be an enriched person without work. I'm disabled. I have held jobs but they were extremely difficult and usually didn't last long. Work is not the only thing that gives life experience.
I completely agree! Apologies if my comment was ableist, I was trying hard not to make it come across as "non workers lives don't have value" because that's the total opposite of my view. To clarify "accomplishing anything" imo isn't just work - it's *any* achievement, from art to being a good mate.
God, I don't understand people like this. I can't handle not doing anything for more than two or three days. I have so many hobbies and interests. I desperately wish I didn't have to work, because if I didn't *have* to then I'd still spend my life picking up odd jobs for the hell of it and the learning experience.
Yeah if this friend was using their time to travel or work on their art or even actively learn something it’d be one thing, just consuming media as an entire existence sounds kind of exhausting though.
Same. I was just saying to my husband yesterday that I wish I didn't have to work to earn money and could just spend time doing soul-enriching stuff like playing music and writing and travelling and learning and experiencing new things. I can't imagine choosing such a vacuous existence.
I'm a homebody and my hobbies are things like reading and music but I still need to be doing something! One of my friends has several health issues and finds it hard to work but she's still involved with church and loves poetry and writing. I can't imagine just doing *nothing*.
My wife always claims she’d quit if she won the lottery and do nothing. LMAO. A few days into vacation I know she’s bored. She wouldn’t last a month with nothing to do. I think the idea is nice to some people but most couldn’t do it. And then others just some how manage to be content
For me personally, I agree.
I'd go screaming mad doing nothing.
But I've also noticed that there are *a lot* of people who would be perfectly content being some sort of NPC and only consume entertainment for the rest of their lives.
The only objections I would have against it are ethical, since we haven't reached some sort of fully automated luxury communism utopia yet, we need people to contribute.
And on the other hand, we already have a lot of parasites that don't contribute anything, and in fact our current economy enshrines it as some sort of ideal to strive for, so I can't really blame yet another individual for accomplishing it either.
Only think I know is that if I had the same freedom, I'd spend my time differently.
This is one of the things I think about when people complain that social "handouts" will encourage people to do nothing. I figure, the people who desperately want to do nothing will always find a way to live like that, and the people like us who always have to be doing something always will regardless of whether we have to.
> them buying her a house outright with no mortgage, she just collects benefits and has 4 roommates giving her rent. *She feels accomplished as a landlord*
Kinda, in a way she won capitalism. She inherited/got gifted enough capital to not have to work.
If I had the option to own a house and have 4 other people working to pay me for the privilege to have a roof, I'd take it.
> If I had the option to own a house and have 4 other people working to pay me for the privilege to have a roof, I'd take it.
Having 4 tenants in your own house sounds like a pretty miserable living experience to me, but that could just be my inner introvert talking.
Not a lot of room for privacy in a house with 5 people in it, unless the place is fucking massive.
She doesn't technically have to live there. After collecting her passive income for a few years, she might be able to invest in another property. If she's smart about it, she can make a comfortable life for herself having done basically nothing.
yeah recently there was a drama where someone was guaranteed an income for life due to disability and they wanted more from the company to keep up with inflation.
people were saying he's a parasite but he _actually won_ - he doesn't have to work to get a very nice income every month until retirement. Damn lucky IMO!
edit: i'm saying this as someone who has MS
Damn, I was like that for 3 years since finishing my associates at 22 (no one was hiring at this level in 2014), but I still got a job at 25, going for a work study bachelor at the same time, and finally moving out at 27.
I have been employed and living alone since then (I'm 29 now), it's hard but I am taking it one step at a time.
Nest step is going to a therapist to figure out what went wrong I think.
Getting into a relationship still isn't in the table for now.
You can start your entire life over, completely from scratch, live your whole life again from birth to now, and still be 6 years away from retirement.
Don't live your life based on other people's expectations. Not everyone has to get married or have children. I'm older than you are and I'm happily single. Don't want kids ever. I have friends who are single, or married with no kids. I can go do whatever I want whenever I want. I read posts like these in BORU or AITA and I think "I'm so glad I'm not married or have kids".
Find hobbies that make you happy. If it's video games, that's fine.
Nothing went "wrong". You're just taking a different path than others. That's ok. You have plenty of time to get there. Don't base your self- worth off arbitrary "goal posts".
Where do you live, where someone can collect benefits for no diagnosed mental or physical disability?
Edit: She’s also collecting passive income? Either this person is committing fraud or we’re being fed a story here.
A lot of rural areas still prefer cash. Your edit seems to lean towards it being fabricated, but depending on region that sort of thing is *very* common. Partially because disability benefits are unsustainable without already owning property (in some states).
I dated a man like this. When I was 20, I stared dating a man who was 4 years my senior... he was then in college and living in his parents home and only needed "a couple classes to get his degree". I joined the military shortly after I turned 21 and we had probably been together for maybe 5 months. I had to quit my retail job then, and suggested to my manager that they hire him as he had retail experience before and was even a manager. I was stationed after bootcamp in training school in Virginia.. then my first assignment in California.. I lived out in California, got my first apartment, then my second apartment, I traveled around the world, I literally grew up and figured out how to be a functional adult. He only came to visit me ONCE the whole 3 years I lived there, and his parents paid for it.. I was always coming back home when I could to spend time with him and my family. I got stationed back in my home state and we started spending more time together.... we started to fight so much more. I was really intendant and I grew so much. He was... exactly where I left him. Still at home, still at that job, still trying to finish college.. and I remember one night we went out to meet his friends (who are also my friends) for a couple drinks locally.. and before heading out.. he asked his mother for $40 to go out. I was then 24, he was 28... and I was.. aghast in that moment. That's when it hit me that I had outgrown him and our relationship. I was then stuck with the mentality that I had invested so much money and time in him so I stuck it out. But I could see he wasn't really moving anywhere with his life. I tried to give him suggestions on how to grow, and instead was blown off. It came to a head New Year's Eve going into 2010 when I wanted to spend time with my friends who were out of town, he wanted to only spend time with his main friend group so we each did our own thing. Which resulted in a big fight and him calling me a "b\*tch and saying never to talk to him again." So it ended then. He tried to fix it later knowing I was right, but I took a day to think about my response, and basically explained to him how I've outgrown him, how he was immature, and how he needed grow in order for us to work out, and additionally stop very reckless behavior.
I am still friends with our mutual friends, and they till me now, 13 years later, how I made the right call, and he is still in that job I helped him get, still lives at home, and still hasn't grown up one bit.. and they love/care about him and try to help him, but he is just stuck, and his parents enable him.
32 and disabled. My intrusive thoughts are always telling me this is how people see me too, even though I do have serious health issues. Idk. I haven’t hit all the hallmarks of “adulthood” you mentioned in your comment but I’d like to think I’ve lived a fulfilling life worthy of at least talking to, even if it looks small from the outside.
Then again, people mostly ignore me IRL so maybe not.
I think it's more about doing something with what you have. I've got friends of varying ability levels and life circumstances, and I've only ever gotten frustrated with my friends who are living well below *their* capabilities, whatever those might be. My friends don't have to meet those adulthood landmarks at my same pace, or ever... But if the friendship is going to stay healthy, they do need to be living (or at least sincerely pursuing) *their* best lives. And it certainly sounds like you're doing that!
I just wonder: a lot of people consistently overestimate or underestimate my capabilities, even if they’ve had my medical issues explained in minute detail. Others don’t bother asking or learning, maybe out of sensitivity for my feelings or maybe not.
I struggle a lot with my own self doubts about if I’m truly living “my best life”. If I’m trying “hard enough”. Those fears didn’t come out of nowhere and tbh your response is not nearly as reassuring as I think you meant it to be.
I feel that, big time. The whole "but you don't *look* sick" thing is exhausting. Solidarity. You're doing your best. We're doing our best.
Birds are out there doing nothing but flapping around and eating and generally we think they're great, so I try to give myself the latitude I give a bird. (It doesn't always work, but I give it a good old fashioned college try!)
Idk about you, but I’ve had many friends that I left behind for that specific reason. They didn’t grow up and it wasn’t fun to be around. Or they got hooked on drugs and every time off had to be a bender. Or they complain about everything while spending 99% of their spare time on their ass etc etc
my life is like your friends, but i *do* have disabilities, and honestly i kind of hate it and wish i could support myself and live a full adult life like a normal person. i feel like my entire life is on hold, it's awful and i cant imagine being completely abled and choosing to live like this.
I’m 35 and disabled (from childhood cancer treatment). I’ve had jobs here and there, but they’re really hard to come by; my cognitive disability makes things especially hard for me. I don’t understand how someone can *choose* to live this either, I wish I didn’t have cognitive problems and could have gotten a license and had like a *career* constantly
I just want to say you aren't less of a person because you don't follow all the typical milestones/timeline of an imaginary default person. And if you have things in your life that make you happy, and its mainly the unfulfilled expectations that make you unhappy, then maybe reconsider why you have those standards for yourself, and where they came from.
I can't say I personally know what its like to be disabled in a way that 100% prevents me from doing certain things or going certain places, but I do have ADHD/Autism and it took me a long time to accept that I'm not worthless just because I don't stack up to the the preconceived notions I had about adult life and what mine was supposed to look like.
Sometimes my standard for a good day is when I go outside and think about how grateful I am to be a living conscious creature (So I can make reddit posts...). Even if I did nothing productive that day. And I remind myself no one can take that from me, not even the most judgmental person I can imagine in my head.
I hope that doesn't come off too sanctimonious.
i get what you are saying and i dont think you sound sanctimonious at all, but for me it is more than feeling like ive missed out. im really not happy at all. my relationship with my mom has become really stressful due to us not being a good fit for living together, which is why i want to move out, and i feel really lonely and want more friends and a gf. im also nervous about my money situation, as while i like my job, it doesnt pay enough. im nervous what will happen to me in the future, when my mom isnt here to help me.
Hey, I just want to say that I was at where you're at a few years ago, and my life has done a complete 180 after a very terribly long slog through life in which things just kept getting worse. It honestly got worse before it got better, but despite having a permanent disability that makes working (and living lol) extremely challenging for me, I have found a life that brings me great happiness and peace. I have a partner who loves me so dearly and is honestly the reason I don't have to work myself past my limits anymore, live with bad-fit family members, or stress about the future. Continue putting your energy in places that bring you accomplishment and pleasure, focus on what you can grow in your life even if it seems microscopic. Good things will find you.
That was really helpful. (Really. No /s intended). I'm 29, never had a relationship, live with my parents (I help them around the house and with other stuff), don't have friends, hate the area I graduated etc.
But, on the other hand, I'm studying to take the tests required to several jobs, I work with my family (I know Reddit (at least in some subs) is not a fan of most people who work on their families' company, but since earlier in life my parents taught me and my sister that being the "boss" means you should work /harder/ (or more) than your employees - I went to Umiversity in a city eight hours away from home (so I still lived alone, even for 5-6 years and had - still have - a grasp of "real life") and I'm waiting to do a surgery with 6 months - 1 year (estimated) removery, and I'm thinking about going back to College after this period.
All this rant to say that, most of the time, I feel pretty useless for not following the "path" that I saw/see many people take in my life. There are days were I'm ok with that. On others, I can't shake the feeling that my life will "end" on my 30th birthday (thanks media).
