Reddit Stories - BETRAYED My UNEMPLOYED Son'S Shocking Betrayal With Hidden Cameras ORCHESTRATED By My Ex Wife

Episode Date: May 26, 2025

#redditstories #askreddit #aita #betrayal #hiddenCameras #exWife #familyDrama #unemployedSonSummary: A shocking betrayal unfolds as hidden cameras reveal orchestrated events by an ex-wife against her unemployed son. Family drama escalates, leaving relationships strained and trust shattered. Secrets exposed lead to heartbreak and turmoil, changing lives forever.Tags: redditstories, askreddit, reddit, aita, tifu, betrayal, hiddenCameras, exWife, familyDrama, unemployedSon, trustIssues, relationships, secretsRevealed, heartbreak, turmoil, shockingRevelations, lifeChangingEvents, emotionalDrama, surveillanceFootage, deceitfulActionsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reddit-stories--6237355/support.

I hope you enjoy this story. Discovered my jobless son setting up concealed cameras in my bedroom. It appears that my former spouse persuaded him to surveil me, accusing me of infidelity and showing preference for my daughter over my son. Son. I, 46M, have two kids, my son who will call Neil and my daughter Natasha. Neil is 22 and Natasha just turned 18. My ex-wife and I have been divorced ever since Natasha was born.

We have been co-parenting them and it's been really great for the most part. We got married really young and soon enough. We had realized that we made a mistake so we decided to get divorced because we were just not compatible at the time. I was young and stupid and so was she after trying for a really long time. We decided to separate and that was the end of our marriage, but we continued to co-parent our kids. together. By the time we found out that she was pregnant with Natasha, we had already started the divorce proceeding so it was too late to back out then, and we decided to just share custody. We recently reconnected about a couple of months ago after a lot of relationships.

Both of us have grown up a lot and we decided that we were going to give our relationship another shot this time and try to make it work. We had been great friends for the past few years. So now, we felt like it was the right time to make the leap. Our kids were also grown up and they would understand, so no time was better than now. We don't live together yet, but we have been discussing the idea of moving together in a couple of weeks or maybe months. My ex-wife, 45F, and I have always loved them both equally and tried our best never to play favorites. At least she claims that she did, but everybody knows for a fact that Neil was always her favorite. She never treated Natasha badly, but I could tell that she had a soft corner for her son and I was okay with it as long as she never treated our daughter badly.

I love Neil, he's my kid so of course I would do anything for him, but he's kind of an idiot. He always has been that way and I don't know, I guess I used to be disappointed whenever he would do something stupid. He was not very good at school and would often flunk out of really easy classes. He was also not very good at sports. And that was a huge bummer for me and for a long time, I was really worried about him because I had no idea what he was going to do in the future. I kept trying to push him into working harder and doing better, but he just didn't seem interested and he just had a really laid-back attitude towards life.

It also didn't help that my ex-wife kept coddling him. She would defend him no matter what, and constantly tell me that he would find his path, even if it happened late. He got into community college because he didn't get accepted anywhere else since his grades were really low, and I told him that I wanted him to work hard because in spite of what his mother said, the world was a difficult place to survive in and without hard work, he would never get anywhere. I thought it was good advice and let's be real, the kid really needed to hear it. But my ex-wife would always accuse me of pushing him too hard and making him nervous, which is why he was never able to succeed. But I thought that my ex-wife telling Neil

that everything would be fine even if he didn't do anything to achieve it was what was ruining his life. We would constantly have fights about how to raise Neil and what to do about his situation. That was pretty much the only major bone of contention between the two of us because we could never bring ourselves to agree on how to raise a child like that. In my opinion, Neil was just plain lazy and my ex-wife would unintentionally encourage it. I had faith in him, I knew that he was capable of doing better, but he was just not driven or focused enough to do it. Anyway, the point was that I loved Neil because, of course, he is my kid. Coming to Natasha, she was different and we didn't really have to do much for her. She was the polar opposite of her brother and was good

