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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/swiftymommaaita on 2023-06-23 18:42:35+00:00.

My husband (40M) and I (39F) have been married for 4 years. We both have kids from previous relationships. My husband has 2 kids (10 & 8) and I have a 17-year-old daughter who will turn 18 this summer. Both my daughter and I are huge Taylor Swift fans and have tickets to see her this weekend. We were not lucky enough to get tickets right when they went on sale, so we had to buy them on the secondary market and paid a lot for them. My daughter helped pay for about 1/3 of the cost out of her own pocket.

Last weekend my daughter was babysitting my step-kids when my husband got home about 2 hours earlier than he planned. He found his kids inside, but couldn’t find my daughter. He eventually found her and 3 friends out in the backyard smoking pot. To say he was livid would be a severe understatement. He kicked her friends out and yelled and screamed at my daughter to the point she was in tears. By the time I got home he was still incredibly angry and my daughter had locked herself in her room crying.

After talking with both of them, my husband now has zero trust in my daughter and my daughter knows what she did was wrong and a very bad decision. If my husband had his way, she would be grounded for life, but obviously that’s not going to happen. His suggestion for punishment was to take away the Taylor Swift concert and sell the tickets.

I completely understand why he’s upset and I am very disappointed in my daughter as well. What she did was reckless, stupid, and indefensible. But both of us have been looking forward to this concert for months and as far as I’m concerned, this is literally a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing. I agree that my daughter needs to have consequences for messing up like she did, but I don’t feel that punishment fits this crime.

None of the other punishments I’ve suggested have been acceptable to my husband. Taking away her car, phone, grounding, making her do chores, etc. To him it’s the concert and nothing else is going to work. He says that she needs to know that what she did is unacceptable and that when you mess up as bad as she did there needs to be severe consequences. He says that if I still take her to this concert I’m basically teaching her that even if she messes up massively, I will still let her do fun things.

But to me, she’s almost an adult and she knows what she did was wrong. We also both paid quite a bit of money for these tickets and even though we could make that money back by selling them, we would be missing out on a huge experience together. My daughter is also afraid of my husband now because no one has ever yelled at her the way he did and he doesn’t seem to care.

My husband will barely acknowledge my daughter at home now and is barely speaking to me either. He feels like I’m trying to sweep this under the rug and that I care more about this concert than the safety and well-being of my step-kids.