Reddit Stories - BETRAYED by Blood_ When FAMILY Favors ADVENTURE over Love_

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

#redditstories #askreddit #aita #familybetrayal #adventureoverlove #familydrama #betrayal #favoringadventureSummary:In "BETRAYED by Blood_ When FAMILY Favors ADVENTURE over Love_," a gripping tale unfolds as familial ties are tested by a choice between love and adventure, leading to betrayal. Explore the complex dynamics and consequences of prioritizing personal desires over familial bonds.Tags:redditstories, askreddit, reddit, aita, tifu, familybetrayal, adventureoverlove, familydrama, betrayal, favoringadventureBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reddit-stories--6237355/support.

I hope you enjoy this story. Father selected Brothers Outdoor Adventure over my marriage celebration, so I had my stepfather accompany me down the walkway. He arrived in tears after viewing the pictures and is now requesting a repeat ceremony. So yesterday, I got married and in the evening, after everything was over, my dad finally showed up and we exchanged words, which made him cry and now I feel awful because of that. For some context, my fiancé and I got engaged about five months. ago and since neither of us wanted a huge wedding with a lot of people and a massive venue,

we decided to get married in our backyard with just our family and friends, since we wanted to keep the wedding as private, small and intimate as we could. We have been together for four years and this was a really special day since we were getting married on the day of our fourth anniversary together. So even though it was a small wedding, it was obviously still not feasible to reschedule it because we still had decorators and caterers coming in and that's why I could not entertain my dad's request to postpone it. And more than a matter of couldn't, it was mostly because I did not want to because I did not think it was important to do such a thing. It wasn't like my dad was asking me to reschedule my wedding for something important. He wanted me to postpone it because

my golden child brother was in town and had organized a camping trip for the same weekend. Yeah, I'm not even making it up and I don't think I would have ever been able to make something as ludicrous as this. Anyway, last week, my dad called me up and told me that he wouldn't be able to make it to my wedding if I had it this weekend because he had a medical emergency. It was a very lame excuse because I couldn't think of a single medical emergency that would him to wait for a week and could not be rescheduled. So I pushed him until he finally told me the truth. And he confessed that he had agreed to go on a camping trip that my brother had surprised him with, but unfortunately, it coincided with the dates of my wedding. I think it's

pretty obvious what the choice should have been, but for my dad, the camping trip was the highest priority since my brother comes back home only for a couple of weeks every year and my dad does not want to lose out on spending any time with him while he's here. He tried to tell me that rescheduling my wedding was going to be easy because it wasn't like I was having a huge wedding in the first place. I just had to tell a couple of people that I had rescheduled it and speak to the vendors, and that's it. I tried to explain to him that the date that we were getting married on was really important to me but after talking to him for a while, I kind of knew that it was pointless because he had already made up his mind and was going to go on the camping trip with my brother.

It did not come to me as a surprise that he had chosen my brother because honestly, he has always been the golden child. My brother, 30M, is three years older than me and has always been an overachiever, while I've just been an ordinary kid. So naturally, he got a lot of attention from everyone and he was always praised while I kind of got overlooked. I used to feel really jealous of him and I wanted to be happy for my brother, but I just couldn't because he was such a brat with a huge overinflated ego. He knew that he was pretty great at a lot of things and I guess all the attention that he had always received made him pretty arrogant and he really thought that he was God's gift to mankind. In short, he was insufferable and was also a bit of a bully

to me. So we never got along and I was glad to see the back of him when he left for college. Our parents got divorced when I was in middle school and it happened because my mother ended up having an affair with one of her friends from college. The divorce was really nasty and left everyone feeling really bitter about it, but, thankfully, my dad agreed to a shared custody arrangement with my mom in spite of everything. If I can be frank, I would say that the divorce was something that everyone had seen coming. The only thing that had been a surprise was the fact that my mother had ended up having but nobody was shocked that my parents were getting divorced because for as long as I can remember, they had always been fighting and none of my childhood memories, even the happy ones,

have my parents being happy together. When we were out amongst other people or during vacations or holidays, they would put on a happy face for the sake of the family but that was just for show. There were weeks when they would hardly even speak to each other or look at each other and they even slept in different rooms. I'm pretty sure that after a certain point of time, my parents had fallen out of love with each other and were just staying together for the sake of it. And neither of them did anything to fix that.

