Real Life Stories of Epic Family Drama
It has been said that happy families are all alike, but unhappy families are each unhappy in their own way. If you’ve ever had the stress of dealing with an unruly family member, you’ll probably relate to these tales of family drama.
It’s easy enough to avoid friends who are total pains, but good luck cutting ties with family members who just don’t know when enough is enough.
The Golden Child
My friend got tired of her Golden Child Stepsister mooching off her Netflix account after they had a petty argument over the phone. The sister called my friend screaming at her about what a witch she is.
Talking about how she’ll never amount to anything, and how she’s just a waste of space—meanwhile, the sister is $60k in debt in student loans.
Oh, and she dropped out in her final year. My friend decided she’d had enough.
She then also changed the password to her Hulu and Amazon Prime accounts too, cutting her spoiled sister off further. After her sister exploded, my friend simply texted her saying, “You could always pay for your own accounts.” The sister’s response was so priceless.
“I don’t have any more money you witch! Sephora was having a sale so I’m tapped out! Screw you!” My friend and I are still laughing about this as we binge-watch shows on her accounts.
Ruining the Surprise
I recently found out that I am pregnant. I am overjoyed as I have always wanted a child of my own. I focused on my career in my life and since I am single, I wasn’t sure if having a baby would ever happen. I was excited to tell my family the big news.
My older sister has one child, my nephew who is seven. My brother is married but he and his wife have made it very clear they will always be child-free.
Last night we had a family dinner and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to share the news. Since this will be my only child I wanted to make it special and I also wanted to involve my nephew. I got a shirt that read “this is what an awesome big cousin looks like”.
I slipped away with my nephew before dinner and had a special moment with him while I told him he was going to have a cousin.
My nephew was very excited and put on the shirt. He put his sweater on over it and I told him he could take the sweater off whenever he wanted at dinner. In the middle of dinner, he took off the sweater and waited for someone to notice.
Soon my sister jumped up and excitedly screamed when she saw the shirt. But here’s where it all started to go wrong.
They all then immediately assumed it was my sister-in-law. I wasn’t hurt by them assuming this and I kind of expected it because she is married. I was hurt because my sister-in-law didn’t try to correct them. She just went along with it and began to rub her flat belly while laughing.
I must have looked completely hurt because my mother yelled at me to stop being rude and to congratulate them.
I tried to explain that I was the one who gave my nephew the shirt. They all didn’t even hear me and just continued to fawn over my sister-in-law. My brother stood frozen in shock just asking his wife if she was serious. I got up and went home.
I received multiple texts at this point from them telling me what a jerk I am for making this all about me.
They said things like it wasn’t my sister-in-law’s fault that I was jealous. I didn’t reply to anything and just cried myself to sleep. This morning my sister-in-law must have finally let it slip that she is not pregnant.
They have now all called me to apologize saying that they just got caught up in the moment. But they had to add in a cruel little twist.
They said I shouldn’t have left the dinner and that it’s my fault I wasn’t clear enough that I was the one who is pregnant. My mom said I could have a redo dinner so I can get it right and they will all act surprised.
My sister-in-law sent me a message that said that the way I chose to announce was how she wanted to do it if she ever got pregnant.
She said that since she is not ever having a child, she just wanted to experience what the moment would be like. She also said I can have my chance at the redo dinner. I told them no and that I will not be doing a redo.
Every single person has now told me I am being selfish and a jerk because I won’t let them make it right. To me, there’s no fixing this.
I will eventually forgive them but I don’t want to do a second announcement so they feel better.
It’s Tradition
Back when my awful sister was planning her wedding, her even worse mother-in-law wanted to be a part of it. Unfortunately for everyone involved, this woman wanted her family traditions involved.
The food…okay, the giant line dance…okay, but then she sprang the big one on my poor mother. It was apparently a tradition in her family that unmarried older daughters had to do a dance in a pig trough at the reception.
Well, my sister and brother-in-law thought that would be hilarious. Being that I was the only unmarried older daughter…So funny. My poor mom was getting torn down by this mother-in-law—because it was just a JOKE. That was repeated and insisted on in every single phone call.
