I (25F) have been with my GF (25F) for nearly 6 years. Her brother (20M) is 5 years younger. Very soon after getting together, I moved in with my girlfriend who lived in her parents guest house. We moved out about a year and a half ago. For about 4 years, we all kinda lived together, as my gf and I would constantly hang out in her family’s home. We were really close with her brother during this time. My girlfriend and her brother had a complicated upbringing; their father was abusive, racist, misogynistic jerk and universally hated by anyone with the misfortune of meeting him. Especially by his children. Being raised by him instilled some problematic behaviors in both my girlfriend and her brother. When I first met my gf, she had really bad anger issues (not violent, just bad emotional regulation) and just a generally twisted worldview. I had told her that her mean streaks made me not want to be around her and she took that to heart and made the conscious choice to work on herself. Her brother was 15 when we first met. At that point, he also had really bad anger issues and poor coping mechanisms, but a lot of that anger was targeted towards his dad, which made sense. He hated his dad for being a racist, misogynistic piece of shit and identified and criticized all of his dads bad actions. There were a few times that made it clear that his dad had done some decent damage to him. He had his mom clean his room and do his laundry well after he was 18, claiming that she liked to do it. He never bought anyone a birthday or holiday gift. My gf, myself, and his mom would typically be responsible for buying gifts for others to be “from” him. That’s acceptable at 14, but less acceptable at 20. One time he was talking about his gf not answering his texts in a timely manner. He explained that his gf had told him in advance that she was going to an event and wouldn’t be super communicative. He said that it was still upsetting because his texts could be an emergency. I asked him, if that was his reasoning, if he would be okay if his gf was looking at his texts, making sure they weren’t urgent, and then not answering. He said no because it would be easy to just quickly answer. Myself, my gf, and their mom were all explaining why that is problematic and wrong but he didn’t seem to get it. He never liked showing vulnerability. He would try to conceal any emotions he felt. Often hid behind very flawed “logic.” These behaviors aren’t completely unusual for a teenage boy. For the most part, he was a good kid with a kind soul. A year or so into me knowing him, his pet bearded dragon got suddenly ill. She wouldn’t eat and was very lethargic. BIL was devastated. Her brother and I both wanted to get her to a vet. My gf and her mom were against the idea of even mentioning the pets illness to the dad, let alone asking to take it to the vet. Their father was against taking animals to the vet, primarily out of negligence and greed. I immediately was planning ways we could secretly get the lizard to a vet without their dad realizing. This upset my girlfriend and their mom, but I didn’t care. It was important to her brother so I was willing to fight for it. I booked an appointment with a reptile vet and we even asked their dad if we could take her, and he agreed with zero reservations. Unfortunately, the bearded dragon passed before her appointment. My BIL was devastated. He tried to hide it, but it really affected him. Their dad was known for being cold and saying unintentionally hurtful things in situations like this. Their dad told my BIL that the lizard probably died because he had gotten a girlfriend and the lizard knew that he didn’t need her anymore. He meant this earnestly, genuinely thinking it would be comforting somehow. For years, we would reference this comment, as it was such an obviously absurd, cruel, and odd thing to say to someone going through the loss of a pet. Throughout the rest of his teen-hood, my girlfriend and I were sudo-parents to him, buying him clothes and toiletries, driving him around, and trying to guide him through entering adulthood.

When he was 17, he got a job at his gfs family’s construction business. He would tell us stories of his coworkers being incredibly racist, sexist, homophobic, and every other atrocious thing a person could be. We expressed our concern that him fraternizing with people like that would change him but we understood that he couldn’t control his coworkers. Since he started his job, we have noticed some shifts in his personality and behavior. Basically, we’ve had to see him slowly get red pilled. He stopped listening to our advice, even when it was as basic as “get health insurance” after cutting his finger nearly off at work or “get car insurance coverage for professional use” after a trailer broke and fucked up his new truck on the job. He would always say problematic things ironically to be funny, with the joke being that we all knew it was wrong. Typical teenage boy humor. But those jokes started being less and less ironic. He started being more friendly to his Dad, even sometimes defending him. There were some conversations had in these years that made us really concerned about the path he was on, but there wasn’t much we could do to stop it. November 2024, we had begged him to vote, emphasizing how important it was. He had plenty of time to, but he procrastinated until the last day he could. He still had plenty of time to go after work, but he claimed that he couldn’t because he had to go to store and that was just too much to ask of him. 3 years ago, we brought home a foster dog named Arthur from the rescue that we worked at. When we first met Arthur, he was thought to be dying. We were set to be his hospice foster. My BIL wasn’t fond of the idea of bringing a dying dog into the home, since that’s an emotionally turbulent journey to go on. Fortunately, he had been misdiagnosed. I took a video of the first day we brought him home. In the video, as we are walking Arthur inside, I tell my BIL “when we get inside, we get to tell y’all good news!” And he responded with “he’s not dying?” I said “spoilers!” And he said “I was talking to father today and told him that I hoped Arthur wasn’t dying, so that we can have a long-term dog.” Within moments, this 100lb German shepherd was rubbing up on my BIL legs, with my BIL calling him Bubba and saying “you’re so cute; I love you.”

