“AITA for banning my sister’s boyfriend from my house, and closing the door in his face?”
I (30m) love my baby sister (26f) but absolutely loathe her boyfriend. My sister is not the brightest bulb, and is a self-admitted gold digger– while other little girls dreamed about falling in love with their prince charming, my sister only dreamed of the castles and dresses. I know this sounds pretty cruel, but she’s always been open about it.
She’s pretty enough, takes care of her health, and puts time and effort into being the arm candy she thinks guys like. She can be sweet and fun, but when it comes to love and ambition she just seems emotionally empty. Over time my family gave up on trying to get her to better herself and we’ve all just settled with the assumption she’ll be a divorcee with okay money by her forties.
Her boyfriend is very successful financially, but also a turd of a person in nearly every possible way. He hates single moms. He hates women who make more money than him or are taller than him. He has nasty things to say about POC, gay people (✨ME✨) and has told my sister IN FRONT OF PEOPLE to mind her p’s and q’s or else he’ll replace her.
He talks about how women who fall in with MLMs would be better off not being alive despite how he’s lost sizable amounts of money to ‘bad investments™️’ like crypto schemes.
She doesn’t mind all this too much it seems; if I suggest she break up with him, her first concerns are usually centered around how she wants to be able to drive his fancy car, host parties in his swanky apartment (she ‘stays’ there but isn’t on a lease, she still has a room at home with my parents she can go back to at any time) and how he’s funding the life that she wants.
There doesn’t seem to be any real manipulation on his end, it’s more like he expects to have a woman around like a pet, and really could get another girlfriend if he needed. Easy come easy go.
Over the holidays I hosted a few family parties at my house. My partner and I had our parents, siblings, niblings, and a few friends over for a white elephant on Christmas. Sister brought the boyfriend along. I honestly didn’t even know why he came, it seems like he hates us.
I had a bit of a last-straw moment with him making comments about my sexuality, turning his nose up at our family’s choices of gifts, and just overall being an uppity creep to myself and my loved ones.
So before the end of the night I rounded up sister and her awful boyfriend and told them in no uncertain terms that going forward he will not be welcome in my house. Didn’t get much of a reaction from either of them, they left together with no argument.
Days later, while preparing for our New Years Eve party, I called sister again and reminded her that the boyfriend is not invited, unwelcome, unwanted, and outright banned from my property. She absently uh-huh’d at me.
I even asked her to put me on speakerphone (she was with him because of course she was) and repeated myself so that he could hear me. All I could hear was a far off ‘Whatever’ but it still counted as a response as far as I’m concerned. They showed up together at my house for New Years.
I cheerfully let Sis in and promptly closed the door in the boyfriend’s face. Felt amazing, 10/10, would do again. However my sister got MAD. She shouted and cursed at me, threw the door open to go after him, but he had already walked back to the car. There was not yelling from him, no drama, he just simply drove off stone-faced.
My sister says I’m an a-hole for doing that in front of our family. That she’s now stranded at my house (good), that he won’t answer her calls (great), that he’ll possibly dump her for letting him get disrespected (amazing).
She says she didn’t think I was serious about banning her boyfriend from my house and that none of us should take what he says or does personally because his opinions don’t actually effect us. She told me through tears that she still wants the ‘boyfriend experience’ of bringing someone around her family and that was the ONLY emotional labor she asks of this guy and he was willing to do it.
And he never did come back to get her, or respond to her calls and texts. She ended up going home with my parents and has been there since. At some point soon she’ll probably get a ride to his place and likely go back to my parents place with her stuff in a box.
Our parents are kind of on her side here, and are saying that I should have just quietly asked them to leave and at least not embarrass my sister. I know we all dislike the boyfriend, but I thought we were on the same page about not wanting him around us because he’s just so awful. I don’t think it’s really a bad thing if he breaks up with her.
And this is the first I’ve heard of her apparently deep need for the ‘boyfriend experience’ at family get-togethers; I think she likes showing off her rich boyfriend just as much as he seemed to like having a pretty girl as an accessory, and she’s upset that she’ll need to start over now. All that being said, it’s my house. It’s my life. And I’m not trying to have a bigot like this guy around me. AITA?
This is what people had to say to OP:
Randa08 said:
Nta you warned them.
SprayConsistent9277 said:
NTA. She’s a gold digger and he’s a POS.
And Brief-Composer-6663 said:
NTA you warned both of them. She was welcome, he wasn’t. Maybe you thought he walked her to your door because he was actually being a gentleman…wtf am I kidding, everyone knows he wouldn’t. If it were me, I probably would have said you were told he was not welcome in my home. Leave now. And shut the door on both of them (she disrespected you by bringing him anyway).
I understand you want her away from him. But truth is, this is what she wants. She is not being disillusioned with how he is. You can only support her from afar for now but be there when she crashes and burns.
A few days later, OP shared this update:
Okay SO. This is actually highly disappointing. Earlier this evening my dad gave my sister a ride to the awful boyfriend’s place under the assumption that he was going to break up with her and send her away with her stuff in a box or something.
Well that didn’t happen. I called my parents to see if she was back at home yet, my dad said nope. He waited outside in the car while Sis went up to her boyfriend’s apartment, and after a little while she texted Dad saying to just go home, everything is fine now.
I feel like hearing this gave me at least six new forehead wrinkles that I didn’t have this morning. My dad didn’t ask any questions, he basically just double checked that she was good and went back home again. So I guess after all that fuss they’re still together.
My sister hasn’t spoken to me since everything went down on New Years Eve, I’m actually somewhat concerned that I won’t be hearing from her for quite some time. I want to be clear here; her terrible boyfriend isn’t welcome at my home, but she always is. We grew up together and she was my little shadow when we were kids. I don’t like the choices she’s made but I can’t help but love her anyway.
On that note I also DON’T love some of the comments calling her a prostitute or a sugar baby; I guess it’s not wrong on a fundamental level, but it’s exceedingly hard to face as a big brother. Our family is close-knit. It might not come off that way in my post. The best way I can sum up the vibe towards my sister is ‘She might be a gold-digging bimbo but she’s OUR gold-digging bimbo.’
I’m not so much holding out hope that she’ll change, because she really has always been like this, but I still want to be there for her if (when) her pretty-pretty-princess moment with rich douchebags ends.
So yeah, here we are. A pretty weak conclusion to my New Years drama. I do appreciate being found not guilty of a-holery in this whole thing; who would have thought validation from strangers on the internet would feel so comforting.
