Reddit Stories - Betrayed envious stepmom sabotages dad s epic birthday surprise a tale of jealousy and intrigue

Episode Date: May 26, 2025

#redditstories #askreddit #aita #betrayal #envious #stepmom #sabotage #birthdaySummary: A tale of jealousy and intrigue unfolds as a betrayed, envious stepmom sabotages her dad's epic birthday surprise. The family dynamics take a dark turn, revealing the lengths one will go to for revenge and validation.Tags: redditstories, askreddit, reddit, aita, tifu, betrayal, envious, stepmom, sabotage, birthday, jealousy, intrigue, familydynamics, darkturn, revenge, validation, familyconflict, emotionaldrama, secretsrevealed, unexpectedtwistBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reddit-stories--6237355/support.

I hope you enjoy this story. Father unexpectedly arranged for me to travel abroad to celebrate my 18th birthday, but my envious stepmother and step-siblings destroyed my travel document the day before in an attempt to prevent me from going. Dad is upset and did this to them. Hi, so I, female, turned 18 a couple of days ago and I was supposed to leave for my first international vacation to India. It was going to be a really special trip for me for a plethora of rich. reasons. My mother passed away when I was six years old and to cope with the grief of losing her, my father and I would watch Indian films all the time together. They were really

colorful and fun and just made me really happy, so I had always been fascinated by Indian culture. It also helped that my mother was the same way, she had always been a huge fan of Indian cinema her entire life and a lot of clothes, even though she had never been there and had only seen the place in films. My dad used to promise us, when my mother was still alive, that one day we would visit India for sure and we would have so much fun there. Unfortunately, my mother passed away due to a brain aneurysm in her sleep before my dad was able to find the means to take us all from Illinois to India. My parents were in their early 30s back then and it was really difficult to cope with such a huge loss at such a young age for all of us since my mother was just 32 when she

passed away and nobody had ever seen it coming. And my parents had been childhood sweethearts. So my dad was also taking it quite hard. It was just a bad time for all of us and the only thing that would make me feel better was watching these films with my father. It became a sort of ritual for us. We would make it a point to watch one of these movies from my mom's collection at least once a we can try to spend some time together so we can bond. And that's how I got so close to my dad and it has been that way for us ever since then. I know that my mother would be proud of us and when we finally meet her one day she's going to be really happy about the way that things turned out.

Well, for the most part, apart from a couple of things, I'm guessing that she's going to be happy about how we did with her passing. Anyway, I guess we could say that India has always held a special place in my heart and also my fathers, and we always wanted to visit the country and learn about its beautiful culture, but so far we either did not have enough money or enough time since my dad was working too hard, and I had almost given up any hope of this ever happening. But then, on my 18th birthday, when my dad told me that we were going to finally live out all our dreams, I was more than thrilled. I was literally overjoyed and the best part of it was that my stepmom and my step-sister

would not be coming along with us on this trip. Just to be. Just to be overjoyed, and the best part of it was that my stepmom and my step-sister would not be coming along with us on this trip. Just to be clear, they would not be accompanying me on this trip, not because I did not want them to, but mostly because they would have to miss out on a lot of other important events if they wanted to accompany us. Like, for instance, my step-sister Nadia, 17F, had her finals when I was on vacation.

My stepmom Susan was already dealing with a really important project at work, so she would probably be able to make it anyway. I have a nagging feeling that my dad, planned this trip during this time on purpose so that it would be close to my 18th birthday and we could leave without having to deal with my stepmom and my step-sister on the trip because I don't get along with them. But I know that if I ask him, he will never admit to it so I'm just going to let this be a theory. Anyway, my dad surprised me with this information on the evening of my 18th birthday, the party in front of all my friends, and everybody was

really happy for me except for these two. And it really showed on their face, how upset they were about the fact that my dad had decided to surprise me with an international trip for my 18th birthday. After the party was over and everybody had left, I could hear my father arguing with my stepmom, and I knew for a fact that she was fighting with him about the surprise that he had planned for me, even though I could not make out a lot of words, I had deduced that it was because she believed that he should have postponed that vacation and then. We could have all gone as a family. I am glad that that did not happen because, it would have been really troublesome for me for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because I did not get along with my stepmom and my step-sister, as you may have guessed by now.

