Aunt Watches Her Family Fawn Over One Niece While Ignoring The Other, So She Drops $2K To Balance The Scale
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Family favoritism rarely stays contained to just feelings; it eventually shows up in things like birthday budgets, and one aunt watched exactly that play out between her two nieces.
One of her brother’s daughters was clearly the golden child, and as a result, she was showered in expensive gifts for her special day.
But when the aunt watched the other child, who also happened to be the child of an affair, get significantly less fanfare for her birthday, she couldn’t stand idly by any longer.
So when she dropped around $2,000 in an attempt to even the scales, her brother came back furious.
She knows her intentions were good, but did she take things too far?
Read on to decide for yourself.
AITA for “ruining two sisters relationship”?
My brother has 2 daughters.
Ellie is 15 years old. She is his wife’s daughter. She is beautiful like a model and is very talented in arts and sports.
She is also extroverted and social and popular.
She describes her other niece quite differently.
Ivy is 14 years old. She is his affair partner’s daughter but lives with my brother and his wife. She is often described as ordinary looking
She is not talented in arts or sports, but she is really smart. She is very introverted and shy.
She’s noticed a fair amount of favoritism towards Ellie.
Everyone in our family loves Ellie. They fawn over her every time they see her. They think she is perfect.
I prefer Ivy, to be honest. I enjoy talking to her and I think one day she is gonna be really successful, and I find her very funny.
Since people in our family tend to show their favoritism, I’ve realized that I have to show mine, otherwise this is really gonna hurt Ivy.
This aunt shares another example of this perceived favoritism.
For Ellie’s birthday she got a lot of gifts, all based on her hobbies and things she enjoys. Each cost somewhere between 50 to 100 bucks. About 700 bucks worth of gifts in total.
For Ivy’s birthday she got 50 buck gift cards from everyone, which might not be a bad gift, but it shows a lack of effort.
She was incredibly upset that “no one even tried to go shopping.”
So the aunt decided she wanted to start evening things out.
So I took her out shopping and we played a game she has seen on TikTok (I’ll buy anything she can carry). She had a really good time, and yeah, maybe we went a bit overboard and I spent about 2K dollars on her.
When we returned, my brother and SIL were angry and asked if I was thinking about Ellie at all.
She doesn’t hold back her true feelings.
I said, “No, does everything have to be about Ellie?”
They called me an AH and said my favoritism is going to ruin their relationship and “I always do this.”
OK, maybe I’m more well off than other family members and maybe I spoil Ivy sometimes, but I’m just trying to fix things.
There’s definitely some clear favoritism going on here.
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Reddit usually doesn’t take well to this kind of meddling, no matter how justified it may seem.
This commenter thinks Ellie and Ivy’s father deserves a heaping share of the blame.
Two wrongs don’t make a right in this judicious commenter’s eyes.
This really isn’t a good long-term solution.
On its head, this really is a pretty messed up situation.
This aunt saw something real: a teenage girl consistently overlooked by an entire family, and she wasn’t wrong to feel protective of her. That instinct deserves credit.
What doesn’t deserve credit is spending $2,000 specifically because Ellie wasn’t going to benefit from it, since that turns a gesture of love into a statement of exclusion.
Her intentions may have been good, but the execution needed work.
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