Man criticised for refusing to share room with sister on family holiday

A man has been criticised online and by experts for refusing to sleep in the same room as his sister while on a week-long holiday with her and their parents.

An ethics expert who spoke with Newsweek responded to the story by saying, “I always try to see both sides of the story, but it’s hard to do here.”

In a viral post on Reddit’s Am I The A****** subreddit, user No-Culture-5957 asked if she was wrong to “refuse to sleep on a sofa bed while on vacation.”

The woman, 28, wrote that she had booked the trip for herself, her brother and their parents, and had checked beforehand that her 25-year-old brother was happy to share a room with two separate beds with her, as three-bed houses in the area were hard to come by.

“He said it was good because we would each have our own bed and asked me to reserve it,” she wrote.

But once they arrived at the property for the first day of their week-long trip, he changed his mind and said they should alternate nights where one person would have the room to themselves and the other would sleep on the sofa bed in the living room.

“I asked why he didn’t want to share a room and why it hadn’t been brought up sooner. He said we were adults and he was ‘too old’ to share a room,” the woman wrote. “I asked him why he hadn’t brought it up sooner. He said he thought I would be okay with the move-out situation.”

The woman stood her ground and he continued to refuse to share a room, so he spent the entire holiday on the couch. But further problems arose when he complained about people being in the common room in the evening or morning when he wanted to sleep, leading to “conflicts with our parents”.

Despite repeated offers to share a room, he refused and, by the end of the trip, the man was irritated by the rest of the family, but the woman and their parents “feel that he is the one who got himself into this situation.”

Yonason Goldson of Ethical Imperatives agrees, saying: Newsweek “The terms and conditions cannot be changed mid-flight. If he wanted to take his turn, he should have made that clear from the start.”

In order to maintain peace, the ethics expert suggested that the family do their best to minimize noise and disturbances in the room while the brother was trying to sleep, but at the same time, the family had assumed that the living room would be a free common space.

“So, again, the brother single-handedly created the problem by not saying what he wanted. Any discomfort or inconvenience falls solely on his shoulders,” Goldson said.

A 2018 study in the Journal of youth and adolescence A study has shown that sibling relationship dynamics play a critical role in a person’s development and adjustment. It found that being the target of sibling bullying during childhood was associated with depressive symptoms and self-esteem issues.

Talk to Newsweek Commenting on the Reddit post, which has over 7,500 upvotes, health and wellness expert Elyse Wagner said both siblings had “valid points,” but clear communication should have been used to avoid conflict.

Assuming his sister would take over on the sofa bed, “the brother’s discomfort and resulting complaints indicate a need for better communication and compromise.”

“If the brother felt uncomfortable about sharing a room, the issue should have been approached with empathy and a willingness to find common ground,” she said.

Wagner suggested encouraging “open and honest dialogue between siblings” to “clear up misunderstandings and foster empathy.”

Reddit users were much less inclined to sympathize with the brother and agreed that he was entirely wrong, with one person writing that he “set his own goal.”

Another suggested that the brother had, in his mind, never really agreed to anything, but was “just buying time to find a solution for her to sleep on the couch.”

“If he should be angry with anyone, it should be himself because of his terrible communication and planning skills,” one said.

And as someone said, “Your brother is not too old to share a hotel room on vacation. He is, however, far too old to act like a spoiled brat.”

If you are experiencing a similar family problem, please email [email protected] with your first name and address. We can seek expert advice and your story could be featured on Newsweek.