Am I selfish to say no?

[Anonymous]

This happened yesterday. I only said no to hang out with my family because im busy and they used "my birthday gift" as a revenge tactic and use that to guilt tripping to make me bend a knee to hang out with them when i have a deadline to finish my project. This is THE ONLY TIME that I said NO to them because I am busy.

[14gurlz2gagonit]

I actually think they're the ones being selfish by using guilt trips about your birthday gift instead of being understanding about your project and it's deadline.

I'm assuming your project is a bit more important than building a gingerbread house for your Ninja Turtle figurines.

Also I do have a bias since my wife's family does this sort of thing to her quite often. Usually it's guilt trips to directly get money out of her, but I've seen them indirectly guilt trip her to hangout first, just so they can then use that to get money out of her. It's sort of sad because her Mom already uses her and her brothers to pay her rent, and her Dad blows his money on girls and booze which usually leads to borrowing money he will never pay back.

Honestly it sounds like they are used to getting what they want and it wasn't working so they applied a bit more pressure, which may cause un-needed stress when you just really have something important that you need to do. This sort of reminds me of my Mom trying to constantly plan expensive trips when I don't want to go on trips to begin with, or even some of my friends wanting me to hangout and party with them even though I'm married with kids and don't want to make time for that bullshit. I don't think you're being selfish, just responsible for something.

[DCVsMarvel]

Everytime someone says no, they're being selfish

[Nikki1989]

No, not at all.