Reddit Stories - Betrayal in the Sleepless Night Family Drama Unveiled ( Over 3 Hour Compilation ) - Episode 87

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

#redditstories #askreddit #aita #familydrama #betrayal #sleeplessnights #emotionalconflict #storytime  Summary: In Episode 87 of the series, "Betrayal in the Sleepless Night," family tensions escalate as secrets are unveiled. The emotional turmoil experienced by each character reveals deep-rooted issues, leading to unexpected confrontations and heart-wrenching decisions. This over three-hour compilation captures the essence of familial betrayal and its consequences.  Tags: redditstories, askreddit, reddit, aita, betrayal, familydrama, sleeplessnights, emotionalconflict, storytime, relationships, conflictresolution, drama, storytelling, podcast, entertainment, narrative, suspense, intrigue, characterdevelopment, realstoriesBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reddit-stories--6816713/support.This episode includes AI-generated content.

Relax and enjoy the following compilation of stories. I hope you enjoy this story. The resident became extremely upset when we constructed a barrier on our land as it prevents her from intruding through our garden. She has contacted law enforcement, submitted inaccurate complaints, and is causing distress. Us. We used to get along great with our next-door neighbor. For context, she is an older Polish woman who lives alone and is very OCD about her grass. She will pick up leaves as they fall down from the tree and pick up leaves off her grass even if it rained. Anyway, she has a front fence that she didn't run all down her property line.

She stopped it at the front so her whole right side of her home is exposed next to ours. Then picked up the fence when her backyard begins. We had more than a few times where strangers would enter the side of our house and actually try and enter our home. So my husband decided to put up a front fence. At the time my neighbor was redoing her backyard fence and she knew my husband also wanted to do his backyard fence so she recommend her guy. As she followed up to see if my husband called the guy to get the work my husband told her that he did and that he also asked the guy for a quote for the front as well. She immediately lost it. Since then she has been acting so crazy. It started with her calling the alderman

and she wrongfully accused us of taking her land. The alderman came and spoke with us and sided with me and my husband. The problem is that she wants to use our front walkway that's on the side of our house to access her right side of her property. The side that she didn't fence, so she fenced herself out and has always just went on our property to access her side. She's mad because with our fence she can't just walk in and go to her side of her house anymore. We told her we would give her a key and she said no. Since she accused us of stealing her land, we didn't feel comfortable about allowing her to come and go off our property anymore, but she didn't care. She called a handy man to install a security camera and he worked on our side of the property and she didn't ask.

I asked the guy to please inform her for any future work she will need to ask us for permission before she enters our property. The security camera was to watch us because she was so paranoid we would build a fence. This Saturday we had the company begin work and she totally lost it. She harassed the workers telling them to stop work and she was accusing us of stealing land. She threatened to report them to the city and to call the inspector on us. My husband had to stay outside with guys as they worked and when he went in she would come back out and harassed them. Then she called the police.

For police cars came. I don't know what she told them but it was not the truth because the cops sided with us and told her to stay inside and not bother us. Then Sunday she paces looking at our fence posts staring. She looked at our fence posts like ten times on Sunday and then she was pacing our backyard and we have her on camera just staring and pacing and starting in. So creepy. Then Monday she is walking and starting again and she stops on of our neighbors and starts complaining to him about our fence right in front of our house.

She continues pacing and staring through the day. Then later that Monday a guy comes and she walks him to our house and he starts looking at our posts. My husband came out this time and asked. the guy who his was and why he was interested in looking at our property. He told us that he is a realtor and a good friend of hers, and he came because she called him telling him that we stole her property from her and accused us of putting posts on her property, which was all lies. We immediately showed him our proof and he agreed with us and tried to mediate with her

explaining that we are legally able to build and that she can extend her fence so she is not blocked out. She just said no. No. And didn't want to do that. So my husband just left we made sure everything was recorded. Then today, she came outside and stared at our property again just pacing. She did the same in the backyard. Then she went to the front and started flagging down neighbors who she never talks to and starts to complain about our fence calling us bad people and that we are stealing her land. She is acting so malicious. What do I do? It's crazy. Edit. So I called the police to see what she accused us of of on Saturday. They said that she alleged we were encroaching on her property and blocking her

egress. The claim was noted as false by the police. Update, March 20, 2025. It snowed and the neighbor came out with her hair curlers and her hair and her pajamas and slippers no jacket, so she was in some hurry and went to the front of our house to stare while she was on the phone. Not sure what information she needed from staring at our posts, maybe she needed our address. looks like she's trying to call someone else on us. She is straight loosing it as she knows the fence will be completed as soon as weather is better. Additional info, Boop clarifies the drawing of the fences. Boop, sorry yes, the drawing isn't the greatest.

But to help explain she has a six feet iron fence in the front of her property. It goes all the way down the left side of her house, but on the right side she stopped the fence at the beginning of her house and curved it in. So it leaves the right side of her house not fenced all the way until the end of her house. She then continues the fence and curves it in when her garage begins. She is upset because with our front fence she can't go on our property to get to her side. Every day she is out staring and calling people to her house to look at it and complain. Update 1, April 10, 2025. Our fence has been up for a week and a half.

The neighbor surprisingly did not bother the workers. when they put the panels up. I was so surprised so that's why I didn't really do an update because I was like okay. This is over. Finally she must have come to her senses. Yeah, I was wrong. On Tuesday I was coming home from picking up my child from school and some man ran out his car and shouted if I was the owner of the home.

I asked who he was and he stated he was from the city building in code enforcement while also briefly flashing his ID at me. I then proceeded to tell him that I am the owner and why was he here. He stated that he received a complaint about a building violation and that our fence is too tall and we must cut it down from six feet to five feet. Keep in mind my neighbor's fence is taller than ours BTW. I told the inspector that three licensed contractors that we contacted all informed us we didn't need a permit, but that if they were wrong we would gladly comply of course and or apply for

the needed permit. He stated that there is no possible way the city would have prove it. And I told him we will work with the city and find a solution. We don't want to cut corners and want to do it right. My husband then comes out and gets informed on what's going on and then my husband asks the inspector for his email or business card so we can follow up and work together to fix it. The guy refused to give us any card or email to follow up with him. He told my husband all the information is on the city website. Why do you need my information for? He was very rude.

I know how to talk with people, so I told him. Look, I get you come across a lot of people who argue back and give you a hard time so you're on guard. But I assure you we don't want to argue and we want to fix this issue. He then calmed down and told us he has kids too and he understand why we need a fence, etc. He then told us he would give us 48 hours to get a permit and then he left. Once I got home, I reviewed the camera footage and the inspector entered our property and did not ring the doorbell to try and speak with us. He just trespassed and was walking around looking at our property.

He didn't measure anything. Nothing. So I began to get suspicious. I then remembered when my neighbor threatened us and the workers saying she had an inspector friend and she was going to report us. On top of that, why didn't the inspector want to give me any information to follow up? So weird. Then he tells me to get a permit in 48 hours?

He didn't even tell me which one. And if he said the city would not approve it, why didn't he tell me to apply in 48 hours? Things just seemed off. I'd so then I went to do my research. I contacted my alderman's office and asked for assistance in applying for a permit. I wanted to make sure we did the right steps. After we apply for our permit, I asked the representative if they could look up the complaint for me because the interaction with the inspector seemed suspicious.

She agreed and looks up the report. There was a report made 17 days ago by our neighbor, before our fence panels were up, that our fence was not on our property line. The report said nothing about fence height. She also told me there was no inspector assigned to the case and that it was still open pending investigation. So that's weird. I'd maybe he was legit and didn't update the case, but it's all not adding up.

So the alderman agrees this is weird and states that they are going to get someone from downtown involved to speak with my neighbor because she is harassing us and it's just too much. The report she made was false. Our fence posts are on our property lines. We have our Platts survey that proves all of this. In addition to all the other things listed in my other Reddit posts that she has done. So today I'm just minding my own business like I usually do and I get a notification on my camera. I see someone sticking their hand through my fence pointing at my back and moving down my fence repeatedly doing the same thing. So I go outside and calmly ask the women,

do you have any questions about my fence that I can help you with? I see that you're sticking your hand through and pointing, she tells me I'm your neighbor down the block. I was just speaking with your next door neighbor and she has a problem with your fence. I let her know that the neighbor's claims are bogus and that we now have a permit for the height of our fence and I have a survey of our property proving we are on our property line.

I told her that the neighbor is crazy and if she has any concerns to please speak with me. As I turn I see my neighbor in her bushes by her door. She was outside the whole time and stopped the neighbor as she was walking her dog to complain about our fence and spread false claims again. Then the neighbor leaves and immediately stands and stares at our house looking at the permit displayed on our front door.

This is getting crazy and I really didn't want to do tit for tat, but I reported her illegal basement apartment which is not a false allegation because her zoning does not allow for a basement apartment. She also does not have two entrances. I really didn't want to do it, but she is really pushing me to become a person I don't want to be. I want this all to be over already. Praying she can finally understand reality soon. I will update if anything else happens. Additional information from OOP who has received the translation of the audio file. OOP, I got the translation. Here it is if you're interested.

Women, is my crazy neighbor man, is her realtor friend she called over to look at my house and complain. It looks like he was trying to actually help us and she was getting mad at him. He was mostly trying to mediate with her allowing us to close the back fence that has always been closed for over 20 years, but now that she is mad she is not allowing us to close it because she owns a couple inches of property next to her garage that is unfenced and open to our property. So in order to close it off from the alley we need to close. It on her few inches of property or else someone can slip through. Easily. She is just using that as leverage.

Doesn't matter to us we can just fence it straight down our property if we have to and she will have awkward fenced in boxes on the side of her house and she can't get in. Makes no sense she is just using that as leverage because it's all she has. That's the backstory on the back, L-O-L and below in the transcript woman. It's mine, man, yeah, but you use this. M, the rats were running in front of the garage. W, he should catch those rats M, okay, today. W, curses, I'm sorry.

The rats were running M. Does it bother you? Why? W, yes, it bothers me and He will destroy it. Because he is so mean and It will. M, but he asked you and you agreed.

No, nobody talked to me about it. They just put up the fence, English part, W, cries, Jesus, on, no, no, M. And now what's bothering you? That it'll be open or that it'll be closed. W, what that? M, so if he closes it and puts something. It'll be safer for you and for M, W. But.

But it's mine M. Why does that bother you? W, it bothers me because I'll have the entrance there? M, where? W, from that side, M. But from that side you block the entrance yourself. W, I'm going home because it's too cold. Are we going?

M, wait a second. W, no, no, I don't want to talk to him. I'll talk to someone else. I'm going to go to the city hall M. What do you want them to? do. To put here. W., I'll just sort this out. I'm not giving up M. To be honest I'll tell you, I live in a building far from the downtown and I've done something. To my neighbors too. They have, something near their house. W, but why are you talking to them? You came to see me. M, you know what, I think

you could stand your ground but it doesn't make sense because he W. Yeah, I'll stand my ground and he will do the same. You know what? Nobody asks me for my permission, and do what they want M. He said that he asked for permission, W. You know what? I'm saying M. But why do you need the entrance to the garage from this side? W, they did everything? Nobody asked me. It's mine M. But you should look and see what you did to the neighbors. something with the entrance w this had been like this since the beginning do you remember m but today someone could come to you and tell you to take down something w then i'll take it down m that would satisfy you w you know what i'm going home m if i were you i would let him to do that thing w and i won't m but

it'll be safer and he will put a fence here w and no m So you will have W. No. Nobody asked me and I won't allow it, so. I'm going home, I'm cold M. I'll go with you soon, W. You shouldn't be the one sorting this out, English part, update two. April 29th, 2025. I know it's been a few weeks since my last update. A few of my neighbors actually found my post, so to protect the privacy and security of myself and my neighbor I removed my old posts because there was pictures and videos that I didn't want getting shared to neighborhood platforms. I mainly made my post event and get feedback and didn't intend on it getting so popular it made it around the world and back to my block, LOL, but I do appreciate

the support and advice from everyone. On to the update, so a lot has happened in the past two weeks. To start the workers came back to paint our fence and weld some mesh on the fence. Our neighbor freaked out and thought the workers welded our fence to her post. She called our mediator, representative from the aldermen's office. She came out to check and immediately saw that we did not connect her fence post to ours. Then our neighbor got mad and started demanding for us to personally show her our fence plans and permits. We had our permit on our door. She got more mad and used a racial slur towards me and my family and keep in mind she said the racial slur about us to the representative of the alderman's office.

So it has been documented. That same day an officer from the city department from building and code enforcement showed up to our house again. It was a different guy this time, he told us that there was a report made alleging we were building a whole new garage without a permit. We haven't changed our garage at all it's the same as when we bought our home and it's clear to anyone it was not just built. The building inspector immediately closed the case. At this point our neighbor is being malicious and is making false reports to harass us. What really worries me is that if we ever want to sell our home these reports stay on record even though they are false and dismissed. After this we did a FOIA, Freedom of Information Act,

for any 311 reports for our address. She made three reports to the City DOB, Department of Buildings, all made in March and all made before our fence panels were even put up. She alleged we built a new garage, that our fence posts was not on our property line, and that we had installed a side fence fence without building permit. All false allegations. Keep in mind we adjust the posts up March 18th and our panels didn't get put until April 5th. We also didn't build the side fence she is talking about. Yet.

So she did a complaint in advance assuming we have no permit. Can't even make this stuff up, it's insane. Then she made a false allegation to a police officer and told them my husband was yelling and screaming at her and throwing his hands up intimidating her during a time she was talking to her neighbors. Then the said neighbor walks to her car at the same moment her and the cop are talking and my neighbor points telling the cop to go ask the women, our neighbor from across the street. The cop goes over and talks to her and the woman tells the cop my husband didn't do what was alleged. Then the cop goes back over and tells my neighbor that the witness to the alleged

incident says nothing like that happened. I also had the video and audio recording of that conversation. My husband went outside because she involved three neighbors at this point calling them over talking about our fence and us. He went outside to talk to the other people and not her. Even his body language in the video was not aggressive and he was not talking to her directly at all. After he told the neighbors what is happening, our side, he left and let them continue talking. Yet she wants to actually lie and try and put him in jail. So glad I have every interaction recorded. same day she gets very erratic and upset that things didn't go her way, that she comes outside while

I'm outside and starts singing, humming like an opera singer. She has never did this before and it was just weird. I ignore her as I always do and just let her be. Then she decides to go inside and get her purse to pretend like she is going somewhere and goes across the street intentionally avoiding crossing in front of the neighbor who told the truth to the cops. They were outside on their porch, I assume she is now upset with them because they told the truth. Then she goes and talks to their next-door neighbor who was just watering her grass. She proceeds to talk about our fence and us to them. I saw it all plain as day because I was outside. I let it go because I want to avoid her as I always do, but it was so annoying.

Then she leaves and literally five minutes later she comes back in her house. She just went around the block and pretended to leave to just talk to another neighbor. about us and just slander us and paint us as bad people. I honestly cannot understand this behavior. Then same day she calls someone over to come look at our backyard. I literally can't catch a break with her. We aren't doing anything wrong. Our fence is permitted by the city.

She is just mad that she can't walk down our property as she did for 28 years to reach the side of her house that she fenced herself out from and she can fix, but she refuses and instead blames us. I hope you enjoy this story. Father requested that I cover the expenses for my step-siblings university education and assured me of reimbursement. However, much time later, when I required the funds for my marriage ceremony, he declined due to his financial constraints. Doesn't approve of my fiancé. I, M-33, have had a very rocky relationship with my family for the most part.

I've tried my best to be understanding and accommodating, and I believe my person. parents have too, but I guess that hasn't been enough to ensure a cordial living environment. When I was 10 years old, my parents got divorced. I wouldn't say I felt any resentment at that time, only relief because living with both of them under the same roof was no simple task, especially for the faint-hearted. I grew up with the most dysfunctional set of parents, who were always fighting and screaming about one thing or another. I was made their referee or mediator at a very young age, and I remember having to resolve their fights or get them to talk to each other on bad days. On some days, when I felt overwhelmed, I just didn't come back home

from school and went to stay with my paternal grandparents. They lived a few blocks away. It was only with them that I felt some respite, and they doted on me, so I loved being there. They tried to intervene in my parents' issues, and when they realized that their efforts were futile, they tried to tell my parents that it wasn't my job to be the adult in the house and take care of their issues. But I guess all of that fell on deaf ears. Moreover, I never felt that what I was doing wasn't what normal kids do, because I had grown up being the tethering point for my mom and dad. I had to bear this responsibility since the beginning,

and I never even imagined that wasn't what other kids spent their time doing. So, when the divorce was happening, I was relieved. I spent two weeks with each parent, and it was only in that situation that I actually began to thrive. There was no more shouting, no more anger, just one on one time with one parent at a time, and I loved every bit of it. I got their attention, I got peace of mind, and I got a lot of free time to do what I wanted to. One good thing about them was that after the divorce, they never once complained about each other to me. They might have had issues with each other, and they might have ran into friends, but they chose never to do it with me, and I am very grateful for that. The constant barrage of hate against each other stopped the moment the divorce was finalized and mom moved out.

Five years later, when I was 15, my father remarried my stepmom, Savannah. Savannah and I have shared a cordial relationship thus far. She has never tried to be mom to me but has always tried to include me in the family you. She is a good woman and I have nothing against her. The initial period of adjustment with her was hard, but all in all, things turned out reasonably okay. The only issue was her daughter, Gemma, now 25F. She was seven years old when Savannah and Dad got married, and if I'm being honest, she was a bit of a brat. My dad, in order to keep the peace, bent over backward to accommodate Gemma and all her ludicrous demands.

Anytime she did something to anger or trigger me, he defended her by saying that she was a kid and was trying to adjust to moving to a new house, which is why I had to be the bigger person and not create a fuss. A few examples of what happened after she moved in was that she took over my entire room. Since she was supposed to stay there permanently, and I was there for only 15 days a month and would anyway be leaving in a couple of years for college, I had to be okay with this compromise. Well, I wasn't. I didn't want to give up my room or even share it with a strange kid half my age. My dad was insistent that the maximum compromise that could be reached would be that she and I would be sharing a room. Savannah stepped in at that time. I don't know if it was because she wanted to protect her daughter from a stranger or she didn't want to antagonize me or a mixture of both,

but she said that taking away my room would be cruel and they would fit Gemma in somewhere else. It was her urging that ultimately made Dad leave things as they were and not the fact that I didn't want to change my room. It felt weird knowing that he didn't listen to me but listened to his new wife. That was the point when the dynamics changed for me. I didn't like being at Dad's place, and it wasn't because of his new wife and daughter, it was because of him. He was the one who made me feel unwanted. It was only because of Savannah and her efforts that I continued going there, to be honest. She took an active interest in my life, tried to spend time with me, and made food that I liked when I was there.

It was as though she saw Dad being negligent, and she tried to cover up for him. Gemma was a whiny little girl and I generally stayed away from her, and Savannah never forced me to form a bond with her daughter either. It was generally Dad who tried to push the You Are Siblings Now narrative. Three years later, while I was about to leave for college, dad and Savannah had a kid together, my step-sister Ashley, now 15F. There is too much of an age gap between Ashley and me to form any sort of relationship with her. Even though she's technically blood, I have no bond with her. When she was born, my dad called me aside and told me that he was in a bit of a rough spot, so he wouldn't be able to help me with university, and that I was on my own.

That came as a big shock to me because I had always been told that both mom and dad had saved for my college and the combined amount was enough for me to not rely on loans. When he backed out, my mother pitched in more to try to minimize my loans. I still had to take loans, but they were not as hefty, and I have held good enough jobs after college to be able to keep paying them off. However, this kind of permanently strained my relationship with dad. This was money that had been promised to me, and he used it for his new family. I rarely went to Dad's place after that.

I had very low contact with him, but surprisingly stayed in touch with both Savannah and Gemma. I guess it didn't matter to my father that I was no longer in his life because he had a kid to take care of again. We were low contact for almost the next seven years, in which I graduated college, got a job, and moved cities, even lived abroad for a year. However, when I was 25, Dad reached out to me again. He tried to engage in some small talk, but I knew there had to be a reason for him to get in touch with me. And then he said it. It didn't take him long.

Apparently, Ashley had had a medical emergency a few months ago, I had known about it from Savannah and regularly asked for updates, and it had been a huge financial strain for them. Savannah had some money saved for Gemma's college, but Dad had used to you. used it all for Ashley's medical bills without Savannah's knowledge. So, he was begging me to help with Gemma's tuition fees and said that he would repay every penny to me. I didn't want to help him out, I wanted him to face the consequences of his actions, and I told him so. I told him that he had failed me as a father, and I had hoped he would do better by Gemma, but clearly that was not the case. I told him this was exactly how he had left me stranded when I had to go to college, and now he

was doing the same to Gemma, and that too after literally stealing the money meant for her. I told him that I had taken out loans, and so could Gemma, but he said that she did not have the support of her biological father like I had support for my mother. I disconnected the call. I knew I would help Gemma. She was a sweet kid and I had nothing against her, but I didn't want to deceive Savannah. So, I called up my dad again and told him that the only condition that I was willing to help him out with was if he was honest with Savannah, and that if he promised to pay me back. He said that he did not want to involve Savannah, but I said that I wouldn't be shelling out a single penny if he wasn't honest with her. He cut the call, and I thought that was the

end of it, but three days later Savannah gave me a call. It sounded like she had been crying, and she just thanked me for everything I had done. I told her that I would help out Gemma with the tuition fees, but that I would be giving the money to her and not dad because she was. I did not trust him. She agreed and that was that. Even Gemma called me up, thanking me, and we have had a better relationship since then. Now comes the real issue. I am engaged to my fiancé Mihira, and she is Afghan by ethnicity but was born and brought up here. This has rubbed my father the wrong way, and he has made sure to be very public and vocal about his disapproval. Not that I care, because I don't have a functional relationship with him anyway.

My mother and Savannah both like Mihira and Gemma and she are quite close. So, all the people that I care about have a good opinion of her, and that is what matters to me. We are planning our wedding, and I went to my dad, telling him that I need him to pay me the money that he owes me, aka Gemma's tuition money, and that I wanted it soon because that would go into funding the wedding. My father told me point blank that he would not be giving me any money if I planned on getting married to that immigrant scum. I told him what I did with that money was immaterial, and he had no right to hang it over my head like a sword. It was my money, and he owed it to me. Even if I used it to wipe my ass for the rest of my life, he did not have a say in it.