at everything that she did. She wasn't a genius or anything of the sort, but she was kind of a jack of all trades. She never gave us the run around as Neil did, and needless to say, parenting Natasha was much easier than being a parent to Neil. She got accepted into her school of choice recently, and we were all really happy for her. At the same time, we were kind of upset for Neil because he was recently just laid off. A couple of months ago, my ex-wife had spoken to a friend of hers and managed to get a job for Neil in her business. He was supposed to to work in HR since he was good with people and it seemed like a relatively straightforward and easy task. He was doing great, but unfortunately, he had to be let go because my ex-wife's

friend's business wasn't going too great and they were struggling to stay afloat financially. So they had to let go of a lot of employees and Neil happened to be one of them. It was a huge letdown for me personally because from what I had heard, Neil was doing great and I believe that he finally had a shot at having a good future. But now I was back to worrying about him because he was unemployed and I didn't know what he was going to do. We received the news just a few weeks ago and my ex-wife insisted that I asked him to come back home and live with us so he could save money on rent and other expenses. I thought that it was kind of unnecessary because Neil was a fully grown adult and he hadn't said that he wanted to come back home so I didn't

understand why my ex-wife wanted to insist that I ask him to return. Getting hired and getting fired was all a part of life and he had to learn to get back on his feet after being let down. Once again, my ex-wife was trying to make things easier for him, but eventually, it would just prove to be difficult for him in the long run. I knew for a fact that if I allowed Neil to come back home, he would have absolutely no drive to start looking for another job because he would know that he had us to fall back on. I don't mean to sound like a bad father, but like I said, he's not very ambitious and if the kid has an easy way out of something then he will take that way out instead of working hard and doing the right thing. I argued with my ex-wife for a really

long time about this, and I put up a good fight, but she told me that his parents, our duty was to protect him from the world because it was harsh enough as it is. He didn't need to be taught a lesson by us as well, we just needed to be there for him and teach him that he could count on us. And I couldn't argue with that logic, it was pretty spot on. She said that she would have offered to let him live in her apartment, but her lease would be over in a couple of weeks and we had been planning that she would be moving in with me anyway. It would be kind of pointless for him to move in with her just for a few weeks. So I ended up contacting Neil a little after we had received the news of him being laid off. I asked him to come back home so that he could

save on rent and he readily agreed, a little too happily if I may say so. Anyway, when he moved back, I told him very clearly that this was going to be a temporary arrangement until he was back on his feet and had been able to find a new job. I was very clear about my conditions and said that I was not going to allow my fully grown-up son to live with us for the rest of his life, that was just not going to happen and he had to be prepared for it. So if he was thinking about making this a permanent arrangement, he could just forget about it. I had already spoken about this with my ex-wife, and even though she wasn't on board with it, she realized that it was important for him to be self-reliant and independent. So she agreed to let me tell him that and Neil said that he was

fine with it. I told him that he could live with us, but he would have to continue applying for jobs and as soon as he got his first paycheck, he would have to start looking for a new apartment. He agreed to all of that and I was very relieved because I thought that I could bring him back on track. But unfortunately, what happened in the end was exactly what I had feared would happen. He was busy for the first couple of days, looking for jobs online, and I was really proud of him. However, a couple of days later, I realized that he had stopped looking and every time I would come back home from work he would just be lying on the couch and either be scrolling on his phone or playing some stupid little video game. Whenever I would ask him about how his job search was going,

he would always have the same vague answer and tell me that he was looking for things but there was a recession going on and so not many businesses were hiring at the time. Even if I would ask him to start small and then work his way up, he would tell me that it was pointless and he didn't want to start in a low position because it was beneath him. It was really ironic. It was really ironic how working in a low-paying position was beneath him, but being unemployed and relying on your parents wasn't. I would try to have discussions with him about work and was even willing to spend my free time at home, helping him out with his job search, but my ex-wife didn't like it. She kept telling me that I was pressuring him and that no good was going to come out of it.

