This Woman Wants to Know If She Was Wrong for Humiliating Her Brother-In-Law in Public

Now, just reading the headline for this post, you might be thinking this woman was in the wrong. Humiliating anyone isn’t typically the way to go, as it has more downsides than upsides, but like with all of the posts on the subreddit Am I The A**hole, you might want to hear her out.

This woman begins by saying that her brother-in-law is a know-it-all and blowhard who isn’t as smart as his family has always promised him he was. She’s annoyed by his misogynistic tendencies and his lack of ability to hear anyone but himself. He also never admits when he’s wrong.

AITA for letting my friend “publicly humiliate” my BIL in front of dozens? Husband thinks I should take some responsibility.

Obligatory throwaway and also this happened about a year ago. It’s resurfacing again because BIL has made it a point to ignore me since and my husband wants me to apologize once and for all.

So some background: my BIL, 43, sees himself as an expert in all things and grew up with the kind of family that always praised him for being “brilliant” (he’s really not).

Personally I’ve always disliked him because he’s arrogant and always calls me “over emotional” whenever I disagree with him on anything. Instead of owning up to his mistakes when he’s caught, he’ll also pretend like he never said it or you just misunderstood him or you’re too “irrational” for him to continue the convo.

On our anniversary dinner last year, BIL was sat close to me and further down the table was one of my good friends who happened to be in town.

Well he was spouting some major BS about stock markets this time. He had just gotten really into investing and none of us really knew what he was talking about. I couldn’t pinpoint why it was wrong but it all sounded pretty made up to me.

This is the part where I could’ve been TA. So my friend is actually a fairly famous financial strategist. She has been watching stock markets for over 2 decades. She’s constantly on TV and her face has been on the cover of industry magazines.

Anyways, I asked BIL to repeat what he said to my friend (she was too far away to hear organically). I definitely did channel that initial conversation and I did NOT introduce her as an expert. I won’t drone on but you can imagine what happened. My friend refuted a few of his points fairly nicely, corrected some of his glaring misconceptions, he then blew up, told her to stop misquoting him and read more, and she finally dropped the bomb of what she does for a living. He mumbled about everyone “overreacting” over things he supposedly never said (despite everyone hearing him say those things minutes earlier) then stayed quiet.

It was glorious to see but it was also pretty apparent BIL was beyond humiliated because he made a lame excuse about how his stomach hurts and left dinner not 15 min later.

It’s been a long time now but BIL avoids me like the plague and my husband wants us to resolve things. He thinks I should take the initiative to apologize because I was the one that started it by redirecting the convo to someone I knew would be an expert over BIL. AITA for what I did? I didn’t need to make that convo happen, but it just seemed so perfect at the time I couldn’t resist. But I admit had I not done it none of this would be happening and it does feel petty looking back.

AITA?

Many people say she’s NTA (Not The A**hole), but if she egged him on, she might want to apologize anyway, just because they’re family and it might make things easier.

Image Credit: Reddit

While other people say she’s NTA because she did him a favor in calling out his narcissistic behavior, something no one who has “cared” about him has ever done before then.