Reddit Stories - Secrets Unveiled Family's Insistent Sofa Drama ( Over 3 Hour Compilation ) - Episode 52

Episode Date: March 24, 2026

#redditstories #askreddit #aita #familydrama #sofa #secretsunveiled #compilation #emotionalSummary: In Episode 52 of "Secrets Unveiled," a family's ongoing sofa drama unfolds over three hours, revealing deep-seated secrets and emotional conflicts. The insistent arguments about the sofa lead to surprising revelations, showcasing the complexities of family dynamics and the impact of seemingly trivial disputes on relationships.Tags: redditstories, askreddit, reddit, aita, betrayal, familydrama, sofa, secretsunveiled, emotionalconflict, relationships, familysecrets, drama, compilation, storytelling, conflictresolution, familyissues, humor, entertainment, podcast, episode52Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reddit-stories--6816713/support.This episode includes AI-generated content.

Relax and enjoy the following compilation of stories. I hope you enjoy this story. My partner's devout parents insisted that I rest on a modest sofa due to our unmarried status, so in return, I offered them the same arrangement when they visited, which my partner is now disclosing. Everyone I was abusive after we broke up. I, M25, and my girlfriend, F-26, have been together for about 4.5 years now. Her and I moved in together just over one year ago as well. We were going to after her degree, but a falling out with her roommate happened led to us moving in together a year early.

Our relationship has been fine, we don't argue often, support each other's separate interests, and overall living together has been quite hassle-free. The only thing that has caused minor arguments between us is that she hates confrontation. For example, she works as a supervisor part-time, and where she works, works the people being hired for her to train are paid more than her. She hasn't gotten a raise of any kind in over a year which is illegal. She refuses to bring it up to the manager, or anyone at all. This is frustrating especially since she moved into my place, she hasn't been able to afford to put anything forth. I own the place myself, including pay for our car insurance, gas, and pay all

of the bills, except we go 50 to 50 for groceries, and it's been tough for how much I get paid, because it's not a lot, but shouldn't be much longer. Anyways, her family and I have been decently close, they helped me move a couple years ago, they helped her move in last year, and we visit them for all major holidays and visit decently often since we got together. Her family and I only don't agree on one thing, which is my religion. I am not religious, but they are quite Christian, and my girl, is non-practicing, unknowingly to them. So whenever I go over, they are over all the top

on everything, my girlfriend's words, not mine, on their religion, and constantly trying to force me to join them in their practices. And whenever I decline they say things under their breath like, oh, we will fix you, in a half-jokingly manner. But we have never visited long so it's never been much of an issue, usually only two to four hours at a time. They live around six hours away from us in another city. My girlfriend moved to my city around seven years ago, before we met, this is where I believe, and everyone else, that I am being an asshole, and the current issue, we stayed at their house for the first time overnight a couple months ago, and while there for around six hours, it was all going well till it got to around nighttime. They told me I should

get the couch ready, and I was confused as my girlfriend has a room sizable for the both of us, so I questioned I thought I'd just sleep with, girlfriends and they declined, saying that our relationship wasn't at that level in their eyes. I accepted, and did not want to argue, as it's their house and their rules. But I am quite tall, six feet six inches, and I grew a lot of that when I was young in an incredibly short amount of time, which resulted in a lot of medical back pain and issues for my entire life, and being unable to even do the sports I used to love. So I told them I wouldn't be able to sleep on the couch sadly, especially since it was barely bigger than a love seat, but would be more than okay purchasing a room at a hotel for myself or myself and girlfriend.

They also live within a couple minutes from some hotels, so I'd most likely be able to find the room close by, and they said I was turning it into way too big of a deal and to respect their beliefs, and after back and forth, they eventually said they give up and told me to sleep wherever I wanted and they were not happy, and went to bed themselves. I was going to purchase a hotel for myself, but my girlfriend got upset at me for attempting so I stayed on the couch, which resulted in zero sleep, and my back hurting for a couple days. But I was at least able to watch some good movies. I, nor they brought it up the next day and we eventually left. Since then I felt quite quilty as my girlfriend said I shouldn't have argued in their house.

