Reddit Stories - BETRAYED by Loyalty_ Standing by my UNEMPLOYED Spouse Against the DISAPPROVAL of my Factory_

Episode Date: October 4, 2025

#redditstories #askreddit #aita #betrayed #loyalty #unemployedspouse #disapproval #factorySummary:Facing disapproval from family and coworkers, I stood by my unemployed spouse, feeling betrayed by loyalty. Struggling to navigate conflicting expectations, I questioned my choices and sought advice on Reddit.Tags:redditstories, askreddit, reddit, aita, tifu, betrayed, loyalty, unemployedspouse, disapproval, factory, familyconflict, relationshipdilemma, loyaltydilemma, standingbyfamily, joblossstress, seekingadvice, copingwithpressure, decisionmakingstruggle, emotionalturmoilBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reddit-stories--6237355/support.

I hope you enjoy this story. Assisted my spouse who has not been employed for the last eight years, but my factory never approved of me. At the celebration I organized, the factory delivered a speech about how I ruin her son's life. So my husband, Landon, 36M, and I, 34F, have been together for 12 years and married for nine. We have pretty much been soulmates and get along for the most part, except for when it comes to my in-laws. I don't know why but my in-laws have never really liked me or accepted me as a part of the family.

I honestly did not know what the real reason was until a couple of days ago when they finally announced it at their anniversary party. Anyway, before I get into that, I need to give you guys some context about the kind of situation that I'm in. Landon is what one would call a house husband. When we got married, one year into our marriage, we realized that I was making a lot more money than he was since I was working at my dad's electrical appliance business and training to take over once he retired and he said that he wanted to be at home and take care of household chores

because he really hated his job and thought that it was a waste of time. I thought it was a pretty big decision to make but as long as he was fine with it, I was fine with it as well. It was a mutual decision and we have been sticking to that for the past eight years. My father retired almost six years ago and since then, I have been the CEO of our company and I don't mean to brag, but I make a lot of money. My husband is happy and so am I. I don't really understand why anybody else would have a problem with it, but for some reason, my in-laws had just assumed that he was the primary breadwinner of the family. To be fair, we had never really told them about our situation, but honestly, that was just because my in-laws are very old school and orthodox and land and

knew for a fact that if they got to know that he was a house husband and was not actually working, they would completely lose their mind. And he said that he did not want to go through the trouble of telling them the truth. So we had never told them about the situation and they didn't actually know that he had not been working for the past eight years. Whenever we met them, we would pretend that he was still working at his previous company, but did not get into the details of it and would change the topic as soon as it came up because we did not think it was important enough to be discussed. That way, we were able to avoid a lot of awkward discussions and unnecessary conversations, and we were happy that way.

And on top of that, they already did not like me by the time Landon and I got married so I did not want to make things worse for myself by telling them the truth about our marriage, that he stayed at home and took care of our household and I was the one who worked and brought home the money. Now, a lot of you might be wondering why I still tried to get along with them and kept in touch with them even though it was very clear that they didn't like me. So, even Landon has apologized to me for all of this several times, but there was just no way that we could just cut them out of our lives permanently. That's because my mother-in-law, Sheila, is a cancer survivor and has had

to battle two types of cancer in the past eight years. First, she was diagnosed with skin cancer and then, a couple of years later, with brain cancer. She's a very lucky lady who has survived both and is in remission as of now, but after she has been through so much, he just couldn't find it in ourselves to cut them off. And if that was not bad enough, my father-in-law, Bob, has had two heart attacks in the past four years. So I guess you guys can understand the position that we were in and why we could not cut them out of our life, in spite of their weird behavior around me. I wouldn't say that they were rude or nasty to me like some other in-laws are, but whenever I was around, they were always very cold with me and it was something that everybody in the room could pick up on.

