Reddit Stories - BETRAYED_ Blamed by Mother for the COLLAPSE of My MARRIAGE_

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

#redditstories #askreddit #aita #betrayed #blame #mother #collapse #marriageSummary:In a heart-wrenching tale, a Redditor shares being blamed by their mother for the collapse of their marriage. The emotional turmoil and complexities of family dynamics come to light in this post.Tags:redditstories, askreddit, reddit, aita, tifu, betrayed, blame, mother, collapse, marriageBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reddit-stories--6237355/support.

I hope you enjoy this story. Mother accused me of being responsible for the end of my marriage when my spouse left me for another lady, and scolded me for bringing shame upon the family due to my inability to uphold the marital bond. To make the marriage work. Hey, I'm 48F and I have a 23-year-old son and he's getting married in two weeks. A few days back, my mother, 70F, who I haven't been in touch with for the past 16 years, got in touch with me because she wanted to attend her grandson's wedding.

We haven't been in touch because 16 years ago, my ex-husband cheated on me and I filed for a divorce, and my mother decided to blame me for it. My ex-husband and I had been together for just a year when I got pregnant and I decided to keep the baby, but I had given him the option to leave if he didn't want to stay with me. I was ready to be a mother at the time, but he wasn't ready to be a father.

We did end up getting married, though, because of pressure from his family since they wanted to have a relationship with their grandson. So he had to marry me because of his family and like most other couples who end up in this situation, we were not happy after we got married. Life after marriage was difficult since my ex-husband was constantly fighting with me, and after a few years, we just stopped talking. Then when my son was seven years old, I discovered a few messages on his phone, and I realized that he had been cheating on me with his friend for a year.

That was the end of our relationship. I moved out that day and filed for a divorce that week itself. Under circumstances like that, I would have expected my family to support me and my father actually did support me, but my mother had told me to go back to him and tried to make that marriage work. I don't know why, but she believed that my ex-husband had decided to cheat on me because I was the one who hadn't been able to keep him happy in the marriage and so, he had decided to look for happiness elsewhere, outside of the marriage.

She thought that it was my fault that we were getting divorced and had told me that it was my duty, as his wife, to try my best to make the marriage work, and it didn't matter that he had cheated on me. What mattered was that we could still forget about all of this and try to make it better for the future. I thought that her ideas were archaic and we had fought a lot over the things that she said to me because I had believed that the least she could do for me was be supportive of me, but instead. She was insisting that I go back to the man who hadn't been able to give me any sort of happiness, or hope for the future in the seven years that we had been together. I was personally relieved that I was going to be able to leave him because for so long, the only reason I had tried to make it work with him was because of my son. But after he had cheated, and I found out about it,

I had come to the realization that if I stayed in this relationship, then neither would I ever end up being happy nor would my son. So it would be better for everyone if we ended this sham of a marriage and my ex-husband and I agreed on that, but my mother didn't. After I filed for a divorce, my mother kept bothering me for a bit, but I didn't bother to pay attention to her and decided to go through with the divorce anyway. At least my father was supporting me, so I wasn't too worried. But unfortunately, for months into the divorce proceedings, I lost my father to a heart attack. It was really sudden and at the time, my mother and I had not exactly been getting

along well because she thought I was messing things up for myself by getting that divorce. So at the time that my dad passed away, I had only been talking to him, but I had been avoiding my mother for a couple of weeks. When I reached out to her to tell her that I wanted to help her plan the funeral so that we could reconcile, she told me to leave her alone and said that she wanted nothing to do with me anymore. She called me a disgrace to the family, since I was one of the first women in our family to actually leave their husband instead of tolerating whatever they did, and she told me that it was my fault that my husband had left me for another woman because I was too selfish and never cared about anyone's happiness, except for my own. My father had already passed away, so the only person

who had been connecting the both of us was gone and with him gone. I didn't feel the need to ever speak to my mother again after the things that she had said to me. She had been horrible to me, and after I attended my dad's funeral, I decided that I was never going to see or speak to her again. And I'm pretty sure that she was fine with it because after that, she did not try to reach out to me either. I was completely on my own during divorce because I'm not very close to the rest of my family and I only had a few friends to help me out. After everything was finalized, I decided to start applying to jobs outside of the state because I just couldn't bear to live there anymore and luckily, I got a well-paying job within a few weeks. Within a month of my divorce being finalized, I left

everything behind and moved away. I had full custody of my son since his father hadn't actually been interested and I had seen that coming because even though we had been together for seven years for our son's sake, he had never really been invested in our son like I was. He had visitation rights, but he never utilized those after the divorce apart from the holidays. But even those visits on the holidays stopped after a year or two and he continued to pay child support, but never bothered to see his son. I haven't heard from him for a really long time, but I know from a couple of old friends that he's doing great and he's married to the friend that he had that affair with. As for my family, I never was particularly close to anyone and neither

