When family comes to visit, it can either be the highlight of the season or a recipe for disaster.

In this story, it turned out to be the latter.

When her stepmother makes a series of unreasonable demands during her visit, one young woman is torn between diffusing the tension and staying true to her own boundaries.

You’ll want to read on for this one.

AITA for not apologising to my father and stepmother?

My dad built a small 2-bedroom house on rented land.

This land is rented by my stepmother’s big sister, and they had an agreement that we could stay as long as we help pay rent.

Meaning we pay the landowner for living on his land.

My stepmother and her son (19) came over from Australia for the holidays.

She explains their living arrangements for their trip.

I (27F), siblings (20M and 13F), and my dad (52) all live in the house and try to organize living space accordingly.

Her son opted to stay with his aunt, which was no problem since he had plans with his cousins and my brother.

The trip started off on a bit of a sour note…

The night they arrived, my stepmother got drunk and began complaining about how we didn’t greet her properly and didn’t make her feel like a mother.

She also said that my dad should “**** everyone in this house.”

This behavior isn’t exactly new, though.

This was the same behavior she pulled last Christmas and New Year, where everything my sister and I did was never to her standards.

She’d yell at us not to eat certain food or drink her coffee (and my dad’s).

She proceeded to make comments about our casual dressing at home to her relatives without talking to us like a parent.

Last time she stayed, she had plenty of criticisms.

Around April/March this year, she stayed over for a few days and hated staying here.

Now it’s revealed she didn’t want to stay with us because she doesn’t feel close to me.

Her dad tries (unsuccessfully) to play both sides.

My dad was upset, but sternly told her to apologize for her behavior and asked us why we didn’t act the way she expected.

I was nervous and said that we didn’t feel comfortable and just said, “Hi, Mom.”

I apologized for that, but apparently, that was not enough.

Things are getting worse and worse by the day.

This has gone on for a week with screaming matches every morning, demanding me to apologize for passive-aggressive comments they’ve made.

I finally gave up and stopped apologizing.

AITA?

It seems that the more she apologized, the deeper the hole she dug.

What did Reddit have to say?

This commenter frankly doesn’t believe her stepmother deserves an apology.

This user is having trouble telling up from down in this twisted tale.

What started as an attempt to smooth things over turned into a never-ending cycle of screaming matches.

You can’t truly apologize to someone who’s not ready to forgive.

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.