Navigating family relationships can be tricky in the best of times, but when you and one of your siblings make completely different life choices from your own, the friction can sometimes build into a fire that’s hard to control.
This woman chose to lead a more conservative life than her sister, who had a child in college, has little-to-no contact with the father, and has been desperate ever since to have a father figure in her son’s life.
My (24F) sister (23F) had my nephew Joe during her first year in college.
The father is absent in his life and only pays CS, she has always hated the idea of my nephew growing without a father figure and since our only brother is 17 and our dad passed ten years ago, she dated recklessly for a while and introduced him to a bunch of dudes.
OP, on the other hand, chose a more traditional route in life, meeting a man who is responsible, mature, stable – but who, like her, has no interest in having children of his own.
Three years ago I met my now fiancé, Gabriel (28M), he’s really sweet and adores my family, he’s financially stable and is good with kids, has a bunch of nephews on his own and comes from a good, big family.
We’ve decided to be child-free and if something happens to my sister and a few of Gabe’s siblings, we’re meant to be their legal guardians.
Her sister has become, in OP’s eyes, too comfortable in pushing her son and OP’s fiancee together, acting as if he’s the boy’s father, and encouraging a special closeness between them.
For the past year my sister has grew comfortable with pushing Joe around Gabe, she always invites him to my nephews activities (which is fine, but she acts as if Gabe were her guest and I’m his +1, not otherwise, plus my brother used to be the one who got invited and he’s not anymore).
She asks Gabe to drive her and Joe to places and my mom pointed out how they look like a family when he does it, she jokes about how much of a dad Gabriel is for Joe and she had the audacity to ask him once if he was comfortable with adopting Joe, but she was drunk so I’ll give her that.
The discomfort came to a head when the boy asked the fiancee if he could call him ‘dad.’
The fiancee had a great reply but OP was upset, which caused a rift between her sister and the rest of the family.
Neither Gabe or I are comfortable with this, he doesn’t know how to push it aside without hurting their feelings, my mom has told my sister countless time how this is inappropriate but my sister always gets defensive and says that Joe chose him and ”is not her fault”.
Things blew up last weekend when Joe asked Gabriel if he could call him dad because ”mom said it was fine”, my sister was looking at them with the biggest smile on her face and I could noticed how my mom and my brother were expecting his answer (neither of them agree with it too).
He sat Joe in his knee and kindly explained him how he wasn’t his dad or even a dad figure, that he was aunt’s OP soon to be husband and that made him his ”favorite” uncle, but even if he wasn’t his dad, he would never leave him and they’ll always be best friends.
Joe, being the sweet kid he is laughed and smiled and said that it was okay, then he ran to the living room to play with something.
Now the sister doesn’t want her son around OP and her fiance at all, and OP is wondering whether or not she should have just let it go.
I think the situation resolved itself okay, but my sister didn’t liked it and started to fight with us. My mom kept telling her to shut up but she was saying things like ”what’s wrong with you two?”, ”how can you say no to a little kid?”, ”he sees you as a father, so you should be proud of that.”
I had enough and I told her that Gabriel wasn’t Joe’s dad and that she needed to stop acting as if he was because it was honestly embarrassing.
She called me a selfish c**t and said that I was jealous of her kid. I just rolled my eyes and we decided to leave after.
She later sent me a text saying that it was best if we step out of Joe’s life for a while or we will end up ”confusing” him because he doesn’t understand that Gabriel is not daddy.
But as far as I could se he got it pretty well.
What does Reddit think? This is an interesting one, so let’s find out!
The top two comments warn OP that her sister is likely out to steal her fiance.
Image Credit: Reddit
Either way, the sister could definitely use some therapy.
Image Credit: Reddit
This seems like a bit of a slippery slope to some folks.
Image Credit: Reddit
I definitely got this vibe from the post as well.
Image Credit: Reddit
A win/win for the sister, at any rate.
Image Credit: Reddit
Y’all this is wild and I kind of want an update to hear what happened next, because I’m sure it’s something.
How would you have handled this? Do you think the sister has a master plan? Let us know in the comments!