Even when I was dating, Landon and I had met their family for the first time, they had been a bit off, but after we got married, they got even more distant and cold. However, given their condition, I decided to just suck it up and deal with it because I did not want to be the person who told Landon to cut his parents out of his life just because they were a bit weird around me and he was extremely thankful to me for it. The real reason I felt really bad for them was because I had lost my mother to cancer a couple of years before I met Landon, so I did not want to make matters worse for them and I would try to even help them financially whenever I could. Both of them are retired, so they would sometimes ask Landon to help them out with certain expenses that they needed to be covered.

Landon did not exactly have any money so I would be the one who wrote them a check, but I would always make it out to be from both Landon and I because if it was just me then it would seem a bit suspicious and we didn't want them to be able to figure out that Landon was not working. In the past eight years, every event that they have had, every vacation that they have taken, and every fancy thing that they have ever done has been, thanks to me. So I would think that they would be at least a little thankful because even though, according to them, it was both Landon and I contributing to their finances, I still believe that if I was part of it, then I deserved a bit of appreciation,

but I never had any luck with them. and recently, I even organized their anniversary party for them to celebrate their 40th year of marriage. Of course, according to them, it was both Landon and I who organized the entire thing, but I was still a part of it so I thought that they would be thankful to me. However, at the party, they decided to make a speech and it was a particularly nasty one and I think after that, there's no going back to having a relationship with them. In retaliation, I cleared up certain things that I think were long overdue. Anyway, as soon as we had shown up at the party, Landon's parents had started acting weird

almost immediately. I could not figure it out at the time, but when they were making the speech, I realized that it was because of my new car. So a couple of weeks ago, I bought a fancy new luxury car for myself. Landon is still driving his old one because he doesn't really go out that much and if the two of us need to show up anywhere, we get around together in my car. But that day, Landon had showed up at his parents' house. in the afternoon and I had to come by in the evening, after work.

So we had come separately and I had driven my own car there and I guessed that had rubbed Landon's parents the wrong way. When they were asked to make a speech for the anniversary, they said that they were happy that they were celebrating 40 years of being together, but they also wanted to take the moment to talk about something that had been bothering them. And then, they turned to me and started saying that they really did not appreciate the fact that I was mooching off of their son for so long and they wanted to put an end to this. For years, they had not said anything about it, because they thought that I would change, but it had been almost nine years and was going to be a decade, but I had not changed my ways. Then, they went on to talk about how I had bought a new car

and it was so shameless of me to do so on my husband's money while their son is still driving around an old car. They also said that it was not lost on them that their son dressed so modestly and I was always dressed up in expensive brands from head to toe, which they thought was a very brazen and unnecessary display of my dependence on my husband. They wanted to address this issue publicly because they had stayed quiet for long enough and now they wanted to make me realize that I was being a gold digger. After that speech, I completely lost it because all the guests were staring at me, and being cold to me was one thing but humiliating me like that publicly was just not acceptable so I decided to take over the event. Then, I went on to make my own

speech where I cleared everything up, and since then, Landon's parents have been constantly bothering us because they think that we made a fool out of them. For the record, Landon himself does not have a problem with whatever I said because he knows that it's the truth, and it is going to come out at some point eventually. Anyway, once they were done with their speech, I got up on stage and they tried to get me to shut up by saying that it was not necessary for me to have a debate with them at that point, but I told them that not only was necessary, it was very important for them to hear me out as well. So I went on to clarify that for the past eight years,

Landon had not had to work a day in his life and it was all thanks to me. I told everybody in the family about the secret that we had been keeping from them for so long and said that Landon was actually a house husband and I was the breadwinner of the family. So contrary to what my in-laws believed, I was actually financing them all along, and they had been ungrateful enough to make a horrible speech about me in public. I also told them that Landon wore modest clothes and drove an old car around by his choice, but nobody could ever accuse me of depriving him of anything or making him feel small like they had been trying to do to me.

