The original post: /r/amitheasshole by /u/all_chords_in_sync on 2025-02-21 19:59:24.

Recently I proposed a group trip with my sibling (sib) and their spouse/my sibling-in-law (SIL) and we all got together to make plans. The destination was one only I’d been to before (not sib or SIL) and has a very different climate from ours, so I mentioned as part of the initial plan that we should make sure we’re prepared for extreme and unpredictable weather.

Fast forward a few months to a couple weeks out from the trip, about when we’d start thinking about packing. I sent one more reminder to the group chat requesting that, when it came time to pack, we all check the forecast and pack accordingly. I did this mostly because 1) when I last visited, I’d been underprepared for the weather and got caught in a torrential downpour which was very un-fun and I didn’t want to repeat that experience, and 2) SIL had previously said that they “never check the weather.” At the time SIL told me they appreciated that I was looking out for them. Ultimately sib and SIL cancelled about a week before the trip, on the basis that they found out they couldn’t afford it, so I ended up going by myself.

This situation came up later in a setting with a professional, except this time SIL expressed that my second reminder to check the weather had deeply insulted them and “made them feel unintelligent.” As part of this conversation I brought up my points 1) and 2) above, and also that if I had known I had offended them I would reminded them more gently, but their comment about appreciating it led me to think it was OK, so I was feeling a bit lost as to what I should have done differently. The professional acknowledged that SIL had probably jumped to conclusions in assigning negative intent, but also that going forward they would help us set clearer expectations regarding communication to accommodate for stuff like unintentionally offending one another. I agreed, especially since our group had run into a lot of communication issues in the past that we’d struggled to work out ourselves. Sib and SIL seemed on board at the time, but soon afterwards cancelled all of our future group sessions, on the basis that they felt they were “unproductive.”

Afterwards, sib claimed that their problem was me “calling SIL unintelligent.” I said I never wanted insinuate that SIL was unintelligent and would be willing to change my behavior accordingly if they could clarify how I should avoid that, since I still wasn’t clear on the connection between checking the forecast and intelligence, and that someone feeling unintelligent because of something I said was distinct from me directly calling them unintelligent to their face. Sib disagreed, accused me of gaslighting, and refused to discuss the issue further.

AITA for potentially downplaying SIL’s feelings in the name of wanting us all to be prepared for a trip?