Reddit Stories - Betrayed_ The Heart-WRENCHING Saga of a Child's FORBIDDEN Wedding ATTENDANCE and Sudden Departure_

Episode Date: October 3, 2025

#redditstories #askreddit #aita #betrayed #wedding #familydrama #heartbreak #relationships  Summary: In this heart-wrenching saga, a child faces betrayal after being forbidden to attend a wedding, leading to a sudden departure that shakes the family.  Tags: redditstories, askreddit, reddit, aita, tifu, betrayed, wedding, familydrama, heartbreak, relationships, saga, forbidden, departure, child, betrayal, emotional, drama, conflict, decision, heartacheBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reddit-stories--6237355/support.

I hope you enjoy this story. Sil prohibited my child from attending her marriage celebration because of his sickness. Consequently, we departed only for her to subsequently inform others that I harbored envy towards her. Just recently, my relatives and I were attending my sister-in-law Annie's 35F wedding. My husband, 42M, and I, 40F, have been together for almost 20 years, married for 17, and we have two kids together. My son is 15 years old and my daughter is 12. Both of them are well-behaved, good kids and everyone adores them, which is why their reaction to this incident that took place recently is even more confusing for me.

Anyway, my son was recently diagnosed with narcolepsy a couple of months ago. It came as a huge blow to the family, and we are still coping with it. He is being treated for it and he's responding well to the treatment. We are just trying to make life easier for him. and he himself is quite self-conscious of it. But we did not want him to be ashamed of it because it's not his fault and we wanted him to know that. Everyone had been very sympathetic towards us

when we initially told people about the diagnosis, including Annie. She and I have never been the closest to friends, but it's not like we have had any issues with each other either, at least not to my knowledge. She and I have always been very cordial and that's about it. We tried to be friends with each other initially, but we were just very different and we quickly realized that there was a lot of friction between us.

So instead of forcing each other to be friends with the other, it would be better for us to just maintain a cordial familial relationship and not try to push the boundaries. I guess it was a bit of a bummer for her because my husband's family is very close-knit, but this was a situation that could not be helped. Anyway, I had never expected her to turn out like this or even my in-laws to go against me in the way that they have. It all happened because about an hour before the wedding was supposed to start, Annie told me that she would prefer for me not to bring my son to the ceremony because she was afraid that he might start dozing off, and that would become a cause of concern for everyone during the ceremony.

She did not want anybody disrupting the event and said that my son's condition was not ideal, so she wanted me to tell him to stay in the hotel room during the ceremony and he could join us later. I was shocked that she would even suggest something like this because the wedding ceremony was not going to be more than an hour long and it was not like my son had not been treated for his condition he had taken his medication for the day and even if he did start dozing off, it was my duty and my husband's duty to take care of him.

And we would make sure that it did not disrupt the ceremony. Besides, if he fell asleep, I'm pretty sure nobody would even notice because all eyes would be on her, but even then, she insisted that he stay in his room and not join everyone for the ceremony. When she started being stubborn about it, I got very offended, and I told her that if my son could not be a part of the ceremony,

then I had no interest in joining them either and walked away. I was really upset because my husband and I have been trying really hard to make sure that my son did not feel self-conscious about it and telling him to stay in the room and not join his family for the ceremony would only make everything worse for him. So when I came back to our hotel room, I pulled my husband aside and spoke to him in person to tell him about what his sister had just said. just as I had expected, he was even more pissed off than I was and said that he was going to talk to her and give her a piece of his mind. But I did not want to create drama just an hour before the wedding, so I told him that if she did not want our son attending the wedding, then the only thing we could do was just walk out.