And secondly, because they are difficult people to be with and especially on vacations because I have been on a couple with them and they were just not the right people to go on a trip with and so, I did not want them tagging along with us. I have already explained why this was important to make for emotional and sentimental reasons. and I would not have liked this trip to be ruined by their presence. And that's why I was very relieved that they would not be accompanying us, and my father also had valid reasons not to include them. Since he did not want my stepmom to miss out on her work

and there was no way that Nadia could attend anyway since she had her finals and she was about to graduate from high school in a couple of weeks. Susan and Nadia became a part of my life about five years ago and things were really nice between all of us and their families. The two of them were pretty cool to be with and they did not seem to have any issues with me while my father was dating Susan, but they got married two years ago, and things suddenly changed for no reason. I know that my behavior did not change, I don't know why they did. But after they got married, the two of them suddenly started developing a weird attitude towards me, and slowly, our relationship started changing. Granted, I had never been particularly close to either of them, but at least we had a cordial relationship before that. After they got married, Susan started treating me like absolute crap, and Nadia followed in her mother's footsteps.

They would speak to me really rudely and would make it a point to be as mean to me as humanly possible. They would always do it when my dad was not around, but whenever he would be in the same room as us, they would go back to being sweet to me. It was really weird behavior for me and I felt like I had to talk to my dad about it, so I did. Then, we had a family meeting, where we could confront these issues, and at first, they outright denied it, but lucky for me, I had recorded one of the conversations that I was having with them a couple of days ago, and they were being downright nasty to me. So they could not exactly

weasel their way out of this with their lies. And then, they finally had to tell the truth, and they decided to be manipulative. Susan and Nadia started crying and told my father that we were just feeling weird because even after marriage, it seemed like I still had not come around to accepting them as family. Which was completely not true because I did think of them as family. It was just that they were treating me badly so after that, I don't know why they would expect me to treat them, when they could not extend the same courtesy to me. My father was really confused because this was the first woman that he had liked so much after my mother and I could understand that he didn't want to give up on this relationship so easily, so he told us all to try and

make things work because he would hate to be caught up in the middle of all of this and for my father's sake. I decided that I would try to keep my peace with them. In spite of what they had tried to do with that family meeting. After that, they changed their behavior again, since they had been confronted about this already. And instead of faking being nice to me in front of my father and being rude to me behind his back, they started taking the other way out and stopped speaking to me altogether. Whenever my dad would not be around, they would pretend that I was not there and for once, I was fine with this treatment. Because at least they were not annoying or inconveniencing me in any way, and I was cool with it. For my father, we put up an act of being a happy family and

that's how it has been for the past year. I don't know why they ever changed their behavior with me, since I don't think I did anything to force them to start acting that way with me, but I guess they're just crazy people and with what they did recently, they just proved my point. The day after my 18th birthday, which was three days ago, I met my father at breakfast, and I pulled him aside to speak about the fact that I had overheard the last night. When I asked him if Susan and Nadia were pissed off about not being included in the trip to India, he told me that they were pretty upset about it, but he knew that this was supposed to be special for me, and he was also aware of the fact that we did not exactly share a good relationship,

no matter how hard we tried to hide it in front of him. So for my sake, he wanted it to be an experience for just the two of us, and this was also close to the time of my mother's death anniversary, so it was just perfect homage to her, and he wanted to do this with me, so he was going to deal with Susan and Nadia's emotions later. But for now, we only had to think about the trip. That is also the fact that I had mentioned earlier, that after having gone on a couple of vacations with Susan and Nadia,