He wasn't doing me a favor or lending money to me, he was only returning what was rightfully mine. He said that he would not be doing it to fund my wedding and that I could do whatever I wanted, but he wouldn't budge. To say that I was furious would be an understatement. There were a lot of harsh words spoken, and I uninvited him to my wedding. I also told him that I would be exposing his treachery to his family and the world, but I think he did not take me seriously at that time. I decided that instead of going nuclear, I would just let the close family know how he was deceiving me. So, I drafted a long text, detailing how he stole Gemma's money to take care of Ashley, and then came begging to me for help, and promised to return the money to me, only to backtrack the

minute he found a reasonable excuse to not pay. This was the gist of the entire text because it is too long to replicate here. Anyway, I sent the message to my mother, Savannah, Gemma, my paternal grandparents, and my father's sister and her family. I kept Ashley out of it because she is a kid, and she should not be knowing all this. I hadn't expected any drama or revelations in response to my message. Frankly, I had only done this to vent my frustrations and anger, and a part of me regretted it too because I could afford the wedding on my own. But I am so glad I did because it opened a huge can of worms and now it is for all to see how big of a scum my father really is. A day after I sent that text, my paternal grandfather, grandpa from now on,

called me up. We exchanged pleasantries, but he cut to the point soon enough. He asked me if what I had sent in those texts was the truth and if I had actually helped my dad with Gemma's tuition. I said that I had and that I had loaned him quite a lot of money for the same. He asked me if I was sure that he had said that he had used up the money for Ashley, and I said that I was completely sure. That was when Grandpa told me his side of the story. So, when Ashley fell sick, Dad called up Grandpa immediately. He said that he was facing financial difficulties and that he did not know how to arrange for Ashley's medical expenses without taking on huge debt. He said that he had Gemma's college fund, but since he had no access to that, he could not use it for Ashley.

I cut in and told my grandpa that dad had told me that he had, in fact, complete control of those finances and had used them, and that too, without Savannah's knowledge. I also told him that, him that I had to intervene and tell Savannah that he had used up Gemma's money. All in all, what I gathered from the conversation was that Gemma's money was not used for Ashley's bills, because all of that was paid for by my grandpa, and even he was assured that the money would be returned to him. Gemma's college fund, therefore, was taken by Dad for other reasons that he has not yet disclosed, and no one knows, Savannah and Dad were in it together, and just wanted to scam

me out of the money. I felt so nauseous after I cut the call. It was as though I was stranded among scammers and cheaters, and not one of them could be trusted. I felt as if I had ruined my wedding because all this was just too much for me to handle, and that too right before the beginning of a new chapter in my life. I called up my mom and told her everything. She just told me to cut this crap out of my life, and that I could fight these battles later. She said that I was getting married to a good woman and that I owed it to her and my

to not let other people ruin this experience. She said that I had all the time in the world to take Dad and Savannah to task, but this was not the time. I knew she was right, and surprisingly, I didn't have to do anything or even wait, because my grandpa was furious, and he was back with his little revenge that was about to completely screw my dad, for all time to come. So, the house that Dad and Savannah live in is owned by my grandpa. He gave it to Dad to live in when he married mom, and then never asked for it back. It was any way assumed that the house would go to my grandpa when he passed. He also never charged dad rent, but dad had to pay for any upgrades and changes that he made to the house, which were plenty. Now, for the drama, my grandpa sent a message

to the family group that he would be gifting me a house for the wedding to allow me to start a new life with my wife. He said that he had done the same thing for my father, and was going to do the same for me, the fact that his son had not thought of doing anything for his son. It was a poorly masked jive at my father, and I was all in for the show. But what he wrote next was completely unexpected. He said that the house that was supposed to go to my father, the one that dad was living in, but was still legally owned by Grandpa, was the one that he would be gifting me. I know that he has done it out of spite, and I am sure even Dad knows it. The thing is, I do not live in the same town as dad, and have no plans of returning, and this is a well-known fact in my family.

The ownership of the house will, of course, be a huge asset for me, but I won't be staying in that house, at least until I retire. But my dad will. That has been his only home for so many years now, and to take that away from him and give it to me is a deliberate and hard slap in his face. I am not saying that I feel sorry for my father, not at all, but I know it would feel horrible to be in his position right now. With the actual ownership coming to me, he now knows that he is always at my mercy, in the sense that I can have him evicted, I can ask him for rent, I can do anything, and without reason. I mean, of course, I can't flout rules, but let's be real, we all know how much power homeowners have over their tenants. I have no idea what the outrage

regarding this is going to be, but I am sure that there will be something. My father is going to make a huge fuss about it, I am sure of that, but I can't be bothered with this unnecessary drama before my wedding. I will gladly accept the gift from Grandpa. Whatever the reason, he has given it to me, and I will respect him and his gift. I don't know what I'm going to do with it yet, and I am not going to waste time thinking about all this right now, either. Update 1, well, shit has hit the fan. My wedding is a week away, and the family is in complete shambles. I tried to try to to stay away from the drama as much as possible, but I just couldn't. I was forcefully dragged into it, even when I tried to maintain boundaries. After Grandpa had made it known that he was

gifting the house to me, this caused a huge stir because Dad, I am sure, never even anticipated that something like this could happen. He called me up a couple of times, but I didn't answer his calls because I knew all too well what they were going to be about. He then sent me a text saying that I needed to knock some sense into grandpa and said that he was ashamed of the man I had become because he had not raised a petty person like me, who would turn his back on his own family. I didn't respond to this text either and have since blocked him. He has been trying to get in touch with me through other sources, even getting Savannah to call me. She called me once, but when I didn't respond, she was respectful and hasn't tried calling me again.

When nothing else worked, he started sending me emails. He is getting desperate and it is showing. I try my best to ignore his nonsense, but it is mentally taxing to wake up to five emails every single day. I just dread waking up in the morning because I know that there is something waiting for me. He is still invited to my wedding as of now, but I want to cancel the invitation. I know it will send a bad message, but at this point, I don't care. I can't even look at his face right now, and if I am being honest, I need distance from Savannah too right now. I am scared he is going to pull off something during the wedding as well.

I called up my grandpa and I told him that he needs to ensure that all this drama is kept away from me until I'm back for my honeymoon. I told him that I didn't care what you do, you needed to make sure that this didn't spill over onto my wedding and my honeymoon. I have already dealt with a lot due to the family, and I don't want to screw up the one important. day of my life. Grandpa assured me that he would make sure Dad didn't do anything and that I would not be contacted about all this until I was back from my honeymoon. I hope nothing bad happens, but in the event that it does, I will just deal with it once I am back. I have a lot on my plate and I cannot allow myself to deal with a father who doesn't care about me and has used me like a cash cow right now. Update 2. I am now a married man. Mahira and I returned from our honeymoon a

few days ago, and it was amazing. I had the time of my life there, and thankfully, no one from the family disturbed me, they couldn't because most of them were blocked. I thought the drama might be over by now, but boy, I was completely wrong. I hadn't even imagined that things would be so dire by the time I returned. I got a call from Gemma yesterday, asking to meet her in Savannah. I told her that I wasn't very comfortable meeting Savannah, I had uninvited them from the because I just couldn't handle the stress. She said that she understood my apprehensions, and so did Savannah, but she still wanted me to meet them just once so that they could clarify everything. I was reluctant, but I said okay because I didn't want to let Gemma down. She was an

innocent party, and I did not hold anything against her. She said that both she and Savannah were actually in my city and that they wanted to meet as soon as possible. The meeting was, well, long. It was awkward between me and Savannah initially, and she congratulated me on the wedding. I told her that I disinvited them primarily because of Dad, and also because I thought maybe somewhere she was complicit in the entire situation of extracting money out of me using Gemma's education and Ashley's health as a front. The minute I said this she broke down sobbing. She said that she had no idea that Dad had actually taken money from Grandpa, and then proceeded to tell me what happened. By the time she had told me the entire story, I had literal flames coming

out of my ears. So, Ashley was sick, that part is true. Dad had used some of his savings for her treatment, but that was not enough. So, he said that he would ask Grandpa for money, and promise Savannah that he would give the money back to Grandpa. She said fine, and that was the last she heard about the money from him. Ashley got better, and for her, every everything was back to normal. So, when she found out all those years ago that he had used up Gemma's money, she was furious and didn't believe it at all. When she asked Dad about it, he just told her that he had used up that money to repay Grandpa. He concocted an entire sob story about how Grandpa was pressuring him, that he had no choice at that point but to use that

money, and that I had offered to help myself. Savannah said that she was very embarrassed by the entire situation, but was still very grateful to me for the help. Their marriage hit a rough patch during that time, and it took them a lot of counseling and therapy to get back to normal. She said that all that came crashing down when Grandpa said he would be gifting the house to me and disclosed to her that he had never received the money back. She said it felt like someone had slapped her across the face. She asked him where the money was.

He tried to lie and make his way around it but ultimately admitted that he had an affair, and the affair partner was trying to out his secret to Savannah. In order to shut her up, he had to give her that money, and only then did she leave him alone. Once the cat was out of the bag, it was over for them. Savannah has since then moved out of the place and they are headed for a divorce. She said that Dad had been trying to get her to reconcile, but she said that cheating was something that she was just not willing to condone. I couldn't believe my ears. So much had happened in that meeting that I just did not have the bandwidth to process that information. I consoled her and we then left. I have been in touch with both her and Gemma, and I plan to

continue doing so. I just feel horrible that I disinvited her for no fault of hers. She was, in fact, the biggest victim in all of this. I can only feel rage and disgust right now. I cannot believe my father would be a cheater, on top of being a fraud. I mean he is the worst combination ever known to mankind, and I don't want anything to do with him ever again. I just want to help Savannah out and do right by her, even though she was failed by my father. Update 3, I am now charging my father rent. He is continuing to live in the same house, and I told him that I needed him to sign an official

agreement to continue residing in the house. The rent is a good amount, and that coupled with the divorce and the process is going to bleed him dry, and he deserves it. I have also decided that I will be splitting the rent two ways, and sharing it with both mom and Savannah. Savannah will be getting the larger share because she was always a stay-at-home mom, and she needs the money now more than ever. My mother, on the other hand, has been a working woman all her life, and she does not really need the money. In fact, she was the one who gave me this idea and was of the opinion that all the money should go to Savannah. Mehira, and I don't need the money for ourselves.

We are comfortably placed where we are, and we could easily do without the additional income. The same cannot be said for Savannah, and I feel it is my duty to help her out. She was there for me when my dad wasn't, and I want to thank her for all that she has done for me. I know she isn't going to accept the money, but I will make sure that she does. My father reacted poorly when served with the rent agreement and tried to get other family members to manipulate me into taking back the agreement. But unfortunately for him, the entire family now knows that he is a filthy, filthy man, and they don't want anything to do with him either. He tried to get in touch with me via texts, calls, and emails, but all of them were unanswered

and well documented. He then tried to get to me via grandpa, but he gave him a stern reality check which has since then calmed him down. He is not on my head asking me to reconsider for the past few I think he has understood that given the circumstances, he cannot really expect anything better. Savannah is going to try to get full custody of Ashley, though that doesn't seem very likely at the moment. Dad is better place to take care of her financially, but his incompetence as a parent is not difficult to prove. I don't know what will happen on that front, but I genuinely hope that Ashley stays with Savannah. Savannah is a great mom and she will do well with Ashley. I cannot say the same for my father.

Funnily enough, I can say the opposite for him with every ounce of conviction. I hope you enjoy this story. The foster mother whom I have forever appreciated and felt indebted to requested that I call off my wedding so that my partner could marry my step-sibling in my place just one day prior. Our wedding Hi, the incident I'll be talking about is between my stepmom, her biological daughter and me. I, 25F, have been living with my stepmother, Mary 45F, since I was five. My biological mom was an alcoholic and extremely abusive to me. My dad, fed up with her behavior,

filed for divorce and demanded full custody of me due to her negligence. Unfortunately, her issues couldn't be proved in court, so both my parents shared mutual custody, with my mother having me most days. But her ignorant behavior soon caught up with her when one day, she left me home alone, and I accidentally got access to the balcony. My neighbors noticed and called child protective services on her. From then on, I started living with my dad. Things were tough at first, but once he met Mary, they changed for the better. Mary was my dad's lawyer's assistant. They met during the divorce proceedings and got into a relationship soon after that. Mary was herself a divorcee and had a daughter, Jane, who was a woman.

was two years younger than me. Jane suffered from a neurological condition and was in a wheelchair permanently. The disease also affected her mentally, as she had learning disabilities. I met Mary and Jane when I was four. At first, it was a bit awkward because I had been pretty closed off to strangers due to my biological mother, but Mary understood my situation and took things slow, helping me to open up more with time. I grew extremely close to both her and Jane in a matter of weeks, and that's when my dad decided to marry her. Their wedding, as far as I remember, was very personal, with only my grandparents and Mary's parents present. I used to call her Mary before the wedding, but I've called her mom ever since. Things started to get better for us from

that point on, as Mary opened her own practice and my dad, who was a construction worker, opened a construction company. Soon, his business boomed, and from that point on, we never faced a day of adversity in financial terms. Both Jane and I went to the best schools and had good lives. I always considered Jane my sibling, helping her with whatever she needed and standing up for her whenever necessary. Even Mary felt like the only mother I had since childhood because she had always been there for me. I have been extremely grateful to her all my life because she was the reason I was alive and thriving, and I have never failed to show it to her. We moved to a much better neighborhood when I started high school,

and that's where I met my boyfriend, Ryan. Ryan lived two blocks down and was my classmate. We started going to school together once we realized we were from the same area and became good friends. He used to visit my house quite often and got along well with everyone, especially Jane. He was one of the few people she was comfortable around, and we all had a lot of fun together. By the end of last year, he asked me out, and I said yes. When I told my family about this, everyone seemed happy, except for Jane. From that day on, Jane frequently became irritated with me, and we didn't talk much.

Mary saw Jane's behavior and blamed it on her recent medication change. I understood and decided not to talk to her much to avoid fights and give her stress. So, Ryan and I applied to many colleges, and we fortunately got into the same. same one, which was a pretty good school. Everyone was overjoyed at our achievement, and Ryan and I couldn't be happier. Jane was still kind of distant with me, so I decided to talk to her before I left and sorted all out because, after all, she was family. After talking for hours, I realized, by the way she talked about Ryan, that she had a crush on him. Everything made sense, but I wasn't going to trade my boyfriend to sort things out, so I decided not to touch the topic at all.

Jane and I got to okay terms before I left, and I was satisfied with that. Before I left, I told Mary how I thought Jane had a crush on Ryan and that it might make sense for her to ask Jane about it so that it wouldn't create further issues between us. She assured me that she'd take care of it and let me know that I always had her support. I got emotional at the thought of leaving my mom, and we both cried a little in the kitchen. A few weeks after this talk, I left with Ryan to go and set up my college dorm room. The next four years were great academically. I learned a lot, was a topper in most subjects, and bagged a few internships before my peers.

I was overall doing well. My relationship with Ryan, on the other hand, wasn't at its best. We had been having issues since the beginning of college and were on and off for most of the time. I also heard a few rumors that he had cheated on me, so by the end of college, our relationship was pretty much hanging by a thread our history. We both mutually decided that we should take a break for some time to gather ourselves together. I went back home to take a break after my degree for a few months and told my parents about the breakup. They weren't as surprised as I had thought, but that didn't seem fishy.

Jane was also about to finish high school and asked if I could get Ryan to talk to her because she was planning on adopting the same major and needed guidance. I was a little hesitant about calling Ryan so soon after our breakup and suggested some of my friends from the same major, but she insisted she wanted to talk to Ryan only, so I decided to keep my feelings aside for Jane and texted him. After talking to her, Ryan called me and let me know that Jane was being extremely flirtatious during the call and that he wasn't interested in her like that. I told Mary about it, and she said that it shouldn't be an issue for me because Ryan and I were broken up. I didn't think much of it after that. A few years later, Jane was about

to complete college, and I was working, still staying at my pay. parents' house. I bumped into Ryan while grocery shopping, and he was doing well, settled, and enjoying life. We got to talking and met again a few times for lunches and brunches. We eventually ended up rekindling our relationship, and a few months into it. He asked me to marry him, to which I obviously said yes. The news of our relationship wasn't welcomed as expected by Mary, and Jane's disdain was understandable too, but it was the news of my engagement that wrecked havoc at my house. Jane threw a huge tantrum, which led to her having an anxiety attack, and she was taken to the ER.

She was fine, but due to her predispositions, the doctors asked us to take good care of her and not introduce any stress. After discussing it with Mary and my dad, we decided that it was best for me to move out. I moved out soon after the incident and used to come home on weekends. Jane had now made peace with my engagement and was pretty excited about the wedding. She was originally going to be my maid of honor, but after her reaction to the engagement news, I decided to let her be a bridesmaid. Everything was going well, with everyone, especially Mary, who was trying to be a part of every small detail of my wedding and was also

paying for half of it. I couldn't have been more thankful to her for everything and even mentioned it in my rehearsal dinner speech, two days before my wedding. On the night of my rehearsal dinner, everyone was drunk beyond measure, and Mary asked if she could talk to me in private. I thought it was going to be a mother-daughter catharsis, so I suggested we both talk in my room. I hadn't expected what was about to go down. So, Mary sat me down and began telling me how grateful she was to have a child like me, making me emotional. She continued that she had similar wishes for Jane, but that was a far stretch, and began to cry. I consoled her, and she asked me if I loved her. I said yes. Then she asked if I owed my life to her. It was an absurd question,

but I answered with a yes again. Upon hearing this, she stood up and asked me for a favor. When I asked what it was, she said that since I owed her everything I had, she wanted me to share a little of it with my sister, Jane. I was confused and asked what she wanted me to share. What she said next was way beyond normal. She said that I, in comparison to Jane, had a way better life, whereas she was surrounded only by a few, one of whom was Ryan. She claimed that she had known about Jane's attraction towards Ryan since childhood but didn't do anything about it until we broke up after college. She continued that Ryan was a very understanding man and perfect for Jane. She asked me to break my engagement

with Ryan and ask him to marry Jane instead. I couldn't believe what I heard and asked her to shut up, but she didn't. She said that this was the only way I could pay my dues to her, as she had accepted me as her own blood and taken care of me like her own child. She said she wished for Jane to have a relationship for the future too, and Ryan was the one guy she was sure wouldn't break her girl's heart. She knew Ryan wasn't interested in Jane like that, which was why she wanted me to convince him. I couldn't process what was happening and in a fit of rage, kicked her out of my room, with her yelling that I should consider it. and she'd be indebted to me for life if I did this one thing for her daughter.

Her yelling attracted some attention, and my dad came, asking me what was up. I didn't answer and just locked him and Mary out. I cried in my room and didn't realize when I had fallen asleep. The next day, I woke up late and was asked by my dad to visit him in his room. Mary was there, with swollen eyes from crying. He said that what I did last night wasn't cool and that treating Mary, the woman who raised me, like that and kicking her out wasn't something I should have done. I realized at that point that he knew nothing about what Mary had asked of me.

As I was about to tell him, Mary held my hand tightly, signaling me not to tell the truth. I shrugged off her hand, and before I could say anything, we heard a scream from Jane's room. She had fallen in the bathroom and had cuts on her legs. We didn't have enough first aid, so my dad decided to take her to the ER as soon as possible and discuss the issue with me and Mary later. Mary, from that point on, has been pleading with me not to tell my dad the truth and cause harm to our relationship. I don't wish to engage in conversation with her and have been sitting in my room.

Wipta if I don't give Mary another chance to explain herself or apologize before I tell my dad about what she asked of me? Update 1. Hi, thank you everyone for such a kind response. I did initially realize that Mary was at fault, but I doubted myself out of my self. after my father tried to intervene. I have also decided to take advice from the comments and will be telling Ryan first, before my father.

Also, some people have been asking how I wasn't aware of her intentions beforehand when I knew Jane had a crush on Ryan. The thing is, everyone, including Ryan, thought it was an innocent crush and nothing more. There wasn't a time when Ryan had reciprocated Jane's feelings through actions or words. But I think I should have been more careful with the cues,

because one thing that I now think of as weird is that during my dress shopping, Mary also decided to get Jane a wedding dress, to fulfill her wish of seeing both her daughters in wedding dresses, as it might have been difficult for Jane to find a husband due to her condition and people's unwarranted prejudices. Regarding Jane, she was fine with some cuts on her legs that were taken care of well. She had no idea about what Mary had asked of me, and honestly, I didn't know how she would react once she got to know. Anyway, when I went to see Jane after she was back, I saw Mary standing in the corner, her face turning pale.

As soon as I called my dad, I had to ask for car keys to visit Ryan. Mary fainted on the spot, thinking I might rat her out. I helped her to the bed, and Dad decided to stay beside her, silently blaming her condition on me. I didn't have time to explain anything to him and immediately left after taking the keys to the car. I am writing this part after I have met Ryan, so I went and asked Ryan to meet me in my car to avoid unwanted attention. He realized from my voice that it was serious and came down rushing. I told him everything that had happened last night and made him aware of the fact that maybe

Jane's little crush wasn't so little after all. He was more shocked than I was because he had respected Mary a lot for being an excellent woman and such a caring mother to me. He said that such a big revelation would lead to a lot of unpacking, so the best option would be to stall the wedding for a few weeks. He made it very clear that no matter what happens, he is my back and is willing to elope if that's what it takes to be with me. He wanted to be there while I told my dad about this, but I asked him not to, as it was a family matter first. He agreed and asked me to call him immediately after I was done telling, and meanwhile, he would announce to his side of the that the wedding was going to be postponed due to some personal issues.

As happy as I was to have someone like Ryan around me, I was still scared because this whole scenario could lead to sour relationships with my dad, who had always been there for me since day one. I had already lost a mother yesterday and was not up for losing a dad as well. Update 2. So, a lot went down after the last update. I gathered all the courage I could and went back to tell my father about it. Mary opened the door and let me in, but she didn't look as stressed as before. I entered the room and saw my dad sitting on the bed with Jane lying down.

He looked angry and asked me to take a seat. He told me that he knew what had gone down last night and was extremely disappointed in me. I asked him what he was talking about, and he told me that Mary had told him how I berated her last night, saying that she wasn't my real mother and that Jane wasn't family, so I didn't wish to have them at the wedding. According to my dad, when Mary tried to calm me down,

I told her that I didn't want her disabled daughter spoiling my wedding pictures. I couldn't believe how cunning Mary was. I tried to tell my dad the truth about her, which he was duly shocked by, but he said that this was a case of my words against Mary's words, and there was no way for him to believe either version as the truth, so maybe we should sort it out for now. Jane was constantly saying how her mom's side of the story was correct, and now I was sure that Mary had told her daughter the truth and asked her to play along.

