He Spent $3K on Their Card, Then Said They Abandoned Him

The setup, by the mother's account, was generous. A twenty-year-old living at home, not in school, would pay five hundred dollars a month in rent — except his parents were banking it for him. When he moved out, he'd have a nest egg. That was the plan.

Then, she says, he spent three thousand dollars on their credit card while they were on vacation. Clothes, food, none of it an emergency. No permission asked or given. They told him to pay it back. He didn't. He also barely paid the rent, fake though it was.

In April they gave him three months: pay back fifteen hundred dollars — half the theft — or move out. May came. He paid nothing. June came. He paid nothing. In July, after they asked if he was apartment-hunting, he screamed that he was leaving. The next morning he and his girlfriend, who'd been living there too, packed and left without a word.

He came back once for clothes and a PlayStation. Didn't speak to them. Now he's telling everyone they kicked him out. They're still paying his cell phone bill. They stopped the car insurance after he left. He barely responds to texts.

The mother wants to know if they were the ones in the wrong.

The comments opened with a wall of disbelief that the phone bill was still being paid. The top response had no analysis, just an instruction. Several people pointed out that continuing to subsidise someone who stole from you and then moved out angry isn't a neutral act. It's still parenting him, and he's made it clear he doesn't want to be parented.

A handful noted that the parents did, technically, kick him out. They set a condition they knew or strongly suspected he couldn't meet, and when he didn't meet it, the consequence was eviction. That this was justified doesn't mean it wasn't an eviction. One commenter suggested the son was being emotionally honest: he feels abandoned, even if the facts say otherwise.

But most of the thread had no patience for that reading. He stole a substantial sum, refused to pay it back, failed to meet even the reduced obligation of fake rent, and brought a girlfriend into their house without covering her costs. At some point, the question stops being whether the parents were harsh and becomes whether they were harsh enough. Several people said they'd have sold his belongings to recoup the loss. One said if they'd done what he did, they wouldn't still be alive.

The through-line in the responses was this: he's been taught that consequences are optional. The rent was fake. The credit card theft had no real penalty. The girlfriend moved in and no one stopped her. He's learned to treat their boundaries as requests. Now that they've enforced one, he's shocked, and the shock reads to him as cruelty.

The parents seem to want to know if giving him three months' notice and letting him keep his phone plan counts as kicking him out. The comments think the question's the wrong one. The issue isn't whether this specific moment was too harsh. The issue is that twenty years of not-harsh led to a young man who thought stealing three thousand dollars would have no consequences, and who now can't understand why it did.

Several people predicted he'd be evicted from wherever he's living now within six months, for not paying rent there either. One said he'd move on from blaming his parents to blaming that landlord. Another said he needed to hit rock bottom before anything would change.

The parents are asking if they were wrong. The thread's asking why they're still paying the phone bill. Those aren't unrelated questions. If you're still subsidising someone who won't speak to you, you haven't actually set a boundary. You've set a boundary with a door in it, and he knows where the door is.

Did they kick him out, or did he leave? He'd say the first. They'd say the second. The correct answer's probably that they told him the terms under which he could stay, and he chose not to meet them. Whether that's abandonment or consequences depends entirely on whether you think the terms were fair.

Were they?