January 7, 2024 at 9:43 am

Wife Wants Husband To Abandon His Golf Hobby So He Can Babysit Stepdaughter. He Says No Way.

by Matthew Gilligan

Source: Reddit/AITA/@Logical-Carpet-4381

I’m gonna tell you that this is one of the strangest Reddit stories I’ve ever laid my eyes on…

You’ll see what I mean in a minute and we want you to ask yourself, is this guy acting like a jerk toward his wife?

Get all the details below and see what you think.

AITA for telling my wife I’m not going to sacrifice my hobbies just so that I can babysit?

“My wife Jane (34F) and I (38M) have been together for 5 years. She also brought my step-daughter Emily (9F) into our marriage.

We have her for four days a week (M-T) while she’s at her dad’s Fri-Sun.

From the beginning, Jane told me Emily doesn’t need a second father figure as she has her dad to fill that role.

I was only supposed to be a trusted authority figure in case she ever needed anything.

He knows his place.

I didn’t mind and try my best to respect that boundary. She’s a sweet child anyway and doesn’t cause trouble so it’s not like I have to discipline her. Her father is also a good dad.

Emily’s dad recently got married and his wife has two kids of her own who are at their place Wednesday to Saturday and at their dads’ Sunday to Tuesday. Emily and her new step-siblings don’t get along at all. They’re always fighting and it’s pretty toxic.

Emily’s dad asked Jane if they change their custody schedule to match his step-kids’ to keep the children apart. It’s not a big deal in and of itself because we don’t live far from each other so picking and dropping is no issue and she can easily be dropped off to school no matter where she stays. The issue is my wife agreed to it without consulting me.

Jane is currently doing a certification course for the next 12 months and they have classes on Saturdays from 9-5pm.

She asked me if I can babysit Emily on Saturdays, but I can’t because I play golf with my brother and sister on Saturday mornings from 8am-1pm.

That’s a no-go, sorry…

This has been our tradition from before Jane and Emily came into my life and I had told Jane from much before that this is important to me and my siblings. She asked if I can move to another day but that’s not possible either because my siblings also have jobs and families of their own so Saturday was the best day for us. I told her she can hire a babysitter but she doesn’t want to spend money when I can do it for free.

And things blew up.

I told her that wouldn’t work for me. She then got mad and said golf is stupid and I should put my step-daughter over my siblings. That ****** me off so I told her I’m not going to sacrifice my hobbies just so that she can have a free babysitter.

For the record, I don’t have anything against Emily. I’ve babysat her before and she’s a good kid. If there was a family emergency or if it was an occasional occurrence, then yeah I would cancel golf for that day to take care of her but I can’t give up something this important to me for 12 months continuous.

She called me a selfish ******* and slept on the couch last night.

So AITA?”

Let’s see what people said about this.

One person said he’s NTA and said this could have been worked out earlier.

Source: Reddit/AITA

Another individual said this is all his wife’s fault.

Source: Reddit/AITA

This person said he’s NTA and that they don’t really get what’s going on here…

Source: Reddit/AITA

And this person said it best: you can’t have it both ways!

Source: Reddit/AITA

There’s a whole lot going on in that story!

I don’t think I would have given up my hobby either, though.

So there’s that.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.