So my mom ended up having an affair and I'm not trying to defend her but my dad had never been an easy guy to live with because, during the time that she had an affair, he had been going through a particularly rough patch in their marriage where they were fighting viciously almost every day and had started hitting the bottles, which seemed to make the fights even worse. One day, my mom finally told him the truth about her affair and left the house, but she still stayed in touch with her kids. Or at least she tried to stay in touch with the both of us. I was the only one who would respond to her messages while my brother ignored her because he never was able to truly bring himself to forgive her for cheating on our dad.

It was quite expected that he wouldn't be able to forgive her because my dad and my brother had always had a very special bond. Right from when we were little, it was very obvious to me that my dad had a favorite and even though he insisted that he didn't, his behavior made it very obvious. As we grew up, my relationship with my dad was strained at best and after the divorce, when I decided to maintain a cordial relationship with my mom and my stepdad, I guess he started to resent me because he was very distant from me afterward. I think he had wanted me to behave the same way that my brother had been, constantly bad-mouthing our mother and her husband.

My mom got married to my stepdad a couple of months after the divorce was finalized and I was a bridesmaid at her wedding, while my brother refused to even attend. But she still had partial custody of us. So whether my brother liked it or not, he would be forced to spend half the month with our mother. He would be intolerable during those couple of weeks, especially because my mother did not play favorites with us, and I guess that did not sit right with him because he couldn't get away with his terrible behavior. Several times, my dad even tried to file for full custody because he believed that my mother and her husband were tormenting his son, but his claims had no weight so he failed to get custody of us and I'm glad because at least with my mother, I had one parent

who cared about me. And my stepdad was a pretty nice guy, so it's not like I hated him either. I was really little and very confused about whether I should be okay with my mom, in spite of the fact that she had cheated on my dad but after a while, I just decided that I would do whatever made me happy and have a good relationship with my mother made me happy. And I'm glad that I put in the time and effort to build a good relationship with her and spend time with her because we ended up losing her to the Big Sea about six years ago. I'm very grateful for all the time that we got to spend together and regardless of what happened in her marriage, she was always a good mother to me and that's what matters. Even in her last few days, my brother was

hardly there but at least he bothered to visit her a couple of times, so I guess that brought her some peace before she finally passed away. A couple of months after her passing, my stepdad left the stake but we have kept in touch. About a year after my mom passed away, my brother got a job offer that would require him to relocate to London and he took it up. He lives there now and comes back once a year to visit our father for a couple of weeks, which is why he is here right now. My brother and I no longer speak, but after my mom's passing and my brother leaving, my dad and I had actually started improving our relationship.

He apologized to me for being cold to me after he found out about my mother's affair because he just felt betrayed and heard about a lot of things and ended up behaving in ways that he was not proud of. Especially with me, he acknowledged the fact that he had always paid more attention to my brother, but not me and that's why we had such a strained and difficult relationship. But he said that he wanted to work on it and that's what we did. So for the past couple of years, we actually had been getting along well, which I didn't even think was possible.

I thought that things had finally started changing, which is why I'd asked him to walk me down the aisle on the day of my wedding and he had agreed. I knew for a fact that he was still really attached to my brother, but I didn't have a problem with that, as long as he continued to treat me well, like a daughter that he loved. However, after what happened recently, I realized that he would never truly treat me like a priority as long as my brother was here and the only reason he had even bothered to try and fix our relationship was because my brother had left for London and would only be here for a couple of weeks every year. So I was important to him, but only for as long as my brother