My ex-wife believed that I should just let him be and he would figure it out on his own eventually and that was the most frustrating thing that she would say to me. Because I knew for a fact that if I didn't push him, he would never figure it out on his own. The reason for that was not because he was incapable or incompetent, it was just because he was plain old lazy. There was nothing else to it. I kept trying to talk to him,

but my ex-wife would stop me every single night when we were on calls and we were back to our old routine of fighting about what to do about Neil, which was ridiculous because this was a full-grown and adult man we were talking about. I hated the fact that we were still fighting about the same things that we used to fight about when he was in middle school. It just made me feel like this kid was never going to grow up and we would be raising him for the rest of our lives. So, needless to say, my ex-wife, and I have been fighting over this for quite some time now. But that doesn't mean that we didn't love each other, I always have and I always will. And that's probably why I'm still

trying to make this work and questioning myself. Anyway, last week, we threw Natasha a party. She had been accepted into the college of her choice and would be going away in a couple of months. We did up the house really nicely, invited all our friends and family, and just planned on having a nice time in general. My ex-wife and I had been fighting a lot, so this was a nice escapade for us. Neil was the only person who didn't seem too happy that day, but I thought that was natural because even though nobody said it, everybody was thinking the same thing. He was obviously going through a rough patch and to see his little sister succeed in ways that he had never been able to, and be celebrated like this was bound to hurt.

Don't get me wrong, we did celebrate his achievement when he was in school as well. But that was just to encourage him and boost his morale because the things that we would celebrate for him, but not real achievements. For instance, the ones actually threw him a party for not failing a subject that he had been flunking forever. That's how low the standards had been for him. In comparison to that, Natasha being celebrated for getting into the college of her choice seemed like a really big deal and it actually was. Strangely enough, my ex-wife didn't seem to notice that Neil was feeling a little down that day. But I did take note of it, and when nobody was looking, I decided to sit with him for a while and tell him that it would all be fine soon enough.

All had to do was keep pushing and working hard and life would find a way to make things better for him. We had a nice conversation that day, and he was actually responding to me and the things that I was telling him. I thought that I had made some progress with him that day and he was going to buckle up and start looking for jobs the next day onwards. I was stupid enough to believe that that conversation would actually lead somewhere. The next day, however, something insane happened and I ended up kicking Neil out of our house. I had left for work as usual that day, but I decided to take the rest of the day off around noon because I was feeling a little under the weather and I could feel a cold coming on. So I started driving back home, and I expected

Neil to be working in the living room or something. But when I came back home, I rang the doorbell several times, but nobody answered. Natasha was out with her friend so Neil was the only one who was supposed to be at home that day, but I kept ringing the doorbell and nobody came to the door. After a while, I got tired of ringing the doorbell, so I decided to use the spare keys that we keep under the flower pots to unlock the door and enter the house on my own. I was also kind of worried that Neil might have injured himself or something, which is why he hadn't been able to come to the road. I was really worried and when I entered the house,

I checked every room. The last room that I checked was my office and that's where I found Neil. He had his headphones on and they were noise cancelling so he hadn't been able to hear me. When I entered the room, he had his back turned to me and he was working with some tools in a corner of my room. I had no idea what he was doing, but when I took a closer look, I saw something like a camera lying on my table. I instantly put two and two together and I was infuriated because there was literally no reason for him to be installing hidden cameras in my room. I asked him what he thought he was doing, clearly very pissed off, so he didn't tell me anything.

He said that he was sorry about this, but apparently, he had two. I had no idea what he was talking about because it didn't make sense and I couldn't imagine any circumstances under which he would absolutely have to install hidden cameras in my office. I asked him if he had installed them in any other rooms, and he said that he hadn't, but I checked for myself, just to be sure. I didn't know what he was up to, but once I was done, checking all the rooms, I came back to him, and I told him that he better have a good explanation for all of this because this was a serious offense and I wasn't going to tolerate it. Instead of explaining to me why he was doing all this, he just stood silently and refused to talk to me. I think it's his silence that really pissed me off and I completely lost it, because the fact that you didn't even have an answer was just crazy.