Meanwhile, my mom is just trying to protect me from that spectacle and wasn’t telling me.
But finally, I saw her crying and she told me what was going on. But there was one thing they weren’t counting on. At that point, I was only a short time out of a very horrible relationship. I didn’t remember how to say “no” yet, but I did remember how to say “I’m taking you all down with me.” And oh boy, did I ever come up with a genius plan.
I told the mother-in-law that I’d be happy to do that dance in front of her entire family…undressed. And only undressed. Suddenly, it wasn’t so funny anymore. Eventually, they all shut up about it, but that was the last time that woman ever spoke to me. It’s been 12 years, by the way.
Passing Down a Legacy
So my fiancée and I have been together for about three years total and engaged for almost a year. We are planning to get married after the baby arrives. She’s seven months pregnant and we are having a boy.
Here’s where the drama starts. My grandfather passed in a heroic but devastating way when I was young. Since then, I have always wanted to name my first son after him.
He was my mom’s dad, and she wanted this even more than me. She has always, always stressed to me how important and meaningful this would be, but I’ve always wanted to do this as well. My grandfather didn’t have the stereotypical old-man name but actually had a name that is still common today.
His name is also actually my fiancée’s dad’s name.
My fiancée never spoke about her dad other than telling me when we first started dating that she does not have a relationship with him and wants to leave it at that. She also told me a shortened name of his name which sounds similar but is different to my grandfather’s.
But anyway, I never pressed her about it. I didn’t connect this at the time, but she never addressed my grandfather by name.
She just called him my grandfather. However, I thought this was normal because she’s never met him and that’s what I call him.
I can’t forget her reply when I told her what I wanted to name our son. She said no. I couldn’t believe she said no so flat-out like that. I kept trying to convince her, letting her know how important and meaningful this was to me and the name is still common today.
It’s not like I wanted to name him an ugly or outdated name. I found her crying a couple times though and she eventually broke down and told me that that was her father’s name too and her father seriously mistreated her from the ages of 12-18, when she left for college.
I felt horrible and of course, told her we won’t call our son that. I love the name and I love my grandfather.
I miss him terribly and would love to honor him in this way, but I love my fiancée more than anything and I don’t want her to spend the rest of her life having that name in regular use. I also don’t want it to feel like to her or anyone else that we named our son after her father.
Selfishly, it really sucks that we won’t be naming our son this name.
But I am trying to come to terms with that. But that’s not the problem really—my family’s reaction was 100 times worse. My parents and especially my mom and extended family on mom’s side as well as my siblings have been doing everything imaginable to try to convince us to call our son this name. My fiancée ended up actually telling my mom what happened and why we won’t use this name.
This was hard for her to do because other than her own mom and therapist, she had never told anyone else about what happened. My mom acted sympathetic and understanding but ended up telling everyone else in our family what happened.
Now everyone is contacting us to offer “support” and console my fiancée but also to tell her about how wonderful my grandfather was.
They keep saying how the name would be after him and not her father and what a great name it is. I put my foot down (or so I thought) and told everyone that enough was enough and they had to stop contacting us. We blocked a lot of people on Facebook and a lot of phone numbers.
This was a few months ago though, and now that the baby will be here in just two months, it’s gotten so much worse.
People have actually started referring to our son with the name. My mom made a post with a lot of photos of baby gifts and equipment and talked about how she was soooo excited to meet her grandson “______” who will be named after her father. My dad shared the post as well as most of her family.
My siblings made their own posts about how they’re excited to meet their nephew, calling him by that name.
100% they are trying to name him that so that when he’s born, everyone will already think that’s his name and we’ll think we might as well just name him that officially. I have spoken to my parents and my mom privately so many times.
I also gave her an earful when she blabbed my fiancée’s secret. But it doesn’t seem like anything is working.
My fiancée is distressed and cries almost every day, and every time she goes on social media. We did change her phone number though so that my family would no longer be able to text her. I’m just not sure what to do from here.