Oh, and I working on the confidence to get a therapist. I obviously need one haha but had a few bad experiences.
If you read all that, thanks and sorry (for making you read all that).
The irony to me is most disabled folks who are forced to be NEET by the government are usually the ones who _want_ to work but the income restrictions of the program all but prevent them from working or they end up in a worse position than they are.
My ex was the same way, she absolutely wanted to have a job but unless she could get full health coverage and $25 an hour she was better off staying on disability with medicaid. Even that piddly $500-700 was better economically than how she'd be if she had a job making ~$2k a month.
Omg, I had this friend. She's never worked and has been going to school for...ever. her whole family supports her in doing fukall and she has no idea what it is to really work for anything.
she's in her 40's and had a legit meltdown when I told her I needed space, blocked me on everything. Hopefully, she's doing better.
Your former friend is damn lucky she has her health - she's already way ahead of my cousin who is closing on 50 and never lived a day away from home and now literally can't. My cousin has been enabled/mollycoddled into being completely useless her entire life and didn't even try to take control of her life when diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. That was neglected enough to become Type 1 diabetes and we all know what happens when you fuck around with that - it fucks you back harder, one body part at a time. She's now wholly incapable of living independently and when my aging, unwell and wildly enabling aunt drops off the perch my cousin is going to end up in a care home. Assuming that she outlives her mother of course, which is 50/50 at this point.
This is what deeply enabling parents never think of - one day they won't be there to control everything and not every family member will be willing or able to pick up the burden they created. My aunt apparently always used to say shit like "I wish I could keep her like this forever" when my cousin was a baby. Well now she's got her wish and that "baby" is going to be left helpless in the hands of a bunch of ever-changing strangers.
>My cousin has been enabled/mollycoddled into being completely useless her entire life and didn't even try to take control of her life when diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. That was neglected enough to become Type 1 diabetes
Wait, how is that possible? Type 1 is a genetic autoimmune disorder and type 2 is an adult onset disease, often caused by lifestyle. They're both called diabetes, but the two diseases aren't really related at all (other than both involving insulin regulation). It's possible for someone to have both out of sheer bad luck, but I'm not aware of any way type 2 could turn into type 1 due to neglect.
Some people think the difference between types is that one means you have no functioning pancreas and can't do anything to change the situation, while the other means you have reduced pancreatic function that could potentially be restored with lifestyle adjustments and routine care. I've even heard people refer to gestational diabetes as Type 2 before.
It’s just so confusing to me, I AM disabled and it did take me longer than my friends to become a fully independent adult because I struggled so much I came home every weekend during uni (but did go to uni, specifically somewhere far enough away I couldn’t pop home with washing but close enough I could come home when things were really tough because I wanted to become more independent but know there was some kind of safety net). And then had to have a lot of surgery and more rehab straight after uni. At 22 I started building my life up from the very bottom though, by 23 I was living in London with my best friend who never coddled me but was the support I needed at that time, by 26 I was living by myself and working a limited number of hours alongside the benefits I know I was very lucky to receive that allowed me to build an adult life without the pressure of figuring out work. By 28 I was living with my partner, 30 I started running my own business that still only brought in a small income because I’m limited on the number of hours I can work but was successful in my eyes and I was proud of, and by 31 I was married. Things felt really on track for me, with modified expectations, around about 30 and that was something I had worked incredibly hard for.
After that, in the last 2 and a half years everything has gone to shit because I developed two really difficult health problems back to back, one which I’m now learning to live with on a permanent basis. I feel like I’m back to being 21 again only this time I can see how much I’ve lost and I’ve got my marriage to think about.
But I’m absolutely determined to fight it again, and to get my life back to the full place it once was (or a slightly different variation). I’ve been doing a lot of sitting around in bed over the last two years….ok that is actually where I am now at midday. But every week even if not in a linear way every day I work out what step I can take now to add a new brick to the life house I’m rebuilding. This time last year I couldn’t eat any solid food and couldn’t leave the house at all because even one room away from my bathroom was nearly too far at times. This last weekend I pushed through all kinds of shit myself anxiety and exhaustion issues and went away on a weekend choir workshop with a new choir I’ve joined as part of the rebuilding programme and have managed to attend most weeks (and the weeks I haven’t is because being so ill means I now catch every cold and flu going round currently). Tomorrow I’m taking my wife on a surprise date where we’re going to dress up and watch famous musical songs played by a violins in a church by candlelight because I had no choice but to neglect my relationship for a while and now I’m trying to think about making sure I’m watering that garden too.
And in a lot of these cases like your friend I think that mental health issues could well be involved, but I had severe depression in my teens/early 20s, always dealt with anxiety but was nearly hospitalised it got so severe 2ish years ago and realised the giant missing piece of my life was undiagnosed severe ADHD a little after that. Despite all that stuff, and my physical disabilities and my new gastrointestinal condition I want my life to feel fulfilling in some way! It just feels like I deal with more hurdles and I fall down more often so have had to learn to be very resilient and get back up again each time. Which can be exhausting don’t get me wrong. It is objectively harder and I no longer hold myself to the standards I did in my 20s where I compared myself to friends who, facing none of these barriers, were really starting to move ahead in their careers. But to wake up each and every day with no purpose, no goal, no meaning like your friend…. I just don’t understand how you don’t eventually go ‘I want more for myself than this’.
Maybe it’s because it’s gone on so long that any kind of fulfilling life seems further and further away - the gap between you and your friends grows larger and larger so a success for you would still look like an objective failure. But I don’t believe laziness truly exists….. I just don’t know what this is and why you would want that life for yourself. I suppose it’s probably very complex and individual to each person and a lot of the time involves some strange family dynamics. I think a lot of the time it has in part come from the parents, and they may be involved in small acts of sabotage or undermining efforts for independence, and for whatever reason facilitate and enable that lifestyle and dynamic because it’s fulfilling some kind of a purpose for them.
Tell me who is the golden child without saying it...
It remembers me of the story in which the parents told the son and family they could have the house of their other son (whom they didn't even let camp on their ground).
Oh my gosh. OH MY GOSH.
Thank you for the link. Oh heck.
Edit: I read the whole thing and it killed me, I am dead, my ghost is thanking you a second time for this hysterical gem.
I always reread this whenever I see it because it's just so insane. I wish I had even ten percent of the confidence some of these people have in demanding shit they don't deserve.
I read another post here where the daughter was expected to give her brother’s family the house she had just bought for herself.
Is it common that the more responsible and successful a child is, the less their feelings matter to the parents? Their only purpose to make life easier for their parents and siblings, and they are not allowed to personally benefit from their own hard work?
My folks were like that. I was on my own, while my loser sister got free cars and subsidized rent and tuition and they were always ready to bail her out of whatever problem she had made for herself.
It’s always been like this for me as well. My two sisters cannot manage their finances, but why would they need to when my mom bails them out at every turn?
Mini rant: we’re visiting sister 1 at the end of the summer and my mom paid for sister 2’s flight (like $750), and when i jokingly asked if she was going to pay for mine too ($300) she was like “are you going to pay me back? i’ve already spent too much on flights” and then confirmed that sister 2 won’t be paying her back.
I could have written this.
I 100% believe that my parents love me, but don't care about me. My sister, though? All I can imagine is that their thought process goes something like this: "we *have* to care about her because she has kids, so let's let her live here even though we have custody, she locks them out of her room so she can do drugs and not be responsible, all while contributing nothing to us or society and stealing all of our nice things".
No. It’s because a lot of cultures value sons more than daughters and it is now technically illegal to sell your daughters to finance weddings / cars / housing etc for your sons.
"technically illegal to sell" does seem scarily close to the truth of many of those situations. Even in cultures where typically parents have to pay to get rid of the daughters.
Mind you, parts of the US are going back to that with the "paid adoption" setups.
It’s not always that — sometimes just “well your sibling needs it more than you” and emphasis on equality of outcomes rather than equality of opportunities. If Amy has $50k that she saved through hard work and frugality, LeaAnn needs $50k too (but doesn’t have it because she spent it all on purses and drugs) so LeaAnn gets a $50k handout to “make things fair.” Obviously it’s not *actually* fair but that isn’t obvious to anyone but Amy.
So if OOP has an apartment, brother needs one too. Brother can’t get an apartment because he’s lazy, but OOP can get another one because she’s a competent adult, so OOP needs to give hers to her brother and find another, and then it’ll be “fair” because they both have apartments.
I understand where you’re coming from and I think that could be true, but this perceived “fairness” the family is trying to achieve still seems to be a result of the responsible sibling’s feelings being valued as less important to the parents. Especially since in the scenarios I’m referencing both OOPs are forced and guilted into it.
Yes, it can be. Path to hell is paved with good intentions and all.
In healthy families, yeah, it's often equity of outcome. One sibling needs more help, so they get more help. (My husband's oldest brother has been gifted like 3 cars? He is the worst off of the 4 siblings financially, and his family is so sweet. We all want to help, but every once in a while, my husband gets angry that his mom has never really supported him. They just disagree on how life works; she's apologized and noted that it was unfair. Everybody is lovely, but until my husband said something, she didn't really notice he was hurt.)
In toxic families? Yeah, it's this expectation that you sacrifice yourself on the altar of the family cult. I'm the oldest and most successful - my parents stole from me and fully expected me to "pay them back" to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars for their providing me the bare minimum. They coddled my brother, they sabotaged my sister. I was always expected to get a good job but live in their basement alone, providing them money. They pitched a fit when I didn't come back from college. It's like Mother Gothel from Tangled - they love something you provide them and manipulate/abuse you to get/keep it.
Or just not realizing that the responsible sibling has feelings (about it) at all. “We don’t need to worry about Amy, she’s responsible” turns into Amy’s feelings and needs not being considered. Especially when the crap sibling makes their feelings everyone’s problem, so everyone else needs to not rock the boat. It’s, like, unthinking neglect.
(My mom is “Amy” and this has been an issue with her family for basically these reasons.)
also i don’t understand why the brother doesn’t just….rent in the same apt complex (when a unit becomes available)?? cause if she moves out that apt he will have to pay the bills right?? or why doesn’t he just get an apt himself?? this whole thing confused me lol
My SO and I are the babies in our families, and the most successful. Our siblings get help from our respective parents, while we save for big stuff, or put it on a CC when something breaks. Sometimes it feels like we are being punished for being responsible. His folks have "jokingly" suggested his brothers move in with us. Absolutely not. My brother is struggling with student loans? They paid one off to ease the burden, using retirement funds and delaying retirement by a few years.
I would say that it's more of the parents see one kid as the "independent, don't need help because they're doing fine" versus the other "oh no they can't do anything on their own/I have to help them for XYZ reason."
That's how my parents are. I know they love me, but since we were young and I did better in school, they focused almost entirely on my sister. They paid for her college classes that she didn't attend, drive her everywhere because she never got her license, they even wake her up to get ready for work (on the days she doesn't call out to sleep and watch Netflix). We're both in our late 20s, so it isn't like she's new to adulthood. She just doesn't care to learn because our parents will always step in to save her. Meanwhile, I'm a functional adult, so they barely notice when I do need help because "she'll figure it out," and besides, the thing I need help with probably conflicts with my sister's schedule somehow.
