Reddit Stories - BETRAYED_ A Love TRIANGLE with FAMILY Ties_

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

#redditstories #askreddit #aita #betrayed #family #love #triangleSummary:In this gripping Reddit thread, a user shares a complex tale of betrayal within a love triangle intertwined with family ties. Moral dilemmas, emotional entanglements, and unexpected twists make for a captivating narrative.Tags:redditstories, askreddit, reddit, aita, tifu, betrayed, family, love, triangle, betrayal, relationships, drama, secrets, confession, forgiveness, loyalty, deception, heartbreak, trust, emotional turmoilBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reddit-stories--6237355/support.

I hope you enjoy this story. My spouse engaged in a romantic relationship with my closest companion, who also happens to be a relative. Presently, she is exerting emotional control over me while acknowledging her actions. I have been a follower for quite a while and am now making my initial contribution. First and foremost, I'd like to start by saying that my wife was always a good wife, and she has made a huge mistake that is out of character that might cost us our marriage, so please keep that in mind as you read on. I have a cousin who was also my closest friend. As my closest friend, he was often at my house when I lived with my parents and he continued to

visit me frequently after I got married. I have been married for three years. During these visits, my wife, who is normally shy and reserved around my friends, began to hang out with us from time to time because he became very familiar with his constant visits, and she saw him as a cousin of hers as well. It's also important to note that my wife has some undiagnosed mental illnesses such as borderline personality disorder, BPD, seasonal depression, and unresolved abandonment issues from her childhood. Anyway, eventually my wife began to join my cousin and I when we would hang out together outside of the home as well, and we regularly started hanging out altogether, which I didn't think was an issue because I was always around. I now know that I was essentially setting myself up

for failure by helping them create a bond. Fast forward to this past weekend, and after weeks of my wife constantly crying and feeling depressed beyond anything I've ever seen, which I had put down to her existing mental health issues. She confessed to me that the reason why she has been feeling this way is because of overwhelming guilt about having developed an emotional attachment to another man. At this point, she was completely distraught and could barely get her words out, so I simply comforted her while trying to hold in my shock and anger in it what I had just heard. Mind you, at this point, I thought she was just messaging a random guy on Instagram, and she started catching feelings for him and felt really bad about it. But it was much worse than that.

She eventually confessed that it had been going on for some time, 12 months since her first feelings, that she suppressed, nine months since they started talking on and off, three to four months since they started talking every day, and two months since they confessed that they had these feelings. And they have both said individually that they tried to end it at that point but couldn't do it straight away and things became romantic without getting physical, and my cousin eventually ended things officially around four weeks ago. Also note, I spoke to my cousin and he confessed without him knowing that my wife had told

me that he was her a fair partner, and their stories matched up, so at least their stories matched up. So now that you're all caught up, I need some advice. Is there any way that this marriage is reputable, or should I just move on and find someone that I can actually trust? Because I definitely cannot trust her right now, and I'm not sure if I will ever again. I've spoken to two sheiks, one individually and one with my wife, and they've both advised me to not rush into any decisions, but one told me to wait two to three weeks and one told me to wait four to six months, the one who told me to wait four to six months then later told me that I might have to end things sooner. If my wife's mental condition doesn't improve because the marriage seems unsustainable.

My wife and I are both 25 and have no kids. What makes this decision even more difficult is that I feel I have to consider my wife's mental health in making a decision. She is Melange at times and often says she doesn't want to live anymore because of what she's done. She's filled with guilt, but she's also admitted to me that she's still grieving the loss of the friendship she had with my cousin, which makes my blood boil. The sheikh said this is normal, but to monitor her she still feels this way in the next few months. I'm really annoyed and angry because I've always been a pretty stress-free person, as well as someone who's very loyal and family-orientated, so not only has this been the biggest

betrayal imaginable, apart from things getting physical. But it has also made me dread upcoming family gatherings where my cousin will be, and I will be expected to bring my wife because of course no one in our family knows about this. My wife is very clear that she only wants to be with me and she wants to make this marriage work more than anything, claiming she would die for me and would rather die than hurt me again. I know, it's dramatic, but that's how she is. I've known her my entire adult life and even though our marriage is not perfect, we've been pretty compatible so far, and I simply can't imagine life without her, even though she's hurt me in the

most unimaginable way. I really didn't want to go through making this story public, but I feel desperate and lost. If anyone has been through anything similar or knows of anyone who has, your advice would be appreciated even more. Thanks if you've read the whole thing. Update 1, so it's been two months to the day since D-Day, and I've been through all the emotions of grief in that time, while trying to wait the two to four months that different sheikhs recommended as not to rush my decision. In these two months, my wife and I have had our ups and downs, but to be honest, it's been mostly downs due to my ongoing depression about the situation. The UPS have been laughing about things and goofing around sometimes like

