My Dad Gave Everything to My Greedy Stepmom and Her Kids, So I Left to Live With My Rich Aunt

He started getting mad at me over everything. Like I said, he gets moody as heck, but I’m not the one that woke him up.

He took his anger out on me because obviously he can’t do anything to the kid. It’s not like he did anything wrong, but I snapped after he told me to shut up.

“Excuse me, I’m your girlfriend, not some random person,” I said.

I called him a big baby and said that if he got so angry, go yell at the kid.

“Right, you won’t, because you have no courage and would rather crap on me because you’re a coward who knows he’s being childish,” I said.

He stopped rolling his eyes at me and being downright rude after that. But it’s been a couple of days, and he’s acting like I did something terrible to him.

He even said I went too far and I know how he gets. Besides, apparently, it wasn’t that he couldn’t yell at the kid; he didn’t want to.

Yeah, right. But I’ll bite: am I the idiot?

Why are you dating someone who refuses to control his emotions and treats you like a punching bag? And who refuses to get noise-canceling headphones or earplugs when he knows he’s sensitive to noise?

Because he’d much rather have an excuse to lash out at his regular punching bag. The phrase: “I know how he gets,” kinda tells me he’s conditioned you into taking some free verbal abuse, and that is not normal.

Being rude to you and telling you to shut up because he got woken up by a kid is not normal. You’re totally valid for speaking up about him telling you to shut up.

I wouldn’t put up with that either. Saying he’s a big baby, has no nerve, and is a coward was unnecessary, but if he got the point across, then oh well.

I’m so sick of watching people accept their partner’s moods for days on end when they are just a crappy idiot who won’t manage their feelings like an adult. “How he gets” is a BS excuse for treating you like crap.

Girl, please find someone who has learned to regulate their emotions without resorting to abusing you.

So my 46, male, son, 19, birthday was yesterday. A few weeks before his birthday, he and my wife, 48, also his mother, argued over something really petty, if I’m honest.

This happens a lot. She will find the smallest things to complain to him about, but due to this argument, she refused to plan anything for his birthday.

So I started to plan it. Now, before anyone thinks I went and planned a massive party, by plan I mean getting some presents, a cake, and making sure we have money for takeout that night.

This is what we’ve done for a while as he stopped wanting parties after 15. And even before then, his birthday parties were really just small gatherings with a handful of friends.

Now, I’m gonna be honest here: I don’t know much about my son’s interests. I know what he’s into, but not enough information about specifics to get him anything.

But I do know the person that knows him better than anyone is his friend, who I will call Alice, 18, female. So I called Alice and asked her about what kinds of things my son would like as a present.

She was immediately able to help me. I know my son loves K-pop, but she was able to show me what albums he would like, and I ended up getting him one that was released very recently.

I actually had to pre-order it after we had the phone call from his favorite group, as well as these small picture cards of his favorite member. The conversation somehow also ended up with cakes.

She was also able to help me with what kind of cake is his favorite and what kind of things to avoid like buttercream as it makes him feel ill. I got everything sorted.

His birthday came, and I made everyone breakfast before work. When I got back, we opened presents, ordered food, and made the cake.

When I say we, I mean my son, my daughters, and my mother-in-law who lives with us. My wife seemed upset and didn’t join us.

She came down to get some food and some cake and take it to our room to eat. When I went to bed, I asked her what was up.

She said she felt like I was trying to upstage her and that our son favors me anyway and I’m not helping. She knows that neither of us knows enough about K-pop to have gotten him stuff to do with his favorite group without help.

I told her I asked Alice for help with a gift and cake. She got upset again and said I was proving her point.

She then just went off complaining about how she was excluded, but she didn’t like the cake, and that no one had paid any attention to her and had left her out of everything. She kept interrupting me as I tried to apologize, so I just gave up and slept on the sofa.

I know my wife and know she can be unreasonable at times, and I’m wondering if I’m the idiot.