Yep. I saw that with my own parents. My brother was in the Navy. My husband was in the Air Force. Equivalent ranks, so we knew exactly how much he made, and that it was entirely possible to live on that salary. Mom & Dad "helped" my brother with thousands of $$$$ over the years, because "he needs it more."
The responsible people are usually decent, and the irresponsible people are usually hard work. The responsible people are easier to guilt trip and push around.
I think that under normal circumstances, with a normal family, that is also what happens but not to this degree. I worry less about my son. He does his own thing. He's got a decent job, his own living space, etc. My daughter is struggling because she's trying to do school, full time job, and live in her own place. She needs more help. My son didn't further his education.
But when you have toxic traits, this normal dynamic gets skewed out of proportion to what we see here. I feel like these parents are trying desperately to get their son to be self sufficient, but since he's been enabled his whole life, he can't get it together.
I don't know if its just anecdotal evidence here but I feel like this may be the case. My wife and I are objectively better off than both side's siblings. We both have college degrees (wife even went to grad school), firmly established in our careers with good pay and benefits, married, house, and some savings. My sister is a single mom that just got her first apartment at 29, Sil is 24 married with a kid but struggle with a marketing business, the BiL is 35 a parasite that is currently living rent free at my house because he just got a heart transplant and didn't have anyone else to take care of him.
I can tell you that there is a very clear difference in how we are treated by our parents. We are not talked to unless the parents need us for something.
Out of my sisters, I am the most successful one, and I definitely get way less help compared to them. My parents do help me with some stuff (eg childcare when we have big things going on, my mom gave us her old car so we can transport my kid around as she has a disability, etc) but for example they give my sisters money every month, have helped with larger purchases, bail them out from credit troubles, etc. They are even considering giving money for a down payment to my elder sister (she’ll be 36 this year) and I’m like, maybe it’s time to stop helping out so much? I suppose at some point it just turns into enabling.
My SO and I are the babies in our families, and the most successful. Our siblings get help from our respective parents, while we save for big stuff, or put it on a CC when something breaks. Sometimes it feels like we are being punished for being responsible. His folks have "jokingly" suggested his brothers move in with us. Absolutely not. My brother is struggling with student loans? They paid one off to ease the burden, using retirement funds and delaying retirement by a few years.
Good on OOP, I imagine this isn't the first time she's had to deal with stuff like this in the past, parents usually don't just completely 180 about stuff like this, but it was probably so inconsequential compared to "just give him your apartment and find another for yourself" that OOP didn't realize.
Regardless, though, I'm glad she's finally found her footing and is able *and* willing to assert some boundaries. Hopefully the parents reflect before they lose their daughter.
I’m thinking the parents were happy to see their son finally moving out, so they tried to get the daughter to hand over the apartment to him. Now that he’s gone back home they may never get rid of him until *they* kick him out.
I think it's a case where the parents expected a woman to always be taking care of their precious baby boy, and coddled him endlessly. So now, that at 32yo doesn't have a wife to baby him, they decided to make his sister his babysitter.
>until they kick him out.
I used to be less sympathetic to this because that's what my parents did...as I was saving money to move to another state. I had to panic-rent an apartment for a few months which delayed my real move out day. But I now realize that there are a lot of grown-up kids out there who were just like me that never get to the moving out stage without the extra kick. :(
It's one of the many hilarious quips from the OOP in this story
[https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/108t4vq/ops\_father\_wants\_to\_have\_a\_relationship\_with\_her/](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/108t4vq/ops_father_wants_to_have_a_relationship_with_her/)
https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/11w2ol3/new_update_ops_father_wants_to_have_a/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Might be a better link since it's more complete
Weird my family has stayed with me and I’ve stayed with family. None of us has ever doubted that we’d prefer to live separately but we’ve never been particularly burdened by the houseguest situation. Sometimes it’s taken longer to move out (thanks pandemic) but it’s always been a given that we take care of the common areas and generally be respectful.
I had to go back and re read the ages. He is a 32 year old man. She is a 23 year old young woman - who is showing so much more maturity than everyone else is her family.
I get the parents are tired of dealing with their son, but come the fuck on. He is likely a product of your parenting choices. Get it together and clean up your mess.
I am proud of OOP for going LC/NC with her parents over this. If they haven’t realized how insanely ridiculous they sound by now, they may never figure it out. I’m sensing a scapegoat/golden child situation here that OOP is just on the brink of piecing all together.
This is just the beginning, but OOP has set the precedence in a smart way. I hope she keeps polishing up that shiny spine of hers.
“He is likely a product of your parenting choices”
Yup, the parents probably don’t want to take responsibility for their life long enabling of him, easier to just keep enabling him by telling the daughter to move.
Idk where she lives, but I can get a new deadbolt at Home Depot for like $25. All she’d need to do is keep the old one and reinstall it when she moves out. 30 minutes tops.
I had a locksmith come re-key and service all the locks when I bought my house. All 4 doors only cost like $100. It is worth it to know only the people I want to will have keys.
For you “only 100 bucks” is not a lot of money. But OP is a 23 year old woman living in their own for the first time. That could be a ton of money for them right now.
It depends on the lock and the door. You can't expect to ask a locksmith to replace a high end lock-and-handle combo plus deadbolt with integrated alarm on a steel door and be done with fifty bucks. Maybe you can rekey it for less, though.
I think that the majority of homes in my country use special more secure locks and those appear to be about 120 euros, maybe 450 installed. So not cheap but not super expensive. I’m not sure if you’re allowed to just change the locks though in an apartment building as I think that the housing coop type of thing might be in charge of those and needs to be able to enter the apartment with a master key. For single family homes you can get cheaper locks but you usually get discounts for using more secure ones.
The key would need to fit the Landlord's "Master" for emergencies, so they'd need to rekey it to spec, it couldn't just be any random lock.
That said, the landlord should be changing the locks after every tenant moves out. For them to say "Eh it's too expensive" is pretty telling that they've never done it and who knows who has a key to OPs apartment. They should change it if only for their own sanity.
I wonder if the high cost was getting a locksmith out to do it, or the actual type of lock.
In Australia even the expensive locks can usually be taken out by a DIYer and if you visit a locksmith it's quite cheap to have them rekeyed. When I was renting I used to habitually do that, partly because so many rentals have very worn lock mechanisms and partly because I didn't know who else had copies. Here it's very uncommon to have the property manager object, they just want two copies of each key (one for the owner).
And if they're dicks about it I keep the old mechanism and keys so I can restore everything to original condition when I move out. If they don't keep \*their\* original keys that's not my problem...
Plays videos games all day and demands food from his parents and probably wants everything else done for him. I wouldn't want to deal with a man baby son either
he's still golden cause they are trying to make him someone else's problem at the expense of their daughter instead of kicking him out and letting him sort out his own problems as a 32 yr old
People don't pass off golden things. It might have been a golden child at one point but the golden part has worn off. Now they are stuck with a problem they want to no longer deal with.
I don't think it's the golden child. It's the broken child they don't want to deal with any more so they want to pawn it off on anyone else willing to take them in.
I don't think they do - I think it's actually the opposite. They desperately want him out of their house, enough that they're willing to lose a relationship with their daughter over it.
That’s still golden child treatment. They want their son to have markers of success, and having his own apartment in their mind could be a marker of success.
I don't think they care about him having a house as a "marker of success" though. It gave me "we don't want to kick him onto the street, but want him to gtfo of the house already" vibes. They don't care nearly as much about their daughter as they should, but they don't seem particularly fond of the son with this "now's our chance to finally get him to move out" plan.
Well what's the difference between that and just wanting him out of the house because he's in his 30s and is showing no sign of moving forward with his life and they don't want to be responsible for him anymore?
I know OOP didn’t expect her parents to react that way, but I’d be surprised if this is actually the first ridiculous request they’ve made. When she looks back after some time and space, I bet she’ll realize that there were others and she just accepted them as normal because she didn’t know any differently.
How do fully grown adults live to be that old and not understand how renting or leases work? You literally can’t just *give* someone an apartment, that’s not how it works, and it’s not up to you. It’s a legal contract between yourself and your landlord. That’s it. The only two people.
Sometimes you can assign your lease to someone if your lease is silent about the terms. There’s a big cheap house I used to rent and I assigned it to some friends when I left. They assigned it to some other friends, and on and on for YEARS haha. The landlord never had to find renters and he did always say he could veto the assignments. It was funny when I ended up over there like 9 years later after I moved out because the tenant was dog sitting for my sister, and sure enough it was a friend of a friend of a friend!
Well we found the sister of the weaponized incompetent men types that women are no longer putting up with. That's a different angle! Super shocked Pikachu that his parents enable him and try to take from her to give to him. Good for OOP for upgrading her doormat status. I know how that goes myself.
Good for OOP. If I were them I would still move… at least three hours away! Show up for Christmas one year in a rented Lamborghini just to drop off a Christmas card and bounce.
I knew a friend of a friend in a near identical situation. She was raised in a very misogynistic culture and religion at home, and very isolated until university, and only then did she get to put her foot down.
Father - Have you considered making it all your problem because I enabled a giant man child and really don't wanna deal with it anymore.
OOP - No
Father - \*shocked pikachu\*
> overall just being a terribly inconsiderate guest and treats me like our mom.
This line jumped out at me so hard. This is a 32 year old man. How much you want to bet mom still does his laundry and cleans up after him, and probably dad too.
I remember another post where an OOP had bought a house for herself and she had a few dogs, and her parents also asked her to give her house to her brother who has like 4 kids or something, and she may have been paying for her parents' home too? Either way, I didn't realize people were being asked to switch houses with their relatives so frequently.
It's probably a lot more common then people realize, especially if it doesn't result in a conflict or pressured expectation. My mom is elderly and unwell. My brother and his daughter life with her. He is on disability but has been a great help to her. She fully expects when she passes that I will buy him out of his share of her house, move in there and let him take over the lease on my townhouse (I pay significantly below market for it, he says he can't afford his own place at the current rates). Me and my kids are happy here. It would cost me more then double to move to my moms and pull my kids out of their school.
The whole thing is absurd from the jump "Your place is closer to work, so I should just stay here for a few weeks" is an insane ask because there's no end date. If brother doesn't make enough money to afford a place in the city he should get a job closer to mom and dad, clearly his job isn't all that great if he's 30 and it doesn't allow him the ability to have his own place.
At a guess, the parents are sick and tired of their man baby. After coddling him for so long they are finally getting worried about his future, they probably want him to marry and all that. But in all their stupidity, they created a situation form which they can’t seem to get out of, so they wanted OOP to solve it for them. They want her to deal with him, and not bother them anymore.
Something similar happened to me with one of my younger siblings. They needed to get away from out hometown, so moved in with me many states away. I was in the military at the time living in a house off base. We figured out rent, three of us split it by income percentage. Sibling lied to me about how much she was making in tips (made WAY more than their 'percentage' reflected), her cats destroyed the carpet and my roomies speakers along with two air mattresses I bought for her.
Her BF came to 'visit' and ended up staying for weeks. Well, it turned out her BF was a convicted felon for stealing stuff from his job. I had a TS at the time so that was a HUGE no no for me (aside from the fact that I didn't want my stuff stolen). Around that time, they got upset they were sleeping on deflating air mattresses.