I started yelling at him about everything, about laziness and lack of ambition, and how I had been worried sick about him all this while, but in spite of our little chat the previous day, he was still doing weird and unnecessary crap. and the worst part was that he didn't even have an explanation for it. He took it all without a word and even when I kept demanding that he answer me, he didn't say anything. I was getting really agitated. So after a point, I decided to tell him that he was no longer welcome to stay here with me and he could gather all his stuff and leave. Because there was no way that I could allow him to live here with me after what I had just caught him doing. He tried to fight with me, but I told him that I wasn't going to let him live with me at least

until he could give me a satisfactory explanation as to what he was doing and why. So we argued back and forth for a while, but eventually, he just decided to leave and started packing his bags. I was really disappointed because I had honestly believed that the previous day, we had actually had a productive discussion, and he would try to improve his life. But instead of that, he was doing God knows what. After he left, I decided to nap for a while, because I was already really feeling under the weather before I came back home and the fight with my son had also made me feel exhausted. I woke up in the evening because my phone was ringing and it was my ex-wife calling.

When I answered the call, she didn't even wait for a second before completely tearing into me and saying that she couldn't believe that I had kicked Neal out. It took me a couple of seconds to really wake up and process everything, but she was yelling at me nonstop and it was clear that she was very upset about this whole thing. I explained to her the reason why I'd kicked him out, and I expected her to be just as mad and confused as I had been, but instead, she was all like, so what? That caught me off guard because it was surely not the reaction that I had expected. So I told her that installing hidden cameras in my room without my consent was a huge breach of privacy and he didn't even have a good explanation as to why he was doing it, so I had to kick him out.

I thought my explanation was pretty logical and reasonable, but she was just not willing to admit it. She kept fighting with me baselessly and it was getting on my nerves because it felt like she was going to go to any lengths to defend Neil. And a couple of seconds later, I found out why apparently she was the one who had put him up to this, and asked him to install cameras in my house. Her reasoning was that she had seen me act really close with a female co-worker of mine who also happened to be a really good friend at the party that I had thrown Natasha the other day. And so, before she moved in and ended the lease on her apartment, she wanted to make sure that I was loyal to her and nobody else. She claimed that she had been cheated on in the past, which is why she

was a little insecure about these things. So she was the one who had convinced Neil to go by the cameras, and then install them himself. I was shocked that she could even think of such a thing and I told her that what she had done was truly disgusting. But instead of accepting her mistake, she started trying to shift the blame onto me somehow. She said that I was the one who had never made her feel secure in our relationship, even when we were married earlier. I thought that it was an unfair thing to bring up because when we were married for the first time, we were both really young and were just not ready to be married. The only reason we even got hitched was because she was pregnant with Neil. And I thought that was something that both of us agreed on,

that we had gotten married because of Neil and not because we were actually ready for marriage. But when I brought that up, she said that she always knew that this was the reason I had a grudge against Neil Wright from when he was born because apparently, I treated him differently from Natasha and constantly vilified him. She accused me of hitting Neil, just because he was the reason we had to get married and apparently, I thought that had ruined my life. Let me just make it clear, I don't regret my marriage and we had a good run, but we went out of steam because we were just not ready mentally. That doesn't mean that I regret it and I certainly don't think that it ruined my life. And as for Neil, I think I've mentioned multiple times that I really love that kid because he is my son.

I wouldn't have it any other way, but let's be real, he is not the sharpest tool in the shape. and I have to be honest with him to make sure that he doesn't screw up his own future. If anything, I'm the one doing him a favor while my ex-wife does nothing but put him on a pedestal and tell him that he's perfect the way he is which will never get him anywhere. But instead of acknowledging that, my ex-wife started gaslighting me and manipulating the facts to make it seem like I was playing favorites between Neil and Natasha. I was really confused about that conversation because I thought we were supposed to be discussing why exactly she had found it necessary to install hidden cameras in my room instead of just talking

to me like a normal person and finding out my equation with the female co-worker. It's not like we were strangers, we had known each other for a really long time and we had even been married before. I felt like I deserved the benefit of the doubt because, yeah, I might have a lot of drawbacks, but I'm not a cheater and she should know that. I tried to talk to her, but she was just too emotional and kept saying nonsensical things like I only disliked Neil because he was the reason I had to get married to her and she couldn't believe that she was being cheated on yet again. She was all over the place and it was clear that there was no talking to her at that point in time because she wasn't thinking straight. So I told her that she could