Because after what she had said, even if she agreed to have him present at the ceremony, it would mean nothing because I would know deep down that my son was not wanted there. And look, it's her wedding, it's up to her what he wants to do. But if she did not want my son to be at the ceremony, then she shouldn't have invited the kids at all. That would have made it much easier for them to understand, rather than have them present at the wedding and make my son sit in his room all by himself for the duration of the ceremony. That was just humiliating for him. And I'm sorry, but as a guest, if my son is going to be treated like that, I have no

interest in being a part of an event like that. So after a brief discussion with my husband, we decided that we were going to just pack up our things and leave that very instant. We did not even bother to say goodbye to Annie or anyone else because we did not want to make a big deal out of it. And to be fair, even she had not bothered to contact us after I had walked away from the discussion with her. So it was very obvious to us that she couldn't care less about whether my son or I attended or not. But I guess it did make a difference to her whether my husband attended or not since people would definitely find it very weird that her brother was

not present at the ceremony or for the following event. It took us around 10 minutes to pack everything in the hotel room and we had forbidden our kids from asking any questions about why we were leaving because we didn't even know how to tell the truth or explain this to them. After we had packed up everything, we started driving back home and around half an hour before the wedding, Annie finally started calling her brother. Since my husband was driving, I was the one who answered the call and she immediately started shouting at me, believing me to be her brother. She seemed very annoyed with the fact that we had just checked out without even bothering to inform her and said that we were overreacting because what she had said about not wanting my son at the ceremony was not even as harsh as we were making it out to be. And even if we were offended by that, we should have spoken to her before leaving because now, she would have to explain to everyone at the wedding why her brother was not attending, even though everyone had seen that he had been present at the rehearsal dinner.

She told him that it was still not too late. He could just come back and make it in time for the ceremony and we would be able to be able to see that he had been able to. to discuss all of this later. I was about to tell her that it was not her brother, it was me who was on the phone, when she said that don't let that wife of yours drag you away from your real family. And that was pretty much the last straw for me because after she said that, I immediately made it known to her that I was the one who had picked up the call because her brother was driving and she had been speaking to me. Now I knew exactly what she thought of me and I was even more sure of the fact that I did not want to be present at her wedding and my husband and I were doing the right thing by leaving because she had not just insulted my son but now, she had insulted me as

well. I didn't even give her a chance to speak and hung up and then blocked her. My husband did not have a problem with any of that and we just continued to drive back home. He continued to receive a bunch of calls from his parents and several other numbers that he did not recognize, but we ignored all of them and just kept driving. Our kids were obviously very confused but we didn't tell them anything and we still haven't because I don't want to make my son feel even more self-conscious than he already is. Anyway, after we got home, we muted everybody and decided that we were not going to be checking any messages for the next couple of days.

Because honestly, things had gotten very intense and dramatic, and we did not want to play into the drama. But the next day, in the evening, my in-laws showed up at our house and they were pissed. In fact, to say that they were just pissed would be an understatement because as soon as we let them in, they started screaming at both of us. They accused me in particular of sabotaging their daughter's wedding and said that I had done this on purpose. It came as a huge shock to me because honestly, like I had said, I had always had a cordial relationship with my husband's family. I was not as close to them as they expected me to be, but that's just because I had my own

boundaries and I didn't want to push them. I thought they had been fine with it, but clearly not because in spite of the fact that my husband and I had been married for 20 years. they were still acting like they didn't even know who I was as a person and said that I had sabotaged Annie's wedding on purpose. Not only was that accusation ridiculous enough by itself, but they also said that I had done this because I was jealous of her. The reason that they suggested that I was speechless of her was equally stupid. They thought that Annie was much more successful than me and even her wedding was a lot more grand than the one that I had back when I was getting married to my husband and so, I had taken it upon myself to make sure that it became all about me and my husband, and why we had walked out. Just to be clear, Annie is neither more nor less successful than I am. I mean, I don't even

know how they are defining success because Annie is an entrepreneur and has a sauce business and I work in publishing. It's two wildly different lines of work, so I don't even know how they would be comparing it. Even if they take into consideration the kind of income we have, I would still maintain that we are definitely equally successful. I'm saying that because I don't want to put anyone down to make myself look better, mostly because I don't have to because I'm not insecure. As for her wedding being organized on a much larger scale than mine, I think that did not surprise anyone because she's getting married at 35 when she's already pretty much established herself. When my husband and I got married, we were really young and it just started working. Our parents wanted to fund the wedding,