I knew that they were really annoying to be around. Because my father and I were explorers and adventurers, we wanted to go out and enjoy every bit of the place that we were in, but they preferred to be in the hotel and do nothing, and if we took a little too much time to return to the hotel, they would start calling us relentlessly and we would be forced to come back by dinner time. Even if we wanted to stay out past that. Because for us, rules don't apply when we were on vacation and we could do whatever we wanted to

and really explore and get into the culture of the place that we were visiting. It was not the same for them and in India, it was going to have to be really special for us, so we did not want them tagging along and restricting us. I did not think there was anything wrong with that. Because to be fair, even Susan and Nadia have had a couple of short trips and getaways over the past couple of years, and they did not include us, so I do not think there was any reason for them to be pissed off about this. The only difference was that whenever Susan and Nadia would go out, just the two of them,

they would make sure that they went someplace close by and would not be gone for more than two to three days and we were going all the way to India for ten days. Maybe that was one huge difference, but apart from that, I thought that we would be were being completely fair. So when my father told me not to worry about it and that he was going to deal with Susan and Nadia, once we go back from our vacation, I was really happy about it. I was really looking forward to this trip and for the past two days, I was determined not to let anything get me down because I was finally going to India and I even started packing and stuff. I was done packing yesterday and tomorrow, we were supposed to leave for India, but unfortunately,

I don't think that's going to be possible anymore since not dealing with Susan and Nadia led to them burning my passport. Yep, you guys read it correctly. I'm not even kidding, they literally burned my passport and we found out about it a couple of hours ago. It's two in the morning right now and at around six in the evening, I was looking for the documents so I could put them in one place and not be disorganized. I had kept my passport in my bag and I was rechecking everything to make sure everything was in its place. When I found out that it was missing, I looked for it all over the house and literally

turned the place upside down trying to search for that one thing. And then, about 45 minutes after I had begun my search, I realized that it was nowhere to be found, and I was getting really stressed out. So that's when Susan and Nadia came to my room and asked me, really sweetly, if there was something that I was missing. And even though I knew that there was something off about their demeanor, I could not bring myself to reject any help and I told them that I was missing my passport and I couldn't find it, even though I had searched the entire house, so I asked them if they knew where it was. Susan threw a half-chard and unusable passport on my bed and asked me if that was what I was

looking for. I was shocked to the core and I did not even know how to respond because most of it was burned away, and there was no way that any sort of authority would accept this, so I essentially did not have a passport anymore. They looked pretty pleased with themselves when they saw the look of shock on my face and I think I might have gone numb for a couple of minutes after that. When I realized what had happened, I made up my mind that I was not going to give them the satisfaction of watching me cry, so I kept the passport aside. And then, I got up, shut the door right on their face and locked myself in my room, and cried for the next few minutes. My dad was outside, for some last minute shopping for himself since he needed some summer clothes for the weather there,

and I texted him to come back home immediately and told him what happened in the text itself so that I wouldn't have to explain anything when he came back home. I even sent him a picture of the passport that had been burned beyond recognition and in a couple of minutes, he had come back home. I did not open the door or anything and just let him deal with the situation. When he came back home, I knew instantly because he started yelling at Susan and Nadia almost immediately. He called them psycho and told him to get out of his house because there was no way that he was going to accept this sort of treatment for his daughter, and said that he had already made a mistake by looking past the first incident, where I had

spoken about the way that they had been treating me. He was not about to let it happen again and let himself fall weak just because he had loved Susan. I could hear Susan and Nadia, pretending to cry downstairs, and they were telling him that apparently, the reason they were that the passport was burnt was because I had apparently accidentally left it on the dresser. And I had left a cigarette there as well without putting it out, which is how it caught on fire. That was a blatant lie and that's the point where I decided that I had to interview and went downstairs to confront them. My father knows very well that I don't even smoke, so that was obviously a lie. And once I came downstairs, he told me that I had come at the perfect time

because he was just about to do something that would make it all even for all of us. I thought he was going to call the cops, but then he did something even better. I had no idea what he was referring to at the time, but then, he went to his office and brought out some documents. I did not have any idea what that was about, but I saw Nadia's face fall the second that my dad handed her those papers and then, within a minute. He had snatched those documents out of her hands and then torn them up right in front of her face. It was not until later that I found out that those papers were for a student loan that my father had decided he was going to help Nadia with. She had to take out a student loan to be able to pay for college because her mother hadn't exactly saved up enough money for it and she had already

