＂My Sister Betrayed Me, But AITA？＂ Matt Walsh Responds
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
209.27957
Summary
It's Am I the Asshole Day on the Matt Walsh Show, and we've got a bunch of questions submitted by the Sweet Babies Gang. We'll be looking at some submitted questions and answering them on the show.
Transcript
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All right, it's Am I the Asshole Day on the Matt Walsh Show.
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And we've got a couple submitted questions from the Sweet Baby Gang,
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and then we're going to go to Reddit and look at some from there for them.
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When I was younger, my best friend lived next door and we hung out all the time.
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As we got older, however, he started to act less Christian
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I grew up homeschooled in a Christian family while my friend was public schooled.
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The older we got, the worse he seemed to behave.
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When we were eight years old and an adult wasn't in the room,
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he'd swear like a sailor and talk trash about my sister.
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Whenever I told him not to talk like that, he'd throw a fit and storm home.
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Something else he'd do was try and show me inappropriate YouTube videos
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After a while, I decided that I was fed up and I wasn't going to deal with him anymore.
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I stopped hanging out with him eight years ago and we've never spoken since.
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Some people thought that it wasn't Christian-like to ditch a friend like that,
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He seemed like a stumbling block in my relationship with God.
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What do you think? Was I overreacting or did I make the right choice?
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The people criticizing you, do they think that you owe lifelong friendship to this guy?
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Like you're tethered to him forever because you happened to hang out when you were kids?
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Look, the fact that most people, I don't know how old you currently are,
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but most people don't remain friends with the people that they knew early in childhood their
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whole lives. I mean, there are a few examples. There are some friends of mine who I've known
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since elementary school, but it's uncommon. It generally, like the vast majority, let's put it
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that way. 99.9% of everybody who you considered a friend or a friendly acquaintance anyway in your
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elementary school, middle school years, even high school, you're not going to continue relationships
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with them. Part of the reason is that when you're a kid, friendships are, first of all,
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it's built, a lot of it is built around just sort of like, there's a certain element or kind of
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default to it. You're friends with somebody because they live next door or you went to the same school
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or you went to the same, you're in the same class. You kind of bond over. It doesn't take much. It
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doesn't take much for kids to bond. I mean, I have, you know, my kids will, they'll go to the
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playground and, and I have this conversation all the time with my, with one of my kids. They'll say,
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oh, I made a friend at the playground. And then I'll say, oh, really? What was their name?
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Uh, I don't know. So they make a friend without even knowing the person's name because for them,
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friend just means like you both are going down the same, you both are playing on the same jungle gym or
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something and you talk to each other, not your friends.
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You like cherry soda? I like cherry soda. We'll be bench friends.
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Which is great. You know, it's one of the wonderful things about childhood innocence is
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that you can make friends that way. But what that means is that as you grow older, you're going to
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find that just because you're friends with this person doesn't mean that you have any kind of
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values in common. Uh, and so it's very easy to grow apart at that point. And as you get older,
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you know, uh, you can't be friends with someone anymore just because you were both on the same
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jungle gym. It's like, you need, you need a little bit more to maintain that friendship. Uh,
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you need some to have some basic values in common, just something there. Certainly a shared sense
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of respect, uh, is necessary to begin with. So no, you just, uh, this is just a natural, natural,
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uh, progression of things and nothing to be concerned about. Okay. From Danielle says,
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I'm not inviting one of my sisters to my wedding to make an extremely long story short. I got a
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temporary restraining order against my ex-boyfriend because he was stalking me, i.e. showing up at
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my work, following me to the beach, breaking into my house while drunk and coming into my bedroom at
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2am. At the hearing to make the TRO permanent, I submitted evidence of the harassment, text messages,
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including him admitting to coming into my house, eyewitness statements, et cetera. And he submitted
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witness statements attesting to his character, as well as a character assassination of me from my
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sister who doesn't know him at all. Claiming that I do this to all my boyfriends. I dated her friend
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for a period, which I ended due to sexual abuse, as well as claiming that I'm a far right extremist
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liar. The judge in liberal California decided that my sister's statement outweighed all my evidence
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and denied me a permanent restraining order. I have not talked to my sister since then.
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I have since met my fiance and I'm planning our wedding. Am I the a**hole for not inviting my sister
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to the wedding? Well, based on all the information you've given me and assuming that everything you've told
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me here is correct, which I have no reason to think that it isn't. No, you're not the a**hole
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for not inviting your sister to the wedding. I'm sure you realize, though, that not inviting a family
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member, especially an immediate family member, to your wedding is one of the most dramatic
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statements you can make about a relationship. And the statement you're making is that the relationship
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is over. So there's no coming back from this, as long as you realize that. There's no coming back
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from it. Maybe like 30 years from now or something, you guys could try to repair these broken bonds.
