Reddit Stories - BETRAYAL and Broken Toys_ The DEVASTATING Impact of a Parent's EMOTIONAL Outburst on Their Children_

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

#redditstories #askreddit #aita #betrayal #brokentoys #emotionalimpact #parenting #familySummary:A poignant tale in r/AskReddit about a parent's emotional outburst leading to broken toys and betrayal, leaving a lasting impact on their children. The community weighs in on the devastating consequences and offers support.Tags:redditstories, askreddit, reddit, aita, tifu, betrayal, brokentoys, emotionalimpact, parenting, familyBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reddit-stories--6237355/support.

I hope you enjoy this story. Spouse interacts with our children as companions, damages their playthings, and became emotional when our daughter referred to her school friend as her best friend forever. I apologize if this appears disorganized or improperly structured. Our most recent fight just happened and I'm still upset plus I've never posted something this. My 29F, husband 33M, we've been married for four years, together for seven. We have two kids, daughter 4F, and son 2M, I'm really not sure where to start. My husband is an overgrown child, he just doesn't know when it's time to be serious.

This is the only problem in our marriage. He's extremely loving, affectionate, and kind. He loves being a dad. He loves our children more than anything and they love him as well. He is constantly playing with them, and I think this is where issues start to arise. My husband cannot understand when it's time to put playtime on pause. I'm serious when I say he's in playtime mode with our children from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to sleep. This results in extremely hyperactive children in the morning when I'm trying to get our daughter ready for kindergarten,

and it's extremely frustrating struggle to get her fed slash clean slash dressed and out the door on time for school, where he then will drive her to. At night, this results in hyperactive children who can take up to two hours to get to settle down and go to bed. and by then it's way past their bedtime and will sometimes wake up grumpy in the morning because they didn't get enough sleep. He will sometimes even be egging our children on at night when we're sitting with them in bed

trying to wind them down to sleep. It's incredibly infuriating and I will tell him to stop because I'm clearly trying to get them to sleep and all he's doing is keeping them up. He laughs and says he's just having fun. Husband doesn't do hard discipline. He tells our kids to stop fighting each other

or to stop touching fragile objects, but when it comes to timeouts or taking away things like dessert, certain toys, TV time for the day, etc., he all but refuses. He will leave me to be the bad guy and I'm absolutely sick of it. I'm tired of feeling like I'm the mean mom who doesn't like fun or has to ruin their fun, but he just won't do it. I've told him that he needs to stop leaving all the hard discipline up to me, says he will, but then leaves it all up to me again next time. I dread when the kids are older and things like grounding become a thing. My husband is constantly breaking our children's toys

because he wants to play with them. He's broken a little kid trampoline we got for them because he wanted to jump and play on it with them. He's broken too, our daughter and sons, of those toddler-sized motorized cars by sitting on them and riding around with them. Like, I would look out the window and see him riding around on these things

having the time of his life. Meanwhile, our kids are standing on the edge of the yard watching him and waiting for their turn. He's broken a little kid basketball hoop by pretending to be on a pro basketball team and doing dunks, which banned and break the actual hoop. Our daughter's birthday was last month, and one of our friends bought her a little scooter. My husband broke it within a week because he wouldn't stop playing and doing tricks on it every time he stepped outside the house for something.

Our daughter was devastated because she loved that thing, even more so because she loves our friend who gave it to her, so to her it was extra special. I also feel terrible that this toy my friend spent her money and was destroyed by my husband before my daughter barely got any playtime on it. Now, my husband is six foot and about 20 pounds overweight. He has absolutely no business playing on these children's toys, and I've told him time and time again to stop playing on them because they aren't made for a person his size, and that he will break them. And then he does. and he'll sheepishly carry the broken toy into me and say sorry. But then he's back at it again destroying another toy shortly after.

We got our daughter a bike for Christmas so she can start learning, and I don't even want to give it to her because I know he'll ruin it for her like he always does with their toys. These are just some of the bigger broken toy examples. There are also countless smaller things of theirs he's broken, like balls, dolls, little cars, a doll house, a slide, etc. He's always making our kids play with him, even when they clearly don't want to or just want to chill out slash relax and sit and watch a movie. This mostly applies to our son, who is much more introverted slash sensitive than our daughter and usually prefers calm and quiet interaction over the loud and hyperactive playtime my husband

always does. A handful of times he has frustrated slash overwhelmed our son by continuously pushing son to play with him, resulting in son to start to cry because he just wants to be left alone. Now finally on to what prompted me to post here. My husband is always telling our kids, and everyone else that our kids are his best friends. Since our daughter started learning to talk, he's trained her to answer the question who's your best friend? With Daddy. Our son is in early talking stages and he is starting to train him do this as well. At first I didn't see any issues with this, and actually thought it was cute. But our daughter has made a really good friend 5F I'll call her Emily at school this year.