I very clearly told my dad that the wedding had been postponed because I didn't care who he thought was telling the truth, but it was absolutely unacceptable to me to have someone who had tried to emotionally manipulate me into giving up the love of my life. Mary intervened and quickly said that she wanted to apologize if she had done anything wrong while raising me and wished for our relationship to get a second chance by being a part of my wedding. My dad was also insisting that I move on and let the wedding happen smoothly because a lot of money had been spent, but I decided not to pay heed to their requests and moved out that very day. I left to stay at Ryan's house, and it has been two days since then.

I didn't really have the energy to deal with anything, so I turned my social media accounts off. I haven't been contacted by my dad and Mary so far, but I've been getting calls from some relatives, which I didn't answer, assuming they must be regarding the cancellation of the wedding. Things are pretty stressful right now, and I hope I find a way to sort things out soon. Update 3. This update comes a week after the last one when the wedding was postponed, and I left my parents' house. So, a week after the constant calls, I got to hear from Ryan, who was friends with my dad on Facebook, that he had put up a post about me on his wall. Apparently, after our relatives had tried to find out the reason for the wedding cancellation from me and got no answers, they decided to bug my

dad and Mary about it. They had tried to contact me to at least make a public announcement as a family, but after they couldn't get in touch with me, he made that post. He mentioned in that post how he, Mary, and Jane were begging me not to ruin their reputation over petty family issues and respond to them because talking was the only way out of this. This post did more damage to the already messed up situation with our relatives, and all his friends on Facebook were now speculating about the problem and spreading rumors. The worst one I heard was that I had stolen money for the wedding and then cheated on Ryan. Ryan was getting stressed about all this, and I talked to him, thinking that he might get cold feet, but to my surprise, he again assured

me that he was going to marry me irrespective of whatever came our way. I still hadn't responded to the post and was going to talk to my parents, a day after the post, to at least be rational before the big confrontation, but things took a different route. That same evening, I got a call from my grandma, my biological mom's mother. I hadn't mentioned her before because she wasn't relevant to the incident, but she has been an important part of my life. She has always protected me and saved me from my mother and had even helped my dad financially. She usually didn't involve herself in our matters, but her intervening in this incident meant something big had happened. Apparently, she had gotten wind of everything and directly confronted my father about it.

He told her what he believed was true, Mary's version. Grandma trusted me and felt something was fishy, so she decided to talk to me about it next. She told me she knew how much I loved Mary and Jane, and there was no way I would have considered them not my family. I got emotional at the possibility of someone from my family finally believing my side and told my grandma everything. She said she could. She said she couldn't believe how vile Mary was and how I was saved from her ill intentions due to her being under the influence. I told her how I feared losing my dad, and she asked me to talk to my parents first while she tried to find a solution. The next day, I decided to go back to my house and

talk to my parents. I was blamed over and again for making a spectacle of our family. I was honestly done with them within just a few minutes and asked if I could have a moment alone with Mary. We went to the other room, and I asked why she was doing it. I was doing it. I was honestly done. I was this to me when all my life, I had loved her. She said that whatever she had said was something she had been feeling and never wished to burden it on me. She asked me to forget about it all as a mistake and move on from it. I said that her losing control and asking so much of me wasn't acceptable at any cost, and I was going to stand by the truth no matter what, which led to her warning me of the consequences. Hearing this, I went outside and asked my dad one last time

if he would even be willing to believe my version of what Mary had asked of me. He said what I was blaming Mary for was very serious, and it wasn't possible for him to believe something so vile about the woman he had loved for so many years. He couldn't believe his own blood, but anyway, I had gotten my answer, and I stormed out of their house. The next thing I hear is that they have been telling people that I have abandoned them, so they were going no contact with me as well. I knew my grandma must be up to something.

So Ryan and I will be visiting her in her country home this weekend. Update 4, I'll start this update with some good news. Once Ryan and I reached my grandma's beautiful house, she suggested that since my parents had created such a messy situation, we should consider eloping and getting married in her backyard instead. Ryan thought of it as a good idea and called his folks to ask for permission. They were very happy about us getting married, so the next day, my grandma called her local priest,

and Ryan and I were married. He announced the news to everyone via his Facebook. The post did get a few comments, but we decided to check them out once we were back home. My dad and Mary had also seen the post and recognized the background, so they began bombarding my grandma's phone with calls and texts. My grandma replied back to my parents, who were acting so desperately, and reminded them that they were the ones who had gone bad-mouting me, so they shouldn't be surprised by this now, and ended the conversation. After the event, I told my grandma what happened at my parents' house and asked if she had planned to do anything. She asked me what I wanted, and I told her very clearly that after Mary's so-called threat, I wished to expose her in front of my dad,

assuming Jane already knew what her mother was up to. My grandma then revealed the plan to me. She said she had this huge chunk of alimony money from her divorce back in the day. and she would spread the news saying that she was going to give all that money to me to start a fresh life after my parents had abandoned me. According to her judgment, she was sure that my dad and Mary would both want a share of the money, and she'd pretend to give it to them if Mary confessed, saying that she had evidence otherwise because I had accidentally called her that night. I was married to the man I loved and had a family with my grandma, so I had nothing to lose

and decided to give this a shot. The next day, my grandma called my dad and let him know that she was going to give me me her money because they had cut contact with me. Just as she expected, they were shocked and wanted to talk in person, so my dad, Mary, and Jane were at my grandma's house the next evening. They congratulated me and Ryan, but nothing much happened after that. My grandma had decided to have a talk with them the next day. As everyone was done with dinner, Mary asked if we could talk privately. She began talking about how my life was finally at peace with me getting married without the drama and with all this new money. I asked her what her purpose for the private

conversation was because I didn't wish to engage with her unnecessarily. She said that whatever she had done that night was extremely inappropriate. I asked her to say what she did because I wanted her to feel ashamed of herself after spoiling my dynamic with my father and maybe Jane. She apologized very clearly for asking me to leave Ryan and convince him to marry Jane instead. She continued, saying it was all her motherly instinct, and that is, yet again, the reason we are having this talk. I expected her to say something along the lines of how I was her daughter too and how she felt remorse and wanted to make amends by telling the truth.

To the contrary, she told me that the kind of money I had now could help Jane settle and get a better future. I didn't cut her off and let her continue. She kept trying to convince me to give half the money I had to Jane because I could earn more, whereas life was already tougher for Jane, and now, with the love of her life married to me, this was the least I could do for her. I didn't say anything to her and began looking at the kitchen door behind her. I don't know how, but it must have been God's will that halfway through the conversation, my dad had come looking for us, and he decided to stay quiet and listen to what

Mary was saying. She didn't realize he was right behind her because she was too busy explaining herself to me. As soon as I looked at my dad after she was done, she realized he had been there the whole while, and what a blunder she had committed. Mary tried to cover up whatever was said during the conversation and instead revealed a lot more about how she had known all this while and was doing this all for Jane. My dad immediately called Jane and asked her if she knew about all this. Looking at the stressful situation, she realized it was best for her to tell the truth. My dad turned towards me and began apologizing for not believing me in the first place and told Mary and Jane to leave the house as soon as they could the next morning because he had a lot to

think about. Mary tried pleading, citing Jane's condition, but Dad wasn't willing to hear anything. I asked my dad to go and rest in his room because this was a lot to take in. Ryan escorted Dad, whereas Mary and Jane decided to stay in another room, at least until they left. No one offered them any sympathy, and we could tell Mary had seen it coming. I cried that night thinking about how bad things had gotten and how we were a happy family just a few months ago. Ryan consoled me, saying that he was going to be my real family from now on. The next day, Mary and Jane left, and my dad left two days later, after apologizing to

me a lot for not trusting me in the first place. I told him that his doubt about me might have heard our relationship and that we should take it slow from now on. He looked dejected but agreed to give me some space. Ryan and I also left the same day, thanking my grandma for all she had done for me. I asked her to come and stay at my place for a while, and she might visit next summer. Update 5, since a lot of you have been asking about what happened with my dad and Mary, I'm here writing this update four months later. So my dad decided to divorce Mary but still wanted to stay in Jane's life if she wished, which Mary denied.

Mary had tried a lot to win him back, but it didn't work. She never apologized to me for everything she had put me through. Her justification was that whatever she had done was for her child, and hence it was okay. I was just happy that I wouldn't have to deal with her anymore. I hope you enjoy this story. Spouse's younger sibling perched on his knees during our gathering. I departed for the evening and now he is residing with his mother, and Rade. with me. I am still very upset. Shaken by everything, and I am so sorry for my rambling. My husband,

Jake, and I have been married for three years, and from the beginning, he was very close with his best friend's sister, Cindy, 18F. Well, my husband would often talk about her and tell me how he had seen her grow up throughout the years. Cindy is always very bubbly and seems very fond of Jake as well. I remember when we were dating, she would ask to come along on our dates a lot. I never really said anything, as I like spending time with her as well. She was like a little sister to me. When we announced our engagement, she asked my husband to better not forget her after being a married man and to still hang out with her. Well, we got married, and I even made her my bridesmaid.

Soon, we moved to a different state and lost contact. Now Jake's best friend has come to visit and is staying with us for some time, and Cindy has come along as well. The moment she saw us, the first thing she said was how hot my husband had gotten, and she was glad he didn't look like those boring married men. Then, throughout their stay, Cindy would ignore my presence and get way too close to Jake. I told Jake that it looked a bit inappropriate and asked him to tell Cindy to tone it down, but he said that Cindy is just a bit childish and is that way with that. everybody. Well, on their last day, we decided to host a dinner party for everybody. During the party, I was with Jake when Cindy came and told me, oh, I need to steal your husband for a while. Before I could say anything, she grabbed Jake's hand and took him to play games.

I ignored it since it was their last day, but then, throughout the dinner, she was getting way too close to Jake and would just drag him away whenever I would be around while giggling at me. When everybody sat for dinner, I sat beside Jake, and Cindy came in last. She then said, oh, there is no seat, and then just went and sat on my husband's lap. Everybody was surprised, and Jake said, laughing, Cindy, stop acting like a kid, you're not a kid anymore. Cindy started laughing, saying it was a joke, and got up and sat on the other seat while giggling at me. Yeah, I was so angry with the disrespect and with the fact that. that Jake was so cool with it, but I didn't want to say anything bad, so I excused myself,

took my car and went out. About one hour later, Jake called me asking where I was. I told him I was going to my friend's house and I would come back after Cindy had left. I know what I did was terrible, but I was so angry at that time that if I had stayed there any longer, I would have probably started fighting or crying. I came the next day, and Cindy and her family had left. Jake was very pissed and said I took things too far. I started crying and told him how everything made me feel. He said it was horrible to think such things about Cindy and that she was like his sister. I told him that I did not doubt his intentions, but I was hurt by Cindy's disrespectful behavior and that he was enabling her by not saying anything. He started saying that I sounded ridiculous

and couldn't even take a joke, referring to the sitting-on-lap incident. I said that that regardless, I don't want her in my house again. To top it off, Cindy sent me a message saying that she was sorry about making me so insecure and that she would make sure to make me feel better, but I should not have left as it was pretty childish and kind of spoiled the mood. It felt so backhanded that I didn't reply to her. I just told my husband he needs to maintain a distance from Cindy. He asked if I was giving him an ultimatum. I asked if he would go as far as disregarding and disrespecting my feelings for Cindy. This really rubbed my husband the wrong way, and he said since I have such disgusting thoughts

in my mind and am giving him an ultimatum anyway, then he might as well leave because he cannot live with such an insecure person who has such disgusting thoughts about him. Then, he packed a bag and left for his mother's place. I have tried apologizing numerous times, saying how sorry I am for everything. He is ignoring my texts and calls. Later, Cindy's brother texted me and called me a bunch of names to think like that about his sister, saying Jake should just leave me and that a disgusting person like me deserves to be alone. I could not stop crying after that. I don't know how to fix this.

Is there a way to even come back? Was I so wrong to deserve this? I don't know anymore. More info, for those who are asking about our ages, we are both 25 years old, just months apart. part. Now, at the dinner party, it was me, Cindy, her brother and his girlfriend, and their cousin with his boyfriend. It wasn't a big dinner, and when Cindy sat on my husband's lap, everybody went silent, but as my husband laughed it off, they didn't say anything either. I think if everyone had seen I was not okay, things would have been awkward. I don't know what happened

after I left. Maybe they said something to Cindy or not, I don't know. I was just a just so overwhelmed and so embarrassed with everything that I didn't want to talk about it anymore. However, now I will definitely reach out to other people who were there and ask them about what happened after I left and what they think of the situation. Update 1, thank you all for responding and the people who gave me good advice and personal messages. I couldn't read all the comments, but now I know my feelings are valid, and Cindy crossed boundaries. Now, during the dinner, Cindy, her brother Sean, his girlfriend, and their cousin Derek,

also a good friend of my husband, with his boyfriend, were here. So I called Derek and asked about the situation and what happened after I left. He was sympathetic and said that after I left, at first, they thought I would come back after some time. However, things were really awkward. When I didn't come back, Sean's girlfriend told Cindy that she was disrespectful. for doing that. Derek and his BF also said the same thing. To this, Cindy started crying, saying they didn't have to corner her and attack her over a silly joke, that she didn't know it would

get so out of hand. She then left the room while crying. Jake didn't know what to say, and everybody left early the next day. Derek also said that Cindy has always had issues with boundaries, and when he introduced his BF to everybody, Cindy would get too close and would joke that she was just checking if he was really gay. They were really uncomfortable with it as well, so Derek confronted her, to which Cindy rolled her eyes and said they couldn't take a joke and eventually stopped. This all sounds so bizarre, I don't know what's going on with Cindy. Sean's girlfriend also texted me, saying she was sorry about what happened.

I told her how Sean's message was inappropriate, but she had no idea about the text, so I sent her a screenshot and asked her to tell Sean not to harass me again. She was very apologetic and said she would talk to him. Then, my mill called and asked what was going on, that Jake didn't tell her and only said we had an argument. I was a bit hesitant to tell her but eventually told her everything. She was furious at my husband. She said they, Jake and her, would be coming to our house so we could all talk. So yeah, I am just waiting for them.

to arrive and really nervous. I don't know if what I did was right or wrong, but we will see. As for people saying my husband is some petto or they are having an affair, I know this is furthest from the truth. I never questioned his intentions, but what hurt me was Cindy's lack of respect for me. Update 2, so my mill came with my husband, and well, the talk happened. There were a lot of things, but I will try to summarize them. Basically, Jacob apologized to me first and tried to explain his POV. He said that he was angry because, A, I left without saying anything for the whole night when he was literally trying just to defuse the situation and tried to laugh it off because it was so awkward he didn't know what

else to do. But instead of communicating I just left him in that a situation. He hadn't seen his friends in a long time and just wanted the dinner to be peaceful. Cindy was going back anyway, and we would most likely never meet her again. B, he acknowledged Cindy was indeed overstepping boundaries, but he didn't know how to bring it up since he had literally seen her growing up, and she is like a little sister to him. Also, she acts like that with everyone. He thought that it was just for a few days, and he wanted no drama during their stay, so he would just brush it off. He did acknowledge he was wrong about not saying anything. C, he was already really worried and sad because I just left with no explanations.

Even after I came back, I did not ask how he felt once. He was also very overwhelmed with everything and felt I was accusing him of not doing anything when he literally pushed her off as politely as possible when she tried to sit on him. He felt I was attacking his character and even gave the ultimatum, which made him so sad as he felt as if I thought that little of him. It wasn't about Cindy but about how easy it was for me to question his sincerity. He said after that dinner he was going to go extremely elderly. see with her anyway. D, he apologized for not speaking up about Cindy's disrespect towards me

and for also leaving like that. Then, after Jake said everything, Mill explained the situation to Jake from her perspective. She scolded him a lot as well. In short, she told him that as a husband, it was his responsibility to make me feel like I was his priority and that he disappointed me the moment I had to come to him to ask to establish boundaries. She said that as a husband, it was his duty that I never would have to come to him about this in the first place. She also asked him how he would have felt had it been a guy on my lap, and he had no answer to it. She told him that what I did was an eruption of suppressed feelings and that, as a husband, it was his duty to go after me and never let me leave in the first place.

There were a lot of things said by her, and Jake seemed to realize and sincerely apologize. for his actions. She ended by telling him that if he ever pulled such a stun again, to not expect her to take him in. Later, she took me for a walk. It was just the two of us, and there she explained some things to me as well. She said that she was sorry for everything but told me that even at her house, Jake was distraught. He didn't tell her because he most likely knew he was wrong but was overwhelmed by everything as well. She said she in no way excused her sons behind. She said she in no way excused her son's but would hope that I would forgive him. She also said that in no circumstances did I need to leave my house as it was my house and my family. She said I shouldn't be afraid to speak my mind

if anything makes me uncomfortable and to talk to her if Jake does something stupid again, and she will set him straight. She hoped we would work it out since she had seen our love for each other, and it would be sad to see us split up due to some disrespectful brat. Her words. She said she could not have a say in our issues but suggested that we should get counseling to understand each other better. She even brought ice cream for me, I know it's a bit childish, but she said sweet things work as a charm when people are upset, and well, she was right. Later, it was awkward at night. Jake came to our room, but we didn't know what to say. After a while, we talked and both apologized to each other.

However, I did say that I was angry at him for telling Sean everything and was deeply hurt by the text he sent me. He said he didn't know what I was talking about, and I showed him the texts. He said he didn't tell Sean about our fight, and only told him that he was at his mom's place. He called Sean, and well, it turns out Sean told Cindy and told her how she went too far at the party. Then Cindy made a huge sob story about how I was passive aggressive with her the whole time. time, how I would always try to question her character and act insecure and jealous.

She even went on to say that I was always like that with her, even when she was a kid, and that I never liked her and always tried to manipulate people into thinking I was an angel while she was a slut. Well, that made him angry to think about how I had been treating Cindy, and he sent those texts. Jake and I were baffled by such accusations, and he tried to explain to Sean how it wasn't true, but then Jake just let it be and decided to do it. go no contact with Cindy and extremely LC with Sean. Jake apologized again, and we just cuddled and slept. And now, Cindy is out of our lives for good, and we have decided to go to counseling for better communication in the future. Let's see how everything goes in the future,

but yeah, we are not getting divorced. I know a lot of you guys wanted me to show Jake this post, but he was so sad and got scolded a lot already, so I decided not to show him for now. Maybe in the future. Sorry for all this rambling. Have a good day, people. Eddett I read people saying we should be NC with Sean, too, and I felt that it would be best to let that friendship go as well, so I talked to my husband about it, and he agreed.

So he sent a text to Sean stating we could not be friends with him, and then he blocked him as well. To clarify, I have somewhat forgiven Jake for his actions, but I told him he needs to rebuild the trust one hat, so I know I can rely on him in situations like that. He agreed, and we will get the couple's counseling as well. Thank you all for your advice. You all made me feel less lonely in all of this. Now on to the next story. Story 2

Discovered my girlfriend's pregnancy was the result of an affair at Bible Camp. When she tried to pin it on me, I exposed the truth. My girlfriend, 25, and I, 27, have been dating for about two years. The first few months of the relationship were blissful. And for a while, I thought she was the one for me. We live together in the same two-bedroom apartment feeding off of each other's monthly salaries. I work as a junior sales representative, while she does some receptionist work at a three-star hotel a few blocks from where I live. With that, it was safe to say that we were doing okay financially, and we were ready to take our

relationship to a whole new level. One day she took me to her parents' house and we stayed there for two whole weeks. They were really nice to me and I enjoyed the mini vacation, except for the no-having sex under their roof part. But one thing I found interesting and a bit strange was how she was still in touch with family, friends, and all their children that she had grown up with. In this group of friends, there was one guy that in my eyes stood out as a big threat to our relationship. His name was David.

He was six feet two inches, dark, and tall with the habit of always whispering in my girlfriend's ear and making her laugh. On several occasions, my girlfriend's mother used to jokingly refer to him as my competition. A joke that I don't normally take lightly. This development bothered me, so I decided to ask my girlfriend about. about him. She brushed me off the second time, this time saying, you worry too much. I only have eyes for you. I still had my doubts about him. But he managed to reassure me in the end. One day, she and her whole family went on a Bible camp retreat for one week in the woods. I didn't bother to tag along because I wasn't too big on Christianity. Plus, I wasn't invited.

My girlfriend said that some of their family friends were coming to the camp too, including David's parents. I asked if David would be there and she said he wouldn't. So, I didn't see any more reason to worry. Two days into the retreat, calls to her number stopped going through. I tried and tried again. But still, her phone was switched off. So, I stopped trying and waited for her to come back. When she was back, I asked her about her phone being switched off all the time.

And she said, we were in the woods. What do you expect? So, I didn't ask again. I also asked if David was there with them, and she said he wasn't. So, for a while, I believed we were fine. Fast forward to about two months after her trip. I attended the birthday party of one of my closest friends at the club. There was a familiar face who kept on staring at me until I walked up to her to talk.

She introduced herself as Angela and said we had met before at my girlfriend's dad's house. She was David's girlfriend who came with him on one of our visits to my girlfriend's house. We talked about a lot of things and it turns out that I wasn't the only one who was insecure about my girlfriends and David's weird relationship. She told me how he left her all alone for one week in the name of some Bible camp she was sure my girlfriend also attended. I didn't tell her she was right or that my girlfriend had told me that David wasn't there. I just nodded in agreement to everything she said, too confused and betrayed to say another word. When I got home, I decided not to jump to any drastic conclusions.