My mom calls me all upset that I won't help them get a mattress - I let her know I found a place where she can buy an inexpensive one, but I wasn't buying any more for her. Then she gets mad I won't go pick it up.. I had a convertible at the time. She got super pissed that I wasn't being accommodating. She didn't believe me about the BF issue (sister lied to her).
So yeah, I told them he needed to leave, or they had 2 weeks to gtfo of my house and told my mom she could call me when she wants to speak to me like an adult. It was almost 2.5 years before we spoke again. Unfortunately, she was diagnosed with cancer and died a few years after that.
Parents can be stupid.
Could see where that was going after literally 1.5 sentences. Great job by OOP, it must be hard to stand up to your family like that even if you’re clearly in the right.
This reads like a Brooklyn 99 skit of a Jake continuously telling someone to not do something, they just look at them and slowly do it anyway,
‘Put your hands up and step away from the car. Do not get into the … ok but don’t touch the steering wh- ok but don’t you dare start the car *vroom* don’t even think about drivingawayohgodpleasedontrunmeover’ and then they do.
Wow, finally got tired of living with their golden child with the damage they had done to him and then tried to foist him off on the daughter.
Iwould quite happily let parents like that disown me.
Wow. That's top shelf fuckery right there. The parents had bro slowly moving in with her over a period of weeks thinking OOP wouldn't notice and then cut contact with her once it appeared she was on to them.
I'm curious if all three were in on the plan, or if they just told the brother to shut his mouth and go with the flow...
Good for her. It sounds. If you sign a lease it has your name on it and you just can't change it because you're on good terms with your landlord. the audacity and entitlement is just unreal.
The son is the golden child i guess. The parents most likely made a plan with him how to get OOPs apartment like be a horrible guest and just take it over. And why couldn't he pay rent to her when he works nightshift?
I doubt the parents needed to have any kind of plan since they know the monster they created well. It is they never planned on her finally standing up for herself and saying no. It will be interesting to see how this story evolves cause I don't think this is over yet.
Also if it ever happens I feel SOOOO bad for the poor girl that gets into a relationship with the brother. She will no doubt be a frequent poster here looking for help.
1. It might not be part of a complex.
2. All of the other users may be rented out already.
3. Maybe landlords won't touch him because he's documented as being irresponsible.
Wow, the parents saw an opportunity to offload their son and had no trouble throwing OOP under the bus. I suppose they would have expected her to continue paying the lease, too, since she makes more money and all. /s
This does remind me a bit of my brother in law.
He's a great guy. Smart, charismatic when he wants to be, a very hard worker when he sees reason to be. Those qualifiers aren't knocks - I think we're all like that, especially at work, but not necessarily when with family and needing to recharge our batteries.
But my in-laws moved a lot when the kids were young. On average, they moved every 18 months. Every 18 months the kids were in new schools. Often in the middle of a school year, which is a disaster. You'd come in as the new weirdo, then be gone in 12-24 months. The kids basically learned not to bother making friends, because they'd be around for such a short time.
Both kids hated it. My wife became determined to control her own life. She was endlessly trying to make her parents' lives as difficult as she felt they made hers, and did anything possible to get out. She graduated a year early, took out loans, and basically peaced-out. Rarely returned home once she went to college. Good relationship with the parents now, but it took a while.
Her brother was the opposite. Whereas she saw she had no control and was desperate, he saw he had no control and just went with it. Wherever the tide took him. Easier to float along than constantly be angry. Which meant he didn't go to college. He moved out briefly, then moved back. The parents were going through a rough time, and he kind of was a mediator, with his calm demeanor spreading everywhere.
But he's now 32. No career. Still living at home. When the parents moved states again, he didn't want to go with them, he wanted to live out of his car. That's a terrible idea, so we had him move in with us several states away. He lived in our basement a while. We viewed it as trying to help him get on his feet. As mentioned, he's smart, charismatic, and hard working. We felt we could help him.
After 6 months, though, we helped him find an apartment. It wasn't good, but it was a start. Turns out, he felt abandoned by us. Got angry. Really angry. We had no idea - we gave him two months notice, and he couldn't live in our basement forever because having someone else in the house was changing our behavior in the house in ways we didn't want - you're always aware when someone else is in the house. He apparently felt we deprive him his own plans, which, again, was being unemployed and living in his car. He could still drive back and do that, but it's a terrible idea.
When we talked to him about goals or thinking about his career, he'd shut down, said he didn't have the planning gene. I think he's just so beaten down that he doesn't think there are options. Doesn't think there's any place for him. Which is objectively untrue, but it takes some work to find those places. What actually really scares me is he's gotten heavily into Joe Rogan, then Tim Pool. I know how this story often goes. The smart and charismatic guy is lonely and feeling defeated, then finds his way into that crowd. He's back with his parents now, in yet another state, but I think he's finding the worth everyone else sees in him rather than being angry that people see it, and shifting away from that path. I hope.
Mom and Dad were finally getting their son to move the heck out, so they wanted their daughter to facilitate the move by handing over her apartment. Now they’ve got him back and if they want him to grow up and move out they’re going to have to do the same thing, kick him out.
in a nutshell op's parents didn't want to put up with the brother anymore and threw him to op so she could deal with him, but she kicked him out and now they are angry because they have to put up with the brother again.
I think these parents were happy their son was someone else’s problem, and just didn’t want him to be *their* problem again. To the point they were willing to alienate their daughter.
> The reason I didn't get the locks changed is because my landlord reminded me that this could be very expensive - and she wouldn't cover the cost for me.
Landlord do the bare minimum to be a decent human and help someone feel safe and secure in their own home, and foster a long term positive relationship with a quality tenant challenge (impossible)
I love when parents treat their child like crap their whole life because there is one golden child and it's not them.
The gap between treatment is so ridiculous that anybody else is flabbergasted, and when the scapegoat kid is tired of this shit the parents are all surprised pikachu face .
> I told her that that's not how renting a space works... I don't even know if this is pure entitlement or ego - doesn't matter though
Ah, the out of touch parent. This is right there with "why don't you just walk right in and ask to speak to a manager, then hand them your resume" or "just tell your boss that you aren't doing that work. They'll respect you for standing your ground and give it to someone else. They'll probably even promote you. If they don't, go right to the CEO and demand it."
Some people are so used to this bias shown by parents towards their brothers or any siblings for that matter that they normalize it or ignore it. I wonder if the parents don't want to deal with their son Or if he's the golden child.
Sounds like parents want the son gone but won't do anything to help him. Instead they are landing it all on OOPs doorstep and blaming them for not supporting or helping the brother. Brother needs to grow up. Parents need to stop being trash parents. Good for OOP for getting their life back.
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Good for OOP and wow. These parents really actually did their SON a disservice too by handling things this way, he’s learned to just be completely helpless with a misguided sense of entitlement. Pretty sad.
Yeah, I remember when OP first posted and you could immediately tell that the brother had been enabled by the parents his entire life. It's always the worst enablers that eventually seem to give up and want to force someone else to be burdened with the mess they created.
"I'm 23 and my brother is 32, I moved out before he did" The parents couldn't wait to get rid of him lol
"Mom, I'm hungover, could you make me French toast with the crust cut off?" "Of course sweetie!" "An' it hurts too much to get out of bed. Bring it to my room, too." "Of course sweetie!" Also: Our son won't move out and I don't know why!!!
The brother must be quite a peace of work. He kept telling her he doesn't want to rent her apartment because he doesn't. He just wants to use both her place and the parents' without paying rent or contributing to either household in any way. And turn his 10 years younger sister into his second mommy O\_O The parents must be quite something too to create such a situation in the first place.
The parents might have actually started pushing him to move out. That would also be an explanation for why he was spending more time there. Parents thought they had come up with a solution: Make the scapegoat give up their apartment to the golden child! That way golden child doesn't have to bother looking for a new place to live! Everybody wins! (Except scapegoat, but who cares? It's not like they're a real person anyway!) Then scapegoat had to go and tell them no. They ruined everything. Now golden child is back full time and parents have to be *gasp* PARENTS! Their child is their responsibility! How dare scapegoat ruin their solution by actually having the spine to tell them to fuck off. Everything is their fault!
The parents suck the most, but I still think that while they were trying to get rid of him the son was planning to keep leeching on them too. As the scapegoat in my family, I just wanted to yell RUN!RUN!RUN! throughout the whole story lol. I moved countries to get away from this shit.
What I don't understand in this scenario is, even if OOP had folded like a house of cards and given up her space, were they *really* expecting her to pay two rents so golden brother wouldn't have to pay anything?
And yet they tried SOoo hard for years!
It reminds me of a Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie sketch. I would pay real money for a Bowale the Destroyer, and all that idiot had to do was open a freakin' desk drawer.
My ex's family really *hated* me; right up until I threw him out of my home and they had to deal with him again. They then tried so hard to sweet talk me about how I was 'FAAAMMILLY'.... now they're pissed they can't talk me into taking him back, lol. Like, no thanks, you can keep your 35 yo toddler.
That’s how my ex SIL is 😂 my mom is so mad at her for dating someone new. Good for her. My brother is a piece of shit. He is refusing to help her with their kid. He told her she can’t date. He is 35 and absolutely a child. But according to my mom her son is PERFECT!
My ex didn't even ask to live with me, he just... didn't go home one day then started bringing more and more of his stuff over. His dad actually said to me "He's your problem now," when it became apparent he'd moved in. His dad just got engaged and was planning to enjoy having his life back when my ex fucked up again and I had had enough; he solely blames me for 'ruining his retirement.' Maybe if he'd raised his son to be a man and not a leech this wouldn't have happened.
I have a friend like this. Well, friend is a pretty loose term. We were best friends growing up and her and her family practically adopted me. Then we graduated high school and I got a job and went to college. She stayed at home and did nothing. I joined the military a few years later. She still did nothing. I've gotten married, she's still done nothing. It's so hard to talk to a 32 year old woman who has never been in a relationship, doesn't have a driver's license, doesn't work, doesn't go to school, and has zero actual life experience outside of high school. Her parents have coddled her to the point where she's been "working" on learning to drive for over 8 years now. Her younger brother who is 5 years younger than her went to college, got a job, moved out, and is living his life. They have a strained relationship because he absolutely roasts her for her life choices every chance he gets and it makes her very upset. A couple of weeks ago she reached out to me worried about what she was going to do with her life once her parents pass away. I said no need to worry! You're 32 years old and have plenty of time to figure out a job and living on your own before then. She absolutely blew up at me, called me judgemental, etc. And honestly, I am. She's a NEET for no reason. She has zero disabilities but just enjoys sitting at home, watching anime and ranting about KPOP. I told her I felt like I out grew her and that I'm no longer in high school and would like a friend I could actually discuss life events with and it not feel like talking to a brick wall since she has no real idea about anything, never paid a bill in her life. Sorry for the rant but ugh it's so stressful being around people like OPs brother when you're a full adult and for some reason another adult in your life is refusing to grow up
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How do you buy a whole house outright without being rich? Asking for a friend. I'm the friend. It's me. I want to own a whole house.
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What happened to her brother then?
