Families with parents who are together can already have complicated dynamics, but merge two step families and you can be in for a whole world of trouble.

How would you handle your Mom’s boyfriend clearly favoring his son over you?

And your mother enabling him?

One girl recently sought Reddit wisdom for this, here are the details.

AITA for asking my mom’s boyfriend to do something he promised me he’d do?

I (18F) was 17 at the time.

My mom was always against me having boys in my room.

So when my boyfriend would come over, we had to either sit in the living room or leave the house completely.

My step-brother (12M at the time-let’s call him Bob) slept in the living room and is heavily babied.

Weird place for a kid to sleep, but sure.

I’m talking never held accountable for his actions, always having to be fed and taken care of, always been cleaned up after, you know the deal.

Well I wanted my then-boyfriend (17M at the time-let’s call him Tyler) to come over one day.

Knowing that Bob would be there, I asked my mom and her boyfriend both how we could work around the tv situation.

Mature for a teenager to try to get ahead of the situation.

Bob would want to play Xbox on the living room tv, but Tyler and I would only be able to watch tv in the living room and wouldn’t be able to do anything else.

It was supposed to be really hot outside and we didn’t want to have to go on a walk.

All three of us agreed that they would tell Bob that he had to go into our parents’ room and play on his dad’s PlayStation and would explain to him we couldn’t do anything else.

“Dad’s PlayStation” is very telling.

That was the deal.

A couple days later Tyler came over and we started watching TV in the living room.

Bob started whining and asking me why we had to do it there and couldn’t go into my room.

I told him he should go in our parents’ room like they told him to so we could watch tv and he could play video games. Win-win situation.

But he won’t stop arguing with me.

12-year-olds tend to do that.

I get annoyed and I go ask his dad if he can tell Bob to go play PS in his room like we agreed on.

Now I’ll admit my tone may have come off rude or yell-y because I was frustrated, but that happens a lot and we’ve talked about it before.

His dad starts screaming and cussing at me.

Uh, what?

He says “It’s his Xbox”, but we weren’t even using the Xbox?

Anyways I ask him, “You told me you were going to let us use the tv, why are you changing your mind now?”

But he just continued yelling at me and my mom just watched.

Yikes, an unforgivable offense.

Then Bob’s dad says that Tyler has to leave and walk home by himself, and he does.

My mom acted like this whole thing was my fault and made me apologize to her boyfriend.

Sounds pretty biased.

To this day I still don’t understand why this happened or why they acted like I was in the wrong.

AITA for asking them to do what they said and still haven’t realized?

Sheesh. Rough situation, but sounds like a pretty open and shut case. Let’s see if Reddit agreed.

Many folks cut right to the chase.

Some tapped into the boyfriend’s psychology.

And heavily criticized the mother.

And the brother wasn’t spared either.

He’s not the stepdad, and he’s certainly not the dad that stepped up.

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.