started applying, but the money was still. And my father had decided that he was going to help her out by becoming a co-signer instead of her mother since he was slightly more financially sound as compared to Susan. But now that they had burnt my passport, it was only fair that she lost a huge opportunity as well. After tearing up those documents, he ordered Susan and Nadia to get out of the house and they tried to fight it and tried to argue with him, begging him to rethink what he had just done, but he was very firm and determined about what he wanted to do. So in an hour, they had left. But now, they are begging me and have been messaging me nonstop for the past couple of hours, ever since they left. Nadia, especially, is particularly apologetic and is telling

me that she is willing to do anything to fix this for me, but all I have to do is to talk to my dad and convince him to become a co-signer and help her take out a student loan yet again. Because in the future, it will be much easier for my dad to pay it off along with her, as compared to Susan and they had no idea that my father was about to do this. They told me that they were really sorry and that they had just been feeling a little put off by the fact that my father had not bothered to include them in this plan and they were feeling like they were not part of the family. So I chose to respond to that particular message and I reminded them that even the two of them had gone out so many times. As mother and daughter, so how was it unfair for me to have

a vacation with my father for my 18th birthday? Especially given how Nodias father was part of her life and she still occasionally got to see him at least once twice a month, since he lived in another state and did not have custody. But my mother had passed away a long time ago, and we just wanted to have this one trip to honor her. And she couldn't even let me have that. So it was really unfair and stupid of her to demand that I help her now because I don't think what she did to me was fair,

but what happened to her, that is completely fair and square. And now, she has lost the right to ask anything of me. Not even forgiveness, because I did not have that to offer to her. But she keeps begging me through text and I have tried to block her, but then there is something just stopping me from doing that, and it's the fact that maybe it was not fair for us to go off on a vacation, just the two of us, without bothering to think about Nadia and Susan. Since they do kind of have a point,

the two of them only go out for two or three days and it's mostly to nearby places, but we were going to India for ten whole days, which is a really long time. So now, I'm here to ask Ida if I wanted to go off on an international trip with my father for 10 days, including my stepmom and step-sister in the plan. Update 1, hi, so before I start talking about what happened, let me just get a few things out of the way. First and foremost, we did not call the cops when I found out that they had destroyed my passport because we did not really want to pursue this legally because it just didn't seem worth it at the time and honestly, it didn't even occur to me. I was in a state of total panic and even if I had been able to call the cops, I don't think anything would have happened to them

because it would take a really long time to prove that they were the ones who had burned my passport on purpose. They were just passing it off as an accident and that would be the solution to all of it for them. So why waste my time on that? Now moving on to the second thing. A lot of you were asking me why I was not in college yet and well, I had graduated from high school last year, but after that, I decided to take a gap year and figure out life for myself. In the past year, I have worked in a couple of places, and I do have some experience in the line of work that I want to get into eventually, which is journalism. I have interned at a couple of places, and I have a bit of an idea about how everything works. As of now, I have already started applying to colleges and Nadia and I were supposed to start at the same time.

Luckily for me, my grandparents have the entire college fund covered, so my dad does not have to worry about that. And neither do I. However, Nadia does not have the same thing going on for her, which is why my dad had been willing to co-sign and take out a student loan for her since he knew that Susan was really worried about it. her father was not up for it. He believed that Nadia should be able to pay for herself, and Susan was of the opposite view. She believed that Nadia should have had some help since college is pretty stressful and she does not need to worry about the tuition money as well. Anyway, that was their issue and I knew that they had been having trouble about what to do, but I did not concern myself with it. I only got to know about it a couple of days ago,

after I discussed it with my father, and he told me exactly what those documents had been that he had turned up in front of Nadia. Anyway, coming back to what has happened, today I was supposed to leave for India, but since I don't have a passport anymore, I can't do that. So my dad and I are spending the day at home and watching old films that we use to love, just to cheer me up. And I've got to say, it's kind of working. I've also blocked Nadia and Susan because I don't need to feel sorry.

sorry for them. You guys were right, I was beating myself up for no reason and I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that I was missing my mother and I was really emotional, so I guess I was kind of in state. Also, it was two in the morning and we all know that we shouldn't trust how we feel about life past midnight. So, I'll consider this a lesson learned. I've blocked them and now they can beg as much as they want to, it's not going to help their case. They screwed me over for no reason, so now whatever is happening to them, they totally deserve it. Update 2, hello, it has been four days since I last posted here and today, my dad came back home from work and told me that he had filed for divorce. He and I then had a discussion that I think was long overdue.