I needed leverage over her, some evidence to prove my doubts. So, I decided to check her phone, which was the only place I could find what I was looking for. So, one day, day when she was in the shower, I snooped. And as soon as I unlocked it, her messaging app immediately popped up on the screen with David's name being the first on the list. From the look of it, I realized they were fighting about something, but what? I decided to look deeper and behold, there it was, the greatest betrayal I have ever experienced in my lifetime. She told him she was pregnant with his baby, but he denied it saying that he wasn't the only partner she had. She told him that it wasn't possible for the baby to be mine, that she had done an ultrasound. And

according to the results, the timing wasn't right, as we weren't intimate during that one week of camp and a few weeks preceding and immediately after that week due to circumstances. But mostly because of her own reluctance. He then proceeded to blame her for seducing him throughout camp and told her that he wasn't ready to be a father just yet. After about a full page of insults and red-faced emojis, they both decided to pin the pregnancy on me. It was better for everyone that way since I loved kids so much and he didn't want anything to do with the child. I was shocked beyond words that I wasn't sure how I still managed to take a screenshot of the chat and send it to my phone before she was done showering. The following day,

she dropped the bomb on me. She told me that she had news for me and didn't know if it was good or bad news, depending on how I would take it. Then she said she was pregnant. I wanted to react, to ask more questions, but I figured it was only going to make her suspicious. So, I smiled and embraced her, and said it was wonderful news. She went to work that day feeling happy and oblivious to what was really on my mind. I called my lawyer friend for advice, and he told me that I needed to order a prenatal paternity test via a court as proof that I wasn't the father before. I was in the baby was born and she put my name on the birth certificate. My brain was befuddled as I didn't know where to start. If I asked her nicely, she would know something was up and refuse. If I asked her

forcibly, she would outrightly refuse. I couldn't think of anything else. So, I decided to pack my bags and leave the house. She began to call my phone and tried so hard to reach me when she realized I was gone. I didn't pick up, blocking her number eventually. About a week after I left, she decided she was ready to announce to the world that she was expecting, posting her baby's ultrasound on Facebook. She captioned it with a toughing speech about the joys and sorrows of motherhood. Then she tagged me in the post. Someone asked who the father was in the comments, and that was when she began dragging me, telling everyone that I ran away and deserted my child. I couldn't take it anymore, all the manipulations, all the lies.

I had to react fast and clear my name. So I made a post on my FB page with a screenshot I took from her phone where they both admitted it was his baby and agreed to pin the pregnancy on me. I tagged her and captioned it, I don't think so. In only a matter of minutes, the post exploded. And that was when all hell broke loose. She kept spamming me on Messenger asking me to take down the post, begging, and pleading. Asking me to think about our child and not embarrass her like that. My posts got flooded with likes and comments, and my inbox was full of her family spamming me,

calling me every name under the sun and people who were curious and concerned about me. I refused to take the post down. Why would I? Even David snuck into my DM and typed, Not Cool. bro. Not cool. I don't think so. Pinning a child that isn't mine on me, now that is not cool. I managed to get a prenatal paternity test with the help of her parents who just wanted closure from all the embarrassment and to find the real dad to pin the child's support on him. The court decided that the baby wasn't mine and my lawyer sent her a cease and desist to prevent

her from putting my name on the birth certificate. Once it was all over, we went our separate ways. And now I'm in a very serious relationship with Angela, David's ex-girlfriend. The both of us have gone through so much in the hands of those two monsters that now it was only right we found love in each other's arms. I hope you enjoy this story. My child stopped communicating with me five years ago due to a misinterpretation, then requested to come live with me after losing her job. When I declined, she publicly criticized me on the internet and abandoned our friendship. Family against me. Hi, so I, 46M, have a 22-year-old daughter who hasn't spoken to me for five years but

recently got back in touch with me because she needed my help. My daughter, whom I will refer to as Lily, is my one and only child, and we had a great relationship up until five years ago. I was previously married to my ex-wife, I will refer to her as Sarah, 45F. Sarah and I met in college and started dating in our second year. Shortly after we graduated, we got married, and then we had Lily. But that marriage did not last for long because we were just way too different, and we realized that we had rushed into things so we decided to get a divorce when Lily was two years old.

We had been fighting a lot, and we believed that it would be better for us to separate, for our daughter's sake. since it was not healthy for her to grow up in such a toxic environment. So we went our separate ways, but we still shared custody of Lily, so we were on good terms. The divorce was a mutual thing in my wife and I were pretty much on equal footing financially, so there was no alimony or child support involved. Everything was amicable and even though we were not friends, we were all right. Lily spent half the month at her mother's place and half at mine and it was a convenient arrangement for both of us. I did not get married a second time, but around six years ago,

Sarah got married to her boyfriend of two years. Her husband, Liam, had also been married before and had two kids. He had a daughter around Lily's age and a younger son, two years younger than his daughter. I was invited to the wedding and everything was quite warm and pleasant. Her husband seemed like a nice man his kids were shy but polite. It all looked fine on the surface, but I realized that Lily did not seem happy at the wedding at all, and when I asked her about it, she told me that she didn't like the idea of sharing her house with those kids. And then she went on to complain about how annoying both of them were and how she wished her mother hadn't married this man. He didn't have a problem with Liam, just to be clear, but just his kids.

Lily always had a problem with sharing, but the way she was speaking at the wedding made me feel like she was being a bit entitled, and I told her so. I tried to be polite and sugar-coated for her. But I had to tell her that she was coming off a tad bit entitled, and instead of making a face at her mother's wedding, she should be out there, being social and happy for her mother. She did not take that kindly and got mad at me, so she didn't speak to me for the rest of the day. That was the first time that I realized how much she didn't like the other kids. I happened to discuss it with Sarah later on, and she told me that she had noticed a couple of times that whenever Liam would come over with his kids Lily would never put in an effort to socialize with them, or even speak to them.

She would just lock herself in her room and then stay there until everybody left. This was only the case when Liam came over with his kids, but when it was just him, she didn't seem to mind it. She found it a bit concerning because now, whenever Liam's kids were not with their mother, they would be living with her and Lily had to get along with them. Otherwise, it would be very difficult for them to live as a family. We decided that we were going to speak to Lily, but it didn't help because she just got mad at both of us and accused us of only caring about how our family appeared to the other kids

and not about her feelings. So we tried to get her into therapy because as far as we knew, Liam's kids hadn't even said anything to her, but she already seemed to hate them for absolutely no reason. And to be honest, Lily had always had behavioral issues, but it never happened to be this aggressive. We had had a few complaints about her during school that she was being rude to others, to the point of making them cry with the way she would speak to them when she didn't like somebody. She wasn't a bully, she would only just interact badly with people who tried to speak to her and she didn't like them.

We had tried counseling back then as well for a while, and the complaint stopped, but with Liam and his kids we were afraid that she would resume that behavior and he didn't want that to happen because of course nobody would want their kids to get bullied for no reason. So we tried to send her to therapy, but this time she was much more resistant than before because she was almost an adult and she kept telling us that she did not want to go because she knew there was nothing wrong with her. Sarah and I did our best but we couldn't make her go and after a while, we just gave up. More than being worried about how she would behave with Liam's kids and how this would affect Sarah's marriage, I was worried about Lily and her behavior in the future

because if it didn't improve, then it could badly impact career opportunities and stuff like that. So I kept asking Sarah how Lily was behaving at home whenever Liam's kids would come around and she always told me the same thing, that she would ignore them and be pretty nasty to them whenever they would try to talk to her so they mostly avoided her and the younger son seemed to be scared of her. Liam hadn't said anything about it, but she could tell that he'd did not approve of this behavior at all. About a year passed, and Lily went away to college, and so did her step-sister. They went to different colleges so they didn't have to interact much and they would only come back for the holidays. And Lily would spend half the holidays with her mother

and the other half with me. We tried our best to keep Lily's behavior in check, but one day, she came over to my house in the middle of the night and it was actually Sarah's turn to have her. So I was pretty surprised when she showed up and asked her what was going on, to which she told me that she had decided to leave her mother's house permanently because she couldn't stand Liam's kids anymore. She complained to me that his daughter was always in her room, reading, and she was convinced that apparently this was all an act to show her how intellectual she was, and she couldn't stand it anymore. She was also pissed off about the fact that apparently his daughter had been bragging about her higher GPA and had been telling her father about it at the dinner table in an obvious attempt to rub it in her face. And also that his younger son was always being annoying and always seemed to be playing video games with his friends, which meant that there were always two or more young teen boys in their house and she felt like she had no privacy anymore.

These were serious accusations and I told her that she could sit in the living room while I sorted this out with her, but she got mad at me the second I said that I was going to talk to her mother about this and asked me if I didn't trust her. So we got into a bit of a fight over that, but eventually, she agreed to let me talk to Sarah and sort this out. So I called Sarah, who didn't even know that Lily had snuck out of the house, because she had been very silent about it, and it was pretty late at night, so she didn't even fathom, that she would do such a thing. But anyway, once I told her about all the accusations that Lily had made against her, she told me that none of it was true, and that Lily was just making up things to be mad about. Apparently, Liam's daughter had only spoken about her grades, because Liam had asked her about it, and it was, in no way, an attempt at anything. She was just casually mentioning it to her father, like a normal person does, and it had nothing

to do with Lily. and about the reading thing, even I had found it a bit hard to believe when Lily accused her of being pretentious just for reading, and Sarah confirmed for me that she had always been that way and even that had nothing to do with Lily. She was just making it all about herself because she wanted a reason to hate her step siblings, and in reality, there was no reason for her to. Even the younger son, and whatever she had said about him was just partly true. He did invite his friends over a couple of times, but they didn't even make any noise and neither did they leave their room, so there was no reason for Lily to feel like she had no privacy in her house anymore. And all of it made sense, honestly, because as far as I had interacted with Liam and his children,

it seemed very unlikely that they would be the kind of people that Lily was trying to make them out to be. After I got off the phone, I was quite disappointed because I knew that Lily was lying, and she just wanted to be her step-siblings in a bad light because she hated them for no reason. I felt like Sarah and I had failed as parents because she had grown up to be very entitled and constantly acted like everybody else was beneath her. It was a difficult decision, but I decided that I was going to have to talk to Lily and tell her, once, and for all, that she couldn't just act out and accuse people of things that they weren't even guilty of just because she didn't like them because it was a horrible thing to do and

that's not the way we had raised her. So whether she liked it or not, she would have to be civil to her step-civil. at the very least and put up with them for as long as she was living with her mother. When I told her this, she got really pissed off and started screaming at me and accused me of siding with the others just because I wanted to get rid of her. I honestly don't even know where that came from because I had never behaved in a way that would make her feel that way. I had always tried to make her feel loved and done my best to treat her as a priority, so for her to accuse me of trying to get rid of her was absolutely crazy. And it was all

also deeply hurtful because I loved my daughter and I would do anything for her, she knew it. The only thing that I was not willing to do was put up with bad behavior or encourage it because it was also important for me to discipline her and make sure that she was a good human being, that's all that I was trying to do. I tried to explain that to her, but she just kept screaming at me and it just didn't seem like she was willing to listen to me at all. So I waited for her to come down, but she just stormed out of the house without even giving me a chance to explain why I did what I did.

I tried to call after her because it was quite late, and I didn't want her to go back home alone since it was also snowing and the roads were slippery, but she didn't respond to me. I tried to chase her down, but she had driven her car and had started driving by the time I left my house. So I was quite disappointed and I had to go back home, but I tried to text her and tell her that I just wanted her to be a better human being, and of course, I wanted her to be around because she was my daughter. But I found that she had already blocked me and that message didn't go

through. I tried to call her a little while later, but even then, I got no response. When I called Sarah to ask if she had reached home safely, she told me that she had, but she didn't want to speak to me and had been very upset. So the next day, I decided to pay Sarah a visit so I could speak to Lily, but as soon as she saw me in the living room, she started throwing a fit. She started screaming at the top of her lungs and demanded that I leave her alone, and she didn't want to hear anything, she didn't want an explanation, and she just wanted me to go. She told me that she never wanted anything to do with me again and that I was not her father anymore, since I had shown her that I didn't want her around, and I was only trying to get rid of her all the time. I still tried to

talked to her through her screaming, but it was too overwhelming and I had to leave. After that, I tried to talk to her every single day, and I would visit Sarah regularly, but the same thing happened every time. After a week of this, Sarah and I decided that I had better stay away for a while and if Lily wanted to talk to me then she would probably come to me herself. But until then, I would just have to stay away because it was getting very tiring for everyone. I would come over every day, and then Lily would refuse to talk to me, come out of her room, and start screaming at anybody who tried to explain my side of things to her. So, I decided that I would not try to talk to her until she had calmed down. And I expected her to

reach out to me herself within a couple of weeks or maybe months at the most, but she never bothered. I kept in touch with Sarah and kept asking her about Lily, but it was quite disheartening because apparently, Lily had told Sarah that she did never want to hear from me again and that she was done with me. She tried to tell me that things would work themselves out eventually, but years passed, and nothing happened, and I gave up hope of reconciling with Lily. She graduated from college and I expected her to at least inform me or invite me to her graduation ceremony, but she didn't. So I just told Sarah to congratulate her on my behalf, but I never got a response to that either. and then she got her first job a few years ago but even then she did not reach out to me.

I tried to move on with my life, but this is my daughter that we are talking about, so it was obviously very difficult for me to forget about everything. But I had to also respect her choice, so I did not reach out to her, because I felt that if she wanted to, she would contact me herself. And until then, I would just have to make do with whatever memories I had of her. It was quite difficult, but I had to get through it somehow. And then, about ten days ago, I finally heard back from Lily. She called me up and I answered, not knowing what to expect, because five years had passed,

and we hadn't spoken even a word to each other. So I didn't know what she was going to say to me. She started off by telling me that she had bad news and that she had been fired from her job because of insubordination. She went on to complain about her boss, who was apparently an idiot, and that's why she had refused to listen to her. So that got her fired because that was her third strike and the company couldn't tolerate it anymore. Apparently, she had not changed a bit since the last time that we interacted, and that was bad news. Because judging by her personality, she only got worse with time and I'm pretty sure that's the reason why she got fired.

I desperately wanted to say something about it, but I refrained because I thought that she was building up to something. So I let her continue ranting about her boss, who didn't even sound like much of an idiot if I am being very honest. Anyway, once she was done talking about that, she told me that this was not something recent and had apparently happened a few months ago. Since then, she had been looking for a job but with no success because everyone in her industry sort of knew about her temperament and no wanted to hire her right now. So she was out of a job and hadn't been able to pay rent for the past few months. She wanted me to help her out by letting her live with me for the next few months until she was back on her feet again. I was really mad about it because five years had passed since we had last spoken to each other and she was just calling me out of the blue,

even though she knew very well that she and I were not exactly on good terms right now. The least that she could have done was at least apologize to me for the way that she had behaved all those years ago, but that was obviously way too much too much to expect for my daughter, given her behavior on most days. But I had thought that the most obvious choice for her would be to approach her mother for this kind of thing since they were on good terms. So I asked her about it and she told me that the reason that she wasn't living with her mother right now was because she had already asked about it and Sarah had apparently declined. On hearing that, I was quite shocked because Sarah was the kind of woman who would support her no matter what and that's what she had been doing so far. Sure she would get pissed off at Lily occasionally, but she would never let her down when it really came down to it and would always be there to help her out. So it was shocking to me that she was refusing to let Lily stay with her when she was in need of it. But then Lily clarified it for me pretty soon and told me that the reason she couldn't live with them was because their house was

already occupied by too many guests since her husband's family had come to live with them for a while and there was no space for her there. So as much as Sarah would have loved to have Lily over, it was just not possible and that's why she had come to me to ask me for help and referred to me as her last resort. Now up until that point, I was still willing to entertain the idea of letting her live with me even though she hadn't apologized for anything, but once she called me her last resort, I got really mad. Because you don't say things like that when you are asking somebody for their help. Especially when that person is somebody you have refused to even speak to for the last five years. Just because her ego was too massive to handle the fact

that maybe not the entire world thinks that she is perfect as she is. And somebody actually had the guts to say that to her. That's the problem that she had with me, that I was honest with her and I tried to make her a better person. And she misconstrued it on purpose and turned it into something ugly, just because she couldn't accept some pretty valid criticism. At least no, I had expected her to apologize to me and tried to make amends for the past, but there was no apology and on top of that, she actually expected me to help her out and let her live with me after calling me her last resort, making it very obvious that she didn't

want to stay with me and would rather have stayed with her mother instead. So out of anger, I told her that she was not welcome in my home and she could look for someplace else to live because I was simply not interested in helping her out here in any way, shape, or form. And she had the audacity to actually be outraged when I told her that I was not going to take her in and she had to look out for herself. She started screaming at me on the phone and told me that I was being a terrible father yet again when she had served me the chance to remedy the past on a silver platter to me.

And I told her that I really didn't mind being a bad parent because she was an even worse daughter and she kind of deserved this. Then I hung up the phone before she could start yelling at me again and I blocked her number because I did not have time to waste on her and I just wanted to get along with my day. But a few hours later, Sarah started calling me and even when I ignored her for the first few times, she did not stop calling until I picked up the call. I had ignored it the first few times because I knew that she was going to yell at me about Lily. And honestly, I really didn't need that just after I had been yelled at by her for being a terrible father. So I told her that I wasn't interested in talking about it. As soon as I answered the phone, Sarah told me that she was terribly disappointed in me and said that I was being selfish and not thinking about the bigger picture here.

I couldn't even understand what the bigger picture was because, to me, it just sounded like they were making up excuses for her terrible behavior. So we got into an argument, and Sarah told me that she was not interested in speaking to me until I apologized to our daughter and decided to take her in. That has not happened yet and they are going around calling me selfish and heartless and whatnot. It has come to a point where I really have to consider if I actually am being any of those things. I really don't understand what I did wrong here because as far as I am concerned, reacted like any other person would. I'd offer refusing to take my daughter in because she didn't

apologize to me. Update 1, hi, I am back here after almost three days of making my post. And I have come to the conclusion I did nothing wrong. So that's pretty nice for me. I also decided to call Sarah up and tell her that she had to cut it out because she had been telling all our common friends that I was being selfish by not letting Lily stay with me. I could understand. I could understand. that she was upset and that was completely her decision. But she could not go around saying bad things about me when I hadn't even done anything and expect me to be okay with it. That was simply not acceptable to me and I told her so.

But then she got mad at me because she thought that it was a pretty jerk move for me to call her after ten days for this, but I didn't think it was important to call her to talk about our daughter and apparently I felt that it was more important to make sure that my image among our friends was not ruined because of what I was doing. I told her that it was because she was blatantly lying about me as a person and only telling people stuff that she knew would ruin my image and ignoring all the other things, like what Lily had said and done all those years ago. Then she actually tried to tell me to grow up and stop having such a meltdown about things that happened six years ago and that I needed to move on from it because it was just not that significant anymore and it was pathetic of me to still hold it against my daughter and use it as an excuse not to help her out when she was clearly in trouble. I was shocked that she was the one saying this because back when it had actually happened, she had been on my side, but now she was acting like it was simply no big deal and I should

just forget about all of it. I'm not going to get my time back and it's all Lily's own fault so I think she should face the consequences of her actions because it's a very important lesson to learn and I can't help her at least until she apologizes to me once. I have been very clear about my terms and if they can deal with it then I'm good and if not it's still their loss and not mine so I have nothing to worry about. The only reason I even called Sarah up was because I wanted her to stop talking crap about me to my friends and that's it, she was the one who brought up all those things about me and Lily and tried to act like a shrink

or something. It's not my fault that didn't work out well for her. But yeah anyway, that's what happened and now if she stops talking about me, that's great and if she doesn't, well, that's on her. I am not going to call her anymore because I have nothing more to say to her or Lily and I don't want to drag this out. Update 2. Hi, so recently I called Sarah up to tell her that she needed to stop talking about me to my friends and trying to ruin my image in front of them, and for a while, she didn't do any of that. But little did I know that she and Lily were just preparing for a much bigger attack on me and that happened a few hours ago. I started getting a bunch of calls and texts from a lot of my friends and they were all telling me that I needed to check out social media and go to Lily's account to see what she and Sarah had posted about me. I knew instantly that this could not be something good and as soon as I checked out their post my heart dropped because they had just said the most horrible things that one can imagine about a person and the worst part was that most of my family were talking about how they had always known that I was going to fail as a father and had no faith in. Me. Even a few of my friends agreed with the things that had been said in the post and it really

broke my heart because I thought I was on good terms with these people but clearly not. I was extremely disappointed that this was the route that Lily and Sarah had chosen to take because it was quite violent and unnecessarily dramatic. I can't lie, that post really broke me and I ended up crying for a few minutes after I read that post because it was scathing, to say the least, and they really tore into me. and called me every single derogatory name you can imagine. My daughter even said that some of her friends did not have fathers at all, and she actually believed that they were much luckier than her because at least their fathers didn't sup.

I mean that's going to hurt and the objective of that post was to hurt my feelings, so I would say that they succeeded in doing so. But I decided to take the high road and not respond to that post at all because I was not going to dignify any of that. So I simply blocked them and went on with my day and I also told all my friends that I did not want to hear anything about them anymore because they were free to do whatever they wanted to and so was I they are not my family anymore and I don't want to hear anything that they have to say about me. Update 3 I recently received a text from Sarah and she told me that Lily had decided that she was going to move away from the city because there were no job opportunities for her anymore and she didn't want to waste any more of her time. She already had bagged a moderately good position in another company and was moving away in a couple of days so they were throwing her a farewell party and she wanted to invite me to it. It's been almost three months since I cut them off and it's been great so far so I don't really want to go back to that life.

This is why I declined that invitation and blocked my ex-wife's number because now that I was not speaking to Lily anymore, there was really no reason for me to continue speaking to her. I am honestly much happier without both of them in my life and I intend on keeping it that way. I hope you enjoy this story. My lifelong companion from early years transformed the perception of my whole neighborhood against me due to a falsehood she spread regarding my feelings for her future husband. Eventually, the reality came to light. Oh my goodness, I am overwhelmed. Such a jumble right now. Let me try to make sense of all of this.

When I, 26 F, was five we moved, and our next-door neighbors had a girl my age named Bella, 27 F. We immediately connected and grew up thick as thieves. Our families were also close. I moved a couple of hours away for college while Bella stayed home. She would come visit me frequently, stay with me, and we had great times. I met Barrett, 26M now, in an Econ class sophomore year and realized, we had a lot of friends in common. He was a smart, attractive guy, so we ended up hooking up a few times after study sessions. It was fun, but there wasn't really long-term chemistry, so we

remained friends. We never even talked about dating. We weren't close after that, but we were on group text threads together and saw each other frequently at parties. I introduced Bella to Barrett at a party senior year and it was love at first sight for her. She interrogated me about him and I informed her of our history. She seemed pretty upset about the fact that we had hooked up, but I assured her that there was absolutely nothing romantic there and that she had my blessing to pursue him. She did, and after a few months, they started officially dating. She was over the moon. I was happy she was happy. I graduated and accepted a job six hours away from home. Shortly afterwards, Bella and Barrett ended up moving in together in my hometown.