Daughter is always talking about Emily and asking if Emily can come over slash daughter can go to Emily's house. Today my husband asked our daughter who's your best friend? And our daughter paused for a moment, got a huge grin on her face and said Emily. And it looked like my husband had just been given the worst news of his entire life. He asked her what? And our daughter started giggling and said Emily again and my husband said no, no, who's your best friend? And again, still giggling, she says Emily. My husband's face went blank and immediately removed himself from her and went into the other room.

Our daughter seemed a little confused, but mostly undisturbed and went back to watching cartoons. I followed him and asked him what was wrong and when he starts talking I realize he's beginning to cry. He tells me that he's supposed to be our daughter's best friend and that he can't. believe she would toss him aside like that. Now up until now, like I said, I thought this best friend thing was cute. I never realized exactly how serious my husband took this. If I had I would have tried to put a stop to it early on. But then again, how exactly can you tell your husband to stop calling his kids his best friends? Anyway, I was a bit shocked at this point and I admit I didn't use as much tact in my response as I probably could have and ask him if he's serious.

He says, of course, I am and I tell him that he's the parent. He's not supposed to be a best friend to his kids. He's supposed to be the parent. And that he's 29 years older than our daughter, of course she's going to eventually make friends her own age and start considering them her best friends. He tells me I don't understand and I told him he was being ridiculous and childish. He looks at me as if I just slapped him and tells me I'm being heartless and accuses me of not wanting him to have a good relationship with our kids and leaves the house early

to go to work. I have no idea what to do. I almost feel ridiculous. Because how can someone have an issue with their husband loving their kids? I feel insane, and I haven't been able to talk to any friends about this because I feel like they'll all be so you're mad at your husband for playing with your kids. What's wrong with you? But I just don't know what to do anymore. I don't know how to address these issues with my husband in a way he'll understand so he'll start being reasonable about them. I also feel extremely anxious about everything now, because my husband and I have been trying for the last two months to conceive another baby, and now I don't want to bring another child into the world without having this mess sorted out.

But I know telling my husband I want to wait on this third child will devastate him. Edit, since it's being asked a few times, I'm just going to put this here instead of typing the same comment over and over. My husband's relationship with his parents growing up was, in his words, great. He has three siblings, all successful adults, and his parents' interaction with our kids now give no indication that they are the reason my husband doesn't seem able to grasp parenting himself. Update.

A few things first, I just want to thank everyone who commented on my op. I got overwhelmed with the amount of responses while on mobile, had no computer when I posted, and stopped replying, but I read every single. single comment and story. I've received a few PMs asking for an update and I'm sorry it's so late. This update would be extremely long if I typed every single detail and still is kind of long, whoops, so I'm going to try and condense it. So, I sat my husband down the night he got home from work after posting my op and we had a long talk. Again, this would be incredibly long if I wrote all the details so I'm going to summarize and go in the order of my points I made in my op keep in mind.

our talk didn't follow the order of my post, so I'm sorry if anything seems confusing. Since it would have been discussed out of order on not knowing when to pause playtime, I told him that I know he loves playing with the kids, and I love that he loves playing with the kids, but that I really need him to work with me during bedtime. I also once again pointed out that their lack of sleep is making them grumpy and harder to manage in the mornings, and that they're growing and need their sleep. He's had a couple slip-up since, but he's cooled it down around bedtime now. and makes more of an effort to help me with bedtime.

He started reading to them instead, I used it to it, and is 20 times better than me at it because they love the funny voices he gives the characters. On discipline, I told him it's not fair of him to constantly make me feel like the bad guy. And that no parent likes disciplining their kids, but they need it to learn and grow into good adults, and that I need him to be united with me on punishments. He's having a little trouble with this one, but has been trying more. I appreciate. On breaking their toys, I, again, told him that I know he loves playing with our kids, but he needs to stop destroying their things. That not only is it upsetting them,

but it's causing us to needlessly spending extra money to replace things that we don't need to be. I took this part of the talk to suggest we finally get a full-size trampoline like we had been talking about for a little while, and that he should dig out his bike from the garage so he can ride with our daughter when she learns. We're both probably more excited about the trampoline than the kids' l-ol. We talked more about this topic, but these are the most relevant points. He realized he goes a little too far after I described the scene I wrote about in my op, with him riding around on their little cars while the kids are standing on the sidelines. I'm also happy to report he has stayed off our daughter's new bike. On making the kids play when they don't want to, he agreed that it wasn't cool of him to push

