When a sister’s family is so chaotic that she can’t figure out why everyone’s at each other’s throats, it’s no wonder she’s venting.

But calling it a “circus” might have been the last straw.

Read on for the story!

AITA for telling my sister she doesn’t have a family, she has a circus?

The other day my sister (36f) was complaining to me that her family is chaos and she doesn’t understand why everyone can’t get along and why they never have a truly good moment while everyone together.

I listened to her for around 20 minutes and she told me I was being quiet.

My response was that she clearly needed to vent and I didn’t want to interject.

That was mostly true but I also think my sister is a little insane for thinking she’d get to have a nice neat little family given the craziness in her family.

Sometimes you just gotta let the craziness be its own reality check.

For context: My sister had her first child at 18, my nephew Shane (18m).

She dated Shane’s dad for a while and found out when Shane was 1 that her boyfriend had another girl pregnant and so they broke up.

My sister and the other mother both got arrested for fighting. And she swore she would never let that woman or her child near Shane.

She got married at 21 and had two more kids Kadie (15f) and Rye (13m).

She filed for divorce straight after Rye was born and her ex-husband is nowhere in sight since.

A year later she met another man, who had a baby with someone. My niece Lily (12f) is not my sister’s bio child but she raises her as her own (though unofficially since she’s not adopted).

What a wild ride!

Kadie got married again had Milo (9m) with that husband and got pregnant with Sage (7f) while married but her ex-husband is not the father.

Her youngest bio (so far) is Nile (5m) and his father is not in the picture either.

My sister is married again. Her husband has two kids from his first marriage and two kids from his second marriage.

He also has a child in his life who is not his biological kid. Doesn’t get along with his biological kids. But he treats this child like his own.

Oh, we’re not done…

The household has many complicated relationships and divided loyalties. There are complications with some of the other parents involved and other children involved.

It’s too long and complicated to get involved in. But even among my sisters children, they are not all cohesive close siblings and some resentments exist for one reason or another.

Anyway, Lily was venting to me. She said nobody she knows has a family so incapable of getting together as hers.

She asked me why I thought that was and I said very blended families are more complex.

She told me there are people with bigger blended families than hers. I told her bigger doesn’t always mean having as many others involved as hers.

Then she said again they’re all a family though and they act like they don’t want to be and that’s when I said probably because it’s more of a circus than a family.

Ohhhh boy.

My sister told me that was really unkind and untrue, that they are a family, even if others can’t see it. She told me she expects an apology from me before we can speak again.

AITA?

Wow, this family drama is next-level.

Redditors weighed in on whether calling it a circus was too harsh or just a reality check.

Verdict: NTA.

This person explains why.

This person has some jokes.

And this person says she shouldn’t have asked if she didn’t want the truth.

Sometimes calling a circus a circus is exactly what it takes to get the clowns out of denial!

But it could also result in a rift that’s hard to heal.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.