I visited them frequently at first, but life got busy so we ended up seeing each other annually at holidays. Last Christmas, my family hosted a Christmas Eve party with our two families at which Barrett proposed to Bella. It was a heartfelt proposal and everybody was thrilled for them. Bella wanted to talk about nothing but wedding planning that holiday and we had tons of fun brainstorming ideas together. There were no signs of what was to come.

For the next few months, I expected to be formally asked to be Bella's maid of honor. She had mentioned this over the holidays, but the ask never came. She started screening my calls. Finally, I received a save-the-date in the mail and still hadn't heard from her about whether I was in the wedding so I got her on the phone and asked her. She told me that she had thought it through and didn't think that I should be in the wedding at all because I lived so far away. She thought it would make coordinating bridal events too difficult.

She was making her cousin, who she doesn't even like, her maid of honor. I was pretty hurt by this. I was her closest and oldest friend. I introduced her to her fiancé and was friends with him too. I told her that I could get the time off work, would buy plain tickets, whatever was required of me, to participate. That I didn't think that it was going to be as challenging as she thought. She shrugged this off.

Instead, she directed the conversation to whether I was going to be. to be bringing someone to the wedding. I was a little confused by this question because I just had a bad breakup and she knew all about what went down. I told her that since I wasn't seeing anybody currently, I'd probably be attending solo. She told me that she would keep my plus one open until the last possible minute and encouraged me to try to find a date so I wouldn't be lonely. I thought this was a nice gesture, but reassured her that with my family present and tons of mutual friends from college and our hometown that I would be fine. The next few months passed without much incident.

I didn't hear a ton from Bella. I probably could have reached out more, but I was still stinging a bit from not being asked to be in her wedding party. I also saw on social media that she had an engagement party that she had not told me about or invited me to. That also hurt, but I didn't say anything. I figured we were just growing apart. It happens.

Then six weeks prior to the wedding, I got a call from Bella. She told me that one of her bridesmaids had dropped out and that she was hoping that I could fill in. I wouldn't be going to any of the events as those were already booked, but I would be in the wedding party. I was thrilled and relieved and accepted immediately. She told me that she was doing a reverse color palette for the bridal party where all of the bridesmaids and groomsmen were wearing white, and she and the groom were wearing black. This didn't seem that strange, Bella has always liked to stand out and has unconventional taste.

She apologized for the late notice and asked if I could find a white dress in time. I had a white slip dress already that would work and sent her a picture of it on the call to see if it would work. She verbally approved it and tagged it with a thumbs up on the text chain. This will be important later. The wedding was at noon, so we were supposed to meet to do hair and makeup at the venue at 8 a.m. I left my parents home early and arrived in sweats with my dress in a bag and greeted Bella and the other girls. We had fun drinking champagne and getting ready. About two hours prior to the

ceremony, Bella told everybody to get our dresses on so we could do some pictures. I grabbed my bag and went into the bathroom to change and tweak my makeup. When I re-entered the room, every last bridesmaid was in a blue dress. I was the only one in white. My stomach dropped. My mind raced back to the conversation I had with Bella. She had said white, right? I hadn't misheard. No, I was certain. She had called out the reverse color scheme. I had Googled it. No, this was a setup. Bella was in the middle of the room in a bathrobe with a resigned look on her face. She said to her cousin, I told you she was going to do something like this. Her cousin approached me and asked what I was wearing. I mumbled that.

Bella had told me to wear white. Bella didn't even blink. She stared back and huffed out a laugh and said something about how of course I would have to make today all about me. The cousin started screaming at me, going off on me about how I was jealous, in love with Barrett, and how completely unhinged I was. Honestly, I froze in that moment. I was so spun around by how fast everything went from great to shit, I couldn't even find the words to defend myself. Eventually, stammered out that I had another dress at my parents' house and could go home and change. Bella said something like I think we both know that this is the end of our friendship. I've given you too many chances.

It's time for you to go. I started to cry. I didn't really know what was happening or what she was talking about, but I knew that whatever was going down was really bad. Finally my leg started to work again and I fled. I left all of my things at the venue and just ran to my car and went home. home, sobbing in the white dress. About a half hour later, my phone blew up. Texts from nearly everyone in my life, telling me that I was bitter, that I was a whore, that I needed to grow up

and get over my jealousy, asking how I could do that to Bella. Even my mother sent me a text telling me how disappointed she was in me and that we'd talk when they got home. I did what any rational person would do in the situation. I broke into my parents' liquor cabinet and got drunk. As a result, the conversation when my parents finally arrived home was somewhat confused. My dad wouldn't even look at me and my mom and I kept talking past each other. She outright didn't believe that I had been told to wear white and I didn't understand why. Then finally she said something like because of everything else that happened, and I was like, What are you talking about?

What does that mean? And she said, you know, your ultimatums to Bella. The next few hours revealed the truth. Over the last several months, Bella has been building a fiction with nearly everyone in my life that I am mentally unstable and madly in love with Barrett. She has concocted a web of outlandish tales and systematically poisoned my family and friends against me. My boyfriend apparently dumped me because of my feelings for Barrett, lie.

He cheated and I dumped him. I told Bella that she needs to choose between me and Barrett never happened. I told Bella that I couldn't be in the wedding party because I couldn't support her marriage given that Barrett was meant for me, lie. I had a major meltdown before the engagement party and that's why I wasn't there. On and on, lies on top of lies. In all of these stories, Bella has painted herself as the patient, long-suffering friend trying to deal with a friend clearly going through a tough time.

She expressed understanding for my unrequited love for Barrett and empathized with how hard it must be for me to see her marry the love of my life, and has made great efforts to try to sustain our friendship despite how complicated the situation is. The lie has been going on so long, my mom literally did not believe me. Finally, I grabbed my phone and handed it to her and told her to go through my text messages with Bella. Asked her to show me any evidence of any of that happening. It was when she was scrolling through reading our messages that she saw the picture of the white dress I had sent Bella with her thumbs up on it. I had completely forgotten about it. The absence of any ultimatums or Barrett drama in our texts and the picture of

the approved dress flipped my mom. She finally believed me. She was horrified that she had bought into a false narrative. She called my dad into the room and explained what was what. My dad isn't the type of person you want to piss off. We had to spend significant energy trying to calm him down. so he didn't walk next door and ripped the house from the foundation. My mom still says that I'm a bit of an asshole because I should never have assumed that I could wear white to someone's wedding. I should have confirmed with the other bridesmaids about what they were wearing, and that was part of my job as a member of the bridal party.

Fine, I own that. But it doesn't change the fact that I never meant to hurt Bella, and she has been setting me up for this epic fall for months. The next day, hung over on multiple levels, I sent screencaps of my call history with Bella and the photo of the approved dress text to multiple people. Unfortunately, this is where my occupation works against me. I am a graphic designer and people believe that I photoshopped the image. Trust me, if I was going to Photoshop some proof it would have been a hell of a lot more compelling

than somebody liking an image. So pretty much nobody believes me except my mom, dad, and one. of the other bridesmaids, one of Bella's friends from college I don't know well. She was there during the dress incident and she found me on social media and DM'd me that she could tell from the stunned look on my face that I was telling the truth. She said that Bella had a pretty bad case of COVID at the beginning of the year, and ever since then had changed as a person, becoming cruel and self-absorbed. She said the wedding events had been horrific and Bella was a monster and she was planning

on going no contact now that it was done. So that's three people out of hundreds that don't think I'm an asshole. Everybody else does. My reputation destroyed. My life in tatters. I don't think I'm the awe, but I submit myself to Reddit's judgment. Relevant comments. Oop answers some questions.

Did Barrett maybe say something about him having feelings for you that you did not reciprocate? This is possible, I guess, but I'm not aware of any incidents. I think perhaps this has more to do with Bella's cousin putting poison in her ear about me than Barrett actually having feelings for me. But that's just a gut instinct. I don't actually know. And where was Barrett in all this? You said he was your friend, so it seems odd that he would watch his bride attempt to ruin

your life for the fun of it. The first time I saw him after last Christmas was at the rehearsal the night before the wedding. I gave him a hug and congratulated him and expressed how excited he must be. and we talked about my drive-up and how some of our mutual friends' flights had been cancelled. It was entirely benign. Bella was talking to somebody else and I greeted her a bit later. I never saw him the day of the wedding because I didn't make it that far. I have no idea what he makes of all of this, but I have to imagine that he's been poisoned

to believe I'm some deranged stalker as well. I haven't reached out to him because I'm worried doing so would add fuel to Bella's narrative. If your parents were at the engagement party, why didn't you tell them you weren't invited? My parents were not at the engagement party. My understanding was that it was more of a friend's engagement party than a familial one. But they did know that it happened, and I do think they expected me to come home for it. There was a lot of miscommunication between my mom and I. My parents are pretty low EQ and uncomfortable with emotions and drama, so they didn't pry too deeply.

My mom would ask me questions like so Bella told me a little bit about what is going on. Are you okay? And I would assume she was talking about my cheating ex where my mom was actually talking about my unrequited love for Barrett. And I would respond with something like I'm struggling a little, but I'm getting through it. I'll be okay, thanks mom. And like that, we kept talking past each other. Looking back, there were a few things my mom said that confused me, but I didn't see clarity at the time. in response to some more questions on that thread. So if they expected you to come home for it, why did they never ask you about your plans to attend and when would you be home?

I wish I could answer your question, but I genuinely do not know the timelines from my end. I don't know what my parents knew when, when the party invites went out, when my parents were told by Bella that I couldn't handle going. All of this happened without me knowing about it. So I just don't know. Trust me, the fact that my parents were. thought all of this stuff was going on with me and didn't properly talk to me about it has been difficult to swallow. Also, how is it that as you're getting ready at the venue you never see

her wedding dress or talk about the flipped colors for the wedding until it's time for the bridesmaids to get dressed? I was boxed out of all of the other wedding events except for the rehearsal which lasted about 30 minutes. I was never really put on group texts about the wedding, which I thought was owed to my last minute involvement. Dresses were in garment bags and put on a rack. At one point her bridal gown was removed from the room to be steamed. I don't think it was back yet when this all went down, which was why she was still in a robe. My understanding was that she wanted photos of us helping her get dressed, which was why we were getting dressed first. Now I suspect the timing was intentional.

I was the only person who thought there was a flipped color palette so I don't know why that would have come up in conversation. We talked about a lot of stuff but wedding colors didn't come up. It seems like both you and your parents are poor communicators and Bella relied on you not reaching out to her, or her parents, the other bridesmaids, or your parents to ask about wedding plans, yeah, my relationship with my parents is, well, I think I'd need a whole additional Ada post for that. It's complicated. Update post, January 16th, 2024, almost two months later. I've gone back and forth about updating my post. If you read my update, hopefully you'll understand why. For safety reasons, this will likely be my one and only update.

For those of you bitching about length, I included a TL, doctor at the end. Before I get started, I want to address a question a lot of commenters had about my parents. A lot of people were questioning why my mom would hear all of that stuff about me and not check in on me or confront me. It's because I'm an apostate. Last year I left the religion my parents raised me in, which Bella is still involved in so she has superior credibility. My politics differ also. From where mom and dad sat, I was a sinner capable of any act of evil

because I turned my back on biblical principles. Assume that the broader religious community in this town believes the same of me. Despite this, I tried to have a relationship with my parents. I am an only child. They are my only family. But there was strain and distance there. For example, I did not tell my parents a lot about my breakup because the circumstances of that would reinforce some of my parents' worst beliefs about me.

It's also the reason I haven't been home in the last year. It's also one of the reasons I assume things were strained between Bella and I in the last year. I didn't bring it up because as everybody wanted to point out, my post was already too damn long, and this one will be too. Sorry. I would have guessed that the events of the wedding would strain my relationship. with my parents further, but unexpectedly it has brought us closer. I think many of my parents' strong opinions of me were more about how they felt my leaving the church would ultimately reflect on

them in the community. But now that the community has rallied against me and the worst has happened, they've circled the herd. They've waged holy war in their church on my behalf in the last couple of months. It's weirdly cemented that my parents actually do care about me, despite our differences as people. So in that regard, this awful event has been a blessing. A lot of the awkwardness between us from the last year has faded and it really feels like they've chosen a side and that side is me. We had a great holiday together. So in that way, I'm glad this happened. On to the update. In the immediate aftermath of the wedding and post, I did as people suggested and sent out a screen recording of my text messages with Bella, all of them going back months, to countering

to counter her narrative that I was unstable and explaining my side of the story. There were three camps that emerged as a result. First were my high school friends. Most of them are religious and had been extensively brainwashed by Bella. None took my side, except for the one bridesmaid who had already contacted me. Next were the college friends closer to me. None of them had heard Bella's whisper campaign and accepted the evidence immediately. Several of them told me that they had never really liked Bella and that she had shit-talked

me behind my back. This was news to me, but also a relief because these are the relationships I most don't want to lose. And it looks like I won't. The college friends who were closer to Barrett just didn't really care. A lot of these guys are classic dude brothers that are drama adverse, so I'm not shocked they aren't relishing the chance to wade through and litigate the evidence. No hostility coming from these people anymore, but no support either.

I can live with that. Bella's nuclear and extended family I have given up on. When I was back for Christmas I tried to go over to speak to Bella's parents, who were like parents to me also, and they refused to even open the door. I left a letter in their mailbox. It went unacknowledged. In general, things settled down into a new normal and I just focused on my life and my work and trying to move forward.

I went home for the holidays and just hung out with my parents. Life was okay. Then, January 1st, I signed into an older email account that I haven't used in a while to reset a password. In the spirit of New Year digital housekeeping, I started going through old messages, intending to close this account for good. When I saw an email from my ex with the subject line I win.

I cannot describe the gut punch that I felt when I saw that mail. I freeze up now just writing about it. My ex, let's call him Matthew, was the perfect boyfriend. Until he wasn't. He became extremely controlling after our first year of dating. He wanted to control what I wore, what I ate, who I talked to, who I connected with and what I posted on social media, etc. He was very cunning and nuanced with the way he tore me down slowly over time. But then he slipped up, I found out he was cheating.

and I woke up enough to get out of there. The breakup was a living nightmare. He refused to allow me to break up with him. We were living together. He installed tracking software on my phone and bugged my car. He had people at my job reporting to him on my movements. I couldn't get away from him. I couldn't hide.

He kept showing up. He held my dog hostage. The police were useless because he was never physically violent and was careful not to write his threats down. I was in absolute hell for months, living under the terror that he would show up again. I had changed my job, my number, my address, my email account, my social media profiles were private,

this was the one place I forgot to block him. The IWN email was sent the day after the wedding. He said that he had become close with Bella after we broke up. He called himself the architect of my demise. He said he had fed bed back. Bella's paranoia about me and Barrett and that together they had planned my punishment. He said losing everyone important in my life was what I deserved. And then he said we should get back together.

Unless I wanted more unfortunate things like this to keep happening. Yes, he a delusional prick. It took me a while to collect myself and get my shit together after reading that. I fell apart for a few days. My mom helped pull me back together and now knows the details about what happened with Matthew. She connected me with a family friend, an attorney, that is currently helping me file for a restraining order against Matthew. I tried during the stalking period, but couldn't afford an attorney and was denied. I think with the email evidence and the attorney saying things the right way, it will be granted this time but the hearing is not for another couple of weeks. It is on Zoom and Matthew will get a chance to be there.

I am terrified to see him, even just on a screen. If you read this Matthew, please realize that I am not so terrified that I won't taste the fuck out of you if you ever come near me again. Once I had dealt with my own safety, I had the realization that I was in possession of absolute proof that the wedding incident was a setup. I considered blasting it out everywhere, but I still have so much shame about being in an abusive relationship and cannot bring myself to do it. So I decided to just forward it to Barrett with a small amount of explanation.

Barrett did not respond to the email. I do not know what happened in Bella and Barrett's household after that, but what I do know is that two nights later, Bella drunk drove her car to my parents' house. While attempting to park in their driveway, she ran over their mailbox. When my parents answered the door, she started screaming about how I'm a home-reaking slut.

In her drunken ramblings, my parents were able to figure out that Barrett had left her. Her parents were called over from next door to collect their drunk daughter. My dad said they seemed extremely embarrassed. I know a lot of people here will probably be fist pumping the air that Bella met with some karma. I'm not one of them. Matthew is a monster, and I know firsthand how charming and convincing he is. Bella, much like I did, fell for his act.

Her happiness has been destroyed by Matthew too. and I have a really hard time blaming her now that I know that he was pulling the strings. But she also made her choices. I'm not dumb enough to reconcile with her either. My number one priority is my safety and anybody who has ties to Matthew is somebody I need to stay far away from. Bella will have to find her own path back to good. There is a role that opened on my team in another country. It's a manager position, which would be a promotion for me and my boss thinks

should apply. While it would be harder having even more distance from my folks, I think being in an entirely new country might help cultivate a feeling of safety for me. One that I'm not sure I can get in the city now. So that might be what's next for me. I don't really know how to end this properly. I'm just tired. Thanks for the support, Reddit. I probably won't sign into this account again. I hope you enjoy this story. Delivered twins and put on weight, my grinder continued to make remarks and presented me with a scale as a birthday present. I misplaced it and departed with the infants. Presently my husband wants me to apologize. Recently, I gave birth to twins, and obviously, that has led to a bit of weight gain. I've spoken to

the professionals and they have assured me that this is completely natural and normal after a pregnancy, especially after twins. And soon enough, with a proper diet and regular exercise, I'll be be able to come back to my original size. To be honest, I'm not even very concerned about that, since I used to be really thin earlier and I think putting on a bit of weight has been good for me. Besides, right now, my primary goal is to be a good mother to my children, no matter what weight I am at. But I don't think my mother-in-law agrees with it since she has made it very clear that she doesn't want me at this size right now. Agnes, my mother-in-law, used to be a model so she's pretty conscious about her appearance and that's great, I find it wonderful that even at her age,

she always takes great care of herself. But for her to expect the same of me, especially after I have given birth to twins, I think that's a bit unrealistic and I was really upset for the past couple of weeks because she kept insisting that I needed to lose weight. I was getting annoyed by my husband's family anyway because they kept visiting every other day and my mother-in-law had practically made a home in our house. So this meant that I barely got any alone time and I was forced to entertain guests all day long for the past three weeks. I tried to be polite about it, but my husband felt that it was normal for his family to want to come over all the time since his family loved him and they couldn't believe that he was a father now,

so they wanted to meet the baby as soon as possible as well. I could understand that his family was excited, but I feel like it shouldn't be the norm to keep visiting a woman who has just given birth since I'm honestly just exhausted right now. Anyway, I was pretty annoyed by the fact that Agnes was visiting every day already. and instead of helping me out, she would expect me to do everything around the house and she thought that she was doing me a favor by looking after the kids instead. I thought it was kind of unfair since I was the one who was their mother, so if she really wanted to help me she should have taken care of the other chores and let me look after my babies.

That was bad enough as it is and on top of that, she just kept taking poutchats at me about my weight. The rest of my husband's family found it funny but I did not and neither did my parents, who told me that I had to stand up to these people and make sure that they didn't behave this way with me. The problem with me is that, by nature, I'm a really non-confrontational person and I find it very difficult to talk about what's bothering me, but after my parents visited me, I decided to tell my husband that I was not fine with his mother making an issue of my weight so publicly and neither was I fine with her or his family visiting us every day. That led to an argument since he believed that I was being unreasonable. He said that I'm not very close to my family, which is why they didn't

visit that often and it was kind of true, but another reason that they didn't visit that often was because I had been very clear that I needed some time to myself with the babies before I was ready to entertain guests. I tried to explain to him that these frequent visits from his family were making me irritable and I was exhausted from dealing with them, but he turned around on me and made it sound like I was being selfish. And I am not really in a condition to keep fighting and arguing, so I let that one go and drop the argument, even though I shouldn't have. Because I guess that's what led to this incident that took place a couple of days back, on my birthday. I had specifically told my husband that I did not want a birthday party, I just wanted to spend the day alone with

him and the kids. And I thought that since it was my birthday, he would respect it, but unfortunately, that's not how the situation played out. I spent the morning at my parents' place since they had invited me for birthday lunch and that's a ritual that we follow every year. Usually, my husband also accompanies me, but this year, he said that he was feeling a bit under the weather and that he wanted to stay home. Around the evening, when I finally came back home, my husband had invited his entire family and a bunch of our friends to the house to surprise me. This was exactly what I didn't want, but since they were already here, I decided to put on a happy face and pretend that I had the energy to deal with this. I was really tired and I just wanted to nap, but after I had cut the

cake, Agnes told me that it was time to unwrap the presents and even though I told her that I wanted to get some rest, she insisted that I do it and I opened hers first. I was too tired to put up a fight, so I did what she asked just to get it over with and I completely flipped out when I unwrapped her present to me and realized that she had given me a way machine. For the past couple of of weeks, ever since I had given birth, I had found my husband and his family increasingly more annoying to deal with, but this was just the last straw for me. Agnes had been the worst of all, constantly bringing up how much weight I had put on, and that I had to shed it off all quickly and this was what finally tipped me over the edge. I started freaking out at her, and I really

gave her a peace of my mind. I had stayed quiet for long enough, but once I started yelling at her, I just couldn't bring myself to stop and let it all out. I told her that she had no business talking about my body, especially after I had given birth to the grandchildren that she constantly came over to see, without even bothering to ask if I would be okay with it. Then I yelled at her for a bit about how she had become an absolute nuisance to deal with since she never helped me out whenever she came over and expected me to do all the menial tasks, while she got to play with the kids that I had carried for nine months.