old times, but I often quickly remember what she did and my face physically drops, especially in the earlier weeks. Nowadays, I spend most of my time trying to stay distracted by playing football, going to the gym, spending time at the mosque slash with good brothers, etc. Some days I spend as little time around my wife as is reasonably possible, because when I'm with her I'm faced with a lot of confusion, because I obviously still have affection towards her but she hurt me in an unbelievable way. I also find myself thinking a lot more clearly when I'm not with her, and then when I'm with her I'm confused again. In terms of her behavior at home, she has been extremely loving, as is her nature, and continues to be a good wife in terms of looking after the home,

making me breakfast before work, packing my lunch, etc. However, her negative personality traits such as her temper slash foul language have reared their ugly heads, as well as some other issues which I'll touch on a bit later in the post. In the weeks and month since the confession, she has been mostly understanding and patient, but every now and again she cracks and has enough of me bringing it up. I've brought up the issue pretty much every day, a lot more often in the first six weeks, but I still do it now.

I know this isn't good, and it isn't because I love talking about the issue, it's because it's still at the front of my mind. I've seen a psychologist, one session so far, and have continued seeing a chic for counseling, and we saw the same chic as on D-Day for marriage counseling. Our main issue is that my wife did slash does not respect me fully as a man. Her words are that she respects me fully as a person, especially for my character, but only respects me partially as her man, because she needs certain things such as more complete emotional support, someone who will be more adventurous with her, she loves hiking, long road trips, etc.

and she picks on my driving is something that makes her lose respect for me. I've stated to her and to our marriage counselor that I believe that she doesn't value the traits that I bring to the table, being patient, respectful, providing for her, helping her improve in the religion as respectable traits in a man. Even though she does see the virtues in them, they're not as high value for her as they might be for other sisters. Although I wouldn't know, because unlike her, I haven't had intake conversations with anyone else outside my marriage. I personally think that she is being unreasonable because I have

tried really hard to be a good husband. We did our marriage when I was 21 and moved and together when I was 22. And from when I was 19 and knew we were going to get married, I started a business to make more money to pay for the wedding and start a life together. This was on top of my full-time university degree and a part-time job, on top of finding time to spend time with her and do the things she liked doing such as hiking, going on road trips, etc. We did the whole going to places together but not touching thing which I now realize was still really not permissible, and I feel like that might have cursed our marriage. Anyway, I worked so hard that I hardly slept, and I ultimately fell asleep behind the wheel and crashed my car, praise be to God, I somehow didn't

hit any cars and only swerved into some grass. I brought this work I've done for us up to her, and she said that's my duty, and then asked why I hadn't highlighted it before. As if she would have respected it more if I had made it clear. It's not healthy that we've developed this silly point-scoring exercise because that's not what marriage is about. Despite all of this, she still holds resentment towards me and says it openly. Part of that resentment is because I wasn't aware and possibly emotionally mature enough to sacrifice more things during our marriage. mainly the fact that I played football three to four days a week for a few hours, and she claims this abandonment, was a contributing factor that led to her abandonment and subsequently led to her affair. She claims full responsibility for the affair, with the affair partner, but says that it's important to understand the reasons for what drove her to that point because she doesn't have a long history with men or anything like that the marriage counselor agreed that it's important to understand how we got to that point as well.

To be honest, I'm baffled as to how someone who's had an affair and their spouse reacts in a composed way and still doesn't disrespect her, can still turn around and say that she lacks any kind of respect for her husband. She says she really respects me for how I dealt with it, and again, fully respects me as a person, but not as her man, which is a different category for her apparently. The things I see as manly and what she sees as manly are clearly two different things. Finally, I had obviously cut off regular contact with my cousin, the affair partner, but in the last 10 days or so, I've had to talk to him because the family has been hit with a major issue. One of our cousins went missing and was found to be using medications and was stuck in a medication house, and our family looked to us to lead the investigation and help find a solution, because we're all 40 days apart in age, myself, the affair partner, and the medication user.