Not the idiot. Your wife seems very insecure and also a hypocrite.

She fought with your son. You made sure your son had a nice birthday, and she’s feeling bad because you made sure your son had a nice birthday.

Also, making the day of your son’s birthday about her? Seriously, you’re not the one who needs to apologize.

Your wife is acting like a child, OP, and my heart breaks for the son to have to deal with her. Your wife wanted to cancel any celebration of your son’s birthday because they had an argument.

Either it was a very, very, very big deal argument or she’s very vindictive. I do wonder what the argument was about.

In general, I’m always a bit disappointed in parents who are unhappy if something good happens to their kids. My wife’s earbuds have gone missing, and she thinks our son took them.

He says he didn’t, and when he showed some proof, she accused him of editing it and then ignored him when he said you can’t edit what he showed her. She still hasn’t found them and thinks he still has them.

So your wife is accusing your son of being a thief because she can’t keep track of her own property. Then when shown proof that he’s not a thief, she decides to discount that and is continuing to do so in order to punish the crime that only she and the voices in her head believe her son committed.

She decided he doesn’t get to have anything for his birthday. She is now in a snit because you made his birthday special when she wanted it to be as miserable as she is.

Did I miss anything? Your wife is an idiot.

Yeah, what country are you in that allows you to be married to a toddler? The birthday was shockingly about your son and not about Mrs. “I won’t admit I’m wrong and want everything to be about me.”

She’s manipulating you into apologizing for something that doesn’t warrant an apology by making you feel bad. Instead of accepting the apology, she kept trying to hammer the point home that you’re wrong because if she paused in her monologue for even a second, you might realize that she’s being selfish and awful.

However, gee, my thoughts by the end were: “When’s the divorce?”

OP is a freaking saint for staying with his wife this long. Absolute saint.

Invite Alice for a film night or something to say thanks. She should really have been invited to the birthday thing, but a film night will do, especially if you make sure to get her favorite snacks and food.

Years ago, I was married to a close friend. We were roommates, adopted a dog together, and lived together since college until our mid-to-late twenties.

Married at 24 and 25. However, we were never actually romantically involved.

She wasn’t interested in marriage and also questioned her orientation at the time. But her family was ultra-traditional and messy for many other reasons and kept pushing for her to settle down.

I just gotten out of a rough long-term relationship, and we’d kind of just said, “screw it.” We were living like a married couple; let’s get married for convenience.

So we did the paperwork for it, but we never had a wedding. We were also never romantically involved; she wasn’t my type and I wasn’t hers.

My family knew she wasn’t my wife in the traditional sense. They did heavily disapprove, though.

When I started getting back into the dating scene, we split up and legally divorced. She remains one of my close friends to this very day, and I care for her a lot.

It’s been a few years, and I’m now 32 with a lovely fiancée who I cannot wait to marry. However, ever since I announced the engagement, my family has been making weird comments.

“Oh, so Roxy’s—my dog—is getting a new stepmom?” they said.

“Wife number two at 32, huh? That’s a lot of wives for your age. Let’s hope this second one lasts,” is another comment.

It makes both me and my fiancée uncomfortable. I keep on saying that my close friend wasn’t really my wife in the traditional sense.

Still, my family brushes me off. “They’re just joking,” they say.

“She is technically my second wife anyway, hence it’s not like they’re wrong,” is another thing they say.

Today at breakfast, though, I blew up at them and called them disrespectful and rude for belittling my relationship. My mom and my sister both said that if I didn’t want to hear these statements, I shouldn’t have married my close friend.

I threatened to not invite them to the wedding, and now things are super tense. Am I the idiot?

Not the idiot. I mean, technically they are correct; she is your second wife, so I guess you are a slight idiot if I only look at the title.

However, if their comments make you and your wife uncomfortable and you’ve asked them multiple times to stop, then they are the bigger idiots for continuing, right? I was once making jokes to my partner that I thought were harmless, but he made a grimace.