but we thought it would be more practical for us to take that money and invest it in our future, so that's what we did with the wedding funds. We were quite happy with our small and intimate wedding and it was definitely not a bone of contention. And I really did not appreciate the fact that they were implying that I had ruined my sister-in-law's wedding on purpose just because I was jealous of her or something because that's not the kind of person that I am and even if Annie did not accept it, I would have expected my in-laws to do so at the very least. I was honestly really overwhelmed when they started yelling at me about how I had sabotaged everything on purpose and made the entire wedding about myself by walking out and overreacting over something so petty and small.

And then they started telling me that I had to apologize because they knew that I had done this purely out of jealousy and nothing else and the rest of the family apparently agreed because that's what they had told everyone at the wedding. They had to come up with some explanation as to why my husband and his family were not present at the wedding because everyone knew how close we were and people had seen us all at the rehearsal dinner the previous night. So they had concocted this story about how I had been sulking the entire time at the rehearsal dinner, and when Annie has spoken to me about it, I had picked a fight with her on purpose about how she was having a grand wedding and rubbing it in our faces to make us feel small on purpose and convince my husband to walk out over it. Now, of course, I came off

looking really bad in this story that they had concocted and that's what really sent me off the it was bad enough that they had come up with a lie to cover up for Annie and make me the bad guy instead. But when they said that the rest of the family believed it and thought that I was sabotaging my sister-in-law's wedding on purpose because I was jealous of her and everyone agreed that I should apologize to her, I just felt so bad because that's not who I am and I felt like everyone had misjudged me. At that point, I couldn't even bring myself to defend myself and my husband, and I just broke down into tears. My husband realized that my in-laws had absolutely no respect for me and when I started crying, he told them to get out of his house because they had

no right to speak to me this way. They tried to argue, but my husband was very firm and said that he would call the cops on them if they refused. Even before leaving, they repeated the same thing that Annie had said, that my husband shouldn't allow me to dictate anything that he does because my eventual goal is to drag him away from his family. That made me cry even harder and my husband had to spend a good half an hour comforting me before I finally stopped crying. He told me that he doesn't care what his family thinks because he knows me as a person

and as long as we know the truth, it doesn't matter what kind of lies they have told the rest of the family about me. Once I felt better, we were just going to put out a statement on social media and tell everyone the truth about why we had left. Until then, he just wanted me to relax and not think of this because his family is just being awful

simply because I had dared to have boundaries and they were not used to it. That's what the problem was and I did not need to worry about it because we all know it's not my fault. So he reassured me a lot, but one conversation with my mother undid all of that. Yesterday, she had called me in the morning, just to talk to me, and while chatting, I told her everything that had happened with my in-laws and stuff. After hearing the entire incident, I thought that she was going to take my side, but instead, she just stayed quiet.

I could tell that she did not agree with me, but I wanted to know exactly. what her thoughts were on this incident. So I told her to be honest with me and I really wish that I hadn't because she told me that she wasn't exactly surprised that things had turned out this way because even before I got married. She had told me a lot of times that I had to actually put in an effort to get along with my in-laws and I couldn't just stay away and still expect them to accept me as part of the family. If I could see so clearly that my husband's family were really attached to each other then I should have made an effort to assimilate and become one of them, but instead, I pushed everyone away and made my own space separately.

She told me that what I did was not inherently wrong, but it was still pretty silly of me to expect that in spite of my behavior towards them, they would still accept me as part of their family. Let me just make it clear that I have never behaved badly with my in-laws, but I had definitely made a separate space for myself because I thought it was important to have a separate identity. All I did was just not bother to constantly keep in touch with them every day, visit them every other day, and act like we were the best of friends.