I said that maybe not telling them the truth about our financial situation situation was my mistake, but that probably would not have changed the situation and they still would have found a reason to hate me because for the past eight years, every time that we have helped them out with money. It had always made it very clear that I had an equal part to play in supporting them, but even then, they were never grateful for it. We had lied to them, but it was for our own peace of mind because even before we had started lying with him about this situation, they had still disliked me for no reason. And since the truth was finally out, I did not see any reason for me to stick around and get insulted by them anymore. Landon and I left,

but before we left, we got a good look at everybody's faces in the crowd of people that were there, and all the guests were disgusted by what was going on. Anyway, after we had, got home, it felt like a burden had been lifted off our shoulders since we had been keeping up with these lies for the past eight years and now that it was finally out, we had nothing to worry about anymore. But the next day on earth, Landon's parents called him up and told him that what had happened at the party was incredibly wrong. We had thought that they were going to apologize or at least attempt to sort things out with us, but they said that we were horrible people for lying to them for so long and even worse, I was a terrible person for making that

humiliating speech against them and making them seem like bad parents. First things first, I do not think that I made them seem like anything. I just held up a mirror to them. I might just agree with the fact that we were wrong for lying, but honestly, what other choice did we have? If we hadn't lied to them, they probably would have made life a nightmare for us by constantly bothering us about our situation and harassing Landon to get a job he wouldn't even be able to cut them off because of their illnesses and we would have gone crazy with guilt if we did that. So I can still justify the lying bit because they had already disliked me from the beginning, even before we did anything. But I can't understand why they had always hated me even though they knew

that I was also contributing to helping them out financially when they needed it because all the checks that we made out to them always had my name on it along with his. When Landon demanded an answer for that, they had nothing to say, and they tried to switch the topic back to how we had lied to them and fooled them for years, and then, with that speech, we had made everybody that they knew hate them almost instantly. But Landon insisted that they tell us why they hated me so much because, at this point, we needed to know. Because they also knew that I had played a huge role in organizing the anniversary party for them and had spoken to all the vendors and everything. They had believed that we were splitting the cost of organizing it and they could actually see

for themselves that I had been speaking to all the vendors, but even then, it was not enough for them. So after everything that I had done for his family, his parents still wanted to hate me. He was saying all these things, but then, I heard screaming from the other end, and Landon's mother was being so loud that I could actually hear her even though I was sitting a few inches away from him. She said that we had been gaslighting them for years and she was never going to forgive that. And now, because of my speech, everybody in their life hated them and she was just disgusted with both of us. Then she hung up and they had been texting him a lot, saying that we need to tell them how much money they owe us because they don't

want to take any sort of favors from me. They wanted to return everything that I have helped them out with so far, even if it meant that they would have to sell everything that they had because they had their son helping them. But if it was me, they did not want it because I was a liar. So now I'm feeling weird about all of this and I feel really guilty. I'd for lying to my in-laws about my husband having a job and for making a speech at their anniversary party to expose the truth? Update 1. Hi, it has been one week since the party and land, and I decided that it would be in our best interest to just block my in-laws and move on with this since clearly, there's no talking to them. There is just no reason with them because they just want an excuse to hate me and that's it.

They always dislike me. I'll still agree that we probably should not have lied to them for so long because that definitely made them feel very betrayed, but I don't think telling them the truth would have made them like me any better. So far, we had kept in touch with them as I felt bad that they had to deal with so many illnesses and I didn't want to take their son away from them, but now Landon has had it from them. He has been apologizing to me every day since the day of the party and he thinks that it's all his fault, but I told him that he is not responsible for the actions of his parents. A lot of his relatives have also reached out to me to let me know that they stand with me and that what my in-laws did at the party was just not acceptable. Most people have cut my in-laws off and I wouldn't say that I feel good about it because they're just a lonely old couple, to be honest. So I'm not going to encourage it because I still have a heart, no matter how I've been treated. I can't wish ill upon

anybody, but I'm not going to go out of my way to discourage that either. It's people's personal choice whether they want to cut them off or not and I'm not going to interfere with that. Anyway, all of this has really frazzled my nerves and I just want to stop thinking about this and move on with my life. Landon and I are planning on taking a short trip to get away from all of this on the weekend. At least one good thing is going to come out of all this drama. We are going to be able to use this as an excuse to get away from everything and just have some time to ourselves and process all of this. Update two so a couple of days ago, Landon and I had blocked Bob and Sheila everywhere. We left no stone unturned to make sure that they would not be able to contact us and yesterday, we left in the morning so that we could take a short trip to the beach.