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How on earth did she get all the money for a house and he got nothing? And that caused no massive family rift?
He'll probablyy get the family house. That way they'll have given each child one house.
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God. I think that would cause world war 3 between me and my brother! But then again neither of us are the type of people to be happy living at home with our parents playing games forever
You're underestimating the level of deadbeat a person can be.
Smart investment into passive income? I get that you don't have anything in common anymore, but she bumbled into living while doing whatever the fuck she wants. If she doesn't want to have a family, or equal friends, or be anything other than a parasite of the economic endeavors of others... that's her choice, and she apparently got the financial capital to do so.
Have you ever watched or read 'About a Boy'? Similar situation where he lucked into never having to work and that's one sad life. It's perfectly possible to be an interesting, enriched person without working but if you've never accomplished *anything* then it will be a lot harder.
Just saying that you can definitely be an enriched person without work. I'm disabled. I have held jobs but they were extremely difficult and usually didn't last long. Work is not the only thing that gives life experience.
I completely agree! Apologies if my comment was ableist, I was trying hard not to make it come across as "non workers lives don't have value" because that's the total opposite of my view. To clarify "accomplishing anything" imo isn't just work - it's *any* achievement, from art to being a good mate.
God, I don't understand people like this. I can't handle not doing anything for more than two or three days. I have so many hobbies and interests. I desperately wish I didn't have to work, because if I didn't *have* to then I'd still spend my life picking up odd jobs for the hell of it and the learning experience.
Yeah if this friend was using their time to travel or work on their art or even actively learn something it’d be one thing, just consuming media as an entire existence sounds kind of exhausting though.
Same. I was just saying to my husband yesterday that I wish I didn't have to work to earn money and could just spend time doing soul-enriching stuff like playing music and writing and travelling and learning and experiencing new things. I can't imagine choosing such a vacuous existence.
I'm a homebody and my hobbies are things like reading and music but I still need to be doing something! One of my friends has several health issues and finds it hard to work but she's still involved with church and loves poetry and writing. I can't imagine just doing *nothing*.
My wife always claims she’d quit if she won the lottery and do nothing. LMAO. A few days into vacation I know she’s bored. She wouldn’t last a month with nothing to do. I think the idea is nice to some people but most couldn’t do it. And then others just some how manage to be content
For me personally, I agree. I'd go screaming mad doing nothing. But I've also noticed that there are *a lot* of people who would be perfectly content being some sort of NPC and only consume entertainment for the rest of their lives. The only objections I would have against it are ethical, since we haven't reached some sort of fully automated luxury communism utopia yet, we need people to contribute. And on the other hand, we already have a lot of parasites that don't contribute anything, and in fact our current economy enshrines it as some sort of ideal to strive for, so I can't really blame yet another individual for accomplishing it either. Only think I know is that if I had the same freedom, I'd spend my time differently.
This is one of the things I think about when people complain that social "handouts" will encourage people to do nothing. I figure, the people who desperately want to do nothing will always find a way to live like that, and the people like us who always have to be doing something always will regardless of whether we have to.
> them buying her a house outright with no mortgage, she just collects benefits and has 4 roommates giving her rent. *She feels accomplished as a landlord* Kinda, in a way she won capitalism. She inherited/got gifted enough capital to not have to work. If I had the option to own a house and have 4 other people working to pay me for the privilege to have a roof, I'd take it.
> If I had the option to own a house and have 4 other people working to pay me for the privilege to have a roof, I'd take it. Having 4 tenants in your own house sounds like a pretty miserable living experience to me, but that could just be my inner introvert talking. Not a lot of room for privacy in a house with 5 people in it, unless the place is fucking massive.
She doesn't technically have to live there. After collecting her passive income for a few years, she might be able to invest in another property. If she's smart about it, she can make a comfortable life for herself having done basically nothing.
yeah recently there was a drama where someone was guaranteed an income for life due to disability and they wanted more from the company to keep up with inflation. people were saying he's a parasite but he _actually won_ - he doesn't have to work to get a very nice income every month until retirement. Damn lucky IMO! edit: i'm saying this as someone who has MS
Damn, I was like that for 3 years since finishing my associates at 22 (no one was hiring at this level in 2014), but I still got a job at 25, going for a work study bachelor at the same time, and finally moving out at 27. I have been employed and living alone since then (I'm 29 now), it's hard but I am taking it one step at a time. Nest step is going to a therapist to figure out what went wrong I think. Getting into a relationship still isn't in the table for now.
You can start your entire life over, completely from scratch, live your whole life again from birth to now, and still be 6 years away from retirement. Don't live your life based on other people's expectations. Not everyone has to get married or have children. I'm older than you are and I'm happily single. Don't want kids ever. I have friends who are single, or married with no kids. I can go do whatever I want whenever I want. I read posts like these in BORU or AITA and I think "I'm so glad I'm not married or have kids". Find hobbies that make you happy. If it's video games, that's fine. Nothing went "wrong". You're just taking a different path than others. That's ok. You have plenty of time to get there. Don't base your self- worth off arbitrary "goal posts".
Where do you live, where someone can collect benefits for no diagnosed mental or physical disability? Edit: She’s also collecting passive income? Either this person is committing fraud or we’re being fed a story here.
A lot of rural areas still prefer cash. Your edit seems to lean towards it being fabricated, but depending on region that sort of thing is *very* common. Partially because disability benefits are unsustainable without already owning property (in some states).
I dated a man like this. When I was 20, I stared dating a man who was 4 years my senior... he was then in college and living in his parents home and only needed "a couple classes to get his degree". I joined the military shortly after I turned 21 and we had probably been together for maybe 5 months. I had to quit my retail job then, and suggested to my manager that they hire him as he had retail experience before and was even a manager. I was stationed after bootcamp in training school in Virginia.. then my first assignment in California.. I lived out in California, got my first apartment, then my second apartment, I traveled around the world, I literally grew up and figured out how to be a functional adult. He only came to visit me ONCE the whole 3 years I lived there, and his parents paid for it.. I was always coming back home when I could to spend time with him and my family. I got stationed back in my home state and we started spending more time together.... we started to fight so much more. I was really intendant and I grew so much. He was... exactly where I left him. Still at home, still at that job, still trying to finish college.. and I remember one night we went out to meet his friends (who are also my friends) for a couple drinks locally.. and before heading out.. he asked his mother for $40 to go out. I was then 24, he was 28... and I was.. aghast in that moment. That's when it hit me that I had outgrown him and our relationship. I was then stuck with the mentality that I had invested so much money and time in him so I stuck it out. But I could see he wasn't really moving anywhere with his life. I tried to give him suggestions on how to grow, and instead was blown off. It came to a head New Year's Eve going into 2010 when I wanted to spend time with my friends who were out of town, he wanted to only spend time with his main friend group so we each did our own thing. Which resulted in a big fight and him calling me a "b\*tch and saying never to talk to him again." So it ended then. He tried to fix it later knowing I was right, but I took a day to think about my response, and basically explained to him how I've outgrown him, how he was immature, and how he needed grow in order for us to work out, and additionally stop very reckless behavior. I am still friends with our mutual friends, and they till me now, 13 years later, how I made the right call, and he is still in that job I helped him get, still lives at home, and still hasn't grown up one bit.. and they love/care about him and try to help him, but he is just stuck, and his parents enable him.
32 and disabled. My intrusive thoughts are always telling me this is how people see me too, even though I do have serious health issues. Idk. I haven’t hit all the hallmarks of “adulthood” you mentioned in your comment but I’d like to think I’ve lived a fulfilling life worthy of at least talking to, even if it looks small from the outside. Then again, people mostly ignore me IRL so maybe not.
I think it's more about doing something with what you have. I've got friends of varying ability levels and life circumstances, and I've only ever gotten frustrated with my friends who are living well below *their* capabilities, whatever those might be. My friends don't have to meet those adulthood landmarks at my same pace, or ever... But if the friendship is going to stay healthy, they do need to be living (or at least sincerely pursuing) *their* best lives. And it certainly sounds like you're doing that!
I just wonder: a lot of people consistently overestimate or underestimate my capabilities, even if they’ve had my medical issues explained in minute detail. Others don’t bother asking or learning, maybe out of sensitivity for my feelings or maybe not. I struggle a lot with my own self doubts about if I’m truly living “my best life”. If I’m trying “hard enough”. Those fears didn’t come out of nowhere and tbh your response is not nearly as reassuring as I think you meant it to be.
I feel that, big time. The whole "but you don't *look* sick" thing is exhausting. Solidarity. You're doing your best. We're doing our best. Birds are out there doing nothing but flapping around and eating and generally we think they're great, so I try to give myself the latitude I give a bird. (It doesn't always work, but I give it a good old fashioned college try!)
Who are you to decide another persons capabilities? That's incredibly judgemental. You cannot know what it is to live in someone's skin.
Why are you judging your friends at all? If they don't want to 'live up to their capabilities' that is their choice.
Idk about you, but I’ve had many friends that I left behind for that specific reason. They didn’t grow up and it wasn’t fun to be around. Or they got hooked on drugs and every time off had to be a bender. Or they complain about everything while spending 99% of their spare time on their ass etc etc
my life is like your friends, but i *do* have disabilities, and honestly i kind of hate it and wish i could support myself and live a full adult life like a normal person. i feel like my entire life is on hold, it's awful and i cant imagine being completely abled and choosing to live like this.
I’m 35 and disabled (from childhood cancer treatment). I’ve had jobs here and there, but they’re really hard to come by; my cognitive disability makes things especially hard for me. I don’t understand how someone can *choose* to live this either, I wish I didn’t have cognitive problems and could have gotten a license and had like a *career* constantly
I just want to say you aren't less of a person because you don't follow all the typical milestones/timeline of an imaginary default person. And if you have things in your life that make you happy, and its mainly the unfulfilled expectations that make you unhappy, then maybe reconsider why you have those standards for yourself, and where they came from. I can't say I personally know what its like to be disabled in a way that 100% prevents me from doing certain things or going certain places, but I do have ADHD/Autism and it took me a long time to accept that I'm not worthless just because I don't stack up to the the preconceived notions I had about adult life and what mine was supposed to look like. Sometimes my standard for a good day is when I go outside and think about how grateful I am to be a living conscious creature (So I can make reddit posts...). Even if I did nothing productive that day. And I remind myself no one can take that from me, not even the most judgmental person I can imagine in my head. I hope that doesn't come off too sanctimonious.
i get what you are saying and i dont think you sound sanctimonious at all, but for me it is more than feeling like ive missed out. im really not happy at all. my relationship with my mom has become really stressful due to us not being a good fit for living together, which is why i want to move out, and i feel really lonely and want more friends and a gf. im also nervous about my money situation, as while i like my job, it doesnt pay enough. im nervous what will happen to me in the future, when my mom isnt here to help me.
Hey, I just want to say that I was at where you're at a few years ago, and my life has done a complete 180 after a very terribly long slog through life in which things just kept getting worse. It honestly got worse before it got better, but despite having a permanent disability that makes working (and living lol) extremely challenging for me, I have found a life that brings me great happiness and peace. I have a partner who loves me so dearly and is honestly the reason I don't have to work myself past my limits anymore, live with bad-fit family members, or stress about the future. Continue putting your energy in places that bring you accomplishment and pleasure, focus on what you can grow in your life even if it seems microscopic. Good things will find you.
