Who is the biggest A-hole? Matt Walsh decides between three reddit users who took to the subreddit Am I The A**hole.
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My family gets together once a year on Thanksgiving.
I'm recently remarried, and my wife hasn't had much of a chance to bond with my family due to COVID, and we are all looking forward to getting everyone together.
Unfortunately, my elderly parents just told me that they've also invited my ex-wife to dinner, which I'm adamantly against.
My ex has known these people for 20 years, and that familiarity and level of comfort will make it hard, in my opinion, for my new wife to fit in.
She insists that I could go without her, but if she won't go, then I'm not going to go as my place is by her side.
My family says that my wife... Isn't that very nice?
You're remaining steadfastly loyal to your second wife.
Good.
That's a man of principle.
My family says that my wife should just suck it up and deal, and that if we're not there, we'll ruin Thanksgiving for everybody.
So am I the a**hole for thinking my ex should make other plans and not attend my family's dinner?
Yeah, you're the a**hole.
I think for a number of reasons.
You're such an a**hole!
First is getting divorced in the first place.
And this is why you don't get divorced.
Divorce!
You just make everything complicated for everybody.
You make everything worse and everything complicated for everybody for the rest of your life.
Including yourself.
That's what happens when you get divorced.
And your family, keep in mind, when you get married, it's not just you.
The two of you are not the only ones affected.
You have families, and your families are now bonded as well through this bond of marriage.
Your parents, it sounds like, have accepted your first wife as their daughter, as a member of the family.
And now they're supposed to renege on that?
They're supposed to reverse course just because you have?
Their bond doesn't mean anything anymore just because you've decided to sever it?
Doesn't work that way.
It's like when parents get remarried and then demand that their kids accept the new person as their mom or dad.
You're not my dad!
Maybe they will, but that's not their responsibility.
That's not their obligation.
They have a mom and dad.
They only need one of each as far as they're concerned.
The fact that you couldn't work out your marriage and you decided to break your wedding vows, that's not anybody else's problem.
That's your problem.
You figure that out.
He had a change of heart and tracked us down two months ago.
To be frank, I'm still angry he tried to make me abort our son and then washed his hands of me when I wouldn't obey him.
So, besides the financial help, I'm not grateful or happy about a change of heart.
He asked me if I would change our son's last name to his.
It made me angry because I'm the one who wanted him.
I carried him and raised him alone until two months ago.
So I don't think he deserves for our son to have his last name.
However, I know it would benefit our son to have a bigger connection to his father's family in the long run.
So I told him I would change his last name to his for X amount of money.
He was visibly angry and made a comment about how I wasn't as innocent as he thought.
And he told me I was very good at hiding my true colors.
While he did agree to give me the money, he's being cold towards me now, and I keep thinking about what he said, which is making me feel like a real a-hole.
Now, somehow, again, Reddit has said that this woman is not the a-hole, when she clearly is.
Now, she might not be THE a-hole, because there are two a-holes.
The father's an a-hole.
Like, showing back up, didn't want any... wanted the child aborted, didn't want to be part of the child's life, and then you show up.
Now, you want to be a part of the child's life, and that's good.
That's a good part.
You had a change of heart.
But then, like, two months later, you're saying, give the child my name.
You have to earn that by being present in the family.
Now, if this was a normal situation, healthy situation, where you're the father and you're there from the get-go, then yes, the child should have your last name to begin with.
But not in this case.
However, this woman, you are still 100,000% the a-hole because you tried to sell your son's naming rights?
What is he, a stadium?
Why not go auction him off to a bank?
Let's call him a PNC or Wells Fargo.
Sell his forehead to Best Buy.
They could slap a logo on it.
And you think you're the good guy?
I know it'd be really important for my son to be connected to his father's family.
So, you're the a-hole, he's the a-hole, I'm the a-hole, we're all the a-holes.
On this episode of Am I the A-hole?
[MUSIC]
I live alone in a one bedroom apartment.
Recently, a co-worker, let's call them Allie, has been coming to my supervisor to talk and visit almost every shift.
They've been talking about how Allie has had a downturn in job performance and might be laid off soon if things don't improve.
Allie is nice and outgoing but not reliable when it comes to office work.
The past couple of days my supervisor has been very interested in my living situation.
Always asking how the area is, how I decorate my space, how my relationship is with the property manager.
They've even started making comments about how lucky I am to live alone and how important community is.
Yesterday after hours... Can we just get to the point here?
You don't need to go back five years in the story.
Just get to the freaking point.
Um, okay.
For over a half an hour, they went on and on about how I could let her live with me and how good it would be to carpool, split expenses, and have company at home.
I tried to keep the shock.
Okay.
So basically, your supervisor is pressuring you to have a co-worker move in with you as a roommate.
You could have just said that!
The whole rest of the story is not necessary.
We don't need to know what you had for breakfast that morning.
Am I the a-hole?
Well, no.
I mean, you're the a-hole for telling this long, boring story, but not in this particular situation.
I hear these stories from people's jobs sometimes, and I'm just like, what?
First of all, why would you tolerate this to begin with?
Your supervisor at your job is trying to force you to...
To allow another person at your job to live with you?
I don't know if this is appropriate.
I'd better go ask Reddit.
It's wildly inappropriate and it's definitely illegal in like 50,000 different ways.
So, first thing I would do is go and get that supervisor fired.
And then absolutely you do not let this person move in with you.
Though this is coming from someone who I would never let anyone move in with me as a roommate.
I think the whole concept of roommates to me just doesn't make any sense.
If you're getting married and you're starting a family, right, with someone, that's one thing.
That's not really a roommate.
You get none of the benefit of starting a family, yet you get all of the annoyances of having to live with other people in your house.
Part of the problem, and no offense to men by this, but it seems to be mostly women who use the Midahole forum on Reddit.
And this is something women do.
And look, ladies, you have to realize that you do this.
You know, if you have information that you want to pass on to someone, you always start way further back in the timeline than you need to.
That's the scourge of existence for women.
They're always complaining, oh, you know, the men, they don't remember, they don't listen.
It's because you're giving us way too much information, okay?
And that's not how our minds work.
We can't retain all that.
We're looking for the point, and that's where we home in.
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