were they bothered about me, so I haven't been in touch with them ever since I left. And my mother and I have never spoken in the past 16 years. I'm putting all of this out because I want everyone to know that since my son was seven years old, I have raised him completely on my own. I have handled my work and managed to build a business and raise him all on my own without any support, emotional or otherwise, not even from my own mother. So when, a few days ago, she showed up at my house uninvited, I was pretty surprised. She is pretty old now, but so am I, and I wasn't happy on seeing her so I did not invite her in. When I asked her how she found me, she told me that she had asked a couple of my high school friends, and one of them had told her and

then she told me that she had come all the way here to ask me if she would be allowed to be a part of the wedding of her grandson. She told me that she had been thinking about it ever since she heard that my son was engaged, since I had posted about it on social media and I'm guessing people from the family must have seen that or something. And she knew that we hadn't spoken in the past 16 years, but she felt that it was time to bury the hatchet and make peace for the sake of her grandson because she wasn't sure how much time she had left and she wanted to get the opportunity to bond with him, even if it was just a little. But she didn't say the one thing that I expected her to say,

and that was that she was sorry for everything that she had said to me in the past. I waited for a bit for her to say that, and then I might have even considered accepting her request to be present at the wedding, but she just stared at me without saying anything, and it was so frustrating that I laughed in her face and I told her that no, I definitely did not want her at the wedding, and I'm sure that neither would my son. Then, I asked her to leave because I didn't want to speak with her anymore. and she left, but she looked very shocked with the way that I had behaved with her.

After she was gone, I decided to call up my son and tell him about what just happened because after all, this was his wedding and he should also have a say in what happens. I was pretty certain that he was going to tell me that I had done the right thing by asking his grandmother to leave, but after he told him everything, he told me that I might have been a bit too quick in asking her to go away. I hadn't seen that coming in was disappointed that he was not on my side, but then, he kept talking and explained to me that it had been 16 years since we last spoke and neither of us had felt that it was necessary to reach out to the other. Which is fine because what my mother had done back then was unacceptable and I had my reasons

not to speak to her. But now, since she had made the effort to reach out to me, I should have at least invited her in and tried to speak to her instead of telling her to go away. Maybe she hadn't apologized right off the bat, but I can chalk that up to old age and the least I could have done was at least give her an opportunity to speak to me and try and make things right. My son was the one who told me that I should reach out to her again and just talk to her once and maybe we'll be able to make things right. He also reminded me that my mother is also getting old and she might not have a lot of time left. So after she's gone, he wouldn't want me to regret letting go of this one opportunity to make things right between the two of us.

Of course, he told me that in the end, it has to be my decision, but that's what he would suggest to me. His suggestion actually seems pretty reasonable, but it's just been so long that I don't feel like speaking to my mother anymore. All that hurt and resentment is still inside of me somewhere and I don't know if I'll ever be able to let that go. But what he said about my mother getting old and not having enough time was also true and truth be told, I don't know how I feel about that. It's just all a mess in my head right now and I feel like my brain is divided into two parts right now, one that wants to reach out to my mother and speak to her and the other. That keeps reminding me of all the things that she had said to me when I was going through the toughest time in my life and she never bothered to reach out to me in the past 16 years. So I'd offer not wanting to reconcile with my mother after 16 years of no contact.

Update 1. Hey, everyone, so there are just four days to go before my son gets married, and a few days back, after speaking to my son, I decided that I was going to give it a try and actually try to fix my relationship with my mother. He was thrilled about it, and he told me that he would be there for it as well, in case I needed moral or emotional support and I really was grateful for it. The only issue was that we didn't exactly know how to get through to her or if she was even here anymore, but thankfully, I asked a couple of my friends from high school and one of them confessed to having given her my address because she had been pestering them nonstop and so, she just caved and sent her my address. Then, I asked her to give me my mother's contact info if she could, and she was able to arrange for it in a while and that's how we contacted her. I called her up and when she picked up

the phone, she was pretty surprised to hear me on this end, but anyway, I invited her over for dinner and I told her that I would be willing to speak to her about all of this if she was still here. Luckily, she hadn't left and was planning on going back after a week, since she was staying here with her niece's family and they were quite happy to have her here. Anyway, last evening, she came over for dinner and it was really awkward and weird, but I was thankful that my son and his fiancé were here to try and defuse the situation. My mother told me about her life and how it had been for her for the past 16 years and I told her a little about how it had been for me.