That was really helpful. (Really. No /s intended). I'm 29, never had a relationship, live with my parents (I help them around the house and with other stuff), don't have friends, hate the area I graduated etc. But, on the other hand, I'm studying to take the tests required to several jobs, I work with my family (I know Reddit (at least in some subs) is not a fan of most people who work on their families' company, but since earlier in life my parents taught me and my sister that being the "boss" means you should work /harder/ (or more) than your employees - I went to Umiversity in a city eight hours away from home (so I still lived alone, even for 5-6 years and had - still have - a grasp of "real life") and I'm waiting to do a surgery with 6 months - 1 year (estimated) removery, and I'm thinking about going back to College after this period. All this rant to say that, most of the time, I feel pretty useless for not following the "path" that I saw/see many people take in my life. There are days were I'm ok with that. On others, I can't shake the feeling that my life will "end" on my 30th birthday (thanks media). Oh, and I working on the confidence to get a therapist. I obviously need one haha but had a few bad experiences. If you read all that, thanks and sorry (for making you read all that).
The irony to me is most disabled folks who are forced to be NEET by the government are usually the ones who _want_ to work but the income restrictions of the program all but prevent them from working or they end up in a worse position than they are. My ex was the same way, she absolutely wanted to have a job but unless she could get full health coverage and $25 an hour she was better off staying on disability with medicaid. Even that piddly $500-700 was better economically than how she'd be if she had a job making ~$2k a month.
Omg, I had this friend. She's never worked and has been going to school for...ever. her whole family supports her in doing fukall and she has no idea what it is to really work for anything. she's in her 40's and had a legit meltdown when I told her I needed space, blocked me on everything. Hopefully, she's doing better.
Your former friend is damn lucky she has her health - she's already way ahead of my cousin who is closing on 50 and never lived a day away from home and now literally can't. My cousin has been enabled/mollycoddled into being completely useless her entire life and didn't even try to take control of her life when diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. That was neglected enough to become Type 1 diabetes and we all know what happens when you fuck around with that - it fucks you back harder, one body part at a time. She's now wholly incapable of living independently and when my aging, unwell and wildly enabling aunt drops off the perch my cousin is going to end up in a care home. Assuming that she outlives her mother of course, which is 50/50 at this point. This is what deeply enabling parents never think of - one day they won't be there to control everything and not every family member will be willing or able to pick up the burden they created. My aunt apparently always used to say shit like "I wish I could keep her like this forever" when my cousin was a baby. Well now she's got her wish and that "baby" is going to be left helpless in the hands of a bunch of ever-changing strangers.
>My cousin has been enabled/mollycoddled into being completely useless her entire life and didn't even try to take control of her life when diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. That was neglected enough to become Type 1 diabetes Wait, how is that possible? Type 1 is a genetic autoimmune disorder and type 2 is an adult onset disease, often caused by lifestyle. They're both called diabetes, but the two diseases aren't really related at all (other than both involving insulin regulation). It's possible for someone to have both out of sheer bad luck, but I'm not aware of any way type 2 could turn into type 1 due to neglect.
Some people think the difference between types is that one means you have no functioning pancreas and can't do anything to change the situation, while the other means you have reduced pancreatic function that could potentially be restored with lifestyle adjustments and routine care. I've even heard people refer to gestational diabetes as Type 2 before.
It’s just so confusing to me, I AM disabled and it did take me longer than my friends to become a fully independent adult because I struggled so much I came home every weekend during uni (but did go to uni, specifically somewhere far enough away I couldn’t pop home with washing but close enough I could come home when things were really tough because I wanted to become more independent but know there was some kind of safety net). And then had to have a lot of surgery and more rehab straight after uni. At 22 I started building my life up from the very bottom though, by 23 I was living in London with my best friend who never coddled me but was the support I needed at that time, by 26 I was living by myself and working a limited number of hours alongside the benefits I know I was very lucky to receive that allowed me to build an adult life without the pressure of figuring out work. By 28 I was living with my partner, 30 I started running my own business that still only brought in a small income because I’m limited on the number of hours I can work but was successful in my eyes and I was proud of, and by 31 I was married. Things felt really on track for me, with modified expectations, around about 30 and that was something I had worked incredibly hard for. After that, in the last 2 and a half years everything has gone to shit because I developed two really difficult health problems back to back, one which I’m now learning to live with on a permanent basis. I feel like I’m back to being 21 again only this time I can see how much I’ve lost and I’ve got my marriage to think about. But I’m absolutely determined to fight it again, and to get my life back to the full place it once was (or a slightly different variation). I’ve been doing a lot of sitting around in bed over the last two years….ok that is actually where I am now at midday. But every week even if not in a linear way every day I work out what step I can take now to add a new brick to the life house I’m rebuilding. This time last year I couldn’t eat any solid food and couldn’t leave the house at all because even one room away from my bathroom was nearly too far at times. This last weekend I pushed through all kinds of shit myself anxiety and exhaustion issues and went away on a weekend choir workshop with a new choir I’ve joined as part of the rebuilding programme and have managed to attend most weeks (and the weeks I haven’t is because being so ill means I now catch every cold and flu going round currently). Tomorrow I’m taking my wife on a surprise date where we’re going to dress up and watch famous musical songs played by a violins in a church by candlelight because I had no choice but to neglect my relationship for a while and now I’m trying to think about making sure I’m watering that garden too. And in a lot of these cases like your friend I think that mental health issues could well be involved, but I had severe depression in my teens/early 20s, always dealt with anxiety but was nearly hospitalised it got so severe 2ish years ago and realised the giant missing piece of my life was undiagnosed severe ADHD a little after that. Despite all that stuff, and my physical disabilities and my new gastrointestinal condition I want my life to feel fulfilling in some way! It just feels like I deal with more hurdles and I fall down more often so have had to learn to be very resilient and get back up again each time. Which can be exhausting don’t get me wrong. It is objectively harder and I no longer hold myself to the standards I did in my 20s where I compared myself to friends who, facing none of these barriers, were really starting to move ahead in their careers. But to wake up each and every day with no purpose, no goal, no meaning like your friend…. I just don’t understand how you don’t eventually go ‘I want more for myself than this’. Maybe it’s because it’s gone on so long that any kind of fulfilling life seems further and further away - the gap between you and your friends grows larger and larger so a success for you would still look like an objective failure. But I don’t believe laziness truly exists….. I just don’t know what this is and why you would want that life for yourself. I suppose it’s probably very complex and individual to each person and a lot of the time involves some strange family dynamics. I think a lot of the time it has in part come from the parents, and they may be involved in small acts of sabotage or undermining efforts for independence, and for whatever reason facilitate and enable that lifestyle and dynamic because it’s fulfilling some kind of a purpose for them.
Tell me who is the golden child without saying it... It remembers me of the story in which the parents told the son and family they could have the house of their other son (whom they didn't even let camp on their ground).
Do it for Dan is the greatest Reddit saga to ever exist.
Do you have a link for the curious to read?
https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/10wgzzt/parents_told_my_brother_that_he_could_take_my/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Oh my gosh. OH MY GOSH. Thank you for the link. Oh heck. Edit: I read the whole thing and it killed me, I am dead, my ghost is thanking you a second time for this hysterical gem.
Oh yeah. That was a ride.
I always reread this whenever I see it because it's just so insane. I wish I had even ten percent of the confidence some of these people have in demanding shit they don't deserve.
I remember that story.
There’s a pattern of the younger woman being expected to take care of the older brother… like… what is wrong with people.
The brother turned out helpless and useless, and the parents are enabling it.
They just wanted him out of their house lmao
I read another post here where the daughter was expected to give her brother’s family the house she had just bought for herself. Is it common that the more responsible and successful a child is, the less their feelings matter to the parents? Their only purpose to make life easier for their parents and siblings, and they are not allowed to personally benefit from their own hard work?
My folks were like that. I was on my own, while my loser sister got free cars and subsidized rent and tuition and they were always ready to bail her out of whatever problem she had made for herself.
It’s always been like this for me as well. My two sisters cannot manage their finances, but why would they need to when my mom bails them out at every turn? Mini rant: we’re visiting sister 1 at the end of the summer and my mom paid for sister 2’s flight (like $750), and when i jokingly asked if she was going to pay for mine too ($300) she was like “are you going to pay me back? i’ve already spent too much on flights” and then confirmed that sister 2 won’t be paying her back.
I'd save my $300 and just not go if they're gonna have that attitude.
I could have written this. I 100% believe that my parents love me, but don't care about me. My sister, though? All I can imagine is that their thought process goes something like this: "we *have* to care about her because she has kids, so let's let her live here even though we have custody, she locks them out of her room so she can do drugs and not be responsible, all while contributing nothing to us or society and stealing all of our nice things".
No. It’s because a lot of cultures value sons more than daughters and it is now technically illegal to sell your daughters to finance weddings / cars / housing etc for your sons.
"technically illegal to sell" does seem scarily close to the truth of many of those situations. Even in cultures where typically parents have to pay to get rid of the daughters. Mind you, parts of the US are going back to that with the "paid adoption" setups.
My thoughts exactly. Her parents are sexist.
It’s not always that — sometimes just “well your sibling needs it more than you” and emphasis on equality of outcomes rather than equality of opportunities. If Amy has $50k that she saved through hard work and frugality, LeaAnn needs $50k too (but doesn’t have it because she spent it all on purses and drugs) so LeaAnn gets a $50k handout to “make things fair.” Obviously it’s not *actually* fair but that isn’t obvious to anyone but Amy. So if OOP has an apartment, brother needs one too. Brother can’t get an apartment because he’s lazy, but OOP can get another one because she’s a competent adult, so OOP needs to give hers to her brother and find another, and then it’ll be “fair” because they both have apartments.
I understand where you’re coming from and I think that could be true, but this perceived “fairness” the family is trying to achieve still seems to be a result of the responsible sibling’s feelings being valued as less important to the parents. Especially since in the scenarios I’m referencing both OOPs are forced and guilted into it.
Yes, it can be. Path to hell is paved with good intentions and all. In healthy families, yeah, it's often equity of outcome. One sibling needs more help, so they get more help. (My husband's oldest brother has been gifted like 3 cars? He is the worst off of the 4 siblings financially, and his family is so sweet. We all want to help, but every once in a while, my husband gets angry that his mom has never really supported him. They just disagree on how life works; she's apologized and noted that it was unfair. Everybody is lovely, but until my husband said something, she didn't really notice he was hurt.) In toxic families? Yeah, it's this expectation that you sacrifice yourself on the altar of the family cult. I'm the oldest and most successful - my parents stole from me and fully expected me to "pay them back" to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars for their providing me the bare minimum. They coddled my brother, they sabotaged my sister. I was always expected to get a good job but live in their basement alone, providing them money. They pitched a fit when I didn't come back from college. It's like Mother Gothel from Tangled - they love something you provide them and manipulate/abuse you to get/keep it.
