Family traditions can bring people together, but they can also leave some feeling left out in the cold.

For one man, the holiday season was overshadowed by a consistent pattern of forgotten invitations and unspoken assumptions.

Read on to hear more about his hurtful dilemma.

AITA For not going to Thanksgiving dinner at my sister’s house, when she did not invite me?

I (48, M) have been with my fiancé for 10 years.

I have 4 kids, all over the age of 16, and all but 1 are out of the house and either have their own places or are in college.

Every year, every event, rather, inevitably someone randomly will ask me the day before or the day of something like, “Are you coming to so-and-so’s house for…?”

This holiday was no different.

Thanksgiving this time.

I always have the same response: I wasn’t invited.

Everyone knows my mother has a bad memory, and the excuse always seems to be, “We told mom to invite you.”

My response is ALWAYS, “Well, CLEARLY SHE DIDN’T,” yet they continue to do the same for every Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthday, or other occasion.

He feels distant from his family in other ways too.

My mother said Happy Birthday to me on my Facebook feed.

No one else even said anything that day except my fiancé and my kids.

No one in my family — and we all live 10 minutes from each other.

His constant exclusions have earned him a reputation.

It’s to the point where I am branded the black sheep, basically.

Everyone thinks I am antisocial and don’t want to be anywhere with them, yet I never get made to actually feel like I am supposed to be there.

AITA for thinking I deserve to be asked to come to things?

Am I supposed to just know I am invited, even if that has NEVER been the way things are done in our family?

His siblings excel at planning in their careers, so he wonders how inviting him always slips their minds.

Two of my sisters are wedding and event planners, so I feel like not inviting me and then saying, “We told mom,” is a passive-aggressive way of not inviting me or excusing themselves of any guilt.

I’m to the point where I just don’t even WANT to be invited anywhere!

I am tired of being made to feel like I am the one avoiding people when it’s them that seem to be avoiding me.

He would invite people if he were hosting the event.

AITA for not going to something I wasn’t invited to?

Like, if I were doing a Christmas party, I would invite people. I wouldn’t just plan it and expect people to know they are invited, right?

I don’t want to keep doing this if I am wrong and it’s me.

I did not go, and now everyone is mad at me and acts like it’s just normal for me.

AITA?

Being left out had become his holiday tradition, and he’s fed-up with it.

What did Reddit think?

Maybe it really is possible his family means well.

This commenter knows what it’s like to feel perpetually excluded.

This user wonders how a family who lives so close together could be so bad at communicating.

If his siblings wanted him there so bad, surely they’d try harder, right?

His family’s silence told him all he needed to know.