Matt Walsh decides who the a-hole is. Cynch - Download the Cynch app and get your first tank exchange for just $10 with promo code WALSH. Visit http://cynch.com/offer for details. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| [GUNSHOTS] | |
| This is from Aaron. | |
| Says, hello, Matt. | |
| My best friend is in a relationship where his girlfriend, the mother of his child, | |
| will on occasion accuse him of cheating and become so engulfed with rage that she will yell at him, call/FaceTime him | |
| until his phone dies. | |
| She's also thrown things at him and punched, scratched, and bruised him on multiple occasions, all in arguments that, in retrospect, they both admit were meaningless. | |
| I worry for their soon-to-be three-year-old child to grow up in an environment where a parent becomes so overcome with wrath that she resorts to any means to get her point across. | |
| I think it's admirable to want to keep a nuclear family for the sake of the child. | |
| My question is, am I the a-hole for wanting to limit my time around them, especially her? | |
| She's told my girlfriend lies about me and has asked her to keep information from me on her behalf. | |
| My girlfriend and I are honest to one another. | |
| So those attempts do not work, but my girlfriend has a big heart and negative energy can be an emotional strain on her. | |
| My friend says I'm being rude and excessive for telling my girl to not be around her when she doesn't have to while I'm trying to maintain my own relationship. | |
| Of course, in situations like family get-togethers or a wedding, we will attend and be cordial. | |
| But in the event that we want to go out to eat alone, I'll ask my girlfriend to politely decline. | |
| No, you're not the a-hole. | |
| You have every right to decide who you want to be around. | |
| I always think it's funny when I get these kinds of questions, and maybe I'm the wrong guy to answer them because I'm antisocial, so this is not anything that I ever struggle with. | |
| I wish you could see this. | |
| You're really struggling. | |
| I never struggle with this idea. | |
| Should I be around somebody I don't want to be around? | |
| No, I don't. | |
| It's one thing if it's a close family member, if, God forbid, you're married to someone that you go through a period you don't want to be around them, something like that. | |
| Well, then it's like, yeah, you got, now you have to work through that. | |
| You got to work on that. | |
| You can't just cut somebody like that out of your life, but if it's outside of that, if it's someone, it's an acquaintance, a friend, someone you knew a long time ago, whatever, and it's a negative experience to be around them, then you're perfectly within your rights to limit the time you spend around them. | |
| I know what I have to do, but I don't know if I have the strength to do it. | |
| You don't even have to, you don't have to wrestle with it very much. | |
| People, you know, there are people who are just miserable, like it sounds like this woman is, and they want to inflict that on those around them. | |
| And so your response is, I don't want to be around that. | |
| And so you limit that time you spend around them. | |
| And in fact, even with family members, that might be the case, too, where they want to inflict their misery on you. | |
| And so you don't want to be around them because of it. | |
| And that's all on them. | |
| That's not on you. | |
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| From Ken says, Hi Matt, I'm asking about an event that did not happen. | |
| As in, my wife told me that she almost broke up with me while we were dating, but four anniversaries later and two beautiful kids, clearly she did not break up with me. | |
| The story of my first visit to meet her parents came up, and she said that that night was almost the end for us because her mom made meatloaf, and I barely ate any of it. | |
| I can't stand meatloaf, and this was well known by my wife at the time, and she communicated this to her parents, but her mom made it anyway. | |
| I ate a few bites of it and fully ate all the sides, but apparently this almost set my wife over the edge, but I did not choke down and risk the vomit, because her mom needed the gratification of me eating her cooked meal. | |
| I responded that the fact that I tried the meatloaf at all was supposed to gain me extra points, since I was very upfront about my dislike of meatloaf, and that there's no reason for me to extra explain myself, since we're just talking about how I was set up to fail, but I was asked to succeed anyway. | |
| There's definitely an asshole here. | |
| Is it me for not extra trying to choke down more meatloaf or my wife for openly acknowledging it was a spot where I was set up to fail? | |
| Well, it's definitely you. | |
| I mean, it's you 100% on so many different levels. | |
| First of all, I'm a firm believer in you're a guest at somebody's house. | |
| You eat whatever is put on your plate. | |
| I don't care what it is. | |
| I don't care if they take their shoe off their foot and put it on your plate and say, we're eating shoes tonight. | |
| You eat the damn shoe. | |
| He's kidding, right? | |
| He's not kidding. | |
| I've told my kids this many times. | |
| They know, whatever's put on your plate, you eat it. | |
| And if we're at somebody's house, if we're a guest at someone's house, and they serve food on your plate, it's even more. | |
| You damn well better eat it. | |
| I don't care what it is. | |
| And if it's bad, if the person doesn't know how to cook, well then we're all suffering together. | |
| We are in this together. | |
| But you eat the food. | |
| You're also an a**hole because meatloaf is delicious. | |
| Like, what do you mean you don't like meatloaf? | |
| What kind of man are you? | |
| This is, you have fallen for, this is a branding thing. | |
| Okay. | |
| The only problem meatloaf has, and the reason meatloaf has a bad reputation, and a lot of kids don't like meatloaf, is because of the name. | |
| Like, Meat Loaf. | |
| Aww, that seems gross, at first blush, right? | |
| It's just, whoever came up with the name for meatloaf didn't spend any time thinking about it, and all they, they just looked at it and said, well, it looks kind of like a loaf, and it's meat. | |
| So that's meatloaf. | |
| I think if we called it something, I don't even know, we could workshop it, but come up with something French. | |
| What is meatloaf in French? | |
| Call it that. | |
| And then I think everybody would agree that obviously meatloaf is delicious. | |
| So you've fallen for anti-meatloaf propaganda. | |
| I think it is unmanly to not like meatloaf. | |
| It should be, you know, it's a comfort food. | |
| It's a classic comfort food. | |
| Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, gravy. | |
| What kind of man are you that you don't enjoy that kind of food? | |
| And then on the third level, you know, this is at a time when, right, you just started dating. | |
| You're trying to impress this young lady, her mom is making food, and you would actually get all skimpy in eating and get squeamish? | |
| Oh, I don't like that. | |
| I don't like meatloaf, sorry. | |
| Do you have a vegan substitute? | |
| A vegan! | |
| A gluten-free vegan! | |
| Somehow your marriage worked out, and you have kids, and hopefully you teach them to eat their food, unlike you. | |
| But she would have been justified in dumping you right then on the spot, I think. | |
| It would have been totally justified. | |
| So, unfortunately, you are the a**hole. | |
| Three times over. | |
| Eat your food. |