Blending families is not as easy or simple as many newly married parents want to believe.

Kids are their own entities, after all, and no matter how badly adults want a big happy family, sometimes it’s just not in the cards.

For this kid, he could always tell his stepbrother didn’t have any interest in bonding, but his parents are still struggling to believe it.

The details on this one are very interesting!

AITA for telling my mom she was the naive one who expected her husband’s son to magically change?

I (22m) was born deaf and was never a candidate for hearing aids. I was taught ASL and my mom and others in my family learned ASL too.

This is the only way I could ever speak or be spoken to. I don’t lip read or anything like that. My dad wasn’t in my life ever.

And when I was 9 my mom started dating Tom. Tom had a 10 year old son, Cole, at the time.

It was pretty clear from the start that Cole was unenthusiastic about us and had no interest in learning ASL to speak to me.

He did take family ASL classes, but mostly so he could communicate better with a friend.

Tom and mom decided we should all take “family” ASL classes and learn together in a fun environment, which the classes they found were.

Cole had to be dragged and he didn’t take part willingly or eagerly. If anything he’d intentionally do things wrong and make himself do worse than he would have naturally so he was asked less.

He did eventually take them seriously. My mom believed it was because he had really bonded with me and now gave a crap about communicating with me.

But that wasn’t it. He had a knew kid in school he wanted to talk to who was also deaf.

He could tell it didn’t mean his brother was interested.

The new guy was his motivation for learning.

Cole and I never talked enough for him to be motivated to learn and he made lots of mistakes when talking to me but I noticed his ASL was perfect with his friend.

It was weird living with a virtual stranger, but he eventually accepted it.

It always felt weird living with someone who didn’t want me around. My mom and Tom believed we’d blended eventually.

I think there was some fight when Cole turned 17 and my mom and Tom wanted to go away for a weekend.

I remember everyone looked so tense one morning and I was told I’d be going to stay with my grandparents for the weekend since it wasn’t a great idea to leave me home alone when I couldn’t hear if something was wrong.

My assumption is they wanted Cole to keep an eye on me and make sure I was okay and he let them know he really didn’t care what happened to me.

They don’t talk anymore.

Cole and I haven’t seen each other since he moved out. My mom has asked a few times if we’ve met up or whatever and I’m always honest and say no.

She finally asked me two or three weeks ago if things were good between Cole and me and I told her she had to have picked up on the fact he never wanted us around and wasn’t interested in being good between him and me.

His parents are still in denial, though.

She said she really believed that had changed once we got closer and she brought up how he took ASL more seriously.

I told her it was clearly for his friend. Not me.

She was clearly shocked. But brought it up again over the weekend and she told me she thought I was very naive to think Cole didn’t learn ASL for both and that him being resistant at first didn’t mean he didn’t grow to love me.

I told her she was the naive one to expect him to magically change out of nowhere. I told her if she wanted to be married to Tom that badly, it’s fine.

But she should accept it wasn’t so perfect for me and her claiming I’m naive about Cole shows how much she wants to overlook.

Mom was not cool with what I said to her. She told me I didn’t need to hurt her feelings.

AITA?

He’s wondering if he should have been nicer about it.

Let’s see what Reddit tells him.

Sometimes the truth hurts.

Live and let live.

She had to know.

She made her bed.

That guilt is there for a reason.

You can’t force people to care.

As much as you might want to.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.