But I just received a phone call from the alarm company, saying that they had detected somebody trying to break into our house. That had set the alarms off and I was instantly willing to bet my entire bank balance that it had to be Bob and Sheila. So as soon as I received that phone call, I logged into those security cameras to review the footage, and of course, it was them. We noticed that they had been standing outside our door and ringing the bell for almost 15 minutes before they tried to get in in other ways and they managed to do so by doing the craziest

thing. They broke the glass bay window in our living room to get in by grabbing bricks that they had brought along with them, probably for this particular purpose. And I made a note of that so that I would be able to sue them later on and get my money back because it was a pretty expensive door to get installed in the first place. It was also very brave of them to try that, given their age and circumstances. Anyway, after that, they got in and they hadn't yet left when I received that phone call from the alarm company and while I was reviewing the footage, I realized that they must still be in our house.

So I decided to call the cops immediately, and I also informed my neighbor, who also is a very good friend of mine, about what was going on. And within half an hour, the cops had arrived and escorted them off our property. And now, the DA gets to decide whether they will be charged with this or or not. They probably won't be because they are really old and they can just act like they're senile or something, but it really pissed me off that they did something like this. For now, I had contacted my neighbor, and she was able to manage to get somebody to install a makeshift glass to replace the one that they had shattered. But it's much cheaper than the previous one,

so we have to get that replaced with something better as soon as we get back home and mark my words, I'm going to make sure that Bob and Sheila cough up the money that they have cost us. And not just that, I'm going to make sure that I demand every single penny back from them because the way that they are acting is really pissing me off. But Landon and I wanted to spend the weekend together and we had already made up our minds that nothing was going to stop us, not even their antics to bother us. So we are still spending the weekend here, on the beach, and we will deal with everything later once we get back to the city.

Update 3, just as I had expected, the DA dropped the charges against them given their age. Landon told me that his dad is really good friends with somebody who is related to the DA, so this might have had something to do with that as well, which seems really unfair, but I'm not going to pursue it anymore since it's not really worth it. And also, once we did a full sweep of the house, we realized that nothing was missing so it's not like they stole or damaged anything inside the house. To be very frank, I didn't even even know what they were doing inside. But I am still going to send them a legal notice and have them pay me back the money for

replacing the glass door. I've already sent them an email saying that they need to return all the money that they owed us since they had made such bold claims themselves. They had been demanding figures from us earlier, saying that they wanted to know how much they owed me since they were not willing to take a single dollar from me. Now, they could finally return the favor and pay me back everything that I had spent on them so far. We calculated it and over the past nine years, they had accumulated almost around $80,000 and now they were indebted to me until they were able to return the full amount to me. I might have felt bad about it, but after the break-in incident, I really don't think that they deserve my pity. Even Landon has said that I'm doing the right

thing and I think I'm doing it pretty late. So far, I've always tried my best to be kind and generous, but some people just don't deserve it. I have spoken to my lawyer, and he has told me that according to the footage, it's pretty clear that they were the ones who caused damage to the glass door, so they are going to have to pay the money to replace it. He's not very sure if we can get the rest of the money back, though, since there was no contract or legal document that would prove anything. So that might be a bit difficult, but for that, I'm just going to keep emailing them until they finally agree to give it back to me. Or at least until one of us gets tired, and preferably, it is going to be them. To be really honest, I don't need the money as badly as

as they do, but after all the humiliation that I have had to face, I don't think it's worth it to just let it go. Update 4, hi, so a couple of weeks ago, we sent a legal notice to my in-laws and demanded that they cough up the money that they owed us for replacing the glass door in our house. Honestly, it was a very easy process and within two weeks, we were able to come to a settlement and they paid us the amount in full. The worst part was not actually that, it was having to see them, and after that, the interaction that took place. When we met with our lawyers, we had to maintain decorum so they didn't exactly get to behave like crazy old people, but once we were out in the parking lot, it was anybody's guess.

