Reddit Stories - BETRAYED BOUNDARIES_ When Trust is SHATTERED Between Families_

Episode Date: September 28, 2025

#redditstories #askreddit #aita #betrayedboundaries #trustissues #familydrama #relationships #conflictSummary:Discover real-life stories on Reddit about betrayal and shattered trust within families, exploring the complexities of navigating boundaries and rebuilding relationships.Tags:redditstories, askreddit, reddit, aita, tifu, betrayedboundaries, trustissues, familydrama, relationships, conflict, betrayal, trust, family, boundaries, forgiveness, communication, healing, personalstories, emotional, supportBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reddit-stories--6237355/support.

I hope you enjoy this story. My former closest companions' university-aged child oversteps boundaries with my 14-year-old adolescent daughter. I am taken aback in distressed and unsure of how to proceed. We still maintain a strong friendship with my childhood best friend. We grew up together, were there through each other's relationships. When we both married the loves of our lives, when we started having children, etc., our families are very close.

She got married and had children a while before I did, so she has older children, one of which is a 21-year-old college boy. I am practically his aunt and know him very well. The past few days I could tell my daughter was in an unusual mood, but I didn't think too much of it. Today I go into her room and see her crying. I asked her what was wrong and she said she couldn't tell me and to go away. I don't know why, but I got a really bad feeling about the situation and asked to see her phone. She freaked out and started to scream at me. After a while I got it out of her that she and this 21-year-old man have been in contact and talking testing calling over the course of the past year. WTF? My daughter was in eighth grade. She gave me more details about the situation and said

that he would encourage her to tell him her problem so they began to form a close relationship. He started telling her that he really loved her and saw her as a little sister, but told her to keep their friendship a secret from me and my best friend, his mom, and our families. Here is what I know about their relationship. He would video call her at night after everyone was asleep and they would talk into the night he would often go on rants to her about how they can't have a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship now and my daughter would not really know what to say.

She would just listen he constantly talks to her about inappropriate things that I don't want her exposed to right now, such as his drinking habits in college and stuff like that. He talks to her about his problems and I see an issue in this because a lot of his problems in college are nothing a 14-year-old needs to know about. I don't mind her knowing about that stuff, but I would like her to be taught about it in a more responsible way. His friend apparently called her drunk one time and began to say explicit, inappropriate sexual things about both her and my best friend's son, example, you suck his D.K. already girl. I want to vomit. Whenever we have family gatherings, we usually let all our children hang out together and my friend's son joins them

and of course we assume he's just babysitting and watching over the younger kids. Apparently at a gathering this weekend, he had took my daughter aside and kissed her on the lips. It was her first kiss. He told her he has feelings for her, but that they can't do anything right now. I am livid that I'm why daughter feels

that she might have feelings for him but she is also shaken at the same time because she's uncomfortable. Deep down I know there's something telling her it's not right, hence why she's so upset. She told me she feels like she likes him but at the same time she doesn't want him to come over anymore. I feel so sick, I feel like a shit parent for letting this happen under my own roof. How could I have let this happen?

There is so much more, this is only a small portion of the stuff she's told me, but I think it pretty much sums up their relationship. I don't know what to feel right now. Part of me wants to go over to my friend's house right now and scream at her son. Obviously I'm not going to do that, but I really need some advice. I'm going to tell my husband later and I know he's going to be extremely livid. I don't know what's going to happen with me and my best friend either. I don't even know if I care at this point about my relationship with her. I need to get some help from my daughter.

I'm also afraid that she's leaving details out. I don't know how bad this is. Sorry I'm just rambling. My head is spinning right now and I can't. can't get my thoughts together. Edit for more details. I asked her to show me the texts between them, but he apparently made her download this texting app that automatically deletes their conversations each day. He made her do this so that they wouldn't be caught. Update, I found that in the app Instagram you can privately message people. I found this disturbing exchange between

them. I believe the context is that my daughter blocked him on the texting app they used and the boy became extremely angry and messaged her on Instagram. The gray texts are my daughter and the white ones are from him. I am beyond pissed off right now. The exchange was from two months ago. Image transcript. Oops, daughter, sorry I was just feeling lonely, had a bad day. Groomer, can you shut the fuck up for like a minute ever?