Apparently, six years ago, my mother had remarried but unfortunately lost her second husband a few months ago. It had been really lonely for her in the past couple of months, especially after her second husband had passed away as well, and she realized that she hadn't exactly done the right thing by pushing her own daughter away. She told me that she was really sorry that she had been so horrible to me in the past and told me that I didn't deserve what I had been through. It was quite surreal for me to hear her say that because I really hadn't expected her to apologize and I still couldn't believe it because this was finally happening after 16 years. Anyway, while she apologized, she started crying and she told me that she knew that she wasn't ever going to get these 16 years back and that what happened was irreversible, but she still wanted to make the rest of her life count and do something right for once.

When she started crying, I started feeling bad for her and I told her that now that she was here, we were going to really give it a try and make things right between us again. But she just couldn't stop sobbing and after one point, we had to abandon dinner just so that we could console her because she was sobbing so violently. It was clear that she had been holding herself back for a really long time and now, the dam had finally burst. She just kept telling me that she was really sorry about everything and that she hadn't been a good mother and she wanted to apologize to me for her failure. So after a while, I just decided

to hug her so she could calm down for a bit and then I took her to the guest room so she could lay down and rest. Then, my son, his fiancé, and I went back to dinner and finished it all up. While she was resting, my son and I got to talking and I told him that I was really happy that he suggested that we reconcile or at least try to talk to each other because so far, things have been going pretty well. After so many years, it's definitely not going to be easy to repair our relationship, but we have to start somewhere if we want that and this is a good place to start. My mother ended up spending the night here that day and the next morning. When she left, I told her to get all her things and stay with me until it was time for her to go back.

She agreed readily and my cousin and her family moved her in here. They're distant cousins, so I'm not very close to them and I honestly didn't even know that I had to be. family here. But I thank them as well, and they told me that they were grateful that I was taking over from here because for the last couple of days, all my mother had been talking about was me and how she had screwed everything up. So they believed that my decision to have her move in with me for the next couple of days was a good one since it would help us reconcile. And I agree. My mother hasn't broken down anymore after that day and things are still a bit awkward and strained between us, but I know that she's trying to erase that gap of 16 years

as best as she can. The wedding is coming up so I've been busy with that as well and I also have worked to attend to, so we mostly only get to talk to each other peacefully in the evenings and our conversations have been pretty nice so far. It makes me feel glad that I decided to give this a chance because I feel like I might be able to get my old relationship with her back again. Update 2. Hello, Everyone. So my son got married last week in two. I was a lot of Two days after that, he and his wife left for their honeymoon. The wedding went really well, everything was exceptionally beautiful and my mother was glad to be there as well. She kept talking about how wonderfully I had raised my son, even though I had been all

on my own and she told me that she would have never been able to do it on her own if she had been in my place. So it was really a commendable job that I had done. My son and his now wife have been together for the past ten years and that's something that came up pretty frequently during the wedding, and my mother told me later on that even though my son was his father's kid as well. She couldn't see even the slightest resemblance to him that was a good thing because I had raised a good man. She acknowledged that she had been wrong about my ex-husband and told me that I had done the right thing by leaving him. And finally, she explained why she had been so against the idea of me leaving my husband. My mother had been raised in a very strict Catholic family,

and I knew that. I was also aware of the fact that her parents believed that getting a divorce was not a valid solution to anything and she had been raised to believe the same thing since they didn't even recognize divorce. And I was pretty much the first woman in my family to get a divorce because everyone had had a similar kind of upbringing. Even my father came from a similar family, but his family was not as strict as my mom's. However, even in his family, divorce was not encouraged, and when I had decided to leave my husband, I hadn't posted about it or anything but words still got around because I had left his house and stuff. And when that happened, people and my family started gossiping and telling my mother that she needed to stop me from leaving my

husband because it was a sin. Once we were married, we were married, and there was nothing that we could do to reverse that. So the only option I had was to just make it work and they made it seem like cheating was not even that big of a deal because their husband used to do it constantly, so they thought that I should treat it as something that just happens and not take it seriously either. But I did not function with the same moral code, and I decided to leave and that created quite a stir in the family. People were quite upset that I was doing something like this and that's why my mother kept trying to discourage me because she knew that the family would cut me off and keep gossiping about me behind my back. In some way, I guess she thought she was protecting me in some weird twisted way, but that's not how it works.

Things only got worse when my dad passed away because people were already upset with me and when that happened, they started taking up the opportunity to make it seem like it was my sin that my dad had been punished for. My mother told me that a bunch of relatives started brainwashing her and believing that because I had decided to go against my husband and leave him in spite of their advice, it was my father who had to bear the punishment of my friend. My mother had lost her soulmate at the time because, unlike my marriage, both my parents had been in love with each other. She was very vulnerable at the time and her family took advantage of that and decided to turn her against me completely. That was why she started to believe that maybe it was actually my fault

that she had lost her husband and that's why she decided to cut me out of her life. When I learned about all of this, even though I knew some bits of it, I felt angry and hurt all over again. Because even though I had known that her family had a huge part to play in all of this, I didn't know what they had been saying about why my dad had passed away. I couldn't believe that even my mother had believed it was my fault that she had lost her husband back then. I felt like I wanted to draw back from her once again, but she told me that it had taken her a long time, but she had realized that she was the one who had screwed up by believing whatever nonsense had been fed to her by her family and it was completely her fault that she had pushed me away from her for so many years.