Now months later, they were wondering if they could visit us and stay with us. My girlfriend and I agreed, of course. But before they arrived, I let them know that our couch wasn't quite big enough for two people, and they were very confused. I told them they would be sleeping on the couch, and they asked why. I told them that I felt they didn't respect our relationship to their standards, and I follow the rules under their house, so they should follow mine. They argued once again that since they are married,

their relationship is more respected than ours. I told them that them being married doesn't mean that for me, and if they are coming to my house they have to follow the rules of such too. They ended up hanging up and texting my girlfriend they would not come over until I would apologize to them, and was in the right mind. This led to my girlfriend and I arguing about this, and she agrees that their relationship is more respectable due to being married, and I told her that

marriage isn't what grants me respect for a relationship, it's the foundation it's built on, and how two people treat each other, and those around them. So, should I apologize, and allow them to sleep in the spare bedroom? My girlfriend believes I am being incredibly childish, petty, and unreasonable. Which I definitely agree I am being petty, but I still just don't feel right allowing them to do whatever they want in my house. If they don't respect my relationship with their daughter. They were happy and didn't say anything about us moving in, but feel weird in us sleeping in the same bed at their house which I found weird, but also never brought up. Update 1. April 22, 2025. Hey, it's been 20 days, and I sort of forgot about this, but Reddit

auto logged me in and reminded me, and thought I'd give an update, ask for more advice. So I read the comments, and it helped me realize from outside POVs that I was 110% being a petty asshole. I already sort of knew that, but hearing people with no connection to us confirm it helped open my eyes. I pulled my girlfriend aside the next day of my post and apologized, admitted I was being childish, petty, an asshole, and that I wasn't acting my age, I was more like acting a toddler not sharing toys. She agreed and laughed at my analogy, and forgave me as long as I called her parents, which was my next plan anyways. I called her parents, said roughly the same thing, and they agreed, did not laugh, and told me that they will find another date in the future and reschedule staying with us,

which I told them sounded great, and we hung up. All was well. But the comments, and some private messages helped me realize as well, that my girlfriend's not taking initiative was something I needed to seriously talk to her about and stop letting go if I planned on marrying her. I thought of how to say everything I wanted to, etc, etc, and a day or two later I decided to talk to her. I told her how much I love her, the person she is, and brought up many things she brings to our relationship to start things out. I then brought up how if we are going to work more in a healthy manner as we get more serious and

conjoined, things do need to be more equal between us. So I wanted to work on a compromise. I pay for everything, except 50 to zero groceries, I do the majority of the cooking and cleaning, etc., as you all know. She got quite upset at this, and was trying to say she doesn't have value in our relationship, but I tried to reassure her, and the conversation sort of ended there. I stuck my ground and two days later, I brought it up again once the dust settled, and while the conversation was. Rocky, we worked on a compromise that she will ask her boss about the raise she deserves, will begin doing more of the cooking and cleaning. Not more than before, but more than me. I asked her also if she would talk to her parents about the whole trying to

convert me thing and well. Baby steps, not going to happen yet. Anyways, why I still need advice as well. Once we had that last conversation I thought things would be better, but she's been cold. She's been only cooking really quick meals, like frozen stuff, mac and cheese, etc., and I tried talking to her about it and that I'd be happy to teach her the stuff I'd make for us, but she always says if you don't like it, make us stuff you do, which is, fair. But I know she's as good of a cook as me. I tried talking to her if things are stressing her out, she declines, I tried asking if anything's wrong, she declines, etc., etc., she's been cold. Our sex life took a nose dive from once every two days, only twice since my last post. I tried feeding into her love languages, she likes words of affirmation a lot so I've been complimenting her extra and reassuring her, but she seems uninterested.

