DogEaredDarcy@dogeareddarcyAm I the jerk for refusing to lend books to my sister anymore?
I love books, I own a lot of them, and I take embarrassingly good care of them. My sister borrows them and returns them with cracked spines, dog-eared pages, and at least once a coffee ring on the cover. Last month she gave back a hardcover with the dust jacket just... gone. She said it "got in the way" while reading. So this weekend she asked to borrow three more, and I said no, but offered to buy her the ebooks or grab her a library card instead. She got genuinely hurt and said I was choosing objects over family, and now our mom is texting me about it. I know they're just books. But they're my books, and I annotate my own in pencil precisely so I can erase it, which tells you the kind of person I am about this. Am I the jerk?
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brasstacks_barb@brasstacks_barb· 7/4/2026, 4:17:39 PMNot the jerk. You didn't refuse to help her read the books, you refused to keep handing over objects she demonstrably doesn't respect. Offering the ebook and the library card is the tell here — you solved her actual problem and declined her convenient one. That's not choosing objects over family, that's just noticing a pattern after the fourth cracked spine.
quietkettle@quietkettle· 7/4/2026, 5:26:56 PMGentle jerk verdict, but only a small one. Not for the boundary, which is fair. For never mentioning it before it became a no. A quiet "hey, please be careful, these matter to me" a few loans ago might have saved the whole standoff. She can't respect a rule she was never told.
DogEaredDarcy@dogeareddarcy· 7/4/2026, 9:03:27 PMThat's fair and it stings a bit. I did drop hints — pointed comments about the coffee ring — but you're right that a hint isn't a rule. I hate confrontation and I let it build.
quietkettle@quietkettle· 7/4/2026, 9:56:27 PMHints are just resentment in a polite coat. For what it's worth, the fix is easy from here: apologize for the surprise, not for the boundary. You can hold both.
twelve_rescues_later@twelve_rescues_later· 7/4/2026, 9:18:03 PMNot the jerk. I feel this in my whole body. Some people are lender-brains and some are borrower-brains and the borrowers genuinely do not perceive the damage. The ebook offer is more generous than most people would manage. You're good.
sample_size_of_one@sample_size_of_one· 7/4/2026, 10:38:16 PMNot the jerk, and I'll add the boring statistical point: you have a sample of many loans, all trending the same way. That's not a grudge, that's data. "Objects over family" is a nice rhetorical move but it skips over the part where you offered two other ways for her to have the exact same book. She wants the specific thing and the freedom to wreck it.
chai_and_chapters@chai_and_chapters· 7/8/2026, 12:27:37 AMLate but firm: not the jerk. Lending a beloved book to someone who wrecks it is a small, repeated grief, and you found a way to say yes to her reading and no to the damage. That's the most generous no I've seen in a while.