She Offered to Sponsor Her Friend’s Visa to Move Across the World. She Never Expected to Pay for Her Living Expenses Too
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For many folk, living in another country is midway on their bucket list. Because fully immersing yourself in a completely different culture feels romantic, exciting, and a great way to spend a few years of your life – maybe you’ll even fall in love with your new home so much that the move will last a lifetime. But there’s a difference between fantasising about moving abroad and actually doing it, and plenty of folk who dream of this great adventure won’t ever make it a reality.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, since many of us have plenty of ties (that we love) holding us in place back home. Some dreams don’t need to become a reality, we can just enjoy the idea of them. But for the best friend of the woman in this story, making her dream of moving to the US become a reality is a serious priority. So of course, this woman agrees to sponsor her friend – but when her friend’s original funding source falls through, she finds herself being expected to pay.
Read on to find out what happened here.
AITA for refusing to financially support my friend for eight months after previously agreeing to sponsor her?
My best friend wants to move from Italy to Texas with her son on an F-1 visa for college.
Months ago, my husband and I said we could potentially sponsor her.
At the time, my husband had a well paying job AND she told us we wouldn’t actually have to financially support her because her boyfriend was going to cover her expenses.
Since then, her relationship ended and my husband lost his job.
However, her friend’s plans haven’t changed.
She knew about our financial situation basically immediately, because we never hid how much things had changed.
Now she’s asking us to pay her rent from January until August, when she thinks she’ll be able to work.
She calls it “a few months,” but that’s eight months.
Even the $600 apartments she’s looking at would be $4,800 in rent alone, without utilities, transportation, expenses for her son, emergencies, etc.
And that has left this woman in an awkward position.
When I told her we can’t afford that, she brought up that we’d previously said we could sponsor her.
But when we said that, our financial situation was completely different AND her boyfriend was supposed to be the one financially supporting her.
I feel bad because she’s trying to leave an abusive situation with her father, but I also don’t think my husband and I can take over the financial responsibility her ex was originally supposed to have, especially after losing our main income.
AITA?
This situation sucks so much for everyone involved, but the truth is that this woman and her husband need to look after themselves and their family first.
It’s lovely that they originally offered to sponsor this friend, but she has to accept that everyone’s circumstances have changed.
Maybe in the future she’ll be in a position to help her friend out financially, but as it stands she can’t be putting her own finances in jeopardy because her friend is wanting to move across the world.
Let’s see what the Reddit community had to say about this.
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This person thought she was in no way obligated to pay for her friend.
And others encouraged her to hold firm on this.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who can’t complete her work-from-home duties because her mom’s houseguest won’t stop talking.
However, this Redditor warned that she might actually have a legal obligation toward her friend.
The sad truth of this is that neither friend expected to be in this situation. This woman in the US never expected that her husband would lose his job, and that they would be flung into a difficult financial situation. And the woman in Italy hadn’t expected her relationship with her partner who would be funding her move to end either. At moments like this is pays to put things on hold for a moment while everyone readdresses their situation and commitments, to avoid either woman and their families being put in a difficult place. But understandably, if the woman in Italy is attempting to flee abuse, her situation still feels urgent, even after the demise of her relationship.
However much money she might or might not have though, the woman in the US is not obligated to fund her friend’s move now that her original funding source has fallen through. And as much as she might want to help, it’s not worth putting her family in financial hardship for the other woman to be able to move, unless she really thinks it’s the only option and is willing to do so. Currently her stance is no, she’s not able to pay – and her friend needs to take no for an answer and find another way.
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