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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/kthrowaway244 on 2023-09-18 20:17:39.
Long story short, my parents hate my husband. But because I am their child, they accepted him “for my happiness.” Context, my mom was fine with him until my dad found out (I told my mom first).
It’s not like he’s a bad person. My parents just had someone else in mind. Anyways, my parents moved back to where we’re from while I stayed and I eventually met my husband. We’ve been dating since 19 and we kept our relationship secret from from my parents for years until he proposed to me.
Now I just gave birth to our first child and obviously my parents want to meet him. The thing is, they live nowhere near North America and the flight would be miserable. I hate flying in general but with a baby? I get anxious thinking about it.
I’ve put it off for a long time and even asked my parents if they could fly over (we’d pay for everything) but they said it was disrespectful for me to even ask. I’ve been stuck in a thing of “fine, we’ll come” and “no I can’t do this” and it’s affecting my whole life. My mom calls me twice a day just to remind me that I have to come and that she wants to see her grandbaby before he gets too big but I finally came to the conclusion that I can’t.
He’s a fussy baby and needs to be held by me a lot. He lets his dad hold him for a couple hours but then he won’t stop crying till I hold him. I can’t do that on a plane. And I’m terrified of the reaction we might get since he does make a lot of noise. If it was a smaller flight I could make do but it would be over 10 hours. I’m exhausted just thinking about it and then I have to deal with my parents and their passive aggressive comments right after.
I called my mom and told her that we won’t be coming. She got very angry and kept ranting about my husband keeping us away from them. She eventually said “forget it, we don’t want to see his child. Don’t call us again.”
My aunt (who I don’t talk to) said that she’s very upset with me and my mom has been so excited to see the baby but we crushed her. Apparently dad doesn’t want to see the baby but mom really does (but she refuses to travel without him) which is why she’s been pushing me so hard.
I feel bad because I know how much my mom adores babies and I get she’s in a tough spot but I can’t fly for over 10 hours with a 4 month old. AITA?
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You’re hitting something that a lot of people run into in life. Not everyone, but a lot of people: it’s a vastly overdeveloped sense of guilt and shame.
Basically you have a model of what you have to be in order to be a good person, and that model includes “not doing things my parents say is disrespectful”.
Their words about it being disrespectful have thrown you into a state of confusion that’s destroying you from the inside. It’s a moral quandary.
I think you may benefit from reading up on the concept of “toxic shame”. Your dilemma (which to someone without the toxic shame would not be a dilemma at all) is a result of being trapped in an over-narrow conception of what you need to do in order to be “good enough” to justify your existence.
The truth is your existence needs no justification. That’s the truth that you will come to embody when you learn about, identify, and ultimately resolve that toxic shame.
But until then, you need our input. So NTA for refusing to traumatize your children in order to save your parents from the horror of being disrespected with a paid trip to another country.
NTA. Don’t fly with that baby just to appease their sense of cultural entitlement, and your own sense of shame.
