Man Called A 'Dog Hater' For Skipping His Sister's Child-Free New Year's Eve Party & Not Getting Her Dog A Christmas Gift
He simply followed his child-free, dog mom, sister's rules, but it's turned into a multi-layered family drama.
firn from Firn / Canva Pro Most of us do all we can to respect our family member's rules and boundaries. But sometimes even that effort isn't enough to avoid conflict, especially when there turns out to be more to those rules than mere boundary-setting.
A man on Reddit has been left mystified after this sort of situation arose with his sister over New Year's and created a huge conflict he's not sure how to manage.
The man has been called a 'dog hater' by his child-free 'dog mom' sister for skipping her New Year's Eve party.
In his Reddit post, the man wrote that while he loves his sister, they couldn't be more different. Over the past year, his "vocally child-free" sister transformed into "your classic dog mom."
Meanwhile, the Redditor claimed to be the complete opposite. He doesn't particularly like dogs and has a 2-year-old son, and their wildly different lifestyles have caused a bit of tension.
"When I had my kid it changed our relationship a bit," he wrote. "She tolerates (her words) my son," but has no real relationship with him.
When his sister asked to bring her dog to his house for Christmas, he said no.
He said his sister's "world revolves around the dog," but he is not a fan of dogs at all. "I do not own dogs and really don't want to be around them. I don't want them in my house," he wrote.
So when his sister asked if she could bring her dog to the family Christmas celebration he and his wife were hosting, he politely told her no.
"She complied and left it alone but was not happy about it and let me know that several times," he wrote. When New Year's rolled around, he found out just how "not happy" she really was.
This year, it was her turn to host a New Year's Eve gathering for their entire family, including not only his two-year-old son but other family members' kids as well. But at the last minute, she made a major rule change that forced him and another family member to change their plans.
When his sister abruptly made a rule that her New Year's party would be child-free, he skipped it and it turned into a major conflict.
"The day before New Year's Eve, she told me kids weren't welcome at her house," he wrote. "I was taken aback by this and asked why." His sister explained that alcohol would be present and she didn't think it would be "appropriate" to have children there.
He shared in another post that despite being "vocal about not liking kids since she was a teenager," she had never made such a rule for family gatherings before. Given the difficulty of finding a babysitter on New Year's, it left him and another family member little choice but to not attend.
"We reconsidered and opted to not go at all and respected my sister's wishes by keeping the kid at home," he wrote. "I let her know a half hour before the party started."
Suffice it to say, his sister did not take it as respectful.
He's now being called a 'dog hater' by his furious sister, who insists her dog should be treated equally to his son.
Just before midnight, "texts started coming in" from his sister calling him profane names, scolding him for not coming to the party, and calling him a "dog hater." She also said she was furious that she had bought his son a Christmas gift but he hadn't bought her dog anything.
He tried to talk to her but she wouldn't speak to him when he called. When they finally spoke a few days later, she admitted that she was angry and hurt that he wouldn't let her bring her dog to Christmas.
But her grievances went even further. "She wants me to accept her dog as family," he wrote. "Apparently the attention my kid gets from family (including my mom) bothers her."
They ended up at an impasse that is a frequent topic of conversation nowadays. "I told her [her dog] can be family to you, but it isn't going to be family to me," the man wrote in his post. "I told her my kid is more important than her dog."
Conflicting views about whether pet ownership is comparable to parenting are so prevalent that psychologists have even studied the issue.
In 2019, University of Central Florida researchers met with dozens of pet owners to study how they viewed the roles both their pets and themselves played in their households.
Interestingly, they found that these views were almost entirely dependent on whether or not the pet owners also had kids. Those who viewed their pets on the same level as kids and their "pet parent" lifestyles as equal to parents, tended to be child-free.
But those who did have children viewed their roles as parents and "pet moms or dads" as being two very different things, and the younger their children were, the more of a distinction between the two roles they drew.
Of course, members of either camp are unlikely to ever see eye-to-eye on whether being a parent or a "dog mom" are truly comparable. But this story does throw some of the distinctions between the two into stark relief — the sister could simply leave her dog at home on Christmas, while the Redditor couldn't do the same with his son on New Year's, for example.
And even "dog people" on Reddit found the sister's actions bizarre. "I’m very much a dog person," one user wrote, "[but] ... if someone demanded that I get their dog a present and picked a fight over it, I would laugh in their face."
The story also highlights the importance of respecting each other's differences and setting boundaries for the right reasons, not out of retaliation. As one dog-loving Redditor put it, "You both have boundaries, and boundaries have consequences."
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.