I said a lot of other things as well before I asked her to get out of my house and kicked her out of the party, and I also told my husband's family that after this party, I did not want them visiting me at all until I'd specifically invited them. I was absolutely furious and I did not care in the slightest about what they thought of me, I just wanted them all to leave me alone with my babies. After yelling at them, I didn't even bother speaking to my husband and just went to the bedroom with the babies and went to sleep. I did wake up quite a few times after that, but my husband was nowhere to be found. I was kind of worried, but I was also worried. But I was also a really upset, so I did not even call him. It wasn't until the next morning that I finally saw him

again, and when I asked him where he had been, he told me that he had spent the night at a friend's place because, after my outburst, he did not feel like staying with me. He seemed upset and I felt a little bad about my behavior as well since I had really insulted him and his family the night before. But I had been pushed to the edge, so I couldn't say that it was all my fault. Anyway, I thought that we could discuss it and talk it out, but instead, he told me that his mother was really upset about everything. And the worst part was that now, both he and Agnes expected me to apologize to her for my behavior because she was an elderly woman, and she had never been humiliated like that before. They also felt like I had overreacted since she was only trying

to look out for my health. So here's a couple of things about Agnes, she's just 54. That doesn't count as elderly at all, at least not in my books. And she has always been very weird about people's appearances, very judgmental and snarky. In fact, sometimes I feel like the only reason she was so nice to me before I got pregnant was because I fit her idea of what an attractive woman should look like. Like I said, I was really naturally skinny and she had complimented me on that several times. If I'm being honest, it feels like she's obsessed with being thin and maybe that has something to do with the fact that she used to be a model in her early 20s before she became a mother. But I'm not a model and neither am I planning on becoming one anytime soon. So I don't

understand why I have to be that thin as well. Also, if she really was concerned about my health and well-being, then she wouldn't have put me in a position where I had to entertain guests all the time without any help and do all the work around the house while she just played with the kids. She would have actually done something to make sure that I wasn't under a lot of stress and would have at least helped me out around the house. In fact, even with the kids, she would literally just play with them. But when it came to feeding them or changing the diapers, she would call for me. So I wasn't buying the fact that she was only looking out for my health.

Since then, she would have actually done something to help and not just nitpick at my weight. And if my doctor thinks that I'm at a healthy weight, then I don't understand why she's thinks that her opinion matters more. So when my husband told me that I had to apologize to Agnes, because she was really upset, it really rubbed me the wrong way. He had already screwed up after I had given birth by never bothering to think about what I was going through, and forcing me to constantly put up with his family. But I had done it all with a smile on my face because I wanted to make it work with him. After the party, though, I had realized where his priorities were and it was a bit of a reality check for me, that I desperately needed. It was evident that for him,

his family came first and I came second and I wasn't ready to deal with that anymore. So I didn't even fight with him when he said that he wanted me to apologize to Agnes. I just quietly got up and went to my bedroom and started packing my stuff. He didn't bother to follow me, he stayed in the living room, and after a while, when I was done packing, I decided to take the kids with me and go live with my parents. I could have loved. I could have left without saying goodbye, but I decided to tell him exactly where I was going, and I said that if he wanted to be a mama's boy then he was free to do so, but it was unfair of him to expect me to put up with his family. I told him that he had been really disrespectful towards me

and what I wanted and the fact that after the party, he had just left and the kids on our own showed us exactly how little he cared for us. So now, I wanted him to contact me only when he was serious about his family, and I meant the family that he had chosen, not the one he was born in. He didn't say much to me, only that he would expect me to let him come visit the kids whenever he wanted, but unless I apologize to Agnes and the rest of the family, he had no intention of making things right with me. So I could live with my parents for as long as I wanted to, but he was not going to tolerate this kind of behavior.

And then, I left and for the past three days, I've been staying with my parents. They know the situation and they think that I should think about getting a divorce, but right now, I'm not really sure what to do. Because he has been a common occurrence with my husband, I wouldn't have thought twice before leaving. But that's the catch. We have been together for almost six years and married for three and he has never behaved like this. He has always been very attached to his family, especially his mother since his father was always too busy for him. And their relationship had only become stronger after my father-in-law passed away last year. That had never been an issue for me, though, since he had all.

always treated me well. This change in his behavior that has taken place after he became a father, that's what I don't understand. It feels like he doesn't care about me at all, even though during my pregnancy, he had treated me like I was the Queen of England. And this is what I'm constantly bumping up against because even if I want to leave him for his behavior right now, I can't stop thinking about the fact that he never used to be like this before and it might be crazy, but I've been considering the fact that maybe I'm actually the one at fault here. I've heard about plenty of cases of postpartum depression where women become increasingly irritable and have bouts of anxiety and stuff. So maybe I can't see that I'm being unreasonable, but he can and maybe he's

right. But at the same time, given the circumstances, I hardly think that my anger is unjustified. If I speak to my friends or my parents about this, I'm sure that they are going to be on my side. So that's going to be a little pointless. And so I've come to Reddit to ask for help so I can make sure that I'm not being selfish and unreasonable like my husband believes, and that I actually do have caused to be mad. So I'd have for kicking my mother-in-law out for talking about my weight and telling my husband's family that I don't want them visiting me right now? Update 1. Hi, everyone. So it has been two days since I posted and I've been really conflicted about what to do because most people in the comments said that I shouldn't reach back out to him and that I should

speak to a lawyer immediately. And I told my parents about it, they suggested the same thing as well and put me in touch with an attorney. But it just didn't feel right for me to file for a divorce before at least giving him one last chance to at least explain himself. I was about to contact him, but, thankfully, he came to me himself. Now, we were not exactly able to make up, but at least we had a discussion. Last evening, he came by to see the kids and it was very awkward, but the babies seemed happy enough to see him. He played with them for a while and then he started talking to me since I had stayed in the room. My parents had the good sense to go to their bedroom and leave us alone as soon as he came over, in case we wanted to discuss anything. Anyway, both of us were

much calmer yesterday and were able to actually have a dignified and civil discussion rather than just one of us walking away angrily. I told him that his recent behavior had made me feel very confused because so far, he had always shown great care for my feelings but right now, it felt like it didn't matter to him. It felt like he only cared about his family and nothing else, not even me. It was very difficult for me to take it because I was the mother of his kids. I felt like that demanded a certain amount of respect and care. I also told him that the way Agnes had behaved with me and the way she had been pushing me to lose weight just three weeks after I had given birth to twins, was ridiculous, and he should have taken a stand for me instead of defending it.

He was silent for a couple of minutes, and then he said that he wanted to apologize for not taking a stand for me when it came to Agnes. He was just very confused, but he had to come to the realization that his mother had been wrong for constantly pushing me to lose weight. Apparently, the night that I had kicked her out of my party, she had called him later on, and she had been sobbing on the phone, which is why he had felt so terrible about the way I had behaved with his mother and thought that I should apologize to her. But then, he had thought about it for a while and realized that Agnes actually had been quite pushy about the weight thing and she had brought it upon herself.

So maybe I didn't need to apologize for it, and he had to tell me that he had spoken to Agnes, and she was mad so she wouldn't be saying to me anytime soon, but he wanted to say that he was sorry. He also told me that he was sorry for not realizing this earlier. He had genuinely thought that Agnes only cared about my health, and that's why she wanted me to lose weight, but giving me a weighing machine and forcing me to open it in front of that

many people was humiliating and she shouldn't have done that. So I was glad that at least he had come to his sense regarding his mother and was apologizing for it. But that was not all that I wanted to talk about, we also needed to talk about the fact that he had not treated me as well as I deserve to be lately. And by that, I meant the fact that he had continued to constantly force his family's presence on me, even though I had made it very clear that I wanted to be on my own for a while with just him and the kids since I was exhausted, and that meant both emotionally and physically.

I guess I had mentioned in my original post that I had brought it up with him earlier as well, and he had argued with me, calling me selfish for wanting to keep him and our kids away from his family. I didn't want to drag out that fight, so I dropped it, but since it had become a bit of an issue in our relationship, I brought it up once again. This time, I had no intention of dropping it until it was sorted out. He had apologized about the thing with Agnes, but here, he told me that he did not think he was wrong. Apparently, his family was really excited that he had become a father and it was a huge deal for everyone. That's not very surprising because right from his childhood, he has kind of been the darling of his family, and that is meant that I have also been showered with a lot of love and

affection by them. But whenever they would come over in the past three weeks, it would only be me who would have to sacrifice time with my babies to entertain them and occasionally cook for them, and even though it might not have seemed like a lot of work to him, it took a toll on me. And I told him that it was not fair, since neither he nor his mother had been of any help to me. Even though he had started working from home, he barely did any of the household chores anymore because he was always busy with the kids, and that responsibility fell on me. As for Agnes, I have already said that she never did anything around the house, and one came over to play with the kids, and didn't even help me out with changing them and stuff.

So I was pretty upset about that as well. Here, though, he said that he could understand that it had become a lot of work for me, but it was unfair of me to expect him to tell his family that they were not allowed to come over at all. All of them were very excited and he did not want a squash, which is why he had argued with me. And I'm not very close with my family, apart from my parents, so my relatives had only video called me to congratulate me and see the babies, but hadn't visited so far. Part of the reason for that was that I had specifically instructed them not to come over right now and that I would tell them when I was ready to have visitors.

I tried to explain to my husband that no matter how much they loved us, it was very important to have boundaries as well, but he refused to understand what I was getting at. He just kept insisting that his family was doing this out of love, not just for him, but also for me and the babies. And I couldn't overlook that, since that would be disrespectful. They were a very close-knit family and since I had always known it, he didn't understand why I was making a big deal of it right now. After one point, it started feeling like we were just talking in circles, so I told him that there was clearly no point in discussing this further. We hadn't been able to come to a conclusion about this problem that we were facing, since he strongly believed that he was right and I think that I am right. So I told him that I needed some more time to think about what I wanted to do right now and that until then, I would be staying with my parents.

As of now, I have put each and every thought of getting a divorce on hold. because I really want to do right by my kids and at this moment, I'm not sure what that would mean. A divorce is a big deal and once I get involved, I can never go back. So whatever I have to do, I have to think about it very carefully and I don't want to make a mistake. This is why I have decided that I'm going to take my time and talk about this to my husband, a couple of times more, and if we are still not able to come to a conclusion that works for both of us, then I might but I'm treating that as a last option right now. Update 2, hey, so two days ago, my husband visited me and I'm still thinking about what I want to do.

But a couple of hours ago, I did receive a text from Agnes, and that was quite surprising because she was actually apologizing to me. Of course, the tone was very passive-aggressive, and it was very obvious to me that she didn't really want to apologize, but she still did. even if it was just for the sake of maintaining a civil relationship, she did. She told me that she had heard from her son that I had left home with the kids and she knew that she was part of the reason that I had done this, so she felt like it was her responsibility to try and make this right.

Personally, I don't agree with her. This is between me and my husband and maybe she was a part of the reason why we had a fight in the first place, but she can't exactly help us sort this out. Anyway, she said that she really didn't want us to separate because that might not be the best move for the kids. Again, I can't agree with that because I think if we separate right now, it might be better for them in the long run because they'll never have known us as a couple in the first place. I think that's a better alternative than sticking together, being toxic for a couple of years, and then traumatizing both our children before we eventually

part ways. Anyway, I'm not thinking about a divorce right now, so that doesn't actually apply. Regardless of that, Agnes apologized and said that if this helped the situation, she would be glad to say that she was sorry about how she treated me. Even though she is still going to maintain that she was only trying to look out for my health and make sure that I didn't compromise my well-being. She claimed that he came from an era where being skinny was considered the healthiest and maybe she was mistaken, but that's what she had been raised to believe, and she had been imposing on me, which was wrong. If I'm being frank, her apology was all over the place and it was kind of contradictory in itself, but hey, at least I received one and that's something to think

about. I'm not sure if my husband had put her up to this or not, but it doesn't matter. Like I said, my relationship with my husband does not depend on her apology. I replied to Agnes and told her that it was fine, that I forgive her and I'm still thinking about what I want to do about the situation with my husband, but I'm thankful that she took the initiative to apologize to me. But yes, I still have no idea what to do so some advice would be greatly welcome. Update 3, Hey, it has been two weeks since I left home and for the past two weeks, my husband and I have been talking about everything back and forth. At first, he would only visit to see the kids and ask me if I had changed my mind and I would

say no. And then, we would have another argument about who was being selfish. But both of us got pretty exasperated after one point. It got really annoying, so I just told him that maybe it would be for the best to just end it and move on with our lives since we were obviously never going to be able to work this out. I think that was about ten days ago and when I said that, he got really quiet and asked me if that was really what I wanted. And that forced me to really think about the situation, whether that was what I wanted or not, and honestly, I didn't. What I really wanted was for him to understand me, to apologize to me, and to make everything right again. That was what I really wanted and that's what I told him.

That day, he told me that he wanted the same thing as well because, at the end of the day, we really loved each other. We had been together for six years, we had kids together now and I don't know, but this seems like something worth fighting for. That day, he told me that he was going to come back the next day after work with a clearer head and we would try to sort things out. Because obviously, if both of us wanted to make it for each other, there was no reason for us to get a divorce. And I decided to do the same, to think about everything with a clearer

head and keep an open mind. To try and understand him instead of trying to defeat him, just so that we would be able to make this work. After that, he started visiting every day and there was a lot of explaining, a lot of listening, some arguing, some apologizing, and a lot of reassurance. Two days ago, we felt like we had finally been able to sort things out and it was really relieving because I did not want to leave him. He promised me that he would tell his family and especially Agnes that right now, it was not the perfect time to visit us so frequently and that we needed our own space. And I would apologize to the rest of his family for my outburst the other day at my party. We have also promised each other that from now on, it's going to be us against the problem and not us

versus each other since that's clearly not going to lead us anywhere and it's only going to hurt each other. We don't want that and we definitely don't want to hurt the kids, so we're going to be to try and be better partners so we can eventually be better parents. I'm going back home with him tomorrow and my parents are also pretty happy about the way we were able to deal with this. So I guess all's well that ends well. Thank you so much for all the advice. I hope you enjoy this story. Wild Mill advised me to separate from my spouse after she unexpectedly arrived at our residence and found her young child preparing a meal alone while I was caring for my mother. Funeral out of state. Two weeks ago, my mother unfortunately passed away from a sudden heart attack and I had to go back

home to be there for my dad and help arrange her funeral. It was very difficult for us, especially since I hadn't seen her for the past couple of months, since my family lives in a different state. So I had decided to stay with my dad after the funeral for a couple of days and I had told my husband about it as well, and he was obviously fine with it. So after the funeral, he and his parents flew back home since he couldn't stay back with me as he had work. And for the last couple of days, my husband has been living on his own, and he's a grown man,

so he can handle it. But four days ago, my mother-in-law decided to visit him, which is not surprising because she does that quite often, but she actually saw him cooking for the first time, and she completely lost her mind. According to her, her poor baby should never be anywhere near the kitchen because she thinks it's a dangerous place and doesn't believe that he is equipped for it. To be fair to her, she has never seen her son cook before because I've never let him, and since I'm not here, he's been cooking for himself occasionally. The only reason I don't let him cook is because he's not very good at it, if I'm being frank. We have been together for five years and married for two and throughout our relationship. Ever since we moved and together,

I've been the one who has been doing all the cooking, and he handles all the other chores. It's a fair trade-off, and we are both fine with it since I actually enjoy cooking, and it's a far more preferable alternative than having to have the food cooked by him, because even though he follows all the recipes and stuff, it still doesn't turn out well, and you know, some people just don't have the knack for it. It's not a male-female thing with us, it's more about who can do it better and that's who actually does it. Like I'm terrible with electronics and stuff, so he handles it for the most part. and as a married couple, I think it's cute because we complete each other.

Anyway, you guys get it. But I don't think that my mother-in-law does, especially given how she reacted when she found out that my husband had been cooking for himself in my absence. Apparently, when she was visiting him and he opened the door wearing an apron, she immediately started acting like the world as she knew it had come to an end. It was a gross overreaction, if I'm being honest because, come on, it's insane in this day and age. She thinks that women should arrange for all the food that their husband consumes. And what is even crazier is that she decided to call me afterwards,

and straight up told me that I needed to divorce my husband because I was obviously not a good wife to him, if he had been cooking for himself. My mother-in-law has always been a bit crazy and orthodox. She has very strange views on things and we have never really gotten along, but I love my husband and he loves his family, so I have learned to put up with her. I haven't changed my ways or anything for her, and because her son loves me unconditionally, she doesn't say anything to me either. In the beginning of our relationship itself, we had come to a place of mutual respect where

I did not question her belief and opinions, and she did not question my behavior and decisions and stuff. But this was the first incident where she reached out to me directly and told me that she did not approve of this and wanted me to come back and apologize to my husband or else. She would like me to divorce him because she couldn't stand there. the fact that her poor baby was having to cook for himself just because I wanted to spend time with my family. I thought it was psychotic of her to say something like that, but I wasn't surprised that this was her take on the situation. It was really insensitive because my mother had just

recently passed away and I was still grieving her, so of course I wanted to be there for my father. Besides, even if my mother hadn't passed away, it was my call whether I wanted to spend time with my family or not, and if my husband was okay with it, I didn't think I needed to consult with her as well. So we ended up getting into a fight and I told her that her son is not a baby, he's a grown man and he can handle living on his own. If she thinks that he shouldn't be cooking for himself, I would gladly let her take over the cooking duties and make sure that her poor baby is fed in my absence. But unless she's willing to do that, then she should just keep her mouth shut. She started arguing against that, saying that since her son is married now, it's my duty

to take care of him and make sure that he's doing well and as his mother. She's obviously going to be looking out for him and she doesn't think that I'm good enough for him. Words were exchanged and the conversation got quite heated after a while, but I don't want to waste my energy speaking for somebody who I knew was never going to see eye to eye with me. So I just hung up after a while and blocked her and I tried to cool off, but it was too difficult because of how insanely stupid and insensitive my mother-in-law had been while speaking to me. I tried to call my husband to talk to him, but he couldn't respond at the time because he was napping and he's quite a heavy sleeper. So I ended up calling my father-in-law to tell him what

had happened and basically just keep his wife in check because he is the only person she always listens to. I don't know if it's because of her beliefs regarding how women should be subservient to their husbands or if she actually respects him for who he is. But regardless of the reason, anytime her husband tells her not to say certain things in front of us or do certain things, she doesn't do it. He's a pretty reasonable guy and honestly, he's the biggest part of the reason why my husband and I have still maintained touch with his family because regardless of how my mother-in-law acts, he is still a good person. I called him and I told him everything and he reacted exactly how I had expected him to. He told me that he would look into it because he knew exactly how his wife could be

about things like this. He told me that I didn't have to pay any attention to her or what she said, and I knew that. But it's just the fact that she had made me seem like a terrible wife simply because of something like this and that had really gotten under my skin. Ever since I had been introduced to my husband's family, I had tried my best to be respectful of my mother-in-law, and so far, even she had succeeded in trying to keep her opinions out of our relationship and respect the fact that her son loved me. This was the first time that a confrontation like this was happening, but I wanted this to be the last time as well. And I know that speaking to my father-in-law would be the only way to ensure that, but I didn't know

that he would go out of his way to give her a taste of her own medicine. because ever since I made that phone call, my father-in-law has been treating her very differently. In the sense that he has been making her do all the household chores, has made her delete her social media and basically just treating her the way she believes that other women should be treated in a marriage. I learned about it from my husband, who called me later on that day and told me that after my phone call, his father had confronted his mother about whatever she had said to me and she had refused to even act like she was sorry about it and said that I was actually a terrible wife because her son was having to cook for himself. My father-in-law had tried really hard to explain

that it wasn't a big deal, but she refused and kept saying that I needed to leave her son alone so he could find somebody better who was more worthy of a relationship with him. Eventually, he just lost it and started telling his wife that now, she had to play by her own rules and be the ideal wife, according to her, all these ancient traditions that she wanted to follow. And that basically meant that she had to delete her social media because her husband did not want her socializing with anybody and everybody. She could use the telephone to contact her friends and stay in touch with them, but she was not allowed to spend more than an hour on the phone with them. That was going to be a huge problem for her because her favorite hobby itself is gossiping and judging everyone

else on the phone with her friends for hours. But she wouldn't even get enough time to worry about it because my father-in-law had decided that since she thinks that a woman should be completely subservient to her husband and do everything for him, she should be living by the same rules as well, and he had told her to start doing all the household chores. And by all of them, he meant literally all of them, from the laundry to the cleaning to the cooking and everything. He had even suspended the services of the housekeeper that they had for a couple of days, so that his wife would get to know exactly how her life would have been if her husband had the same opinions that she did. And on one hand, I think it's completely fair that she's been treated like this because that's what she wanted for me. But on the other

hand, I feel kind of bad for her because she's living the life that I dread. I mean, of course, she has an easy way out. My father-in-law has told her that she can just apologize to me for everything and he will hire the housekeeper again, but she refuses to do so and says that she's ready to do whatever it takes to prove that she's right. Because she knows that she is and she thinks it's good that she is being forced to go back to the kind of life that she used to have when my husband was younger because it's keeping her honest and preventing her from becoming lazy like the women of our generation. So you say, I'm kind of conflicted about whether I did the right thing or not since on one hand, I really don't think that whatever she thinks and believes about women is healthy,

but on the other, I don't really think that this is the right way to go about it either, especially because she is in her late 50s and has severe back problems. So this can't be good for her health either, but she just refuses to apologize to me and be done with it. It's just a very weird situation that we are in right now and I feel kind of guilty, but my husband keeps telling me not to. And yet, I can't help it. So I'd have for telling my father-in-law to keep his wife in check after she told me that I should divorce her son because he was having to cook for himself?

Edit. it. So first things first, my husband also does not agree with the kind of opinions that my mother-in-law has, and he has tried to change it several times, but as you guys already know, she's very stubborn and refuses to listen to anybody else who doesn't have the same beliefs as she does. And it's very exhausting to keep fighting with somebody close to you over the same things again and again. So my husband decided to stop talking to her about these things after a while. He still had to maintain a relationship with his mother because otherwise she would just keep guilt-tripping him and he didn't want that.

And after he started dating me, he knew that she would not approve of the kind of person that I am because I'm quite outspoken and strong-headed and she would want somebody a little softer for her son. But he had made it very clear to her before he even introduced to his family. He did not want her speaking to me about any of her skewed opinions. And if she did, then he would cut her off forever. neither did he want her imposing those opinions on me after we got married. And so far she had managed to do it, which is why we had stayed in touch with her. Besides, we just didn't want to get

into any drama. And I think that was a valid reason for us not to cut her off. I can understand most people would say that we should have cut her out of our lives, but it's not that easy. Families are not just black and white, and it's important to understand that. And a lot of people had also been questioning why exactly my father-in-law had been with his wife for so long if he had wildly different opinions and well, I don't know what to say to that. I guess does crazy things to people, and even though my father-in-law had always known that she was this kind of person, he had put up with it because he loved her. Just like my mother-in-law had put up with me because she loved her son, I think it's like the same thing. But right now, both of them are getting older and it's more

difficult to put up with somebody else's BS at this age. So maybe that's why he's punishing her the way that he is. Whatever it is, I hope this answer is why we hadn't cut her off or why my father-in-law had still chosen to stay with her for so many years since that's what most of you had been very confused about. Update 1, hey, so one week has passed since I had that fight with my mother-in-law and she has been living according to her own rules since then. She has refused to apologize to me, so my father-in-law refuses to go back on his word, and after reading the comments, I don't think that I did anything wrong anymore. I think that this is perfectly well-deserved and she can deal with it, since she expects everybody else to. I had been discussing it with my husband

back and forth ever since that incident took place and he told me that he hadn't been on speaking terms with his mother as well after that day because he did not appreciate the way she had behaved with me. And even he had made it very clear to her that he was not going to speak to her unless she apologized to me, but even that had not moved her. She had said that this was the last straw, that the last thing that she ever wanted to see was her son cooking for himself in the kitchen. So now, she would do whatever it took, but she would prove that she was right and make sure that I was not a part of the family anymore, at least on her watch. Good for her, she can keep trying to prove that she's right, but it's not going to harm anybody apart from her anymore.

