I think it’s safe to say that we now live in a world, culture, society—whatever you want to call it—where it’s none of anyone’s business how you choose to lead your love life.
As people shift away from being members of communal societies to more individualistic ones, societal and cultural norms and expectations imposed upon people become less of an influence and more of a nuisance to many who just want to live their lives in peace.
And, if anything, asking someone when they’re gonna get married or have kids is at the very least rude, as you can never know if a couple has fertility problems or have made a conscious choice to not do any of it. It’s personal. Go away. Shoo!
But it still happens, often leading to conflicts in the long run. Just like it did with this r/AITA story where parents kept bringing up their son’s unmarried lifestyle, and so he had to bring out the big guns because Christmas dinner was the last straw.
More Info: Reddit
It seems like Christmas dinners have become the new Thanksgiving dinners where folks have family drama, as seen in this next story
Image credits: Jonathan Borba (not the actual image)
Reddit user u/SupermarketFair3341 recently shared a story that happened to him during Christmas dinner. He’s a nurse practitioner who provides primary care for low-risk maternity cases. His fiancee is also in medicine and actually finishing her residency.
This bit of context will be important later on.
The two have been living together for a few years now, and were never in any rush to get married until they recently announced their wedding in June. During the said few years, OP’s very religious parents kept on broaching the issue of marriage and pushing their own very holy agenda. And it did not stop after the date was announced.
A guy who got fed up with his parents pushing their religious beliefs on marriage subtly hinted at their own hypocrisy towards married life
Image credits: u/SupermarketFair3341
After mom and dad's very cultured comments on how living together outside matrimony is "a sin", the son snapped and started pointing fingers at them
Image credits: Nicole Michalou (not the actual image)
Come Christmas dinner, all the kids and the grandkids (17 in total) were there, and the parents turned the table conversation to express their joy at OP and his fiancee announcing they’ll get married soon.
But instead of actually expressing their joy, they turned it into yet another lecture of sorts on how to lead a good Christian life—with the mom pointing out how she’ll no longer be embarrassed in front of all her church friends, and the dad stressing how the three older kids got married and then moved in together. Smooth move there, mom and dad.
Anywho, OP’s fiancee sensed the “subtle” tone and started getting embarrassed. OP himself has had this conversation one too many times—each time asking them to stop controlling his life and accept it—and now it was the last straw.
In particular, he highlighted how his brother's "premature" birth was not actually that, but just a conception 4 months before marriage
Image credits: u/SupermarketFair3341
So, OP turned the tables and pulled out a little bit of dirt he had on his parents, mixed with his own professional wisdom. Remember the whole work with maternity cases thing? Yeah, the guns were loaded.
OP remembers how, right after the first time the parents had the “marriage talk”, his grandma told him about his brother being born over 9 pounds in weight and almost 23 inches in height. In context, that is not what a 4-month premature baby weighs, nor is that its height. That’s what a 1-month old infant is like. And OP knew that because he worked in the field.
Image credits: Aditya Romansa (not the actual image)
Despite not letting the topic progress to a critical degree, the parents were anything but thrilled about it, and OP got a stern talking-to
Image credits: u/SupermarketFair3341
The 4 months, as it turns out, was like a margin of error that the parents needed to push off the date by to make it sound like 9 months would have passed after marriage, if not for a fake premature birth. In reality, the baby was conceived 4 months prior to marriage.
But OP wasn’t able to get this much into detail—all he needed was to just broach the topic and the parents started changing the topic with “deer in the headlights looks” on their faces.
And once the story hit the internet, folks praised OP in the comments for delivering a good laugh
No idea if anyone else caught on, but regardless, OP got a stern talking to by the parents. This is where the conflict peaked. And while the parents were upset with him for his bit of truth, his fiancee was happy as ever as it seems the parents were off the topic for good.
Still, getting some perspective from strangers online was of interest to OP, and that’s how the story found its way onto Reddit. And it was an obvious NTA from the community.
Overall, folks loved the story, its setup, the payback, all that jazz. Some immediately fell in love with grandma because of her sneaky tactics, while others cracked jokes at how OP now has to get off Reddit and drive his folks to treat their burns after getting exposed.
The story itself got more attention than most other r/AITA stories do, garnering almost 50,000 upvotes, with a 89% upvote ratio, as well as 67 Reddit awards. You can take a peek at the post in context here.
And once you’re done peeking, come back here because the comment section won’t fill itself with your insights and opinions on everything you’ve read here.
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