But honestly, I did not think that was an acceptable reason to treat me so horribly because we had always had a normal relationship and they had never come across as if they didn't like me. And yet, I couldn't stop thinking about what my mother had said, even after I argued with her and tried to defend myself. So that's why I'm making this post right now because I want to ask Ida for not making an effort to connect with my husband's family? Update 1, so I told my husband about what my mother had said, and he told me that while he

respected my mom, she could be pretty weird sometimes, and she did have a problem with internalized misogyny and constantly expected me to act the same way that she had with her in-laws. For context, my mother had given up her entire life just because my in-laws did not approve of it. My grandparents were pretty orthodox and did not think that she had any need to work after I was born, so they made her quit her job and eventually, they started controlling. controlling every aspect of her life. My father, unfortunately, was not the kind of guy who took note of any of this. So even though he loved my mother, he never protested against any of this and went along with it because that's what he thought was normal since he had grown up

witnessing this kind of life around him. I guess that's why my mother thought that I should have made more of an effort to get along well with my in-laws because she had molded herself to be well-liked by her husband's family, and she thought that everyone should do the same. It came from a bad place and I felt like I could understand why she thought this way, but that was still no excuse to argue with me, especially when I was upset. Besides, I'm not my mother. I don't have to put up with the same things that she did and I am lucky enough to have a husband who wouldn't expect me to do so either.

So after discussing this with him, I felt better about the situation because regardless of what my mother had said, I knew that I was not at fault. and honestly, my in-laws have had a very weird idea about what a family should be like. They expected me to be present at every family dinner, which they hosted quite frequently, almost every weekend. And my husband and I live in the suburbs, so it's not feasible for us to drive all the way to their place every weekend. And more importantly, we also have to think about the kids and their lives.

We need some time to ourselves as a family as well, so I think that was pretty unreasonable of them. As for Annie, she lived really close to them, so it was more practical for her to be present for her parents at all times. My in-laws also expected me and my husband to call them every other day and spend hours on the phone with them, discussing our lives. They wanted family getaways every other weekend, family vacations every other month and you know, the works. I guess they never really realized that this is the real world, not a sitcom and most of this is not really feasible if we are being practical. So if they had such unreasonable expectations from us, they were just setting themselves up for failure and that's not our fault anyhow. It's not even like I had forced my husband to stay away from his family like they were making it out to be,

he did not want to spend as much time with them either because he had his own family to take care of now, and after 20 years, I guess they should have taken the hint. And now, coming to what happened at the wedding, that was not even about the family in general. I did not even think about the rest of the family before walking out, I did that for the sake of my son, and it was definitely not a move to sabotage her. But their decision to spread lies about me and tell everyone some crazy story about why we had walked out, was definitely a move to ruin my reputation and it could not go unanswered. So my husband and I decided to put out a statement like we had said we would.

And we still maintain what we said about not caring about what the rest of the family thinks about me, we really don't care about it. But the reason that it was important for us to put out that statement and let everyone know the truth was because they could not get away with lying about me. They had enough time to apologize to us, but they hadn't and now, we were going to let everyone know the real reason why we had not been present at the wedding. And honestly, I was doing this more for the sake of my son than for myself because he had been able to figure out that there had been some problem regarding him, I guess. I don't think we had kept our voices while we were

fighting with our in-laws and he might have picked up on some of the conversation and figured out that his aunt had probably not even wanted him at the wedding and we had walked out over that. So he had become very self-conscious about it again and I could tell that he was really upset, since he thought that this was all happening because of him. And I wanted him to know that this was not his fault. If there was anyone to blame for the situation, then it would be his aunt and his grandparents. The best way to do that would be just to put out the truth and now that it's done now, my husband and I can finally breathe a sigh of relief.