Arthur was primarily mine and my gfs dog but he slept in the main house, so for nearly 2 years, he was the whole family’s dog. He was so beloved. Arthur wasn’t dying, but he was an old man who had a tough life. He went through a few health scares throughout the years. 7 months into living with us, a single day after he was deemed heartworm-free, we found out that he had a chemo-resistant, fast spreading cancer in his toe. Luckily, we had caught it fast enough (actually, it was my BIL who noticed Arthur’s paw looking inflamed) and with a single toe amputation, he was cancer free. It was a miracle. About a year later, my BILs GF moved into the household, bringing along their dog. This dog and Arthur lived together for several months, and they became very close. In October 2023, my gf and I moved out, but Arthur would occasionally see their dog when we would all go to visit. In May of 2024, my gf and I adopted another dog. A couple weeks later, our vet found a lump in Arthur’s spleen. After thousands of dollars of diagnostics, we were told that there was a 96% chance that the lump was B cell lymphoma. Our oncologist said that with a splenectomy, he was very confident that Arthur would have a complete remission. We spent $7,000 and maxed out our care credit cards to afford the surgery. After the surgery, his oncologist told us that he was the diagnostics were wrong, and that unfortunately, Arthur had hemangiosarcoma, which is a violent, fast-spreading cancer with no cure. However, they only saw a microscopic amount in his spleen. There has genuinely never been a documented case of HSA found this early. Many owners don’t find it until 5lb masses burst in their dog’s spleen, requiring emergency surgery, and they still live for years. We decided to go through with chemo, which should’ve resulted in keeping the cancer at bay for potentially the rest of Arthur’s life. We financially ruined ourselves and had been on an indescribable rollercoaster of pain and hope. It was all worth it for Arthur. He was truly our everything. When we told BIL, he had questioned the point of going through the process of surgery and chemo. We gave him the benefit of the doubt without a second thought, because it was a fair question. In different circumstances, chemo wouldn’t have been the right decision. Since it was a complicated situation, we took his questioning at face value. We also explained that since we had moved out, Arthur had become more active and lively. In October, he received imaging that showed that the chemo wasn’t working, and that the cancer had spread to his liver. Our vet said that Arthur likely had months. I can’t convey how absolutely broken we were to hear this. We work in animal care; our animals are our everything. I would’ve done anything for him. Arthur was due for updated imaging in early December, but we decided to get it done a few weeks early to be safe. We then discovered that his cancer had aggressively grown to the point where the tumors were deforming his liver and were at risk of bursting at any moment. There are no words to describe how utterly broken we were. We set a date for his euthanasia for 10 days out; we just had to hope that he would hold on until then. We made every day about him and did all of his favorite things. We made sure he got to see his favorite people and dogs. We had asked my BIL to set up a day to bring their dog by to say bye to Arthur. We had generally talked about them coming over Sunday, but nothing had been set in stone. He was set to be euthanized on Thursday. I don’t want to editorialize this, so I’m just going to copy paste the interaction. I’ll be redacting names. My GF: M BIL’s GF: J BIL’s Dog: K

Sunday, December 8th, 5:57PM:

BIL: When do you expect to be off/ home?

Me: M’s home now. I'll be off around 7:30

BIL: So would planning to arrive at your house at 8 be accurate?

Me: Oh I didn't know if y'all were coming over for sure. I would say 8:30. Can yall bring K?

BIL: Oh, that is pretty late for us, and we had kept coming over in mind but had no idea on the actual operable time window, I have to be at work early tomorrow so it probably doesn't work out tonight, we can try to find another time to hang.

Me: Okay, that's chill. What time frame is better for yall (to keep in mind in the next few days)

BIL: Really our only slots are saturday, and not too late sunday due to our work schedules

Me: So yall wouldn't be able to meet up so Arthur can see K before Thursday?

BIL: Probably not, I don't have set hours so I can't ever say for sure and J gets off pretty late during the week and has meetings and trainings early in the days so it probably just doesn't line up as unfortunate as that is

Me: I'm just going to say this, because I am severely disappointed- but my feelings aren't what's important here. You know M. Losing Arthur is going to be the hardest, worst thing she has ever gone through. It will utterly and completely wreck her. You have the opportunity to do something to ease just the slightest bit of that pain, and you don't want to do it because it will cause you to be slightly inconvenienced. I hope you know that M would move heaven and earth for you. She would put herself through hell for you without a second thought. Because she loves you. And time and time again you have shown that there is very little that you would do for her if it meant even the slightest bit of sacrifice from you. And that sucks, but this situation is different. This week will stay with M forever. That's not me being dramatic. You should know how devastated she will be. You should want to sacrifice something if it meant bringing her comfort. And although my emotions in this situation are FAR less important than M, I do feel like it's fair to point out how I acted when your pet was dying. I fought your mother for you. I fought M for you. Your mom was really upset with me and said some really unkind things to M about me because I wasn't going to let either of them stop me from fighting for you. M and I had to buy a new blender after we used it to make your lizard a smoothie that we could syringe feed her with for days. And we paid for all of it ourselves when we had nothing. And if a similar situation happened right now, I would do it again. Because showing up for people during times like that, like this, is how you show people that you give a damn about them. M deserves better.

