Post by Anusha (@Anusha)

I love reading the AITA (Am I The A-hole) forums! Here's one enjoyed reading:

AITA for telling my ex he can’t come say goodbye to “our” elderly dog after he left me for a 19-year-old?

I (40F) was with my ex (40M) for almost 8 years.
I’ll start with the part that makes me the a*hole. When our relationship began, there was a few months of overlap with my previous relationship. The circumstances were complicated, but I still own that it was wrong. Ironically, that ended up becoming important later.

The first several years with my ex were genuinely wonderful. We adopted a third dog together after she was abandoned before Christmas, bought a house together, and I truly thought we’d spend the rest of our lives together.

Financially, things became very one-sided. I started making significantly more money and eventually paid for basically everything: the mortgage, utilities, groceries, vacations, nights out, even buying him a truck outright when his car died. He always promised he’d contribute more once things got better.
Instead, things slowly got worse.

He started working a job where he’d stay after work drinking with coworkers before driving home. Every time I brought up the drinking or the drinking and driving, somehow the conversation would turn into how messy the house was. I’d end up apologizing while nothing changed. Eventually I sat him down and showed him how much money I’d spent supporting us because my savings were disappearing. He got a second job and that’s when everything changed.

He became distant. He lost weight. He smiled at his phone constantly. Every cliché warning sign suddenly appeared. While I was away on a work trip, he asked if he could spend the day at a theme park with a female coworker and one of our friends. I had never had any reason not to trust him, so I said yes. That night my Ring camera sent me a notification. I watched this “female coworker” leave my house. He gave her a long hug and kissed her on the head before she left.
I called him immediately and accused him of cheating.
He insisted I was crazy and nothing was going on.

The irony? We’d started our own relationship with overlapping partners. I recognized the signs because we’d literally lived them.

When I got home, he told me he thought we should break up. We tried to work things out, but every discussion about this coworker became a fight.

Then I learned she wasn’t just a coworker.
She was 19 years old.
He was 40.

I told him that continuing the relationship with her was destroying ours. His exact response was that she was “non-negotiable.” I tried to convince myself I could live with that because I loved him, but eventually I couldn’t anymore and I told him to leave.
Literally days after he moved out, I saw them making out together at a local bar.
So…I wasn’t crazy after all.

(Small petty victory: the bar ended up banning her from a tip I made, because she was underage and he had apparently been buying her drinks there.)

The breakup absolutely wrecked me. I unintentionally lost a lot of weight, became severely depressed, needed surgery during that time, and spent over a year barely functioning. We’d occasionally talk, but I’d eventually block him because every conversation reopened the wound.

Fast forward two years.

I found something sentimental of his while cleaning and returned it along with a playlist I’d made. We’ve been talking again, but only casually. Honestly, talking to him has made me realize he hasn’t really changed. He still avoids accountability, has never given me what I’d consider a genuine apology, and still seems like the same person who walked away.

Now here’s the issue.
The dog we adopted together all those years ago is now 17 and nearing the end of her life.
He says he wants to be there when she’s euthanized so he can say goodbye.

Part of me understands that he loved her once.
The other part of me feels like he walked out on all of us. He rarely checked on her after leaving. He left me to pick up every piece of our life while immediately starting a relationship with a teenager. Now that things apparently haven’t worked out as well as he hoped over the last two years, he’s back in contact.

So…would I be the asshole if I told him he doesn’t get to come say goodbye?

Source: CharlotteDobreYouTube Reddit

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