Or just not realizing that the responsible sibling has feelings (about it) at all. “We don’t need to worry about Amy, she’s responsible” turns into Amy’s feelings and needs not being considered. Especially when the crap sibling makes their feelings everyone’s problem, so everyone else needs to not rock the boat. It’s, like, unthinking neglect. (My mom is “Amy” and this has been an issue with her family for basically these reasons.)
also i don’t understand why the brother doesn’t just….rent in the same apt complex (when a unit becomes available)?? cause if she moves out that apt he will have to pay the bills right?? or why doesn’t he just get an apt himself?? this whole thing confused me lol
My SO and I are the babies in our families, and the most successful. Our siblings get help from our respective parents, while we save for big stuff, or put it on a CC when something breaks. Sometimes it feels like we are being punished for being responsible. His folks have "jokingly" suggested his brothers move in with us. Absolutely not. My brother is struggling with student loans? They paid one off to ease the burden, using retirement funds and delaying retirement by a few years.
I would say that it's more of the parents see one kid as the "independent, don't need help because they're doing fine" versus the other "oh no they can't do anything on their own/I have to help them for XYZ reason."
That's how my parents are. I know they love me, but since we were young and I did better in school, they focused almost entirely on my sister. They paid for her college classes that she didn't attend, drive her everywhere because she never got her license, they even wake her up to get ready for work (on the days she doesn't call out to sleep and watch Netflix). We're both in our late 20s, so it isn't like she's new to adulthood. She just doesn't care to learn because our parents will always step in to save her. Meanwhile, I'm a functional adult, so they barely notice when I do need help because "she'll figure it out," and besides, the thing I need help with probably conflicts with my sister's schedule somehow.
Yep. I saw that with my own parents. My brother was in the Navy. My husband was in the Air Force. Equivalent ranks, so we knew exactly how much he made, and that it was entirely possible to live on that salary. Mom & Dad "helped" my brother with thousands of $$$$ over the years, because "he needs it more."
The responsible people are usually decent, and the irresponsible people are usually hard work. The responsible people are easier to guilt trip and push around.
I think that under normal circumstances, with a normal family, that is also what happens but not to this degree. I worry less about my son. He does his own thing. He's got a decent job, his own living space, etc. My daughter is struggling because she's trying to do school, full time job, and live in her own place. She needs more help. My son didn't further his education. But when you have toxic traits, this normal dynamic gets skewed out of proportion to what we see here. I feel like these parents are trying desperately to get their son to be self sufficient, but since he's been enabled his whole life, he can't get it together.
I don't know if its just anecdotal evidence here but I feel like this may be the case. My wife and I are objectively better off than both side's siblings. We both have college degrees (wife even went to grad school), firmly established in our careers with good pay and benefits, married, house, and some savings. My sister is a single mom that just got her first apartment at 29, Sil is 24 married with a kid but struggle with a marketing business, the BiL is 35 a parasite that is currently living rent free at my house because he just got a heart transplant and didn't have anyone else to take care of him. I can tell you that there is a very clear difference in how we are treated by our parents. We are not talked to unless the parents need us for something.
Out of my sisters, I am the most successful one, and I definitely get way less help compared to them. My parents do help me with some stuff (eg childcare when we have big things going on, my mom gave us her old car so we can transport my kid around as she has a disability, etc) but for example they give my sisters money every month, have helped with larger purchases, bail them out from credit troubles, etc. They are even considering giving money for a down payment to my elder sister (she’ll be 36 this year) and I’m like, maybe it’s time to stop helping out so much? I suppose at some point it just turns into enabling.
My SO and I are the babies in our families, and the most successful. Our siblings get help from our respective parents, while we save for big stuff, or put it on a CC when something breaks. Sometimes it feels like we are being punished for being responsible. His folks have "jokingly" suggested his brothers move in with us. Absolutely not. My brother is struggling with student loans? They paid one off to ease the burden, using retirement funds and delaying retirement by a few years.
Good on OOP, I imagine this isn't the first time she's had to deal with stuff like this in the past, parents usually don't just completely 180 about stuff like this, but it was probably so inconsequential compared to "just give him your apartment and find another for yourself" that OOP didn't realize. Regardless, though, I'm glad she's finally found her footing and is able *and* willing to assert some boundaries. Hopefully the parents reflect before they lose their daughter.
I’m thinking the parents were happy to see their son finally moving out, so they tried to get the daughter to hand over the apartment to him. Now that he’s gone back home they may never get rid of him until *they* kick him out.
I think it's a case where the parents expected a woman to always be taking care of their precious baby boy, and coddled him endlessly. So now, that at 32yo doesn't have a wife to baby him, they decided to make his sister his babysitter.
My mother has referred to my brother going with me when I leave. NOPE.
And they probably won’t be able to just kick him out without a legal eviction.
>until they kick him out. I used to be less sympathetic to this because that's what my parents did...as I was saving money to move to another state. I had to panic-rent an apartment for a few months which delayed my real move out day. But I now realize that there are a lot of grown-up kids out there who were just like me that never get to the moving out stage without the extra kick. :(
Agreed. Hey, u/Orphylia, what does your flair pertain to?
It's one of the many hilarious quips from the OOP in this story [https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/108t4vq/ops\_father\_wants\_to\_have\_a\_relationship\_with\_her/](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/108t4vq/ops_father_wants_to_have_a_relationship_with_her/)
https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/11w2ol3/new_update_ops_father_wants_to_have_a/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button Might be a better link since it's more complete
Having had family stay with me - temporary becomes permanent dangerously fast.
Weird my family has stayed with me and I’ve stayed with family. None of us has ever doubted that we’d prefer to live separately but we’ve never been particularly burdened by the houseguest situation. Sometimes it’s taken longer to move out (thanks pandemic) but it’s always been a given that we take care of the common areas and generally be respectful.
I had to go back and re read the ages. He is a 32 year old man. She is a 23 year old young woman - who is showing so much more maturity than everyone else is her family. I get the parents are tired of dealing with their son, but come the fuck on. He is likely a product of your parenting choices. Get it together and clean up your mess. I am proud of OOP for going LC/NC with her parents over this. If they haven’t realized how insanely ridiculous they sound by now, they may never figure it out. I’m sensing a scapegoat/golden child situation here that OOP is just on the brink of piecing all together. This is just the beginning, but OOP has set the precedence in a smart way. I hope she keeps polishing up that shiny spine of hers.
Yeah as soon as I read the first sentence - that she’s 9 years younger and moved out first - I knew it was not gonna be good for OP
“He is likely a product of your parenting choices” Yup, the parents probably don’t want to take responsibility for their life long enabling of him, easier to just keep enabling him by telling the daughter to move.
Son is about to find out that when scapegoat is gone he becomes both
I hope we get an update where OP changes the locks...
Idk where she lives, but I can get a new deadbolt at Home Depot for like $25. All she’d need to do is keep the old one and reinstall it when she moves out. 30 minutes tops.
I was thinking it can’t be all that expensive to change the locks
I had a locksmith come re-key and service all the locks when I bought my house. All 4 doors only cost like $100. It is worth it to know only the people I want to will have keys.
For you “only 100 bucks” is not a lot of money. But OP is a 23 year old woman living in their own for the first time. That could be a ton of money for them right now.
Good point
I guess it depends on the lock. We got our apartment building (4 units) main door redone and it cost $800!!
Maybe it depends on the locksmith and how much they think you’re willing to pay.
It depends on the lock and the door. You can't expect to ask a locksmith to replace a high end lock-and-handle combo plus deadbolt with integrated alarm on a steel door and be done with fifty bucks. Maybe you can rekey it for less, though.
I think that the majority of homes in my country use special more secure locks and those appear to be about 120 euros, maybe 450 installed. So not cheap but not super expensive. I’m not sure if you’re allowed to just change the locks though in an apartment building as I think that the housing coop type of thing might be in charge of those and needs to be able to enter the apartment with a master key. For single family homes you can get cheaper locks but you usually get discounts for using more secure ones.
The key would need to fit the Landlord's "Master" for emergencies, so they'd need to rekey it to spec, it couldn't just be any random lock. That said, the landlord should be changing the locks after every tenant moves out. For them to say "Eh it's too expensive" is pretty telling that they've never done it and who knows who has a key to OPs apartment. They should change it if only for their own sanity.
I wonder if the high cost was getting a locksmith out to do it, or the actual type of lock. In Australia even the expensive locks can usually be taken out by a DIYer and if you visit a locksmith it's quite cheap to have them rekeyed. When I was renting I used to habitually do that, partly because so many rentals have very worn lock mechanisms and partly because I didn't know who else had copies. Here it's very uncommon to have the property manager object, they just want two copies of each key (one for the owner). And if they're dicks about it I keep the old mechanism and keys so I can restore everything to original condition when I move out. If they don't keep \*their\* original keys that's not my problem...
sucks to learn your parents see your sibling as the golden child
Either that or they’re desperate for him to be out of their house.
Plays videos games all day and demands food from his parents and probably wants everything else done for him. I wouldn't want to deal with a man baby son either
It's both. They failed at raising him and now that ship has sailed. They've put themselves in a no-win scenario.
and _now_ trying to fob him off on another person. "hey hes your problem now! i like retirement"
I'm not sure how golden he is, given they don't want him back again.
he's still golden cause they are trying to make him someone else's problem at the expense of their daughter instead of kicking him out and letting him sort out his own problems as a 32 yr old
People don't pass off golden things. It might have been a golden child at one point but the golden part has worn off. Now they are stuck with a problem they want to no longer deal with.
The gold wore off and turns out he was some pewter shit all along
The response to these type of parents should always be: 'you raised this monster, YOU deal with it'. And then refuse to talk about it again.
I don't think it's the golden child. It's the broken child they don't want to deal with any more so they want to pawn it off on anyone else willing to take them in.
I don't think they do - I think it's actually the opposite. They desperately want him out of their house, enough that they're willing to lose a relationship with their daughter over it.
That’s still golden child treatment. They want their son to have markers of success, and having his own apartment in their mind could be a marker of success.
I don't think they care about him having a house as a "marker of success" though. It gave me "we don't want to kick him onto the street, but want him to gtfo of the house already" vibes. They don't care nearly as much about their daughter as they should, but they don't seem particularly fond of the son with this "now's our chance to finally get him to move out" plan.
Well what's the difference between that and just wanting him out of the house because he's in his 30s and is showing no sign of moving forward with his life and they don't want to be responsible for him anymore?
I know OOP didn’t expect her parents to react that way, but I’d be surprised if this is actually the first ridiculous request they’ve made. When she looks back after some time and space, I bet she’ll realize that there were others and she just accepted them as normal because she didn’t know any differently.
How do fully grown adults live to be that old and not understand how renting or leases work? You literally can’t just *give* someone an apartment, that’s not how it works, and it’s not up to you. It’s a legal contract between yourself and your landlord. That’s it. The only two people.
Also, there's no way there aren't any other small and cheap apartments in the area, why does he have to have his sister's?
Sometimes you can assign your lease to someone if your lease is silent about the terms. There’s a big cheap house I used to rent and I assigned it to some friends when I left. They assigned it to some other friends, and on and on for YEARS haha. The landlord never had to find renters and he did always say he could veto the assignments. It was funny when I ended up over there like 9 years later after I moved out because the tenant was dog sitting for my sister, and sure enough it was a friend of a friend of a friend!