Anyway, last evening, I finally decided to come back to my husband because my dad had his brother to take care of him now and it was very difficult for me to leave him behind but he told me that I had to go back to work and stuff, so he couldn't expect me to stay with him forever and that was really nice of him. So I came back and my husband was overjoyed to see me after so long and for the first time in weeks, we discussed things in person. Eventually, we got to talking about his mother again, and he told me that she had been having a lot of trouble with her back and stuff, but even then, she refused to acknowledge that she had been

wrong and that it was unfair of her to expect me to do everything for her son, especially since both of us were adults. And we were fine with the kind of arrangement that we had. So she had absolutely no business speaking to me about whether I should be cooking for him all the time or not, and she definitely did not have the right to tell me that I was not a good wife and that I should divorce him. He also told me that his dad had been feeling bad about what he was putting his wife through, but he had made up his mind that he was not going to back down until she apologized to me because for yours, he had put up with her outdated opinions and beliefs but now, it was getting out of hand. Initially, she would just say things about women and that was outrageous enough,

but at least she wouldn't act on anything and go out of her way to control things around her. But I guess with age, she was slowly losing the capacity to understand what was right and what was wrong and she was just doing whatever came to her mind and seemed right in the moment. I wouldn't call it senility because she's just in her 50s. I don't think that's even possible. But there's definitely something off about this whole stubborn and weird behavior of hers because right now, she's not even willing to listen to her own husband, which, according to her, it's not the way women should behave. Anyway, my point is that I refuse to feel guilty for anything that she's going through anymore. She brought this on herself and now she can deal with it. Update 2. So, I

decided to visit my father-in-law with my husband because we hadn't seen each other for a really long time and it has been a couple of days since I returned, so I decided to drop by. Of course my mother-in-law was the one who opened the door to us and as soon as she saw me, she told me that I was not allowed to enter the house. My husband obviously lost his temper and told her that she needed to cut it out because we were here to see his father and not her. She refused to even step aside and stood blocking the doorway until my father-in-law came along and said that it was his house, his name on the deed of the house, and so, if he wanted me

to come inside, then she had no right to stop me. Then, she started arguing with him and said that she had an equal role to play here because even though it was legally his house, she had been living here for ages and she was a member of the family as well. And then my father-in-law told her that she herself had said that they were not on equal footing because she believed that women should be worshipping their husbands and obeying everything that they said without question, and that's not what she was doing at the moment. It was then that she completely lost it and started freaking out at all of us. She grabbed a glass and smashed it two bits on the ground, and we all had to back a little bit because she was raging out loud. First, she started yelling at

her husband and told her that she couldn't believe that instead of taking her side, he was siding with me. And it was incredibly wrong of him to do that because she only wanted the best for her son, and it was not just her son, my husband was his child as well, and he should not be so blind to his kid's misery. What misery she was referring to, I have no idea, since my husband is pretty happy with me. Anyway, she went on yelling at my father-in-law and told him that she was absolutely done with because in spite of the fact that she had completely devoted herself to him, he still seemed to be taking my side over hers for no reason. Apparently, it was her belief that even if she was wrong, her husband should still be by her side because that's what a marriage means.

I must say, she has a very twisted idea of what it means to be married. Then, it was my husband's turn to be yelled at by his mother because she was completely losing it, and it was very obvious. When it came to him, she literally started screaming like a banshee and told him that she had only wanted the best for him. But instead of being grateful for her and how much she cared for him, he had not even bothered to check up on her for the last couple of days and was acting as if she was the villain in the situation. She told him that she regretted ever agreeing to allow him to marry me and I could see my husband looking very, very confused because he had never asked for her permission, he had only ever told her not to behave badly with me

and that was it. He even tried to tell her that he had never asked for her permission, but she cut him off and told him that it didn't matter, she would have made sure that the wedding wouldn't have happened without her consent and now. she regretted letting it take place. And then finally, it was my turn. If I'm being frank with you guys, as soon as she looked at me and she screamed you, I had a very strong urge to laugh in her face because it was so dramatic and unnecessarily villainous. Also, while she was screaming at me, she kept making really weird and angry faces, and it was very funny.

But it stopped being funny as soon as she got all up in my face and I'm not even kidding, she was so close that I could actually smell her breath. So I just put my arm in front of me so she would be gently forced to back up a little, but instead of backing up, she decided to retaliate at my harmless gesture and shoved me. And I guess she used all her strength to shove me because I fell back pretty hard and lost my balance, so I ended up on the ground. Luckily, I was not hurt too badly, but I was really angry. No matter how much she hated me, she had absolutely no right to turn into physical alteration.

and even though I had been amused until that point, I started yelling back at her after she shoved me. Even my husband was quite upset, and as he was helping me up to my feet, he kept arguing with her, and she kept saying that I was apparently going to shove her, which is why I had raised my arm to place it in between us. Even though I had just done that so she would back up a little and I had no intention of hurting her, but she did. While she and my husband were arguing, in the heat of the moment, I ended up saying to him

that it was not even worth it to speak to her because it was very obvious that she had been against me right from the first day and now, her true colors were just coming to the surface. Then, I told him that it was a pity that she was his mother because even though she kept claiming that she loved him and was doing everything out of love for him because she wanted the best for him, it all seemed like a bunch of BS because everything that she did was just to prove herself right, not out of love. I guess that really ticked her off because as soon as I said it, She literally charged at me and my husband had to push her back and my father-in-law had to restrain her physically because she had started to kick and scream and it was very obvious that all she wanted to do was hurt me. She kept cursing at me and was acting all hysterical, so my husband and I decided to leave because it was very obvious that we were not wanted here and at the moment, that was the best thing for us to do.

My father-in-law also insisted that we leave so he could deal with the situation and so, we went away. But even after we had left, we were still very worried about what was going on, so a couple of hours later, we decided to call my father-in-law and ask him what had happened after we left and also make sure that he was doing fine. When we called, he picked up the phone and he sounded a little exhausted, but all right otherwise. And then, he told us that after we left, he had taken his wife inside and gotten her to sit down and calm down. But even after she had stopped acting crazy, she continued to curse at me and said that she was going to make sure that we got a divorce. How she planned on doing that, we don't know. Anyway, my father-in-law had had enough of this,

and after she had calmed down, he decided to leave the room and called her brother. He told his brother in law everything about what was going on with him and especially how crazy his wife is acting, so her brother came by and even though she didn't want to go with him, she had to leave. Her brother also had a similar kind of upbringing and initially used to be quite orthodox and regressive like her, but he has since changed, mostly because he got married. And now, even though he does not agree with the way that his sister thinks, he still decided to come to pick her up so she could spend a few days with her brother and his wife and I think a little bit of space right now is very necessary. My father-in-law told me that he really loves his wife, but whatever she has been doing of late

and the way she has been acting, it's not acceptable and he cannot stand for it. So I, After spending a few days apart, when she finally comes back home, he's going to tell her that she needs to get help and if she refuses, then they are going to get divorced. They have spent many years together, slightly more than three decades, so that's a huge deal, but I think it's for the best. For her own good, I hope she realizes that she has a problem and she needs to get with the times, or else nobody will be there for her anymore. Even my own husband thinks that his parents getting divorced would be the right thing to happen,

in case his mother refuses to change her ways. But even then, she is still going to be given a chance to change herself, and I really hope she takes it. Update 3, hi, so almost a month has passed since my last update and a lot of things have changed. I guess I had mentioned that my father-in-law had sent his wife away to live with her brother and his family so she could calm down a little and re-evaluate her priorities. She came back to him after a week and he told her that now, either she could apologize to me, agreed to get help and just fix her behavior in general or he would be forced to file for a divorce. They fought for a couple of days, but eventually, she agreed to get help but she said that she

still needed some time before she apologized to me. So she has been getting professional help in about five days ago, she sent me a really long email to apologize to me as well. It's not as if my husband and I haven't seen her in the recent past, before that apology, we see her around every time that we visit my father-in-law, but we had stopped acknowledging. each other's existence. However, after the apology that she sent, when my husband and I went over for dinner to my Phil's house, she did say that she was very sorry about everything to us in person as well. And that's a start. I don't know if it will get better or not, but it's still a start.

Anyway, my husband and I are going strong together, and even my father has started doing better, he has taken up a bunch of new hobbies to keep himself occupied, and my husband and I are planning on visiting him in a couple of days as well. So things are well at the moment and I hope they get better. I hope you enjoy this story. Affluent partner gifted me a $4,000 electronic device I never requested, then shouted at me when I didn't utilize it, phone me a dozen times when I departed to the gym at midnight, and wouldn't stop touching my thigh in public even when I said stop. I'll refer to my BF as X. To put things into context, he comes from a powerful and wealthy family in my city relevant later. Things started off peachy, he was always affable, pleasant, and accommodating.

However, I'm starting to realize certain issues which have me questioning everything. Incident number one, he got mad at me because he felt I wasn't appreciating an expensive present. He got me a specialized tech gadget which cost about 4k. I was a bit surprised by it as I'd never mentioned any inclination towards this gadget, I'm really not very tech-why at all, and he'd never asked me about it. Also, this gadget is something which requires a lot of time and practice to use. To be honest, I was also very concerned that it had cost so much, if I had known I would have just told him to get me something less expensive. Anyway, I still thanked him and said that I appreciated it very much. A week or so later, he asks me if I had used it yet to which I

answered no but would eventually get round to it. He got upset and repeatedly asked me if he had just wasted his time and effort and money and told me that if that was the case, I should just dump the thing. Incident number two, he blew up at me when I was at the gym at midnight. Fitness is very important to me so I always make sure to go to the gym consistently. I usually go right after work which ends at 6 p.m. However sometimes life happens, friends want to meet up, overtime, dinner, I get distracted reading, watching videos, etc., and I go later. One day I went at 10.30 p.m. Before I left I told him I was heading to the gym, and he said okay then silence, so I assumed

he was doing his own thing and off I went and had a good workout. I was done around 12 a.m., checked my phone and there was 12 missed calls from him. I immediately called him back and was met by him yelling at me demanding to know why I hadn't been answering my phone, didn't I know what time it was, didn't I know what sort of impression it was giving for me to be around other half-naked sweaty guys this late. He was too old to be chasing his girl around in the middle of the night, etc. I was honestly shocked at this because even when we started dating I would tell him when I went to the gym, even late, and he didn't seem to have any issues. Incident number three, he told me he didn't feel attractive nor desirable when I asked if we could reschedule to one hour later. We planned to

meet up on Saturday afternoon. On Friday night, he called me and we ended up talking on the phone till pretty late around 3 a.m. Because of that, I overslept on Saturday and woke up late. I texted him telling him I overslept and I would probably be taking an hour or so more to come over. He told me that he felt I didn't seem interested in him or our relationship anymore and that he was the only enthusiastic one. I tried to tell him that it wasn't the case, I just needed some more me time. It's the weekend and my only time to sleep in, but he still told me he didn't feel loved in this relationship and that we didn't see each other enough. Context, we usually see each other one day during the work week and I spend the weekend at his. Incident number four, he told me I was going to get us into a fight.

We were getting ice creams, we were laughing, and everything was going great. We were sitting in the ice cream parlor and he playfully put his hand on my knee, which I don't mind, I actually find that pretty cheeky and cute. Then he started to move his hand higher up my thigh to which I told him to stop. I was still smiling and laughing. He didn't, though, and I said again, I said stop, cut it out. But he still kept going and I told him I was going to yell and I said stop, loudly. Immediately the whole mood dropped and he told me that I could have gotten us into a fight.

What if someone had reacted badly and attacked him? And he retaliated, and everyone could have gotten into trouble. Incident number five, he got mad when I talked to another guy. We went on a holiday recently and signed up for a tour which was eight to nine hours, pretty long time to be spending with the same bunch of people all going to the same places and doing the same things together. On the same tour was another guy, I'll call him A, around our age who was traveling alone and X and him got talking about guy stuff, work, sports, current issues, idk, and they seemed to like each other really well. I was happy that

X had made a friend and they were getting along and I just chilled and let them be. At the end of the tour when we were heading back, I also got into conversation with A about what he thought of the tour, what else he was going to do on this trip, etc., etc., all along my conversation, X kept budding into the conversation asking me abrupt or relevant questions completely unrelated to the context of my conversation with us, so I wasn't very responsive as I was engaged in my conversation. When we got back, X told me that he had felt I had ignored him and was more interested in A than I was spending time with him. He also said that if we had been back home, he would have told A to get lost so that the two of us could just spend time together, but because

we were here, in a foreign country, if A had reacted badly and they had gotten into a fight and all of us ended up in a police station we would be screwed because nobody knew of him nor his family in this place. Incident number six, he was getting me to apply sunblock on him because he didn't want to get his hands dirty. It started off as him asking me to put sunblock on his back. I'm okay helping him with that because he can't reach it himself, and then he just told me that I should go on and do the rest, which I found kind of funny and princessy of him, so I did. But by the third day of our trip I was getting tired of it and told him that he'd just sunblock himself, I would help him with his back if he couldn't reach, but he could damn well do the rest on his own. He said, but my hands

will get dirty and I responded, oh, so it's okay for me to get my hands dirty but not okay for you? He made a face and said, well, this is new, I've never dated a girl like this, still stuck to my guns though and did not apply sunblock on the rest of him. incident number seven, he told me that my past bothered him. When I was younger, I was very sheltered and very religious. A few years ago I realized that I had no clue about dating, being physically intimate, etc. As a result, I ended up hooking up casually for a while before realizing that casual isn't for me and I focused on purely dating to know someone better, without sleeping with them, and focusing on looking for lasting relationships. I was honest with

X about this, that I went through this phase of casual hookups, before I met him. At the time when I shared this with him, he seemed okay and told me that he had also done similarly when in the college phase. However, we were talking about it again recently and he told me that it's different for guys than it is for girls and that he felt that what I had done was bothersome to him. I countered that I had been honest, it was a while ago, and I am happy and comfortable with the person I am today regardless of anything in the past and if this was an issue for him he should not have gotten into a relationship with me. In fact, I told him that if this was something he couldn't get past then he could go ahead and move on right away. Incident number eight,

he, sort of, broke up with me but ended up not going through with it. When I told him that he could go ahead and move on if he couldn't get past my sexual history, he paused for a while, then said, well, I did try. To which I wasn't sure if this was him asking for a breakup so I asked does this mean we're done? And he said, I guess. He started to start. He started to be a while. He started to started to leave and I told him take care and all the best. As he was going about gathering his stuff, he kept saying things like I'm sorry we couldn't make it work I did really have a good time, etc., etc., and I said you don't have to apologize or try to make me feel better. It's fine, really. He hesitated and said, are we both sure that this is what we both want?

I said to him, well, it seems like it's what you want. To which he said no, it's not what I want. I thought it was what you wanted which I said I meant that if he couldn't get past my history, he could go ahead and move on but otherwise I was willing to continue our relationship. We eventually ended up not breaking up, LOL. After that he told me that it bothered him that I could have let things go so easily. So, I don't know, am I just being irrational or is this legit? Are we still getting used to each other and can we make this work? Comments where Op has replied, comment one.

You've been dating three months and have eight examples of him acting the fool, being jealous, getting mad for no reason, and one of them is a breakup. Yes, honey. Yes. These flags are so red. Dump. Dump. Dump.

Comment too. Yeah, this is a collection of red flags. I'd say there's a bit of love bombing too, with expensive gifts to create a sense of indebtedness. Not to mention the pushing of boundaries. This guy is all kinds of nope. Oop, op here, I'm on mobile now and for some reason Reddit won't let me log into my other account. You're right, I'm fact being with him has me questioning now everything which I used to do so regularly and openly, i.e. sleep in, go to the gym, grabbing lunch with a platonic single guy friends, sleeping in, etc.

I find myself asking if he would be okay with this, or would he get upset if I did that. I also find myself constantly checking my phone because I worry if he texts me and I take too long before replying, if I was occupied at work, I was having a conversation with someone else, I was working out, etc. Or if he happens to call and I don't pick up in case he gets worked up and flies into a rage. Oop adds in the comments more on the relationship. He's never been physically violent, but when he's mad he gets really outraged and shouts to express himself. It really disturbs and upsets me as I believe that things can always be resolved by

calmly discussing and talking through issues to come up with a resolution, not yelling and losing one's temper. I'm supposed to go on a hike and lunch with a platonic guy friend next weekend and even this has got me anxious as to whether X would take intention with it when I tell him that I would also like to spend my weekend with another person, a guy more so. And you're right, once when we were out I bumped into a guy friend of mine whom I hadn't seen in a long time, so I smiled and waved. As soon as we had passed, X turned to me and started making all sorts of comments like I'm better looking than him anyway. I drive a nicer car. I probably have a better background and family than him. He also said that it was inconsiderate of me to be excited over another guy when I was on a date

with my boyfriend. Update, after making the post, I re-evaluated the relationship and had a talk with X against my better judgment. I decided to give him another chance. Anyway, I'll get to the incident which was the straw which broke the camel's back. Last Sunday, I inquired whether we could spend the coming Friday night together so we could get an early start to the weekend. He replied that he would let me know how his schedule worked with that. The following day, Monday, I received a dinner invite for Friday from a bunch of good friends. Since X hadn't confirmed with me on his schedule yet, I assumed things were still up in the air with him so I accepted the invitation. I informed X that I would be doing dinner with my friends, so I would be meeting him a couple of

hours later than I had initially suggested. He flipped out on me. He yelled and screamed at me on the phone, cursing me out and demanding to know who was so fucking important I was going to meet. He asked me if a frivolous dinner with mere friends meant more to me than spending time with my so. I responded that, of course, I valued my soes, however, there were other people I also like to have in my life. He told me I could go and date those people then. He went on at how I was incredibly disrespectful towards his time and that I was jerking him around. I told him that I didn't see how that counted as being disrespectful of his time since it was only Monday and the invite was for Friday. I was keeping him updated of the dinner way in advance so that he could plan his time

for those couple of hours. It wasn't as though I was pushing plans back at the very last minute or even cancelling on him. I told him that in my perspective, since he had yet to get back to me on his schedule, I had the impression that we weren't confirmed hence accepted the invite. I also told him that from my point of view, when I make plans with someone for the whole weekend and they push things back a couple of hours, for whatever reason, it wouldn't be a big deal to me so I didn't see why he was being so drastic. He then said to enjoy myself with my friends and that he hoped that dinner would be worth the cost of our relationship. I responded okay, There's still some stuff that both of us have at each other's places, though, so we're

meeting up later this week to return things. Next story, fiancé got a huge tattoo of my D-Di brother without asking, and when I said it made me uncomfortable she accused me of burning her with hot food and destroyed our kitchen in a rage, so I finally left. For context, my older brother, 30M, while I'm 29M, passed away three years ago in a motorcycle accident. This fucked me up severely, still does. He was my best friend and we had that whole inseparable since we knew each other type shit,

even if he was older, he was never the stereotypical older brother bully sort and I loved him for that. Anyway, my fiancé who I'll call Bella is, 28F, and met him only a few times but always said she admired our bond as she has no real siblings of her own. Only step but they aren't close. A few weeks ago, Bella surprised me with a fucking tattoo she got in memory of my brother. It's this pretty fucking big, realistic grayscale tattoo of his face with a little snoopy icon beside it on her upper arm, with his nickname we use, and his birth and death dates underneath. When I saw this, I was fucking stunned. She said she did it as a tribute to him and to support me BC she knows how much I still struggle with grief.

I honestly didn't know what to say at first, but the more I sat with it, the more it bothered me. I told her, gently, as much as I could TBH, that I appreciated the gesture but found the tattoo really uncomfortable. Like it's unsettling to see his face on my fiancé's body. Like it's too much, especially since they barely knew each other? She got upset and said I was being weird about a nice gesture and making her regret doing something beautiful, her words. Now she's distant, and my mom thinks I should just be thankful someone loved my brother enough to memorialize him. But first off, I didn't ask her to do this. Now I'm stuck with a fiancé that won't even talk to be properly,

and my brother's perfectly black and gray eyes staring at me when I'm laying beside her. And honestly, I don't even want to think of how horrifying having segs would be with that on her arm. Am I being unreasonable? Asshole-ish? Is it in my right to ask her to get it covered up or like zonked off? Additional information from Op. IG I'm adding some additional details because I don't know how to respond individually. My fiancé and I both have tattoos and many of them. I have smaller ones. She has bigger ones. To my knowledge, neither of us are mentally ill in any capacity and we aren't on

medication. I can't believe I have to write this. And ever since my reaction she has been wearing longer-sleeved shirts in the daytime, at work she has to anyway, but that's for home too. It's only during bedtime that I really see it with her wearing tanks and it physically hurts LOL update one. Hi guys. I don't know if anyone cares enough for this but for the few that do. Here's an update to the situation LOL after breakfast this morning. At around half seven, it's 10.34 as I write this BTW, I sat down, already was sitting down

after eating but yes, whatever, with my fiancé and spoke about the fucking tattoo again. I basically echoed all the comments I received, which by the way I'm so grateful for, for the most part because some of them were crazy. Anyway, I told her again that the tattoo made me very uncomfortable and wasn't the leap she needed to take to comfort or support me on my journey with grief, as I still had a firm belief that she didn't do this in a malicious manner. She was quiet initially and then asked if she could explain herself and I said I was willing to listen.