Everything says about you. I had a long fucking day and I don't respond to your texts and you fucking block me. You're a piece of shit. Oops, daughter, frown, okay. I'll just disappear then. Groomer, unblock me or I'll ruin you. You're a dumb eighth grade bitch you don't want to mess with me. Oops, daughter, okay I did.

Image transcript over. Update 2, earlier after my daughter told me about this situation, I told her to block all communication with him, which she said she would. I had checked in with her later to make sure everything was deleted, and it thankfully was, and I told her that she was very strong and that I was proud of her. She knew me and her father were planning on talking to his parents, but all of a sudden in the past hour she kept trying to convince us not to and kept insisting that it wasn't as bad as she made it out to be. She kept saying it was her fault and seemed to get increasingly anxious.

Me and my husband sat her down to try and work through the feelings and ask her where it was coming from. When she broke down into tears and told us that the boy knows that she told us and had messaged her. What I didn't know is that right before she blocked him, she messaged him out of fear saying she was sorry but she had told me about there. Relationship and what had happened. She told him that she wasn't allowed to talk to him anymore or something like that. She blocked him without giving him the chance to respond. He apparently knows what her Tumblr account is and decides to create an account just to message her there. WTF? Here is the message he sent. I have never seen such a manipulative and horrific message, but it worked because it got to my daughter's head.

She has been begging us to just drop everything and leave him alone. Obviously we are not going to do that, but I'm at a loss on how to convince my daughter that things will end up okay that we've all agreed to go to bed since it's been a long night. I've kept my daughter's phone in my room so he won't contact her in the middle of the night. Tomorrow we will deal with the situation once we are thinking more clearly and are able to take the best course of action. Thank so much to everyone for the overwhelming support. It's really nice to have a place to vent to people and the advice really helped. I'll try to make an update post later this week once I get the ball rolling on putting an end to this. Image transcript.

How could you think I'm a bad person? You're the person I trust the most in the world. Some of the things I have told you are things that I've never told anyone in the world. You are selfish and evil at heart if you can really turn against me like. that after everything I've done for you. When I've told you that I love you I really mean it. But you are crazy a. F. to interpret me saying that as something more than just us being friends. You are like a little sister to me. Why the fuck would I want a 14-year-old? You are delusional. Whenever I would speak to you about how we can't be in a relationship, it's because I thought

you wanted something with me. I'm totally fine without you dude. You are the only one who needs me. I'm the only one who has helped you through all your shit. Went and turned against you who was there for you and talked to you whole night even though he had so much work to do. Me. Who was there every time you felt depressed? Me. I can name so many other things. I kissed you on Saturday because I thought that's what you wanted and felt like you would kill yourself if I didn't.

It's fucked up how you wanted and I felt like you would kill yourself if I didn't. It's fucked up how quickly you can turn on me and use the things I've done against me to hurt me. I don't know what else you told your mom but I'm tired of your drama and don't really want to be friends with you anymore. Sorry it came to this but it's something I've been thinking about for months but all the stuff you do really affects and I think it's best for me if I cut out your toxic energy. If you care about me at all, you'll go to your mom and tell her that you lied and exaggerated like you always do. You owe me that after everything I've done for you. Don't screw me over like you screw all of your other friends. When you told me about your drama, I really wanted to believe that you were in the right,

but maybe your friends were actually right about you being a terrible person because I'm starting to see your true colors now. Prove me wrong. You are no better than me, dude. You let this go on for so long so you're equally at fault. Think about all the stuff you've done before you try to get me in trouble. Image transcript over. Relevant comments.

