It’s always tough to navigate family dynamics when you’re in a new relationship.
A Redditor posted a story of inadvertently upsetting her boyfriend’s family after an innocent joke.
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After everyone got mad at her for her actions, she went to Reddit to find out if she was truly in the wrong.
“There is an unspoken rule that the women bring dishes.”
You can see the post here , and there‘s an archived version here .
Basically, OP was invited to a party at her boyfriend’s parents’ place.
“His mom told me that the wives and girlfriends are in charge of food and I laughed because I thought it was a joke,” OP wrote. “But after a little more talk I realized she wasn’t [joking].”
I half jokey suggested that this year maybe the husbands and boyfriends step up to give [the women] a break.”
This is what truly set things off. OP’s boyfriend’s parents got “frustrated”, saying it was “rude of [OP] to come in and laugh at their traditions.”
“I said it was rude of them to treat me like my boyfriend’s mommy, who has to make him a snack to share with the class,” wrote OP.
“I said I find it pretty rude to have the family rule be that half the family arbitrarily does all the labor and I’m in that arbitrary half.”
Things quickly got tense, so OP and her boyfriend went for a walk where they aired their grievances. OP thinks the tradition is BS, while her boyfriend thinks she’s disrespecting his family’s traditions.
Is she right or wrong?
“They can have whatever tradition they feel comfortable with, but expecting you would magically know about it and join was beyond ridiculous,” wrote one commenter, and this establishes the theme of the comments. Indeed, after a few days of polling, OP has a ‘not the a-hole’ badge displayed next to her post.
Were there any dissenting opinions?
There were, actually. One poster gave four (!) reasons: apparently you should never go to a party-empty-handed, you should always bring a dish (these two are kind of the same thing), you should respect traditions, and you shouldn’t insult the host.
I can’t say I agree with them, but it’s an interesting perspective.
Should OP have joked as much as she did?
One commenter pointed out that the account read like OP wasn’t necessarily expected to bring a dish, and only really set things off when she continually made jokes about the tradition. These could easily have been interpreted as belittling a beloved tradition, even if it is sexist.
Tradition or not, it’s a sexist dynamic.
OP said in a follow-up post that the vibes were bad: the men were chilling, while the women were “run ragged.”
A reply said , “The fact that he didn’t notice the sexism in his family ’til you pointed it out is a red flag.”
What do you think?
Reddit has officially declared OP as not the a-hole in this instance, and I’m inclined to agree.
Let us know what you think in the comments. How would you deal with dating someone whose family had such gendered expectations?