I even tried asking her if I explained anything badly, or said the wrong thing about the conversations above, and she says no. What can I do to make her feel happier? She barely even greets me when I come home now. Edit 1. I am currently deciding to do two things as comments have suggested. A, spend a week doing everything for myself, by myself. Watch what I please, make just my own food, and finally take the classes I have been waiting for her to agree to, pottery, baking, etc., and just do my own thing and see how she treats it.

My main fear being that she will just see this as petty, and that I'm just to be. I'm doing the same thing as I almost did to her parents in my last post. B, try and talk to her one more time about all of this, which most likely she won't be receptive to. Tell her how I feel, what I want in a relationship and needs to change if it wants to work. I obviously fear she will break up with me for that, but if she does it's probably for the best. Edit 2, I think I will choose a try and give her a slight taste of her medicine, and then bring up how I felt. Maybe she will understand better once she sees me doing my own thing. Update 2, May 10th, 2025.

Hey everyone, it's been nearly three weeks since my last post and I tried using this account so I'd remember but. I forgot to update, my post gained a bit of traction and people have been requesting an update, so I felt I should oblige, and I will continue to update if anything else goes on, but I'm not sure after this update anything will be happening. I once again tried to read and reply to as many comments as I could, and I really appreciate everyone's advice. It helped me realize that things need to change or need to end. The way she has been treating me was not okay, and that I was essentially a doormat. It's hard to tell these things when you're with someone for years, and from my POV, when you

really want it to work. Now I did, as I said in my post-up date. Some people were suggesting, what if you did? what you pleased, and let her to her own devices. How would she react? So that is what I attempted. On Monday, the 21st I decided to wake up early for work, and make my own breakfast. By the time she got up, I was nearly done eating. She questioned why I made my own, and I told her you told me if I didn't like what you made, make something myself, she asked why I hadn't made her some, and I told her she can make her own. We sort of left it at that.

Throughout the next couple days, I watched what I felt like, when I felt like, I purchased a class to make pottery without even telling her, stopped asking her if she wanted to do stuff with me, and made all my own meals myself. After the first day she stopped really asking me anything, and just didn't care I was on my own. It truly felt like I just had a roommate that I shared a bed with. It sucked. A lot. But I was hoping it would show her how I felt. After about a work week of doing this, I was at my limit and couldn't really take it anymore. Neither could she apparently, since she was starting to make comments again. We were growing more distant, and we started arguing for most our conversations. On Saturday I prepared to sit down and talk to her one finale time about everything.

I woke up early and made my own breakfast, and as soon as she came into our kitchen she went off on me. yelling at me if I don't love her, if I am cheating on her, how shitty of a boyfriend, etc. I kind of just sat there and took it, I wasn't even done my damn breakfast. I sort of ignored her entire crash out on me, and I'm not sure if it calmed her or made it last longer honestly, but once she was done I told her we needed to talk and I'd tell her everything. And I think she thought I was going to admit I cheated or something, since she looked livid. I firstly told her I wasn't cheating and would never, then I brought up how she had made me feel for a long time now, how much she has learned to expect out of me, and that I truly do love her, and she might love me but it no longer feels like she cares. How her parents aren't going to convert me, how her not letting me discuss all this with her before was wrong, etc.

This dissolved once again into another fight, but it wasn't too bad. kind of just going back and forth for a while. We calmed down, and I told her it's best she left and we had some space. I felt kind of sick to my stomach doing that, I probably have an issue giving up on things, but whatever. She tried to tell me I was stupid, and how a decision like that would be horrible for me, how no one would love me the way I expect to be loved, or treat me the way I think I should be treated and no woman would want to be with a man she has to nurture like a child. I tried telling her it was just for some space and to not insult me, but she didn't seem to listen, so I repeated to please leave.