XMAN1971-Praise her for coming to you. Don't blame her, she's 14 and she's a kid. Not sure if you have a legal case against the guy, but at the very least intervene and cut off all contact between them. Again, remember she's 14, don't be hard on her, not her fault. Oop, of course. I told her that I was so proud of her for telling me this but stressed that at her age she shouldn't be having relationships like this with 21-year-old men

and that I'd much rather her be talking to boys her age. I told her that I don't want her talking to him anymore and she said okay, but I don't know if this sorry excuse of a man will try to contact her again or even if she will reach out to him. I know at 14 she can't understand the severity so I don't know what got through her head. Oops replied to now deleted comment. I talked to my husband after he came home from work and he is just as angry as I am. But he did bring up the point that the police will be unable to do anything if we don't have any real evidence.

All we have is our daughter's word and we wish that was enough. Frown like the other commenters suggested, we are going to keep fishing for anything that will give us an edge. My husband proposed the idea even though he agrees it's risky, but would it work to maybe trick the boy into saying something that puts him in hot water? Meaning, we basically use my daughter's phone to bait him. I'm not sure about that though. out what we are going to do is go over to his mom's house at some point maybe tonight and have a chat.

I occasionally go to their place since we are in the same neighborhood, and childhood best friends, LOL, and as shitty as it is, we're going to go over onto the guys that we're just going to stop by and drop the bomb on her then. We don't want to take the chance of anyone having time to cover their asses and truthfully I have no idea how my best friend is going to react in this situation. I know her son will be home since he is an intern this summer and probably will not be out late at night on a Wednesday that I appreciate the advice. It definitely helped. Update post, July 13, 2018, one day later. Hi everyone. I want to thank you all once again for the overwhelming amount of support and messages in my original post. Taking into consideration all the advice we received,

our own gut instincts and information we had on hand about the situation, we decided to move forward and get law enforcement involved in this situation. Our reasoning simply being that this guy knew exactly what he was doing and must be held accountable for his actions. Getting the police involved certainly has brought a lot more information to fruition. A thorough search brought up some more disturbing text conversations between my daughter and this boy that was enough to charge him with indecency with a child and possibly assault. We will continue to move forward. We will continue to move forward. with this and get our daughter the justice she deserves. The new findings, however, have brought up some more information about our daughter's well-being. At the time of writing my previous post,

I knew she was having some problems with friends in school on top of this current situation with the 21-year-old but what I didn't know was how severe her emotional issues have been lately. I feel awful. I know teenagers are good at hiding the things that they want to hide but I wish I noticed, or tried to reach out to her more when I noticed she was being moody or isolated. herself in her room. The police showed us a lot of messages involving suicide ideation, possibly signs of depression, the phrases I'm a fuck up. I don't think anyone would care if I disappeared. Being constantly said. They strongly suggested getting a counselor and provided us with some resources. Here is an example of another thing the police showed me. Some background, she has this friend at

school, I'm going to call him Alex. She has mentioned Alex to me before. They have gone to school together since kindergarten and when she was younger Alex would come to her birthday parties. They are decent friends, she mentions him from time to time regarding basic things like how they have a group project together, etc. He's a really sweet kid from what I've seen. The police showed me these direct messages between the two of them on Instagram. I think he could be a good friend for her. He acts very unfazed and calm when my daughter is exhibiting manipulative and volatile behavior but that's still no reason to speak to someone in this way. I don't want to diagnose, but I'm really afraid about my daughter's mental health and behavior. I don't know if it's BPD,

depression, anxiety, what? I don't want to make her think that this behavior is okay in any way, but at the same time I know she must be hurting deeply to have to resort to treating people this way at this age. Basically, I don't want to make her feel like she's an awful human being, because she isn't, but I don't want to approach it in a way where it seems like I think it's okay. She says she doesn't want to go to therapy, but me and my husband agree that she needs to at least go to a preliminary appointment and speak to one. She is pretty open with us, but I know there are things she doesn't want to tell us about and there are things that we really feel only a professional can help with.