Praise be to God she is now safe and back with the family, so we can cut off contact again. But this incident has reminded me that it will be impossible to keep my cousin out of my life, and the thought of him and my wife even being in the same room makes me want to die inside. One of them has avoided each family gathering so far. So here we are, I'm still extremely confused. To be perfectly honest, in the first six weeks I was leaning heavily towards walking away, but in the last couple of weeks I have started to feel responsible for not being the perfect husband. Even though I spent a lot of time being her shoulder to cry on, spent many nights reaching out to her friends asking them to reach out to her because she needs their support,

and even trying to cheer her up after she's verbally abused me, she says this is because of her anger and mental health issues that she's working through. But she still gets really angry. By the way, I've asked my wife if she expects me to be the complete husband, and she says, said no, but something close to it, she feels that that's what she needs. This obviously still consumes my mind, I've struggled to be efficient with my work, for example, it's around midday where I am and I've basically got nothing done in the office so far today. I spend a lot of time reading forums about marriage slash affairs, watching lectures about the issue. I think I've watched all of them so I'm back to Reddit, and messaging my wife with more issues. This isn't healthy for either of us, the marriage counselor says I need to decide sooner

rather than later, whether I'm looking to commit or go our separate ways, and if I was to commit, that our marriage needs a lot of work. Sorry for ranting on, and I'd be surprised if anyone read all of that. Regardless, any advice is welcome, especially if you've been in a similar situation. Update 2. This week my wife and I divorced after being married for three and a half years. It was very sad, she got extremely emotional and I also shed some tears, but I believe it had to be done as I couldn't look past the affair. At the moment, my wife is in the process of moving back into the home we shared, and I'm going to live with my parents for the remainder of her waiting period. She came to the house today and in the evening, she asked me if we can talk about some things because she was not happy that I was in a bad mood towards her today, and had mentioned the issue a few times. She knows the reason why the issue came up today was because I'm having Anties calling me,

and even coming over to try to get me to give my wife a second chance, and I find this very triggering because they don't know what I've gone through, plus all the things I've hidden from them, such as the fact that she had an affair. To protect her dignity and reputation which is the right thing to do, and to not reveal that the affair partner is their nephew and my cousin. It's extremely infuriating because they all see her as a kind girl that's very sweet, which she is at times. But they don't know what I've gone through, with the affair and with all the verbal abuse and temper issues throughout the marriage. I always shielded my family from seeing this

side of her because I was always able to keep my cool, so there were never any major incidents they would hear about if I'd also lost my cool. She's also really good at being the best version of herself around others, particularly family. It goes down to her cultural roots and how she was raised. There are a lot of good things about her personality and character that I would look for in another wife, so that should be made clear. Anyway, back to the issue that she wanted to talk about, I told her that I didn't want to talk about things right now, but she insisted and kept talking about it anyway, saying that we won't have any other time to talk, because I'm going to my parents tomorrow. So she began asking why I've forgotten all the good she did and the sacrifices she made in our marriage, and that I'm just labeling her for one thing she's. did. I insisted it wasn't just one thing, and I said that I haven't forgotten about all the good, because if I had, I wouldn't be treating her with kindness, I would be cold to her like I am to

her affair partner slash my cousin. I was then alerted to news that one of my ex-colleagues and a friend was being rushed to hospital after a serious car accident, and she became even more upset that I was diverting my focus from our conversation, which I said I wasn't ready to have anyway, and said that this is symptomatic of our problems in the marriage. where she always had to fight for my attention, and that's what caused this problem between us. I'm so flabbergasted by her lack of empathy when she's in that kind of mood, it's just so bizarre, because she's not an inconsiderate person when she's in a stable mood. She also said that for the record, after some time she would have forgiven me for cheating if I had done what she had.

I think that's a load of horse crap if I'm honest. She's a very sensitive person and can't even handle the perceived threat of being abandoned. so if she found out that I had an emotional relationship with another woman, let alone a relative of hers, she would lose her mind. If her family found out, her brothers would probably have broken my legs. I swear tonight she made me feel like I was the one that had the affair. She even fell down to her knees crying why? I thought in my head, I'm pretty sure that's my line. I should be the one saying that and falling in despair after what happened. The last thing I want to do is. The last thing I want to is lose faith in being able to find someone who appreciate the qualities that I do have.

When she starts speaking about the things I did wrong and the part one had to play, I do start to get defensive. I won't lie, but that's because it's really hard to compare not being attentive enough and not having more deep and meaningful conversations with actual cheating. So the reason why I'm asking all of this is, do I owe it to her to have these final discussions about where things went wrong in our marriage so she can get some closure? Or do we just stop talking about the issue entirely and move on separately? I am trying to do everything by the Holy Book and habitual practice, and not take away any of her rights from her, regardless of how the marriage ended.

I want both of us to be able to heal from this marriage ending. I've been advised that I have to prioritize myself in this, but I can't pretend I don't care about her well-being, and I want to increase both of our chances of being able to remarry in the future, if God wills, because a fresh start would be. healthy for everyone involved. I've always tried to carry myself with respect and honor, even in the face of this most heinous betrayal, so any advice from people who have been divorced or advice from married brothers slash sisters on tips on how you would handle this situation, I would greatly appreciate it. Update 3, I found out three months ago that my wife cheated on me, emotional affair with my first cousin and best friend. They were speaking secretly for up to 12 months, but it was romantic for approximately three months, give or take.