I had figured that they wouldn't have anything to say to us anymore and we were about to go home. Landon and I had driven there in my car, you know that new one, and obviously, I should have guessed that they had a huge problem with it and just automatically that I was trying to rub my wealth in their faces. Sheila came right up to me while Bob stood behind her and she spat on the ground beside my feet, told me to get out of there as quickly as I could, because otherwise, I would regret it and I was caught totally off guard. And then she said that this is exactly what I deserve for humiliating them at their party because now, nobody wants anything to do with them and it's all my fault.

When Landon came to my side and said that this was unacceptable behavior, she told him that she didn't even want to speak to him because he was just as nasty as I was, and he was a a humongous loser who had no money of his own, so he had no right to say anything. And then, I don't know what got into Bob, but he climbed onto the hood of the car and then punched the windshield so hard that not only did he injure herself, but he also managed to crack the windshield a bit. Sheila thought she was being very cool and then, she said that I did not need to worry because she would also send me the money to get that fixed along with what she already owed me.

Both Landon and I were dumbstruck and had no idea how to react to that. We would have called the cops, but they were already let off with just a slap on the wrist once and we were pretty sure that it was going to happen again. Anyway, we decided to ignore that because we were going to get the money back anyway so nothing mattered to us. All we wanted to do was move on and we don't really care if they get punished or not because after this, they are going to be on their own and I think that's punishment enough for them. We don't need to get the law involved anymore since we are just done and we don't want to get into the hassle of all of that. So, that's what happened and now, we are just looking forward

to living a peaceful life and have nothing to do with either Bob or Sheila anymore because they are just not worth our time or energy. Earlier, I had said that I did not want them to be completely isolated from the rest of the family, but I think now, I have changed my mind. Landon has contacted most of his relatives and told them about everything that has happened and he has said that from this point forward, if they are invited to any family get-togethers or other holidays, of us will not be attending, and most people have responded positively to that. Nobody has anything nice to say about them and said that they want nothing to do with these people, especially after what they found out about them from us.

The line has been drawn and it's not going to be crossed anymore. Update 5, hey, so it has almost been one year since I posted here and something happened yesterday that I wanted to share with you guys. I am pregnant. We found out about it a couple of weeks ago and yesterday, and we decided to throw a party for our pregnancy announcement and invited a bunch of people. We were not exactly planning on this but it just happened and I was kind of skeptical about it because I'm almost in my late 30s now, but it just felt right, so we are going on with the pregnancy and everyone's really

happy about it. So yesterday, after almost a year of no contact, guess who showed up at our party uninvited? Yep, it was Sheila and Bob. And when they showed up at our door, almost one hour before the party was supposed to begin, I did something that I had been waiting to do right from the beginning. When Sheila said that she wanted to put everything in the past and start afresh, now that she was going to be a grandmother, I spat on the ground and told her to get lost just like she had done to me one year back and shut the door with a slam. They kept ringing the doorbell for a couple of minutes more after that, but then, I opened the door, and I told them that if they did not leave, I would call the cops once again and this time, I would not let them off so easily. So they demanded to speak

to Landon, but he came out and told them that since he was not an earning member of the family, and was such a humongous loser, he did not feel that he was worthy enough to have any sort of discussion with them and it would be better for them if they left. After that, they had been humiliated enough, so they left. We are really happy because now, I can demand a restraining order against them because now that I'm pregnant, I don't want to risk anything. I don't want them in my life ever again and I'm going to make sure of it.