BIL: Well, for one, I have been kind by not saying anything remotely close to how I felt about the entire situation to save M's feelings, secondly, I just said it probably wouldn't work, if I got off early between now and thursday I had planned to check in, see if that day worked better, and to attempt to make this happen to the best of my ability while still prioritizing my personal responsibilities. On the topic of me never doing anything for M, I reject that claim vehemently, I have done a lot to help, and offered to help in situations many many times, but am either not taken up on it or never updated. Arthur has been on borrowed time since he left the shelter, why no one else acknowledges that baffles me, he was always going to die, if anything the fact he lived so long should be looked on fondly and appreciated. I understand that my tendency to rely on logic is taken as being unfeeling or cold, but ultimately they are animals, it is sad yes but you agree to being sad when they die when you adopt them. I am still planning on attempting to make this event happen before thursday, which is not even that unlikely, I just can't guarentee my schedule for the week. However, all that your lectures do is make me feel when you resort to frankly being kinda rude, is make me want to help less, I am refraining from that because despite your claims I do care for my sister, people just care in different ways, and about different things. So yeah, if you can get me y'alls schedule for the week I will try to keep in touch, l don't mind if J isn't there or not, l'll see what I can do.

Clarifying points: BIL generally didn’t get off late, but preferred to have earlier nights since he had to work early. He stayed up “late” for far less important situations. I could’ve gotten off early if he had previously expressed time constraints.

I didn’t acknowledge the awful parts of his message. I responded asking if we could pick their dog up to go to the park with us the next day, since our priority was Arthur getting to see his dog friend. And at that point, I didn’t want him seeing Arthur anyway (I didn’t say that). He declined.

My girlfriend and I wanted to put our focus on Arthur so we chose not to deal with her brother right then. He didn’t reach out to neither myself nor my girlfriend after Arthur passed. We decided to write a letter outlining our feelings on the situation. Part of it detailed just how abhorrent his message about Arthur was, calling out his cruelty without mincing words. But a good portion of it was just a genuine plea for him to take this situation as a wake-up call and do better. My girlfriend wrote “If you continue to coast through life the way that you have been, you will wake up and find yourself a miserable, empty man. The very worst attributes of Father when he was at his very worst, are the very attributes that you are fostering and solidifying in yourself. I truly hope you can understand that the reason I’m writing any of this at all is that it would kill me to see you become that. Especially when I know who you have the potential to be instead.”

I told him that I understood how his upbringing made him this way, but that he needed to choose to put in the work to change. I told him that his dad, who was notorious for making moments of grief worse, was actually really great and supportive during Arthur’s last week, and that it hurt to see him become even worse than his dad. I wrote “Really, the best support we could’ve received was just knowing that Arthur was loved. And you did the opposite. I really don’t think you’ll ever be able to understand just how cruel that was to do. And that is something that you will never be able to take back. All I can say is that I really fucking hope that you try to anyway.”

He never acknowledged any of the actual points made in the letter. He only saw it as an attack, which isn’t surprising, but was disappointing. He has continuously told us that in his message to me about Arthur, he was still holding back from saying how he truly felt about the Arthur situation to spare my feelings. We weren’t willing to meet up IRL to discuss unless he was willing to acknowledge that the message he sent to me was cruel and inexcusable. He wasn’t willing to discuss it over text or a phone call. We’ve pretty much been avoiding each other for 5 months. He and his fiancé are engaged now and we don’t know if we are invited. I don’t know if we’d go if we were. My girlfriend and her brother were supposed to be each others best men. My GF was going to be their officiant. We are at a stalemate. My GF and I want to resolve this so that we can all move forward, but we don’t see the value in fighting for a relationship with someone who was capable of saying that to us, and will only get worse from here.

I want to clarify that Arthur wasn’t decrepit when we brought him home or when he passed away 3 years later. His only real ailment was arthritis, and he refused to let it hold him back. He went to farmers markets and went swimming and demanded 12 walks a day up until the very end. He actually hadn’t begin to show any clinical signs of the cancer when he passed. I just wanted to make it clear that this wasn’t a circumstance in which we had kept pushing Arthur way passed his time.

If we were truly out of line and in the wrong, I want to know. Am I the asshole? I’ll answer any questions about the matter.