just because he wants to play. I told him our kids are people, and just because their kids, doesn't mean they don't deserve to have their boundaries respected or time to themselves. And now on to the best friend thing, this was the first thing we discussed. Long story short, he was feeling hurt and generally having a little trouble accepting our daughter was growing up. This is really the first big thing she's done or said to show that she is, in fact, growing up. And he just wasn't expecting it and handling it very very, very poorly, which he knew he did. I took a line from a comment on my op and told him our children will have lots of best friends in their lifetime, but he will always be their only dad. This

visibly comforted him, so thank you to whoever it was who wrote that. I took a suggestion from someone on the op and suggested that he call up his own parents and asked them for advice on how they handed watching four kids grow up and leave the nest. He really liked this idea and has since done so. I also showed him stories commenters on my op shared about their relationship with their parents growing up. I told him that I'm not showing him them because I think he's going to become like those parents, but that I think it's important he's see the children's side of things. These stories hit him pretty hard, which led into this. So, I left something out of my op that I didn't realize was relevant. Lots of people asked how my husband's relationship with his parents

was growing up, and I answered that it was great. However, my own relationship with my parents was horrible. Long story short, I don't get along with nor even like my parents, and I see slash talk to them maybe once a year. Growing up was miserable, to say the least. And it affected me for quite a long time where I was a huge ball of anger and resentment because of the way my parents treated me. I told my husband about all of this a few months after we started dating, so he was aware

of everything from the start. My husband told me he told himself he would be the best dad he could be, because he wanted our kids to have the childhood he knew I wanted, and wanted for them. Now, I started crying here and was a bit of a mess for a few minutes, L.O.L. It was honestly one of the most touching things anyone has ever said to me. I told him he is the best dad, and that I love him so much for it. Finding out that this was essentially the root of everything, it was a lot easier to continue on with the rest of my points. Everything has been great since. He really listened to what I was saying this time, and has made a big effort to help me out more while also cooling it a bit with the kids. Him and our daughter have been riding around on their bikes together every weekend. I've also started learning how to ride so I can eventually join.

Again, I want to thank everyone for commenting on my op and helping me gather my thoughts. I thought a few things said about my husband were a bit extreme, but I realized that something that happens when people give advice on a situation they only have so much info on. Next story, BF almost proposed in Vegas, then went cold feet. Turns out he's in love with his co-worker and has been cheating for months. I've been with my boyfriend John for five years. We have a pretty awesome relationship, great communication, fun, easygoing, with good chemistry. We've always talked about getting married, and I have, had, no doubts that we've. would be getting engaged very soon. Recently, John, myself, John's closest friend and his girlfriend,

went on a trip to Vegas for several days. We had a great time, all four of us, and on our last night there, John told us he wanted to go to the Bellagio Fountains to see them before we had to leave. Everyone was up for it, we went for a nice dinner beforehand, and then began watching the fountains and the music came on. It was really romantic, and I was really enjoying myself, and that's when John grabbed my wrist. He turned me toward him and I saw that he was sweating profusely. Like, his face was bright red, and he looked like he was about to pass out from trembling so hard. The whole time it looked like he was about to say something, but he never did. He just informed all of us that he wasn't feeling well and wanted to go back to the hotel.

Our friends looked really puzzled and were whispering into each other's ears all the way back to the hotel. I kept asking John if he was okay, and he just said he probably had too much to drink. We've been back for a couple of weeks, and he's been acting really distant and cold. I honestly knew something weird was up that night in Vegas, so I called up John's friend's girlfriend, who I'm fairly close to, and asked her if she knew what was going on with John, since he had been at their place a lot this past week instead of coming home. Eventually, she spilled the beans and told me he had plans of proposing to me that night at the fountains, but then didn't. That's why the two of them had been acting so confused. I kept grilling her and she also told me that John had told

his friend that it didn't feel right. She made me promise not to tell John that I knew because she didn't want anyone to be upset with her. I'm feeling sick to my stomach. We live together and he has been spending all of his time at his friend's house or at his parents' place since we got back. He barely calls me or responds to my texts anymore. I don't know what happened that night, but I feel like he's about to end things. I want to talk to him, but I don't know how to approach the issue. Do I just say, hey, I heard you were going to pop the question the other night, but changed your mind? What gives? Was he really nervous? Ah, I'm freaking out. Edit, he'll be home shortly, I told him over the phone I needed to talk to him, and his words were I need to talk to

