My friend “Debra” 55-year-old woman have known each other since school days. Debra recently got engaged to her BF after dating him for 2 years. This is going to be Debra’s 6th marriage, and the wedding took place today. I was supposed to be her maid of honor again, so I was looking forward to it. 2 days ago, I called Debra and told her that I won’t be able to attend the wedding.

My ill Mother recently broke her leg and needed someone to stay with her for a while.

Debra was a bit sad, but she understood my emergency situation. She made a joke about how she’ll have to drink double the wine to make up for my absence.

I chuckled and joked back, “Don’t worry, I’ll just come to your 7th wedding.” The call went dead silent and she just hung up on me.

A few hrs later, I received several aggressive texts from the Bridesmaids. They said I was a B for making such a cruel joke, and that Debra had called them crying about how I “made fun of her.”

I feel bad and I’m wondering if I went too far.

Here are what netizens think:

• It’s not the nicest thing to say to someone when you are the made of honor and you are dipping out last minute for a low-level emergency 

• My dad’s aunt was married 8 times for a similar reason (she wouldn’t live with them before marriage) One of those marriages was actually to the third husband, again, but then she divorced him a second time. I always thought maybe she was just a huge optimist and thought each time “hey maybe having a man in my space will be alright this time!”

• Are we in the same family? Lol my aunt just had her 6th wedding and this was her reasoning. Let’s ignore the fact that she’s has in fact cheated on all the other husbands but it’s a sin to not be married. LOL

• At how many marriages does it become OK to joke “LOL this one will fail too!” right before it?

My daughter is 22 and she wants to move out soon. She is planning on moving out with her best friend. It doesn’t make much sense economically.

My daughter doesn’t have a high salary and the way things are going if she moves out she will take years to save up for down payment. She wants to buy a home and living with us she can save a lot of money.

Another factor Is that her best friend has a boyfriend and I have heard her best friend talking about moving in with him. So it could also be a situation where my daughter will have to find a new roommate after a year. It doesn’t make sense at all.

We were talking about moving and she asked me what I thought of it. I told her that it didn’t make sense financially if she wanted to move out and she will have to delay buying a house. I also mentioned that she could have to find a new roommate if her friend got serious with her boyfriend.

She got upset and irritated. She said she would deal with it and she ended the conversation quickly.

My husband thinks we should just let her make her own decisions and mistakes.

Here are what netizens think:

Your daughter has an opportunity here to spread her wings and experience some independence. You are falling for entirely natural parental instincts to shield your child from any possible negative that might happen.

What I’m seeing here is a sort of struggle toward maturity. Mature enough to want to move out but still wants approval from parents for what she does–to the extent of getting unreasonable when it’s not forthcoming. Possibly moving out after being advised not to will help her become her own person. We can hope.

When I get asked for advice by my adult daughters, I generally always start with, “Well, it’s your decision and I will support you no matter what you decide.” Then I give them the pros and cons as I see them. 

I am the breadwinner, my wife is a stay-at-home wife. We have 3 kids so the house is a little too messy oftentimes. My wife does her best to keep up with the cleaning and keeping the house tidy and I feel for her, I really do so I told her she doesn’t have to clean up all the time since the kids are running up and down all day and making huge messes, I did tell her that she only has to make sure the house is clean when we have guests over and she agreed with me.

Well, the other day I brought over some friends from work and when I opened the door all I could see was an utter mess, food and toys and clutter everywhere. I was shocked I was embarrassed and just mortified that my friends saw my home looking like this. Also I have a couple of guys who came over for the first time so the first impression must’ve been horrible to them.

I took the guests into the least messy part of the house and my friends kept giving me weird looks and making indirect comments about the state of home.

I was livid, I waited till they left then went into the bedroom to see that my wife was actually sleeping, I woke her up to ask why she didn’t tidy up the house knowing I was going to bring friends over. She said she didn’t know but I sent her a text letting her know and she said she didn’t see it. I told her it seemed like she did see the text but decided to ignore it? She said no but she wasn’t feeling well and had a headache so she thought of getting an hour long nap. I told her that it was so so embarrassing that the house looked like this when my friends came over and that this was avoidable had she cleaned up and prepared the house for the guests.

She argued that first of all, the kids are the ones causing this mess and second of all, it was my fault for not checking twice with her and making sure the house was ready for guests. I thought that was ridiculous because she was basically blaming me for her own actions (or lack of) which I didn’t appreciate so much. I told her it was embarrassing and yes she gets part of the blame for the house looking like a complete mess and being out of control like that. She called me a jerk then walked out of the room and avoided speaking to me about it insisting that I’m the one at fault in this situation.

Am I?

I feel like more relevant context is needed here so 1. The reason I only texted was that this is our usual way of communication so it seemed unusual that she didn’t check her phone for any texts.

My kids are under 10 and my oldest is basically glued to her tablet and does nothing to help out.

My wife and I rarely argue about the guests coming over since we would at least have the living room ready any time someone shows up.