Sometimes the hardest part of setting a boundary is watching someone take it as a personal attack.

After years of letting their cousin borrow the family car for errands and dates, one relative finally decided enough was enough when he asked to use it for another 10-minute trip despite owning a scooter. Instead of accepting the new boundary, the cousin defended his integrity, insisting the issue wasn’t his behavior, but an attack on his character.

These types of situations are the ones that often occur because people are mad at each other for other reasons and need a motive to explode. In this case, there’s a family car, and the father lends the car to his nephew for short errands. For some reason, this affected the OP, and they wanted to let the cousin know that this behavior is not okay and that he should find a new type of transportation.

Something that calls my attention is the fact that we don’t know who the owner of the car is. If the father of the OP is the one who bought it, he is the one who gets to decide what they do with the nephew situation. And, according to the story, he agreed to share the car, as the cousin offered to pay some gas and was responsible with it. The other members of the family, on the other hand, were more reluctant and not so sure.

They are concerned about the safety of the car if he’s a responsible driver because, in the case of an accident, they are not sure if the boy is going to be able to pay for repairs, and things like that. This is a fair point, but there are always risks in life, and it doesn’t have to be the cousin who crashes the car… could be anyone in the family.