was not around. Things really hadn't changed as much as I had believed and this recent incident was a harsh wake-up call because I could hardly believe that my dad was asking me to reschedule my wedding in favor of a camping trip with his son. So I did the only thing that occurred to me at the time. I agreed to delay my wedding in the heat of the moment and minutes after I had disconnected I was on another call, but this time, it was with my stepdad, and I was asking him to walk me down the aisle before I even knew it. I was furious at the time and I'll admit that what I had done was pretty vindictive and was done purely with a spirit of revenge but while I was doing it, I thought I was doing the right thing for myself so I could teach my father a lesson. My stepdad had been invited

to the wedding as a guest anyway since I had already mentioned that he was a nice guy and I didn't have a problem with him. Besides, he was the only person who got me through my mom's funeral so even though we don't talk on a regular basis, we are still close enough. When I asked him to walk me down the aisle, he seemed skeptical about it for a couple of seconds at first since he was aware of the fact that my father was also going to be there, but I got him to agree eventually. I really didn't think much of it because I thought that even though what I was doing was petty, it was well deserved and my fiancé agreed with me, so that was all the validation that I needed. For the past week, my dad had hardly even bothered to keep in touch and I knew it was was back in town,

which just added fuel to the fire. and then, yesterday, I finally got married and my dad was not there, which was expected. I had been waiting until the very last moment for some sort of miracle and then maybe he would show up, but that never ended up happening and my stepdad walked me down the aisle. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy about that and it was my wedding day, so I'm obviously very happy about how it turned out in general. The only thing that went wrong was that after I sent my dad a picture of me being walked down the aisle by my stepdad, I expected him to be mad, but I hadn't expected him to actually get on the next bus and come back home so he could speak to me.

But that's what happened and I feel bad about everything that took place last evening. I had asked one of my cousins to take a picture of me from my phone while I was walking down the aisle and send it to my dad and she did. He saw it a couple of hours after that and then there was no response, which I thought was a bit weird but I was busy with the wedding lunch and stuff so I didn't pay much mind to it. Then, around 8 o'clockish in the evening, when the guests had started to leave, my dad finally showed up. My brother was also there with him and both of them seemed exhausted but it was only my dad

who did all the talking and told me that he was really sorry for not taking my wedding seriously but now that he was back. He wanted me to have another ceremony the next day so he could be there for me and finally walk his little girl down the aisle. He told me that he was aware of the fact that he had really been very disrespectful of me by choosing to go on the camping trip and asking me to reschedule my wedding and I was totally justified in doing what I did but he really regretted all of it and he just wanted one more chance. He told me that he didn't even care if nobody attended, he just wanted another ceremony

so he could at least have the satisfaction of knowing that he had gotten the opportunity to walk me down the aisle. And he seemed pretty desperate for another chance, which made me kind of upset because I realized that maybe if I hadn't asked my stepdad to walk me down the aisle, I don't think my dad would have cared this much. I actually went ahead and asked him if he would have come back so quickly and behaved the same way if I hadn't asked my stepdad to step into his shoes and walk me down the aisle, or if he wouldn't have cared, and that seemed to make him think for a bit and that was all that I needed to see. It was obvious that this was more about him versus my stepdad rather than him caring about me and I told him that he had really disappointed me and I was not going to have

another wedding just for his sake. He had his chance and he blew it and now, I just wanted some peace and quiet, away from him. Then, I politely asked him to leave, but he just ended up breaking down and kept asking me to forgive him. He was crying and he told me that he was really sorry for not prioritizing me. He said that he just hadn't realized that I was actually going to go through with the wedding and as soon as he saw those pictures that I had sent, he and my brother took the next bus back home. But when I maintained that, I just wanted him to leave because I wanted to enjoy the day of my wedding to the fullest. He got kind of offended and told me that I was being heartless and I couldn't just treat him like this over one mistake. At that point, I got really annoyed. And I told him that if

he could treat me badly throughout my life in spite of not having a valid reason, then I had the right to do this to him. Especially because he had given me more than several reasons by now and everything that was happening to him right now, he totally deserved it. I told him that I wanted him to go away and that I was glad that I had asked my stepdad to walk me down the aisle because even though he was not related to me by blood, at least he cared about me and it wasn't just for show like it was with him. Then, I walked inside the house while he continued to cry, and after a while, when I looked out, my brother and my dad were gone. Now that it has been a considerable amount of time since that happened, I feel kind of bad about what I said. I feel even worse that I made him cry.

