“Sister Torn Between Loyalty and Burden: Why She Draws the Line at Helping Her Alcoholic Brother-in-Law Get Home”
The story got a lot of attention online and touched on a couple of very sensitive topics, including family boundaries and alcoholism. At the time of writing, the author’s post has 13k upvotes and over 900 comments. Many members of the AITAH online community felt like they wanted to share some advice and support the OP. Unfortunately, we were unable to reach out to the author of the story for further comment because her account got suspended.
The majority of readers felt very strongly that the woman did nothing wrong by sticking to the plan and getting on the plane. From their perspective, it wouldn’t have been right for her to sacrifice her holiday because her brother-in-law, an adult, continues to make very questionable decisions.
This isn’t to say that addiction isn’t serious—in reality, alcoholism is a major problem. However, tolerating consistently disruptive behavior only exacerbates the issue instead of pushing someone to take the steps they need to get sober and take control of their life.
Enabling someone’s addiction isn’t healthy for you or for them
Sometimes, letting someone deal with the natural consequences of their actions—instead of rushing in to save them—is a lesson they need. Being an enabler isn’t a good thing.
Solidarity and empathy are essential parts of living a good life, but you also have to be somewhat practical about where your time and energy are best spent. In short, the woman had to ask herself whether staying behind to help her sister and her kids would have been the right thing to do.
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