To summarize, she said she simply got the tattoo because she thought it would symbolize the extent she would go to love me and support me, and said in that way, I had both people I loved so much in the same place. Her words not mine. She did say she was sorry and that she wouldn't have done it if she knew that I wouldn't have liked it. I asked her why she hadn't spoken to me about it prior and she said it wouldn't have been a surprise then, which is what she wanted it to be. She also said, and I'm remembering this fresh and internally cringing as I write this LOL, that the tattoo was meant to be a symbol of a new beginning because we're going to get married in a couple of months and she wanted to turn over old leaves. I'm still stuck on what she meant, so I'd appreciate any word sleuths helping me in this. To wrap it up, I said I didn't want to end our relationship over this and I really wanted to move on from it,

but that she needed to either cover it up or laser it off and she was, to say the least, not very happy about it. Said a cover up would be complicated and would take too long, said laser might be painful and look scary from the videos, also said she likes how the tattoo looks along with her other ones and asked if I'd be okay with her just covering it up either with clothes, or foundation. I was as firm as I could be, mind you this is the woman I've loved for five years straight so admittedly I'm soft, but I reiterated that I wanted it gone either by a cover-up or laser. She was quiet then and that's honestly where the conversation ended. She already left for work at 10 and I'm going to start my own work now, as I work remotely from home, after I finish this. Anyways, I hope this works out and I would appreciate any advice. I did read a comment that shamed me

for taking this to Reddit instead of speaking with her first, so I will priorities our communication first but will hopefully keep this updated. Thanks for all the help for now update 2, it's final, I've broken up with her. I don't even know why I'm writing this other than to get some closure on this situation and maybe some support. I've read so many comments this morning and while it didn't go the way I or anyone anticipated, I've taken my decision though I'm struggling to accept it myself. Last night when Bella came home from work, I made sure to make dinner and asked if we could talk after dinner in the back garden. She said that was okay but that she needed time to shower and unwind before dinner so she'd be a bit late, but that I could start eating. I agreed and she went

upstairs while I ate the dinner I'd made with the TV on in the back. She came down about an hour later, while I was winding things up and washing the dishes from earlier and I offered to get her a hot plate and she agreed saying she'd eat it on the couch in our living room rather than than the kitchen where we have a dining table, also where I ate. I said that was fine and I brought it over to her and as I gave it to her while she was sitting, her hand out to take it, I somehow managed to drop it and the hot Spog bowl went all over her. I immediately apologized profusely and went to grab her some water and tissues slash towels, but she just started screaming at me. I do not want to make myself sound like a victim in this, so I want to be careful with how I

write this. But yes, she started saying that I did that on purpose and that I was punishing her for our conversation that morning and for the tattoo in general. I immediately defended myself as I brought over a damp towel and some tissues and said I knew I had a steady grip on the plate so there was no way I had done that on purpose, also saying that I always spoke respectfully and calmly to her about the tattoo situation and that I'd never escalate things like this. Things beyond are a blur but we had a big fight and she broke many and I mean many of our glasses and plates, even trying to pull off a cabinet door in our kitchen that was already not in good condition and threw anything around her at me. By the end of it, I said I couldn't be with her

anymore and that this was the last straw and left from my parents' house. I haven't returned and I haven't picked up any of her calls or messages. And I'm honestly afraid of what she'll do to my belongings if she's so easily broke so much of the shit we bought together. I'm still at my parents' house and I haven't told them either, but I think this is it. This may be the last update because I don't know if I can focus on this when I have everything else I need to resolve. Thank you for all your comments I really appreciated them and I never expected this outcome. Peace and love to all that helped additional info, have spoken to family about it and they asked me to try to have a final conversation to remedy this and I rejected it.

We'll be bringing my things back either tonight or tomorrow depending on when she gets back from work and will bring a friend with me. I'm more at peace with my decision now so thank you for all the help. I hope you enjoy this story. Mill kept me out of family outings for a long time, but then unexpectedly decided to include me. It turns out that the only reason they wanted me to join was because I was available for free. Nanny and a maid. I, 29F, have been with my husband Ryan, 33M, for four years, married for two. And everything's always been great between us except for one thing. He never ever takes me with him

on his annual family trips. That's literally ever been. It has been the only bone of contention between the two of us and I have never been able to figure out why he would do such a thing. For the first year that we were dating, he told us that his family takes an annual vacation every year and they get away for a couple of days. I thought that it was a pretty cool tradition, given the fact that I don't come from a very healthy family myself, my parents are divorced and we never had the opportunity to do stuff like this. I was looking forward to. I was looking forward to to doing things like this with the family after we got married. The second year of us being together, I expected him to ask me to accompany him because we had been together for quite some time,

we were pretty serious and were even living together. But he did not ask me, and I found it a bit awkward but after that, I did not think much and figured that maybe he was waiting for us to get married so we could go on these trips. But even last year, after we had been married for a couple of months, he did not ask me to accompany him. That was when I was pretty disappointed. and before he left, I decided to ask him why he hadn't invited me to come with them on the trip. He seemed very confused and told me that he had just assumed that I would not want to accompany them. I don't know why he would do such a thing because I had repeatedly told him that I liked the idea of such family trips together and would have loved to be a part of one. He knew that I was a child of divorce

and had a weird childhood, so I enjoyed doing things like this. It was not even as though I did not get along well with his family, his parents loved me and so did his older sister, her husband, and kids. So I got along well with everyone, I did not understand why he did not think I would want to come along with them. We had a discussion about it last year, and we got into a fight before he left for the trip because even after I had expressed my interest in being part of it, he had still not invited me to come along. I was feeling very insulted by that, so because of how upset I was, I decided to confront him and pick a fight about it because I thought that it was totally necessary for me to get to the bottom of it. So a couple of days before he was supposed to

leave for the trip with his family, we fought, and I asked him why he had still not invited me to come along, even after I had expressed my interest in being a part of this. Because as my husband, he should have known that I wanted to go along with him and spend time with him and his family. And he finally told me that it was not just that he had assumed that I would not want to accompany him, there was also the fact that his family was not entirely comfortable with me accompanying them. I was really hurt by that because I had always assumed that I got along with them as I had mentioned earlier, and there had been absolutely no signs of them being uncomfortable or uneasy around me. They always treated me like family whenever I visited them, so I did not see that

coming in the slightest. He told me that he had given me another reason and sort of lied to me to spare my feelings, but the real truth was that his family still wasn't comfortable enough with me to take a trip together. They were fine with me visiting them on important events and the holidays and spending time with them at that point and a trip was a big deal. They were not ready for that yet. They believed that if I accompanied them, they would have to be extra formal the entire time and it would just be really awkward, so they wanted to spend a few more years with me, get to know me better, and then they would extend an invitation to me. The only reason that my sister-in-law's husband got to be part of these trips

was because they were high school sweethearts and my husband's family had known him for a really long time, so it was different for them. But with me, they were not ready yet and as hard as it felt, I still had to accept it. If they were not comfortable with me, I couldn't force my presence on them. And it was not Ryan's fault, so I couldn't blame him for it, and I had to accept it. I was very confused about my feelings at the time, so I let him go without any further fuss about this, but when he was gone for that one week, I did some introspection and I decided that I was going to try and really make myself a part of the family.

So that my in-laws feel comfortable enough to take me on a trip with them and they don't have to act formal and ultra-polite around me. I tried to understand where they were coming from and made sure that in the next couple of months, I made them feel comfortable around me and I went out of my way for that because I did not get along well with my own family. I wouldn't want to have a strained relationship with my in-laws as well. I guess you guys might have guessed that I'm a bit of a people-pleaser by now. I really wanted my in-laws to like me, so after my husband told me that they did not feel comfortable enough with me yet, I started going out of my way to be nice to them. After they returned from the trip,

I guess Ryan told them about the discussion that we had earlier, and we had a family discussion where they apologized for not inviting me and explained to me that because otherwise, Ryan and his sister were always busy and didn't really get to spend time with their family. Ryan is an investment banker, which is a taxing job, and his sister and her husband are in the medical field, so they're also pretty busy most of the time. They do get together with their parents every once in a while, but they have always had this tradition and they wanted to follow through on it. They did not realize that this would make me feel left out, and they apologized to me from the bottom of their hearts. They also said that they would try and meet me halfway,

and try to make me feel more included and make me feel part of the family. It was a much-needed discussion, and after that, I decided to try and get to know them independently as well, which is what I meant when I said I started going out of my way. Even if my husband wouldn't be visiting his parents, would still try and make it a point to go see them every once in at least two weeks. And whenever I would visit them, we would have a nice time together. At least, least that's what I thought was happening. They seemed to be enjoying my company. I think anybody else in my place would have felt the same way because they put on false happy faces and it was really hard to decide whether they were acting or not. Anyway, I had assumed that they were having

a nice time with me and they enjoyed my visits, so I kept doing it. I would not be there all the time, of course, but occasionally. They had said that they would try to meet me halfway and make me feel part of the family, so I had no reason to assume that they were getting annoyed by these visits. But apparently, that's the reason that they gave my husband this year, as they refused to invite me yet again. And that pretty much broke my heart because I had really tried to be a part of the family and be there for them as their daughter-in-law, and yet, all of that went in vain. This happened a couple of days ago, and when I found out about it, I was heartbroken because I had really felt that my in-laws and I were getting along well and I could expect to be a part of the family trip this

year. Last week, Ryan told me that they had finally decided that the family was going to California this year, for the annual vacation. I was really excited because I thought that I was going to be part of that trip this year, but then, he went on talking about it and mentioned nothing about me. So when I asked him, if I would be part of the trip this year or not, he seemed kind of upset and said that his parents hadn't mentioned anything about it, but I knew that he was lying, so after some convincing, he finally told me that his parents had said that they were kind of done with me apparently. As I had been visiting them a little too frequently and they needed some space. They believed that I had been trying way too hard and was kind of forcing my presence on them,

even when they had made it very clear that they needed some space. I did not know what they were talking about because they had not made anything clear and every time that I visited them or spoke to them, they seemed to have been enjoying it. I told Ryan about it, and he told me that he had tried to to convince his parents, but they were pretty stubborn about this and said that I was not welcomed this year. I was very upset and I got into a huge fight with Ryan because I wanted him not to go on the trip as well if I couldn't go because I thought that his parents were being very unfair to me. Earlier, they had told me that they would try to include me in things and get to know me, which is why I had tried so hard to build a relationship with them. And now, they were acting as

if I was the one who was bothering them. I found that very insulting and I tried to tell Ryan that this was not the way to behave with me and I did not appreciate the way his parents were acting. But he told me that this annual trip was very important to him, so that he could spend time with his family and would have loved to take me with him,

but his parents did not want that, he couldn't argue with them. And he said that, apparently, he could see both sides, which was ridiculous because I don't think that his parents have a point here and I think that they are just being fickle-minded and are making me seem like the bad guy just for trying to get along with them. If they did not want me coming along with them, they should have just said that instead of coming up with arbitrary reasons.

Anyway, we got into a big fight and I told him that I would not like him to go on the trip and I wanted him to take a stand for me, but he said that I was being silly and petty and went on the trip anyway. After he left on the trip, I was very disappointed by the way that I was being treated in this family, because I had really always tried my best to be there for everybody and become a part of this family. My own parents have never been very connected with me and when I met my in-laws, I thought that maybe these people would like me better. Even now, my parents and I don't really talk much.

But the relationship that Ryan had with his family, I envied that and I wanted to be a part of that. So I don't think it was wrong for me to try and get them to like me. I might have gone a bit overboard in trying to do that, but that That was only because they themselves had said that they would try to make me feel like I was more of a part of the family. And I had also noticed the difference in the way that my sister-in-law's husband and I were treated. I just wanted to be loved by these people. I don't think I was wrong for trying that. These were the thoughts that kept running in my head on repeat and I just kept feeling bad for myself

because at that point, I felt like Ryan did not care about me either. And I could still forgive his family for treating me badly, but I could not forgive him. And I had half a mind to leave before he came back from his. Two days after he had left, he called me up and I was pretty surprised. When he called me, I did not answer the phone the first time because I was very pissed with him. But then, he texted me and told me that it was an emergency and it was necessary for me to answer. So after that, he FaceTimed me, and to my surprise, his entire family was with him. his parents, his sister, and his brother-in-law, everybody were standing behind him, and all of them

looked really nervous to talk to me. I did not understand what was going on, and when I asked him to talk to me, he told me that everybody was there to apologize to me. So that was a pleasant surprise. He also told me that he had spoken to his parents about the things that I had said, and the fact that he had. So now the two of them had realized that they had been wrong and wanted to fly down to them and be there with them for the rest of the trip. His parents spoke to me as well and told me that Ryan had spoken to them, and they had realized that the way that I was being treated was quite unfair, and they were ashamed of the way that they acted because they had been entirely selfish and hadn't even given a thought to how I would be feeling about all of this.

They made the apologies seem so heartfelt. My mother-in-law even shed a tear or two and told me that Ryan had told them that I had only been trying to get them to me and they had been very selfish and inconsiderate. And they wanted to make it up to me by inviting me along for the rest of the trip and they would be heartbroken if I did not accept that invitation. They would understand if I declined, but they really wanted me to be a part of it. On the call, I was pretty confused, because I had felt insulted earlier, but on the other hand, I believe in second chances and I really loved Ryan. I wanted to make it work with him, so I told him that I would think about it. In the evening, I told him that I was ready to join them. I thought about it and I believe that everybody

deserves a second chance, so I got my flight tickets and flew down to them. They were there to receive me at the airport and we drove to an Airbnb, which was very confusing for me because I had assumed that they would be staying in since all of us were pretty rich. But the place that they were living in, it was far removed from the hustle of the city, and the area was pretty secluded, so they told me that there were no hotels that had empty rooms nearby, and the ones that were around, they were not good enough, so they had to go with an Airbnb. It was close to the beach, but quite far away from everything else, and was in a pretty nice spot, if you really think about it. Unfortunately, the only downside was that they had to do everything for themselves.

And I don't think anybody in my husband's family is used to doing that, not even Ryan. I'm used to being independent because whenever I was younger, my parents were not really home most of the time, so I would end up having to do everything for myself, right from the cooking to my own laundry. And even as I grew up, I made it a habit. So while we do have a housekeeper now, I still prefer doing certain things on my own. Ryan, however, grew up in a house where they constantly had people for everything they wanted to have done. and the Airbnb did not have any housekeeping services or any room service, so they had to cook and clean up after themselves. Even though the trip was just for eight days, they did not like the

idea of that and once I was there, they started delegating all those jobs to me, but they were doing it in a really subtle way so that I wouldn't guess what they were up to. Unfortunately, for them, I'm not stupid. I might be a people-pleaser, but I'm not going to just forget about my respect and dignity and be their unpaid nanny and cook. As soon as they got there, they complained about how there was nobody to do anything for them. All the hotels were booked as well, so they couldn't even move. And they were really annoyed with this whole thing, because apparently everybody was too tired, and they were supposed to be on holiday, so it was not fair that they had to do everything for themselves. I could understand what they were trying to hint at. And then, they started trying to

delegate all the work to me. Pretended like they were going to help me out as well, but said that since I was apparently the best at all of this, they were looking forward to having me around. And then they made the mistake of saying that the next morning, they would be leaving for a bit of sightseeing and requested that I stay with my sister-in-law's kids. That's when I lost it because I had realized what was going on. It was pretty late at night, and they had already told me that there were no hotels nearby that were not completely booked, but I still told them that if this was the real reason that they had invited me to join them on the trip, then I was better off staying at home. They tried to calm me down and said that they did not intend to insult me, but I could understand

what was going on, and that they only wanted me around as a free nanny and cook. And I was not going to tolerate that, so I told them that I would either be here as part of the family or I would leave. So after that, they were forced to admit that they had initially only invited me with the intention of having someone extra so that at least my sister-in-law's children would have somebody to be with them since their nanny had fallen and could not join them on the trip. It was apparently my mother-in-law's idea, which was a unique brand of disrespect. I was very upset when I found out the real reason they had invited me, and it completely negated their apology, but my in-laws insisted that they had meant every word of what they had said.

They told me that they would be devastated if I left, because they really wanted me to be there with them for the rest of the vacation as well, and it did not even matter if I did not want to help them out with chores, and as a way to make it up to me, they would do it themselves, and I could just unwind and relax. So after a bit of apologizing and pleading from their end, I decided to stay, as long as they did not ask me to do anything. That way, I would get a free vacation out of this, and I already made up my mind that I was going to get back at them, they had even assumed that I would tolerate this level of disrespect, and I had a plan for when we would be coming back home. I spent the rest of the vacation doing nothing. They did all. They did all. They did all. I would be tolerated to

all the work around the house, because they had to compensate for the way that they had behaved with me. And I just chilled in my room, taking my revenge. Yesterday was the day that we were supposed to all go back home and by the time we were at the airport, I could sense that everybody was really annoyed with me. Because I had really lived up to what I had said, that I would not be doing any work and I guess somewhere deep down, they were pissed at me. They were trying to put on an act of being nice to me and stuff, but I could see through it very clearly. However, it did not matter because I already had a plan in mind that would show them that it was never a good idea to pick a fight with me. Once we had boarded the flight yesterday, I only had to wait for a couple of minutes

and then, my plan was finally put into action when two of my friends boarded the flight with us as well. Obviously, they had been with us all along, throughout the entire process, but my in-laws only realized what was going on after I greeted two of them. And then, I sat away from my family, because I had booked my flight ticket separately. For the last couple of days, ever since I had flown down here and they had disrespected me by assuming that I would become their servant for the vacation and they would easily take advantage of my kindness, I had talked to my friends about it. They had been just as outraged and we had decided that we would go back home together and from there, we would embark on a road trip. I was just one row behind my house. I was just one row behind my

in-laws, and when they noticed that I was sitting separately with my friends, they asked me what was going on, and I told Ryan what I had been approved for the past couple of days. The day after they had insulted me, I had spoken to my friends, and we had planned this whole thing out. One of my friends lived in California anyway, so it was no trouble for her, and the other one had to fly down to California, but it was all worth it. The reason I had them fly down here and take me back home is because I didn't even want to spend the flight back home with these people. I could have just had them fly directly to my hometown, but we planned this out on purpose because I wanted to show them their place.

I had just been trying to be kind to them, but since they had shown me their true colors, it was about time that they saw mine. Once I had explained everything to Ryan, he told me that it was very petty of me to do this and that he was not fine with me just leaving for a cross-country road trip with my friends as soon as we got back home because that would be inconvenient for him, but I told him that it did not matter to me. I also told him that I was going to leave him now that he had shown me that he did not have a spine and could never stand up to his parents for my sake. This was another reason that I had invited my friends to be there for me on the flight back home so that I would have more support when I confronted him and told him what I was going to do once we got

back home. I had already spoken to my lawyer, and he was in the process of preparing the divorce papers. As soon as I returned from the road trip, I was going to file for divorce. I was not even going to go back home with him because it just did not seem worth it after everything that happened. He had allowed his parents to disrespect me, time and again, and this time, they had taken things too far. And my friends also took my side. They told him that I had made up my mind and there was no turning back. Besides, now that the two of them were here, there was no way that he could even manipulate me into believing that there was any need for me to give them another chance. Everybody was pretty upset on the flight back home and after I had told him

that I was leaving him, we did not speak for the entire duration of the flight and I was pretty happy about it. I was sitting right behind him, but I didn't even care about that. I was just so happy to be around my friends once again. For context, these two women had been with me since middle school, but we had been separated after college and even after that, we had tried to keep in but Ryan did not approve of my friendship with them, and he had made me distance myself from them after we got into a relationship. And I, being the vulnerable fool that I am, did exactly what he asked me to. His reasons were pretty stupid too, he just believed that these two women were a little too manipulative, and he thought that I had become a doormat for the two of them,

and I believed him. I just wanted to be with him, so I made him my priority and forgot about everything else. But now that I had realized that he was completely spineless, I had told my friends about it and they were standing up for me. After we landed, we went our separate ways. I didn't even go back home to pack for the road trip. I decided that I was just going to buy new clothes on the way, but I was not going to be anywhere near Ryan or his family. That was yesterday, and after we landed, they did not speak to me. In fact, they had stopped acknowledging my existence, right after I had boarded the flight with my friends and told them that I was leaving him. But this morning, he sent me a long text, saying that he was really disappointed with the way that I was acting.

He told me that he acknowledged and was ready to accept the fact that his parents were being horrible to me and that it had been wrong of him not to stand up for me. But apparently, he wanted me to think about this from his perspective as well, and that these were his parents, he couldn't just disrespect them. And apparently, he hadn't even realized what his mother was trying to do. since she had only spoken about the reason why she wanted me to come along on the trip to my sister-in-law, not him. He had no idea that they intended to make me cook, clean, and babysit for them, so it was unfair of me to blame him for that. He said that he was feeling really guilty about everything, and he just wanted to make things right with me, so he would want me to go on this road trip and come

back to him. And apparently, if I did not do that, it just meant that I never loved him in the first place and now I'm just really confused. It feels like he's manipulating me and I know that, but even then, there's a part of me that believes that I should just at least talk it out with him because I never really gave him a chance to explain because he couldn't exactly speak to me on the flight back home because we did not want to create a scene and trouble the other passengers. Anyway, I spoke to my friends about it, and they are vehemently against the idea of speaking to him, they just want me to block him and move on. I know that they are right, but I just want a second opinion, I guess, just to make sure that I'm doing the right thing. I'd offer leaving my husband

because he did not stand up to his parents for me. Update one, first off, thank you so much for all the comments, even the mean ones. I guess I really needed a reality check that Ryan was always going to be the kind of guy who tried to manipulate me and he had been a bright red flag ride from the beginning, but I was wearing rose-colored glasses, so I did not realize that. Anyway, now that my friends and you guys have helped me realize it, I'm not going back. I have blocked him and I'm going on this road trip with my friends, to reconnect with them and regain the friendship that I had lost earlier, because of Ryan. Update 2, quick update, I spoke to my lawyer and he told me that the divorce paper is already, and I can file the petition as soon as I am back from the road trip.

Which is lucky, because I'm going back home in a couple of days and as soon as I return, I'm going to file for a divorce. I have not heard from any body. from my in-laws family or Ryan. He did not try to get in touch with me and I'm happy about that because I don't think I want to speak to him at this point. The road trip has been fun, though, my friends and I have been reminiscing about the old times, the good times. And gosh, I can't believe I left this behind for Ryan.

Update 3, hi, so it's been about two months since I returned from my road trip. The divorce proceeding started quite a while back and we are in the middle of settlement negotiations right now. They are going quite smoothly since Ryan's family was able to brainwash him into believing that I was the bad guy here and he did not need me back. And I'm glad they did so because that just made the divorce process a lot easier for me now. He does not want anything for me and is acting like I'm the villain here and he's too good for me anyway. Good for him, he deserves way I better and so do I.