You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose family. And as someone who has a pretty darn fine family, I’m pretty much fine with that, but a lot of families out there suffer from some seriously toxic personalities.
Take u/Forsaken_Drama1789, for example. She had to hop on Reddit to wonder if she was wrong “for not telling my cousin my fiance works at the same office as her husband?”
At first blush, this seems like an INSANE question. Like, of course not? But let’s check out her post and make sure.
First/only post, I mainly lurk. I thought stuff like this only happened in movies, but it happened and would like some unbiased opinions. More light-hearted than some of the other posts on here.
I have a cousin ‘Kat’, who got married to ‘Henry’ early this year. We weren’t close as kids – she was pretty spoilt and would always brag about how much designer stuff she has, be really mean to people under the guise of “just trying to help”, etc. Don’t go out of our way to interact with one another but I do see her at family events and whatnot and we make small talk.
OP’s cousin Kat has always been a little bit of a bragger and she isn’t terribly close with Kat, but nothing is so negative that the pair can’t coexist.
I’m engaged to ‘Chris’, who is a software engineer. He’s co-head of his department at work with two other people – not too long ago, Chris was telling me about how they had some new employees and one of them sounded really familiar, he told me the name and I realized it was Kat’s husband. (Also he and Henry hadn’t met face-to-face yet)
OP is also engaged! Her fiancé told her about some new employees… and one was Kat’s husband.
Kat and Henry had a huge wedding, it was really nice but all she did for months is brag about how amazing her wedding was. The wedding stuff’s died down now so recently she’s started going on about how wealthy her husband is and what a great lifestyle they have.
True to form, Kat was pretty obnoxious about her wedding and now her husband’s job. When they met for a family event, Kat asked what OP’s fiancé did. OP told her, but left out where he worked.
One of my other aunts celebrated her 50th about a week ago, I went with Chris and Kat was there with Henry. We were chatting and Kat was saying how Henry has a fantastic new job that pays even more than his previous one. Henry chimed in and said that they were already planning to buy a new house. Kat asked what Chris does. I said he was an engineer like Henry and he has a good job too, but I’ll admit I left out where he works on purpose.
Kat’s weird reaction was to say she understands OP is embarrassed? What? Okay.
She smiled and nodded, then said it’s fine, she understands that I’m embarrassed and want to keep it quiet. So that was pretty much the end of our conversation then when we were leaving, she pulled me aside and told me to “let her and Henry know if we needed help with the wedding.” Obviously I knew what she meant and it was just another dig, but I said bye and left.
The secret obviously didn’t last and Henry was shocked to realize that his boss is OP’s fiancé. So… was she wrong?
Literally two days later, I get a DM from Kat and she’s furious (well, as much as one can be through text) that I didn’t tell them that Chris was one of Henry’s bosses. Henry was shocked to see him in the office and Chris made a comment “tell Kat -OP- and me don’t need help but thanks for offering.” Henry’s really embarrassed and so’s Kat, and she said that we made them look bad on purpose and if she knew, she’d have never made those comments. It was my “duty” to tell her and Henry. Chris and I had a really good laugh over this, but she sent a text out to the family group chat we have saying how she was “blindsided” by me. A few others said that what we did was petty and wrong. So, AITA?