I cut my cousin out of my life immediately and after three months of tossing and turning, trying to see if I can get past the betrayal, I asked my wife for a divorce a week ago today. My STBXW has been deeply remorseful since the affair, but I've just been unable to let it go, especially because she still exhibits some of the toxic traits that have put a strain on our marriage, such as a vicious temper and emotional manipulation. For example, a few days after I asked for a divorce, she sent me a photo of her eating alone at a cafe and said I better get used to eating alone. If this is an emotional manipulation, someone please correct me.

My STBXW is also in the process of being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, BPD, she's had a provisional diagnosis and it's pretty obvious to me, her, and her psychologist that she has it. My STBXW's remorse was the only thing that made me consider staying in the marriage, but even though she continues to say that she takes full responsibility, she says that there are things I did that led her to doing what she did. For example, we have different ideas of a nice Saturday, I'm more of a home buddy and she loves the outdoors, so I would only be up for a long drive to the countryside or a faraway beach every now and again,

but she would want to do something like that a few times a month, so she says me constantly rejecting her led to her affair. She also attributes some of the blame for putting her in the situation by inviting my cousin to the house to occasionally stay over because he lives over an hour away, my cousin and I would have sleepovers regularly before I got married, and I now realize that it should have stayed in the past. But I could never imagine that it would lead to the two of them cheating together. To clarify, we've been on plenty of road trips in the seven years we've known each other, as well as three international trips, despite the pandemic and the fact that we're 25-26.

So it's hardly like we've had some boring dormant marriage. For context, my STBXW is very loving overall, especially in her good times, she takes care of the home very well, she always took care of me when I was ill, and we always got along for the most part, to the point where we could be good friends if we weren't married, although we don't have a lot in common. It's hard to explain. So my question is, is my STBXW's remorse and responsibility taking genuine, if it comes with the caveats of me also taking some of the responsibility for the part one played? Also, is it fair enough that even though she's remorseful that I can't get past it because it was such a huge betrayal, a double betrayal actually? Plus, is it normal that my attraction levels to her have dipped immensely?

I've never been a person that's prioritized looks, so when I married her, it was more for her personality and how well we got along more than anything, and the physical attraction grew over time, so is it normal that now that she's not exactly the person I thought she was? When I married her, that I'm less attracted to her in general. I'm also confused because I don't resent her as a person. I still want good for her in her life, she's a good person overall, but I can't get past what she did, and I can't take it. trust my own judgment or her intentions if I were to get back with her. Her BPD also complicates things because she could be the sweetest girl one minute and then be yelling at swearing at me the next. She knows that I don't like swearing, we're both religious and I don't swear at all, yet, she's continued to swear when yelling at me in our three years of marriage. She's also said cruel things such as that she doesn't fully respect me as her husband, because I don't do X,

Y, and Z that she finds respectable in a man, yet she overlooks all the things that I've done for her over the years, including never really losing my cool and putting up with years of abuse, mood swings. And being there for her as much as I could because people with BPD are more emotionally needy than others, in some ways through no fault of their own. She's taken back a lot of the comments post separation, but I feel like maybe she's just saying the right things because she wants me back. Overall, I'm tired. I'm tired of being the nice guy, tired of being stepped all over, tired of having to worry about if being divorced will destroy both of our reputations, tired of keeping my cousin's role in

this a secret from everyone except my therapist and counselor, it would destroy my family. And I'm tired of wondering if I'm doing the right thing by walking away, or if I'm leaving a good thing too soon, even though when I think rationally, it doesn't feel like it. Sorry for the rant, this is all still pretty fresh, I guess, the months haven't really dulled the pain, I still think about it every single day. When does that stop? Update 4, I've recently started realizing that she's very emotionally manipulative. For example, a few days after I asked for a divorce, she sent me a photo while she was out and said I better get used to eating alone. I called her out on this and she denied that she was trying to manipulate me. Just now, we were sitting on the couch. I'm still in the process of moving out, and we had the following conversation, pretty much word for word, wife, I wonder what it'll be like to be forever single. Me, here comes the emotional manipulation.

Wife, I'm just saying stuff, not saying it to you. Me, just keep it in your head then, so you're not manipulating me. Wife, I don't care if you hear, or what you do with the information. You're actually the worst man I've ever met. Am I right to call this out as manipulation, or is she really just thinking out loud?