That last family meeting that we had, where we sat down and we discussed the change in behavior that Nadia and Susan had after Susan got married to my father, was kind of pointless because, after that, things really didn't change. Instead of treating me badly, they just stopped interacting with me at all and that's not the way a family should be. So my father sat me down and told me that he had been selfish for a really long time and that he had only been thinking about himself. But now, he had realized that this was not good for any of us and he was better off without this woman because clearly, she was not the right person for him. Maybe he was in love with her and that was his own issue, but she did not love him enough to treat me nicely and accept the fact that he had a daughter. He told me that he kind of knew

that the reason that she did not like me was because she could never bring herself to think of me as family and she probably felt like to my father, I would always come first, and it would never be her and Nadia over me. So maybe that's why she was jealous and insecure about me. He would never be able to find out the real reason for the change in their behavior, since they had always been nice to me, and they only started acting around me after marriage. He had been willing to look past that since it was not exactly inconveniencing anyone but not anymore because the damage was already done.

So, he was done pretending to be a happy family because it was just an act and they did not need to pretend anymore. And neither did we. We are not a happy family, period. That was the reality of the situation and he was ready to accept. it now. So he had filed for a divorce that day after speaking to his lawyer, and readings were going to start pretty soon. He apologized to me for everything that I had to face because of him and we hugged it out. You might think that he is not even a good father,

but for me, he's always going to be the best. Maybe he did a couple of things wrong and maybe he was selfish a few times. But I'm going to forgive him for all that because for everything that he did wrong, there were so many things that he did right for me and I don't think I could have ever asked for a better father. I love him and I always will. Update 3, so I'm assuming that Susan was served with the divorce papers today because my father came back home from work earlier than usual and he has locked himself up in his office since then and I can hear him screaming at somebody periodically. I don't really know what's going on, but when he comes out, I'm going to be sure to ask him. He hasn't even spoken to me ever since he

came back home from work and I was worried about what was going to happen, but I know that he will deal with it. It has been five days since he filed for divorce and I'm just guessing that she must have been served with the papers today because otherwise, I can't find any reason to explain his behavior. I have not had any contact with Susan or Nadia after I blocked them and they did not try to reach out to me in any other way either. Lucky for them because I might have had a lot to say to them, had they tried to try something of the sort with me. I'm still really pissed about what happened, but it's fine. I guess we'll just go to India some other time then. It's going to have to be after the divorce now and since I start college in a couple of months as well, I don't know

when we have enough time to do that, but I just hope that it happens at some point. Update 4, hey, so it's pretty late right now, but my dad came out of his office a couple of hours ago and told me that the reason that he had been screaming on the phone was because Susan had decided to call him up and threatened to come after him with a bunch of lies and accuse him of lots of things if he tried to divorce her and then he would. Lose everything that he had worked so hard for. He had come home from work early because he did not want to have to deal with this in the office. He had been screaming because he had been fighting on the phone for so long. The first time around that she had called him, he was at work and he had been caught. off guard, so he had not been able to record her threatening him. But when he came back home, he had the wherewithal to record what she was saying, and then, he told her that if she tried to do anything, he would use this against her. But then, she turned it around on him and started

accusing him of trying to blackmail her. It was just really crazy, but in the end, he was able to tell her and put it to her that if she tried to lie about him or his character and try to defame him while they were going through with the divorce. He would make sure that he screwed her life up for good. He's not sure what's going to happen now, but she seemed scared on the phone, so he's considering it a job well done. Anyway, he told me that the divorce proceedings will begin soon and as soon as it's over, he and I are going to India. And that's a promise.