Homeowner refuses to let her homeless 31-year-old brother move into her house after he trashed it and refused to pay bills the first time he lived there: 'I can't handle that stress and damage again.'

You can only give someone the benefit of the doubt so many times.

If you are a kind-hearted individual, it can be easy to find yourself getting taken advantage of by family members and friends who will walk over anyone to get what they want. You might see the best in everyone, and never think that someone you've known and loved for decades upon decades would betray you by trashing the house you let them live in for free when they're going through a difficult period of their life. Unfortunately, you can't always predict when somebody will take advantage of you, so you have to be the one to protect yourself first.

If you've been burned once, you're much less likely to be burned again. If someone lets a drifter friend of theirs sleep on their couch for 6 months and discovers that they've been stealing money from them the entire duration of their stay, there's a good chance they won't let anyone else stay over at their house for a prolonged period of time like that ever again. They might trust their college-student sister or their chronically employed cousin more than they trust their "friend," but they know that if they make the same mistake twice, it will be unequivocally their fault this time.

Even if you know that someone cannot be trusted to live in your home rent-free without trashing the house and making the house's residents' lives miserable, it can be challenging to say no to someone who is desperately begging for help that you aren't going to give to them.

Some family members pressure others to take on the financial and emotional burden of the family's bad seeds. They aren't self-sacrificing enough to do it themselves, so they make sure to pack on the guilt as much as they possibly can. The sister in this story has "helped" her brother during times of woe before, and he made sure she'd never do it again. Now that he's pleading with her to help him, the rest of the family is pressuring her to give him a second chance. Here's to hoping they'll be around to help him for the third and fourth chances.
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Am I the bad guy for refusing to let my homeless brother move back in after he trashed my house last time?

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