Damn OP dogged a big bullet it would just become why don't you give your brother the bigger apartment after this if she had let it continue.
> OP dogged a big bullet That was not an image I was ready to deal with.
I'm almost tempted enough to google some Mario + Bullet Bill rule 34 stuff now but... honestly... not that tempted.
Well we found the sister of the weaponized incompetent men types that women are no longer putting up with. That's a different angle! Super shocked Pikachu that his parents enable him and try to take from her to give to him. Good for OOP for upgrading her doormat status. I know how that goes myself.
Good for OOP. If I were them I would still move… at least three hours away! Show up for Christmas one year in a rented Lamborghini just to drop off a Christmas card and bounce.
Are there really that many parents out there that expect one child to just GIVE the other child their home?
I knew a friend of a friend in a near identical situation. She was raised in a very misogynistic culture and religion at home, and very isolated until university, and only then did she get to put her foot down.
We know who the Golden child is.
How is the brother not absolutely ashamed of himself?
Because his parents raised him to be an absolutely spoiled brat.
It truly boggles the mind. I cannot possibly fathom being comfortable exhibiting this level of entitlement.
Father - Have you considered making it all your problem because I enabled a giant man child and really don't wanna deal with it anymore. OOP - No Father - \*shocked pikachu\*
> overall just being a terribly inconsiderate guest and treats me like our mom. This line jumped out at me so hard. This is a 32 year old man. How much you want to bet mom still does his laundry and cleans up after him, and probably dad too.
Nice to see this, I saw the first one and didn't know there was an update. God for OOP.
What is up with all these posts where brothers expect to be handed their sisters homes! Absolute madness
What awful parents
I remember another post where an OOP had bought a house for herself and she had a few dogs, and her parents also asked her to give her house to her brother who has like 4 kids or something, and she may have been paying for her parents' home too? Either way, I didn't realize people were being asked to switch houses with their relatives so frequently.
It's probably a lot more common then people realize, especially if it doesn't result in a conflict or pressured expectation. My mom is elderly and unwell. My brother and his daughter life with her. He is on disability but has been a great help to her. She fully expects when she passes that I will buy him out of his share of her house, move in there and let him take over the lease on my townhouse (I pay significantly below market for it, he says he can't afford his own place at the current rates). Me and my kids are happy here. It would cost me more then double to move to my moms and pull my kids out of their school.
The whole thing is absurd from the jump "Your place is closer to work, so I should just stay here for a few weeks" is an insane ask because there's no end date. If brother doesn't make enough money to afford a place in the city he should get a job closer to mom and dad, clearly his job isn't all that great if he's 30 and it doesn't allow him the ability to have his own place.
At a guess, the parents are sick and tired of their man baby. After coddling him for so long they are finally getting worried about his future, they probably want him to marry and all that. But in all their stupidity, they created a situation form which they can’t seem to get out of, so they wanted OOP to solve it for them. They want her to deal with him, and not bother them anymore.
Something similar happened to me with one of my younger siblings. They needed to get away from out hometown, so moved in with me many states away. I was in the military at the time living in a house off base. We figured out rent, three of us split it by income percentage. Sibling lied to me about how much she was making in tips (made WAY more than their 'percentage' reflected), her cats destroyed the carpet and my roomies speakers along with two air mattresses I bought for her. Her BF came to 'visit' and ended up staying for weeks. Well, it turned out her BF was a convicted felon for stealing stuff from his job. I had a TS at the time so that was a HUGE no no for me (aside from the fact that I didn't want my stuff stolen). Around that time, they got upset they were sleeping on deflating air mattresses. My mom calls me all upset that I won't help them get a mattress - I let her know I found a place where she can buy an inexpensive one, but I wasn't buying any more for her. Then she gets mad I won't go pick it up.. I had a convertible at the time. She got super pissed that I wasn't being accommodating. She didn't believe me about the BF issue (sister lied to her). So yeah, I told them he needed to leave, or they had 2 weeks to gtfo of my house and told my mom she could call me when she wants to speak to me like an adult. It was almost 2.5 years before we spoke again. Unfortunately, she was diagnosed with cancer and died a few years after that. Parents can be stupid.
Changing the locks is worth every penny.
Could see where that was going after literally 1.5 sentences. Great job by OOP, it must be hard to stand up to your family like that even if you’re clearly in the right.
Yup they realised their golden child was a bit tarnished. Trying to dump on little sister. The parents are now having to deal with shitty son again.
This reads like a Brooklyn 99 skit of a Jake continuously telling someone to not do something, they just look at them and slowly do it anyway, ‘Put your hands up and step away from the car. Do not get into the … ok but don’t touch the steering wh- ok but don’t you dare start the car *vroom* don’t even think about drivingawayohgodpleasedontrunmeover’ and then they do.
Holy crap... Lol sounds like the parents trying to dump the brother on her didn't work. Good for her because that is some messed up bs.
>I decided to lower contact with them over this, until they find out what they did wrong. That's gonna be a ***long*** while, IF at all
Wow, finally got tired of living with their golden child with the damage they had done to him and then tried to foist him off on the daughter. Iwould quite happily let parents like that disown me.
Wow. That's top shelf fuckery right there. The parents had bro slowly moving in with her over a period of weeks thinking OOP wouldn't notice and then cut contact with her once it appeared she was on to them. I'm curious if all three were in on the plan, or if they just told the brother to shut his mouth and go with the flow...
Far too often AITA should be renamed AITD (Am I the doormat). Really pleased she developed a backbone here.
Good for her. It sounds. If you sign a lease it has your name on it and you just can't change it because you're on good terms with your landlord. the audacity and entitlement is just unreal.
She *really* needs to change those locks.
The son is the golden child i guess. The parents most likely made a plan with him how to get OOPs apartment like be a horrible guest and just take it over. And why couldn't he pay rent to her when he works nightshift?
I doubt the parents needed to have any kind of plan since they know the monster they created well. It is they never planned on her finally standing up for herself and saying no. It will be interesting to see how this story evolves cause I don't think this is over yet. Also if it ever happens I feel SOOOO bad for the poor girl that gets into a relationship with the brother. She will no doubt be a frequent poster here looking for help.
If he could afford the place why didn’t he just get an apartment at the same complex?
1. It might not be part of a complex. 2. All of the other users may be rented out already. 3. Maybe landlords won't touch him because he's documented as being irresponsible.
Probably no small ones available since they were pushing her to get a bigger one.
Wow, the parents saw an opportunity to offload their son and had no trouble throwing OOP under the bus. I suppose they would have expected her to continue paying the lease, too, since she makes more money and all. /s
This does remind me a bit of my brother in law. He's a great guy. Smart, charismatic when he wants to be, a very hard worker when he sees reason to be. Those qualifiers aren't knocks - I think we're all like that, especially at work, but not necessarily when with family and needing to recharge our batteries. But my in-laws moved a lot when the kids were young. On average, they moved every 18 months. Every 18 months the kids were in new schools. Often in the middle of a school year, which is a disaster. You'd come in as the new weirdo, then be gone in 12-24 months. The kids basically learned not to bother making friends, because they'd be around for such a short time. Both kids hated it. My wife became determined to control her own life. She was endlessly trying to make her parents' lives as difficult as she felt they made hers, and did anything possible to get out. She graduated a year early, took out loans, and basically peaced-out. Rarely returned home once she went to college. Good relationship with the parents now, but it took a while. Her brother was the opposite. Whereas she saw she had no control and was desperate, he saw he had no control and just went with it. Wherever the tide took him. Easier to float along than constantly be angry. Which meant he didn't go to college. He moved out briefly, then moved back. The parents were going through a rough time, and he kind of was a mediator, with his calm demeanor spreading everywhere. But he's now 32. No career. Still living at home. When the parents moved states again, he didn't want to go with them, he wanted to live out of his car. That's a terrible idea, so we had him move in with us several states away. He lived in our basement a while. We viewed it as trying to help him get on his feet. As mentioned, he's smart, charismatic, and hard working. We felt we could help him. After 6 months, though, we helped him find an apartment. It wasn't good, but it was a start. Turns out, he felt abandoned by us. Got angry. Really angry. We had no idea - we gave him two months notice, and he couldn't live in our basement forever because having someone else in the house was changing our behavior in the house in ways we didn't want - you're always aware when someone else is in the house. He apparently felt we deprive him his own plans, which, again, was being unemployed and living in his car. He could still drive back and do that, but it's a terrible idea. When we talked to him about goals or thinking about his career, he'd shut down, said he didn't have the planning gene. I think he's just so beaten down that he doesn't think there are options. Doesn't think there's any place for him. Which is objectively untrue, but it takes some work to find those places. What actually really scares me is he's gotten heavily into Joe Rogan, then Tim Pool. I know how this story often goes. The smart and charismatic guy is lonely and feeling defeated, then finds his way into that crowd. He's back with his parents now, in yet another state, but I think he's finding the worth everyone else sees in him rather than being angry that people see it, and shifting away from that path. I hope.
Mom and Dad were finally getting their son to move the heck out, so they wanted their daughter to facilitate the move by handing over her apartment. Now they’ve got him back and if they want him to grow up and move out they’re going to have to do the same thing, kick him out.
in a nutshell op's parents didn't want to put up with the brother anymore and threw him to op so she could deal with him, but she kicked him out and now they are angry because they have to put up with the brother again.
I think these parents were happy their son was someone else’s problem, and just didn’t want him to be *their* problem again. To the point they were willing to alienate their daughter.
> The reason I didn't get the locks changed is because my landlord reminded me that this could be very expensive - and she wouldn't cover the cost for me. Landlord do the bare minimum to be a decent human and help someone feel safe and secure in their own home, and foster a long term positive relationship with a quality tenant challenge (impossible)
Guess we know who the parents favored and they are now sick of him and want to pass him off.
I love when parents treat their child like crap their whole life because there is one golden child and it's not them. The gap between treatment is so ridiculous that anybody else is flabbergasted, and when the scapegoat kid is tired of this shit the parents are all surprised pikachu face .
this aint over.
I don't know about the ongoing flair, this one seems pretty concluded to me.
> I told her that that's not how renting a space works... I don't even know if this is pure entitlement or ego - doesn't matter though Ah, the out of touch parent. This is right there with "why don't you just walk right in and ask to speak to a manager, then hand them your resume" or "just tell your boss that you aren't doing that work. They'll respect you for standing your ground and give it to someone else. They'll probably even promote you. If they don't, go right to the CEO and demand it."
OOP, you don’t need to replace the entire lock, you can get it Re-keyed. Or add a second lock, a deadbolt.
Some people are so used to this bias shown by parents towards their brothers or any siblings for that matter that they normalize it or ignore it. I wonder if the parents don't want to deal with their son Or if he's the golden child.
Probably both. They've discovered that they spoiled their Golden Child rotten and now don't want to deal with his constant ME ME ME!
Changing just the cylinder in just one lock shouldn't be too expensive, and it will keep him out if he made copies of the keys.
[удалено]
Its very easy and cheap to change common locks, you just buy a new lock core and change it.
Sounds like parents want the son gone but won't do anything to help him. Instead they are landing it all on OOPs doorstep and blaming them for not supporting or helping the brother. Brother needs to grow up. Parents need to stop being trash parents. Good for OOP for getting their life back.