Ida for asking my stepdad to walk me down the aisle instead of my father and then trying to make him feel bad about it. Update 1, hey, everyone. So I've thought about it long and hard and I have decided that I have nothing to be sorry for. After all, it was my dad's decision to have me reschedule my wedding so he could go on some stupid camping trip with his son. And I have made excuses for him all my life. I'm sick of doing that now. There is just no excuse for this kind of behavior and I don't have to forgive him if I don't want to. I do feel bad about making him cry, but honestly, there is only a certain level of

mistreatment that people can tolerate and beyond that, I think they earn the right to make that other person cry. Throughout my childhood in teenage years, there have been several times when I have cried because of how he has treated me, and I've never let anybody find out about it, not even him, and I highly doubt that he would fix anything, even if he knew. So I'm pretty content with my decision of not reaching back out to him again. I have spoken to my husband about it and he thinks that I've made the right call and the only reason he hadn't said anything so far was because he did not want to influence my decision.

He wanted it to be mine and only mine. And I even discussed it with my stepdad because I felt like I was betraying him a bit by using him for revenge on my dad, sort of. So I felt like I owed him a bit of an apology but he told me that it didn't matter because at least he knew that after my biological father, he was the first person that I thought of and I guess that's true. Besides, I really do value him and both he and I are aware of that. So that's all good and for everyone in the comments who were upset with me for using my stepdad, I guess it's clear that he doesn't mind and as long as he doesn't seem offended, I'm fine with what I did. Anyway, it's been a couple of days since my wedding and my dad has tried to text me several times

and has been calling me at least once a day, but I haven't responded. I haven't even opened his texts, so I don't even know what he's trying to say to me and I really don't want to find out. I'm going on my honeymoon in a couple of days and I want to keep my mind off of these things for a while now. Update 2. So, my husband and I are leaving for our honeymoon tomorrow and today, when my dad called me in the morning, I let it ring but then, a couple of minutes later, I decided to go through

the messages that he had sent me so far. I think I already mentioned in my last post that he had been calling me every single day ever since the day of my wedding without fail. The timings would differ, but he would call. I hadn't gone through his messages so far, but today, I finally did and all of them were just the same. They were worded differently, but the message was just that he was sorry about everything and that he really wanted to fix things.

He told me that he really valued me and he knew that he had not been the best father so far, but he just wanted one more chance to fix things. He also acknowledged the fact that I had been right to be upset with him because I had actually given him a lot of chances to fix his behavior so far, but he had always been biased towards my brother and he knew that I was upset. But as my only surviving biological parent, he really wanted to be a part of my life, and he said that he was ready to do whatever it took to get me to forgive him. I felt really sad reading those messages because the situation itself was just so upsetting. But I had to be a had made up my mind that I needed some space away from him and so, after reading those messages,

I decided to call him back. He picked up almost instantly and started apologizing, but I told him that I was only calling to tell him that I was going on my honeymoon and I wanted him to stop calling and texting for a while. I told him that I had read his messages and I knew that he was sorry, but I needed him to cut it out for a while because constantly apologizing was not going to change whatever had already happened. It was only going to keep everything fresh in my mind and I did not want that. So I told him that when I was ready to talk to him, I would contact him myself, but for now, I wanted him to stop trying to contact me. If he was upset about what I had said, he did not let it come through in his voice, and he just told me that he could understand

and he would wait for me to contact him again. So that was that and now, I really just can't wait for the honeymoon so that I can take my mind off of all this drama. Update 3, Hi. So I'm currently on the third day of my honeymoon and my father has been successful and sticking to his promises so far, he hasn't tried to contact me even once. But surprisingly, somebody else did get in touch with me today, and it was totally unwanted and unnecessary. I'm referring to my brother who called me up this morning to lecture me about the importance

of family and tell me that the way I was treating my father was horrible, so I needed to apologize to him as soon as possible. He had called from a burner phone, so I did not even recognize the number, and when I answered the phone call and I heard him on the other end, I was about to hang up, but then he told me that he knew that I wanted to hang up, but if I did, it would just prove his point that I was an escapist. And I don't know why, but it worked because he just knows how to push my buttons, I guess. Anyway, I ended up staying and he told me that I couldn't just run away from the family that I had and whether I liked it or not. My dad was going to be my dad and my stepdad.