We've set up an appointment with both a therapist and a psychiatrist that I'm just rambling now, but I've always tried to give my daughter privacy, but I think it's time I monitor who she's talking to. I don't want her to feel like I don't trust her and like I'm spying on her so it's difficult. If there was just some way for me to see the contacts on app she's messaging without really seeing the message content that would help maybe. I just want to make sure she's not talking to anyone she shouldn't be. I don't know that we're glad that we can more forward and potentially get the 21-year-old

guy charged with something and have him out of our lives, but my daughter is far from being healed. Thank you again to all who helped weigh in on this situation. Much love to you all. Update, I've received some interest on how the parents of the 21-year-old, the mom as my best friend from childhood, responded to the situation. Received this text from his mom not soon after the police went to their house. You could have given me a heads up before you went ahead and destroyed my family. L.O.L. I did not reply to the text seeing as it was immature, I did not want to entertain it, and I had bigger things to worry about. She called me a bit later and

I made the mistake of picking up. She began to berate me and told her that I had broken her trust and ruined her family and that they were going through hell. She said that she could have fixed things herself if I came to her first and that I didn't need to go to the police and escalate the situation. Said some stuff about how her son's life was ruined too. Some other stuff about how I'll burn in hell for this. I thanked her for the friendship and all she has done for me over the years and told her I was not interested in debating whether or not I did the right thing outside of a court, and swiftly ended our friendship. Relevant comment. Deleted, her son engaged in criminal activity on a child, but you destroyed her family. K. It sucks

to lose a friend, and to be blamed, but know that you did the right thing. If he had robbed a bank, you wouldn't have called and given her a heads-up that the police are about to be informed. Oop, exactly. The reason me and my husband agreed not to give her a heads-up was because we knew she would freak out and try to talk us out of it. I know if it was any other guy grooming my daughter, she would have 100% supported me calling the police. I'm trying to limit the amount of contact with her and remain objective and pretty much behave Grey Rock with her

because of how conflicted our interests in the situation are. And I don't want the emotions between us due to our friendship to overcomplicate what we know we must do that it's really, really hard. Final update, December 13, 2019, 1.5 years after original post. It's been well over a year since everything happened and I figured I should give a final update to the community that was so supportive to me during such a difficult time for my family.

I sincerely thank each and everyone one of you who gave me advice and showed so much love and support. After everything that happened last summer, we did eventually end up moving to a new state right before the school year started. My husband's job allowed him to relocate there, and after some time I ended up finding a job of my own here. My daughter was able to start high school at a new school and it was the best decision we made. She's very recently 16 now and in her second year of high school, involved in track in Exce,

has a wonderful new social circle and a boyfriend, who's actually her age this time, few. He's been over for dinner a couple times and he's a lovely young man and treats my daughter with so much respect. I'm just so happy that she's happy now after everything's been through. There's still stuff she needs to work through so she is attending therapy regularly and it's helping her a lot. Overall, all the dust has settled and my family is happy, stronger and closer to because of all that's happened. For the man who did all this to my daughter, we unfortunately weren't able to get too harsh

of a punishment. We fought tooth and nail and were only able to get him to be slapped on the wrist with a large fine. We've come to peace with it knowing that we did all we could and that he's out of our lives for good. We were able to place a restraining order on him so he won't be bothering anyone anymore, and he's on the sores for my best friend, aka the mother of this man. We hadn't talked to each other in over a year. A couple months ago, she reached out to me to tell me she was in my new state for a business trip and asked me to get coffee with her. I declined at first, but she called me and told me she just wants to meet for closure and that she's missed.

me and wants to apologize for her part and everything. We met for coffee and she completely apologized for the way she treated my family through all of this and told me she only did it because she was afraid of her family falling apart but now recognizes that it was selfish of her. She wanted to be friends again in some capacity if I was okay with it. Dude thanked her for the apology but told her that I don't feel comfortable resuming a friendship with her and that it was best for us to go our separate ways. It was a really sad conversation. Me and this girl have been together through so much growing up, she has been my rock during some of the most difficult and scary times in my life and vice versa. It was hard not to be

sad or second guess it, but I knew it was best. I don't want ties with her family or any connection there. Thank you again Reddit for everything. I'm so grateful.