you too. I'll update when I can. Thanks for all the advice, folks. Update, hello everyone. I apologize for not updating sooner, but a lot has happened. I'd like to say thank you to everyone who posted comments and to those who tried to reassure me. So John came home last night around 11.30 as I was watching TV in our bedroom. He came in and looked like absolute shit, his eyes looked tired and baggy and he smelled like beer. He apologized to me for the way he had been acting recently, and told me he knew that I knew about the almost proposal as he had talked to his friend Mike and he told John that his girlfriend Tara had told me everything. He basically said to me that he had the whole thing planned out. He was going to propose

and Tara and Mike would take pictures, then we would go back to a romantic, more expensive room in our hotel, which Mike and Tara had to end up staying in that night so as to make sure our I wasn't aware of the fact that John was supposed to propose. They switched key cards while I was walking back. He then told me what I was afraid of. It just didn't feel right, I was looking at you, and it just wasn't what I wanted. Ouch. He told me that he had been nervous ever since he bought the ring, but that he'd thought it would go away once he actually proposed. In the moment, he said he knew that it was not what he wanted, and thought it would be better to not ask me to marry him because he knew it wasn't what he'd want in the long run. So at this point I'm in hysterics, as I pretty

much know that this is the end of the relationship. I tried to be calm and rational about it, but there was one point where I was crying so hard that I literally got down on my knees, put my head in his lap while he sat on the couch, and just kept in coherently saying please in between sobs. Not my proudest moment. But at that moment, this man was my my best friend, the future father of my children. I just never, ever in a million years, pictured our relationship coming to this point. He ended it with me last night because it didn't feel right, and that's all he could say to me, over and over it just doesn't feel right anymore. I can't see myself with you. At that point I could barely breath, feels like I'm having a panic

attack, so I call my mom and she comes to pick me up from our place. My poor mom, she just looked so helpless while I sat there in the car crying so hard I eventually got a nosebleed. So, I wish I could say this is the end of the story, but more has happened since last night. This morning, I'm on Facebook, looking through a bunch of old picture of John and me, sobbing uncontrollably and sending him text after text with reasons why we should be together, and I eventually stumble onto Mike's page through a tagged photo. He updated his status from a few hours ago to something along the lines of California was amazing, wish work would send me for more than five days.

My stomach started doing flips, because John kept telling me he was spending the days he was practically ignoring me with Mike. But Mike was in California for several days, and we're in Canada, so not very close. I freaked. I called Mike from my house phone, and when he answered, I said, hey,

it's acetylic acid and all he could say after a few seconds of silence was fuck. Basically, Mike's been covering for John's ass while John is spending time with the girl he's been apparently fucking for the past six months. I know this girl, John works with her and she's always been really sweet to me whenever I've seen her at John's work-related events. Mike told me that John had told him he was falling in love with her. He said this after the incident in Vegas.

He's been spending almost all of the past two weeks with her. Mike then told me he had promised not to say a word to anyone, not even Tara, but he felt guilty and was glad I called him. He apologized and said if I had to tell John that he told me, I could. That's all I know for now. I haven't bothered contacting John yet, and I don't know if Mike told him that I know. I don't know what I'm going to do. I've been throwing up all day. I took one of my mom's Aedavans and I'm feeling a bit calmer right now, but whenever I think about it, which is practically all that consumes my thoughts, I feel disgusted, humiliated and devastated. It actually feels like my heart is breaking in two and I have no control.

I need to get my stuff from our place. I need to find a new place. We have a dog, who gets the dog. I love my dog. It all feels so surreal. Ugh. Update same post via edit. John called me a bunch of times while I was in an RX-induced slash depression coma. I woke up as he was calling me again and kind of just answered the phone without thinking about it.

He was crying and apologizing, I guess Mike told him that I knew, and saying he was confused. He asked me where I was and I lied and said I was with my sister an hour away from here at her place. I asked him if he was with her, he said yes, but that he'd be home tomorrow, so could I please meet him to talk about things at our house? I said, sure. I asked my mom to drive me to our place a little while ago and I kidnapped my dog, brought her back and I'm feeling much, much better. I'm also not meeting with him tomorrow. You guys, I didn't think it would help this much to ask you guys for advice. But I've read each and every

one of your comments and dear God, I feel 1,000x better than I did a few hours ago. Thank you, thank you. Like, I feel so, so different, it's weird.