She also told me that after she got married for a second time, her late husband had tried to get her to talk to me on multiple occasions and had tried to get her to cut her family off because they were very toxic, but she had refused. It was only towards the end of his life when he had fallen very ill, that she realized what he was talking about and started to acknowledge her mistakes. And she told me that she really wanted to tell me that I was stronger than most of the women in our family and maybe everyone resented me for that. But anyway, we cannot change the past and now that we have started trying to fix our relationship,

I don't want to go back on that. So my mother and I are still staying together and we are actively trying to reconcile and make up for lost time. Update 3. Hey, guys. Three weeks have passed since my last update and my mother has still been living with me, but she has decided to go back by the end of this week. Things have been going really well and we have been bonding. Occasionally, it still gets really weird and silent,

but we have been trying not to let that get in the way of our reconciliation. Anyway, she has decided to go back for a couple of months so she can sort everything out back home and then move back in here with me permanently. I know a lot of people are not going to agree with my decision, but she's not getting any younger and I really want to be there for her. When we were younger, when I was a kid, she was my best friend. And slowly, we are going back to that relationship that we used to have when I was little and I don't want to lose it anymore. So I think it's for the best if she comes back to live with me permanently. And I've also been pretty lonely ever since my son moved out, so I think I could do with some company.

My mother has told me that she's going to put our old house up for sale because the memories attached to that house are just too much to handle and I agree, I think it's the best decision she could make right now. I can't go with her because I have worked here, but my son has told me that he's going to return in a couple of days, so he'll handle everything. Thankfully, my mother doesn't really have any serious health problems as of now, so she can handle herself alone, but she just needs somebody to be there for her while she's traveling. Once she comes back, we have also been talking about going to therapy together. It's my cousin who told us to give it a try and to be honest.

My mom wasn't really into the idea because it's a very newfangled concept for her, but I told her that it would be worth it. So now, I'm just going to wait for her to come back after she's done with all the work back home and then, she's going to be living here. I'm quite happy about it because she and I have been spending a lot of time together recently and I have been having a great time with her. In these past 16 years, I'd almost forgotten how fun and witty she could be when she wanted to only the bad parts had stayed with me after our

massive fallout part but slowly, but surely, we're getting the good parts back again. I really don't know how much time I have left with her. If I'm lucky then I might get a lot but whatever I have left, I want to make the most of it. We have spent enough of our lives being angry at each other. I think it's time that we leave all that in the past. Update 4. Hi, Guys So I have absolutely heartbreaking news for everyone, my mother has unfortunately passed away. It has been five months since she moved back home so she could wrap up all the work she had there and sell the house. At first, I didn't think that it would take her so long to sell the house, but she told me that she had other things to attend to as well before she moved in with me.

I didn't think much of it and we kept in touch over the past five months. We would often face-time each other and she had started to look quite sick, but whenever I would ask her about it, she told me it was just the camera and her phone had poor quality, which was true so I didn't question it. Then, two days ago, I was informed that she had passed away in the hospital. She had a nurse who had taken her to the hospital in the middle of the night, but she hadn't been able to make it.

Apparently, she had been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia about two months before she came to see me. She had been undergoing treatment, but the disease had already gotten to a stage when it was too late to do anything. So for a few weeks, she decided to come see me instead of wasting her time on treatment because she knew that she was going to pass away eventually and she wanted to make things right with me before that happened. She never told me anything about it because she didn't want to make me upset, and after she

passed away, it was her nurse who told me everything. I'm still trying to process and cope with this loss, but I'm really happy about the fact that I decided to give it a chance and even though I had very little time to spend with her before, she eventually passed away, I'm very grateful that I even got that time. My son was right, I would have definitely regretted it if I had not given this a chance. For those of you who had said that the only reason she wanted to make things right with me at this age was because she needed somebody to take care of her in her old age, I guess you were wrong because she knew she wasn't going to make it. And she didn't need me to take care of her, she just needed me to forgive her and

spend some time with her before she passed on. I'm organizing her funeral at the end of this week and flying back home for it. Condolences have been pouring in from her family, who always hated me so I know that it's all pretend, but I don't really care about it. I'm content with the time that we got to spend before she passed away and I'm always going to cherish it.