Her Parents Are Trying To Make Her Pay For Her Sister To Go On A Family Cruise, Even Though She’s A Broke College Student
This year, the grandparents of this 19-year-old woman will be celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary.
They invited her entire family to go on a cruise with them in March as a family reunion. Her grandparents have six children, and their extended family includes about 125 people invited on this trip. She loves her grandparents, but her relationship with her parents has been turbulent.
“They’re incredibly emotionally immature and care entirely too much about how they appear to others and not enough about how we as a family are functioning,” she said.
Sadly, her older sister, Brittany, 20, has been struggling with an addiction, and the dynamics within the family haven’t been helping.
She’s been supporting Brittany as much as she’s able, but since her parents haven’t stepped in to do anything, she doesn’t feel like what she’s been doing is enough.
Her parents said that taking care of her sister was her obligation, and she accepted this huge duty. When she was a senior in high school, her sister got a DUI, and her life fell apart because of it. So, she put her own dreams on hold to support her sister.
For her freshman year of college, she lived at home so that she could drive her sister to appointments, work, and school.
She put her own needs on the back burner so that no one would know that their family was going through painful times.
“Unfortunately, with addiction, there’s always the chance of relapse, and my sister relapsed hard. She overdosed, and I found her and had to rush her to the hospital,” she explained.
Svetlana – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
“Still, my parents refused reasonable help. So, I stopped doing everything and decided to go to the school of my dreams and live my own life.”
After only one week of taking over parenting duties, her parents called her to say sorry, though it was insincere.
They only called to ask her to return and take care of her sister again. She refused, and since then, she has been living on her own.
Last week, her parents called to let her know that she has an obligation to go on this cruise, and she has to pay her own way.
She took no issue with this since she is a grown woman. But she did not think she should have to pay for Brittany to go on the cruise, too.
“My parents said without reliable transportation, she’s been unable to maintain a steady income, and it’s my fault for moving away, so it’s reasonable for me to pay for her and have her pay me back. I told them no and asked why they couldn’t,” she shared.
In response, her parents said that they were paying for her younger sister, Callie, 16, to go on the cruise and were also going to pay for her nieces, who are 2, 3, and 5, as well as her stepsisters, 28 and 24, to go, too.
Despite this, she repeated that she would not pay for Brittany to go on the cruise. She has been putting her way through college, and she doesn’t want to have to use her savings for this cruise when she’s positive that Brittany will never pay her back.
Since this conversation, tons of her family members have been texting her in anger about her choice not to help pay for Brittany’s portion of the trip.
She doesn’t think she was wrong for setting this boundary, but now her grandparents have been pleading with her to still come on the cruise and just cave and pay Brittany’s way.
Because she’s being pressured to change her mind, she’s unsure about what she should do. Her parents think that if she didn’t pay for Brittany’s portion of the cruise, she would be humiliating them in front of their entire extended family.
They added that if she still refused to pay for Brittany, she wouldn’t be able to go on the cruise, as she does not have that kind of money.
What would you do if you were in her shoes?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
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