She asked where would she go? I told her to just go, and if she needs money for a hotel or anything to let me know. She left, somewhere I guess, and didn't request any money. She texted me a couple times throughout the night on that Saturday and I ignored it, till night time I told her I'd pack all her stuff and she can come tomorrow, and I turned my phone back on due night. disturb. Most her messages were just pointless insults. I woke up early on the Sunday and packed things really quickly, LOL, like I had to move, and my landlord would be here in 20 minutes. She didn't come till the afternoon, and when she did she said she was shocked I actually

packed things up, and if I was really serious about being this stupid and throwing it all away, and I said yes. Honestly, I think her just believing we were breaking up right now made it easier. I kind of just rolled with it. I did tell her I want to still talk and see if she can see where it went wrong. This obviously turned into another fight, but I just told her to get her stuff and leave. She stormed out, slammed the door and left. There was still a couple things, I couldn't pack everything, and I called a buddy of mine and asked him to stay at mine for the week and he said sure. She came over the next couple days, the first day she tried insulting me again saying I needed my buddy to keep me safe and shit, but after that it was just silent when she came to collect her things. By the time it was last week's end, it was really quiet, around the first, Thursday.

My buddy left after she got the last of her things. My house was quiet, I kind of hated it. We weren't really texting, but for some reason I decided to call her. She picked up. I asked her why things got like this, she said she didn't know, and was sorry. She apologized for everything, and said she wished she was better, and I said I wish I was too. She asked if she could come home eventually, and I told her I'd think about it. So I thought about it. I read my posts again, I read all your comments again, and I decided no. So I called her up, and told her that it's best we end this for good.

All she said was, are you serious? I said yes, and immediately hung up. She blew up my phone with a ton of calls and texts, but I put it on do not disturb. Last Saturday, her parents even texted me that I was horrible, and a bunch of other things. Since then it's been quiet for the last week. I don't know who she's staying with, where she went, who she came with to collect her or was driving her. I have tried not to think about it. I still have a lot of unanswered questions, and I'm sorry I can't give them to y'all.

So yay. It's been officially like almost a week without contact. There was probably time she could have caught me and convinced me to stay, but she kind of ended it herself in my mind. Update 3, May 14, 2025. Hey, it's been a couple days since my last post. People have been requesting I keep them updated to my dumb little drama, LOL, and this sort of of has turned into a diary for me at this point. I found some answers to one of the questions that people and I, have been wondering, and a bit of a mini update, that I will turn into long

tangents as per usual. I have been trying to learn Reddit formatting so my tangents aren't as bad to read. The primary one being who has she been driving with, staying with, and collecting her stuff with? Turns out it is a somewhat mutual friend of ours, who she knew prior to us dating from school, I know he lives alone, but I only ever really hung out with him maybe ten times total since meeting him multiple years ago, and all that group stuff. No, I haven't contacted him, and I don't plan on it. I found out through a different guy who is from that original friend group that is much closer to us.

Me now, when he visited him he was confused why she was staying there. I don't know or think they are anything more than friends, but I am still very confused why he of all people is who she's staying with. He actually lives farther from her work in uni than I do, and neither one of us, to my knowledge, were that close to him. The update is, I signed up for therapy, which will begin in a week and a half. I blocked her and her parents after she tried calling me again about three days ago. No idea what she was going to say, but the second I saw her. the phone ringing from her, I cancelled and blocked. Next it turns out she has been telling some of our mutuals that are closer to her that we

broke up because I was incredibly mean to her and her family, and trying to make her do everything in the relationship. That our friend she's staying with now helped her escape me. I found this out since I was talking, casually, to one of them online, she asked how I was doing, I told her I was doing fine just focusing on myself and trying to become a better person, she responded that's good. I would really hope so which led to the conversation of what I now know. She heard me out, but I understood she really wasn't believing me so I just left it. Finally, I was invited a couple days ago to a birthday house party, get together this coming

Saturday, which I know she's friends with two. I have no idea if she's going but I am tempted not to go if I find out she is, but I really like the dude. No idea what I should be doing in regards to that, or her telling people how we ended. Update 4, May 20th, 2025. Hey, it's me again, thought I should update since I can't sleep before work tomorrow, today was a holiday for me, and I've been thinking a lot. Since my ex has been telling people she had to escape the relationship and much more, I started texting some mutuals of ours, and kind of steer the conversation towards the and I said bits and pieces about how we broke up and such and most the replies were essentially well that's not what she told me. And really? It's up to them who they believe, but at least my side,

the truth is out there now, and not just whatever she's saying. I talked to my friend who stayed over while we were breaking up, and he's one of my few separate friends from her, and told me he backed me up if ever needed, which is nice. I did decide to go to the party, and overall it went fine. She was there, but she didn't make a scene like some people thought she would. She was always on the other side of the rooms with her girlfriends, and 100% were just staring at me, talking about me, but nothing worse than that. I didn't really drink, because I feared if I got drunk I'd make a fool of myself or go up and talk to her, LOL.