I don't know if people are going to believe this version and I don't know if it's going to create even more drama in our lives, but it was important for us to let everyone know what really happened and we are glad that we did. So whatever. Update 2, hi, so my in-laws have not reached out to me yet, but my brother-in-law did. I'm not surprised that Annie's husband decided to apologize to her because when we met him, he seemed to be a pretty decent guy and he lived up to that expectation. Obviously Annie considers us beneath us. herself, so she couldn't be bothered to apologize to us herself, but her husband decided to send us a message saying that he was willing to apologize on her behalf. We don't really count it as an

apology from her, but we appreciate the gesture from his end. Another interesting thing that happened was that a bunch of relatives reached out to us that they knew that there was something about the version of the story that my in-laws had been telling them, and they hadn't wanted to believe that I was capable of being so vindictive. So they had been waiting for us to put out a statement and the reason they hadn't contacted us to confirm the story was because they did not want to stir the pot. But now that the truth was out, they were all firmly on my side. I thought that this was really strange behavior because from what I knew, my in-laws had said that the rest of the family also believed that I had sabotaged Annie's wedding out of jealousy and they expected me to apologize

to her, but this reaction made me feel like my in-laws had probably been lying. So I spoke to one of my husband's cousins and he told me that most of the family had flat out refused to believe the version of the story that my in-laws had been telling everyone and they had been waiting for some clarification from our end. I guess my in-laws had been trying to manipulate us into believing that the rest of the family was also against us, and maybe that would cause us to apologize to Annie. What would they have gained out of it? Absolutely nothing apart from the satisfaction of having us flatter their already overinflated egos. I'm honestly really glad that I did not apologize to them and that my husband and I did not fall for the trap that they had been setting up for us.

I'm also really happy that most of the family is with me because that means that nobody is going to be speaking to my in-laws or any. I don't really mean to sound vindictive or vengeful, but they do deserve this. Anyway, I haven't spoken to my mother for the past couple of days after we got into that fight, so maybe I might even let her know what has happened so she realizes that she was wrong as well. Her, I'm still willing to forgive but regarding my husband and his family, even if I forgive them, I'm not sure that my husband will. And also, thank you so much for such kind words about our son and I'm sure that he's going to get better with time. It means a lot to us, so thank you. Update 3. Hey. So I finally spoke to my mother after almost three weeks of no contact,

and I've explained a lot of things to her. I can't say that we have sorted things out just yet. but we are trying to, we are working on it. All I can say is that both of us missed each other a lot and after my father passed away six years ago, I am all that she has so she wouldn't want to lose me, and neither do I want to lose her. She is willing to learn and change her ways and be more sensitive towards my feelings,

and I'm going to stick with her while she tries to become that person. Old habits are hard to unlearn and I can understand that, but I don't want to give up on her, so I'm going to keep on trying. I wish we could say the same thing for my in-laws though, but whatever, they don't even deserve this second chance. After we made that post, most of the family was with us and they refused to even acknowledge the existence of that post. From what I've heard, Annie even got into a huge fight with her husband because he had bothered to apologize to us, and she had even moved back in

with her parents for a couple of days, but then she went back to him. Honestly, I know it's going to sound very if I say it out loud, but I hope that that guy leaves and find somebody better. Because my husband and I think that he deserves better since he seems to be a decent human being and I'm sure it won't be a struggle to find someone better than Annie. But whatever, that's their choice to make, and we don't want to interfere in their lives anymore. We have gone completely no contact with them, we have blocked them everywhere that we possibly can and we have discussed what we might say if they apologize to us as well. My husband does not want to speak to them right now, so even if they do apologize to us,

we are going to maintain our distance. But that seems unlikely because all they have done so far is tried to mock us through social media. They have also posted a bunch of jokes and memes about narcoleptic people and I think it's a bit insensitive but whatever, that just shows the kind of people that they are and it does not reflect on us anyhow. Our children are most precious to us, and if this is the attitude that his family has towards them, we don't want anything to do with these kinds of people.

Speaking of the kids, they have been pretty down in the dumps recently. So my husband and I have decided that we are going to leave for a family getaway this weekend and it's one that is desperately needed because we have all been pretty stressed out of late. All of us definitely need some time off and family is all that we have, so we are going to make the most of the time that we have without kids before they grow up.