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But in the near term and short term and even, you know, the immediate long term, there's no repairing
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it. This is like a severing of the relationship. But I would say, based on the information you've
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given me, it's not really you who severed the relationship. She did that because, look, there are
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plenty of cases where men are unfairly accused of, you know, of being, of harassing and all the rest
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of it. They're being unfairly accused. They're being falsely accused. But in this case, if this
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guy's breaking into your house in the middle of the night and coming into your bedroom, I mean,
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this is like, this is criminal activity. This is, of course, you should feel unsafe around this
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person. This is like, this to me goes beyond, this goes far beyond harassing. This is like actual
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breaking and entering and physical intimidation inside your own house. Like, really, he should
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be going to jail for that. But if that's not going to happen, then a restraining order is the least of
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it. And the fact that she would side with the other guy, potentially putting your safety at risk
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is pretty extreme. So that's already an extreme kind of severing of the relationship has already
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happened. And all you're doing, I suppose, by not inviting her to the wedding is kind of
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Reddit. My son is 18 and will graduate from high school in a few months. Lately, he's been fighting
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a lot with my wife and I. My wife isn't his biological mother, but she's been his mom since he
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was three. A week ago, they got into a big fight, and my wife got frustrated and yelled at him that she
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wasn't his mother. Since then, he's been completely cold to her, and when he does have to address her,
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he does so by her first name. My wife confiscated the keys to his car last night, but I gave them
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back this morning because he didn't curse at her. He just called her by her name. Besides, I don't want
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to drive all the kids to school and then pick them up. My wife is upset and said I need to support her
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and talk to him. I think it's pointless. He's 18. If he doesn't want to call her mom, we can't really
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make him. My wife says that I'm being a lazy asshole that just doesn't want to have a conversation with
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him. Maybe I am an asshole, but I did talk to him. He said he's not going to call her mom again
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ever, but what am I supposed to do about it? Even if we find a way to force him to, he's going to
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school at a state, so what do we do then? Just seems like a pointless battle that will only create
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more animosity, but maybe that's just what a lazy asshole would say. Obviously not the asshole in
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this case. We talked about just a second ago, there are things you can do in a relationship that
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severed that relationship and there's no coming back from them. Sometimes it's not even something you do.
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It can be something that you say. Most of the time, people in relationships and family dynamics,
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you can get angry and say something you regret and apologize for it. There might be some hurt
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feelings. There may be some emotional injury that happens, but it can be healed and repaired.
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There are things that you can say, and even though they were just words, you can't come back from them
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because you've expressed something that you actually think. And the other person is not
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going to be able to just forget that you have revealed this thought. And this would be one of
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them. Having your mother, who's maybe not your biological mother, but is your mom, say to you,
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I'm not your mother. Yeah, that's one of those things. He's never going to forget that, ever.
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You'll never forget that. He'll be 70 years old and he'll still think about that. And it forever
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changes that relationship. There is no coming back from it. Consequences for your actions. You said
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that you're not his mother. Now he's going to call you by your first name. It's going to forever alter
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that relationship. That's consequences. Reap what you sow. FAFO, as the kids would say.
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Finally, am I the a**hole for criticizing my roommate's grooming habits harshly? Hey, all.
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I currently live in a rented apartment with my roommate. Recently, we've been running into some
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issues because of his grooming. I occasionally notice a funk coming off of him, and a few times
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it got bad enough to ask him to take a shower because it was distracting me and grossing me out.
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He apologized and said he had a lessened sense of smell, which made him less likely to realize he
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needed a shower. Sounded kind of BS to me, but he showered, so I didn't think anything of it.
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Our apartment has two full bathrooms in the hallway, and I ordered a bidet for mine. The
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other day, I was installing it, and he happened upon me doing it. He asked what it was for,
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and I explained. He chuckled and said, you gay guys are something else. I laughed and said,
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it's less invasive than toilet paper and more effective. He laughed and said, yeah, but I
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don't use that either. What? Something clicked in my head, and I asked for clarification.
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Apparently, he never wipes. Why am I reading this? He says he thinks it's gross to rub his
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ass with a piece of paper that doesn't really do anything. He said, no straight guy does,
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Okay. So the a-hole here is, uh, is the roommate for not practicing basic human hygiene. It's also
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this other guy for telling us about this, and it's also my producer McKenna for sending me this,
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am I the a-hole submission in the first place. So a lot, there's a lot of a-holes involved,
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uh, in this particular story, and we're just gonna, um, stop there. I can't imagine. It goes on,
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actually goes on for, like, another five paragraphs, this whole, if you want the whole saga
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of this guy not wiping himself, you can go to Reddit and find it, but, uh, you're not gonna hear it
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from me. All right. Talk to you tomorrow. Godspeed.