calm down a little and then I would call her back because I didn't want to make matters worse than they were. So I hung up that day and after that, I tried to call her back several times. times, but she didn't answer my calls. When Natasha came back home, I told her everything except for the part where my ex-wife had said that she was afraid that I had been cheating on her because I didn't think it was appropriate to tell my 18-year-old daughter. But I did tell her that Neil had been installing cameras in my room to spy on me, and I told her that I didn't know the reasons yet, but I said that if her mother got in touch with her, then she was to tell me about it. She seemed to understand that there was something going on here that I

wasn't telling her and she respected that and didn't ask further questions. But unfortunately, my ex-wife has not gotten in touch with either my daughter or me. I really want things to go back to normal, but I don't want to apologize for anything because I think I reacted perfectly normally. Anybody in my position would have done the same thing, considering the fact that Neil wasn't even telling me the reason why he had been installing cameras in my room. I understand now that it was to protect his mother, but even then, I think my reaction was completely reasonable and it shouldn't be held against me. I also don't know how to feel about my ex-wife accusing me of playing favorites between

Neil and Natasha because I don't look at it that way. I think I have been more than fair to both of them, I don't understand why she wants to make me the villain here, but I feel bad about everything. I also want to make things work with her because she's probably the only person that I've actually ever loved and I don't want to let it go. I'm just really confused and I have no idea what to do about this. A couple of days have passed and I'm still having really conflicted feelings about everything. I'd have for kicking my son out of the house when I found him installing hidden cameras in my

room. Update 1. So, I know most of you advised me to break up with my ex-wife and end the relationship for good, but I couldn't bring myself to do that. I'm sorry but I really love her and I don't think I can just let it go. I paid her to visit a couple of days ago and decided to speak to her in person because she hadn't been answering any of my calls or responding to my texts. That is the only option that I have left now. Thankfully, Neil wasn't at home at the time because apparently, he had a job interview. But my ex-wife was at home and even though she was quite hesitant and awkward, she did let me in and we had a discussion about everything.

She told me that her boyfriend had been cheating on her with one of her friends, and that it really left a mark. So when she saw me laughing it up, and having a great time with my coworker at the party, her brain went into overdrive, and the next thing, she was asking Neil to help her spy on me. She confessed that maybe she was not recovering from her last breakup as well as she had thought she was. So we decided to put our relationship on hold for a while so she could go back to therapy and try to work. on her feelings. I don't know how long it's going to take for her to get back to normal, but I'm ready to wait. She also apologized to me for everything that she said the other day and we hugged and made up. It was quite emotional but necessary and I'm glad that I talked to her. We have agreed that we are not breaking up but we're just taking a little break. And when she

feels better, we're just going to pick up right where we left off. I also waited for Neil to come home that day and I reconciled with him as well. I told him that I was proud of him and that I loved him, even if I didn't say it enough, and always seemed to be pushing him to do better. So that was that. I don't know what's going to happen now, but I'm hoping that it's all for the best. Update 2, hi, so a couple of months have passed since the last update and Neil finally has a job in his own apartment again. I couldn't be happier for the kid, honestly. Natasha has also left for college and it seems to me like both of them are doing great now. My ex-wife and I are still on a break, but I'm doing a lot better emotionally now.

Even if we don't get back together, I think I'll be okay with it. But we're going to try to stay on good terms because we want to be actively involved in our kids' lives since we recently met at Neil's housewarming party and also dropped Natasha off at college together. So it's necessary for us to be on good terms for their sake. Update 3, Hey, so you guys must have forgotten about me and I wouldn't even blame you guys for it because it's almost been three years since I last posted here. I know I had definitely forgotten about this thread, but I'm back now with just one tiny little update. A couple of weeks ago, my ex-wife and I got remarried and I think it was the best decision of my life. Our kids were there, they were happy and so were we.

That's all that a man needs. She has been through therapy and is doing much better now, so we reconciled about a year ago, and after living together for almost a year, we decided to get married again and have a small and intimate ceremony among our closest friends and family. It was beautiful and life is great right now, which I'm really grateful for. Feels nice to know that I've come such a long way.