could never replace him. I don't know why he felt the need to say that to me, it's not like we are in school right now and are back to the stage where we were picking sides during the divorce. So I told him that he needed to stay out of this because this was between my father and me and he told me that because of my hurtful behavior, my dad had been miserable and even the camping trip had been cut short, because of which his visit had been ruined, so this was between all of us. And then he told me that he knew for a fact that I was always jealous of and he couldn't do anything about it. but I couldn't just take it out on our father because it was not his fault that he wanted to

prioritize the child who had actually always been there for him, unlike me, who had betrayed him during the divorce. I was stunned by how childish and idiotic he sounded, but I told him that this sort of behavior was expected from a man-child like him. I also clarified to him that I was not jealous of him in the slightest, I actually pitted him because even though he was doing well in his career, he was still emotionally stunted, and no matter what he achieved, he was still going to be miserable and dislikable. He was about to argue, but before he could say anything, I cut him off, and I told him that if he argued, it would just prove my point that he was miserable, and he was desperate to prove that he wasn't. And then, I disconnected the call before he could say anything,

which was pretty satisfying in its own way. I shouldn't have spoken to him at all, but well, at least I got back at him. I've also decided that for the rest of the trip, I'm just not going to be answering any calls unless it's an emergency or something. So I recently came back home after my honeymoon a couple of days ago and we were still on vacation mode for a couple of days, but yesterday, my husband had to go back to work and so did I and now that we are settling back into our old lives, I decided that it was time to confront my father and talk to him. So after work today, I went over to his place, and he seemed quite surprised to see me there. Of course, my brother was also there, but I just ignored him because he's not very important to me.

I also asked to speak to my dad in private because I did not want to have any conversation in front of my brother, because I was sure that he would find it impossible to stay quiet and would try to keep interrupting, and I did not have the patience for that. He did not seem very happy about it, but had to agree to go back to his room so my dad and I could speak in private. Once we were by ourselves, I told my father that I was very disappointed in his behavior because I had thought, that things were finally getting better with us. For the past couple of years, we have been getting along well and that's why I'd asked him to walk me down the aisle, but when he asked me to reschedule, I knew where his priorities were. It was a bit petty and vindictive of me to ask my stepdad,

but then he is important to me as well, just in a different way. I told my dad that I still didn't know if he had shown up that day because it was my stepdad walking me down the aisle instead of him and he felt competitive or whatever or if it was because he actually regretted missing my wedding, regardless of who was walking me down the aisle. I told him that it really didn't matter at this point because whatever had happened, we couldn't change it. He seemed very upset up until that point, but then I told him that the only way we could deal with this was by starting again. I know people would want me to cut him out of my life forever, but realistically, that's not possible, and neither do I want to do that. As somebody who lost her mother to cancer,

I know how cruel life can be and how quickly people can be taken away from you. And regardless of how he has behaved in the past or even recently, I've had some good times with my father, and I can't disregard all of that. But I also can't disregard the bad times. So I had to come to a place of acceptance and I told my father that from this point onwards, I would be willing to give him a shot to fix everything that he had messed up. But for now, I wanted him to keep his distance. I explained to him that I needed some time to heal and he had to be willing to give that to me.

Maybe it would take some weeks, or maybe it would take some months or maybe even years, but eventually, when I would feel better about him and our relationship, we could try to make our father-daughter bond work again. Until then, I just wanted to stay low contact and then I asked him if that was acceptable for him. He just nodded and then asked me if he could hug me before I left. So we hugged and it was a bit emotional, but I did not. not let myself cry until I was back in my car. Anyway, that's the decision that we came to and I guess it works. At least, for now, it does.