She did get very drunk, though, but did not try to talk to me or anything. On Sunday morning, though, I got a text from our good friend, host, and he told me I wouldn't be invited over anymore. I asked why, and he said that my ex requested it, since at the party she felt very unsafe since I was there and incredibly uncomfortable. I won't lie this upset me and I asked him if she had any proof I've ever done anything to her which he responded that I was victim blaming and stuff, so I promptly told him I sighed and the whole story and all he said was it's best we remain calm and you just don't come in the future. Which really sucks.

Since the party, I've noticed a lot of my followers go down on everything, I never had a lot anyways, and that a lot of people are taking her side in things, and are unfriending me, removing me as their friend on everything without saying anything. I never had many separate friends from her, just mutual ones, but she always had a lot of separate ones so this sucks. I have no idea what she's saying about me, our relationship either, other than from the one mutual friend before who said she had to escape the relationship and was mean to her, her family, but I think it's much worse than just that. No idea where to go from here. I hope you enjoy this

story. Spouse was a skilled chess competitor with a rating exceeding 2300. However, she is deceiving and intentionally losing matches for the sake of our 10-year-old child. I possess a peculiar and highly particularized. Issue with my wife and wanted some perspective on it. More than anything I'm just confused, really. I'll lay out the details. So my wife is really good at chess, like really good. She used to play in tournaments, she is a title player,

I think her peak fide rating was around like 2300-235-ish. She's good. I am. Not ha-ha. I enjoy the game, but I am nowhere near her, I have an online rating of 1120. Recently our 10-year-old son has started to show an interest in chess, and we have been teaching him the game. Before we began teaching him, my wife and I had talked and come to the agreement that it would not benefit him to go easy on him or let him win. It was better to play at our

real strengths and help him understand the game, help him learn to analyze his games, replay the critical positions and understand where he could make improvements or choose a different line. We were totally on the same page on this, full agreement. However, when my wife plays with our son, she has been letting him win. She is not playing anywhere near her real strength, and after about 30 games between them over the course of the last few weeks, he is a plus score against her, which is crazy For context, over the 16 years that we have been together I've had, at a guess, around 1,000 games with my wife.

I have never beaten her. Not once, not ever, not a single game. She just demolishes me, rolls me off the board. Once, about five years ago when she had the flu, I drew her in a perpetual check from a losing position and I was very proud of that, ha. I hold that as one of the strongest games I ever played. The only way I'm winning a chess game against my wife is if she falls asleep at the board and I win on time, she's just that far beyond me. So here's the odd thing.

When I try to talk to her about it, she just, lies to me. She flatly insists that she's playing to her full strength and all of his wins are legitimate, which is just simply, not true. At all. And before I get the suggestion, they're not. he's perhaps a prodigy and that the two of them are playing at a level that I can't understand, that's not the case. I have observed their games, he is playing like a beginner. I have plugged some of their games into an engine, and the engine just breaks down crying at how bad the play is on both sides. It's not a subjective interpretation, these games are objectively bad. My wife is simply

refusing to capture hanging pieces for multiple turns, intentionally making bad trades, making antipositional moves that make no sense, refusing to execute extremely simple combinations that even I can see. Like, my wife can see Maid in three, she can probably see Maid in 15, and the idea that she is missing those things is nonsensical. When I play my son, I crush him. I'm not blaming him, he's still learning the game, but he's still at the level where he can fall for the scholars made in making one move blunders, that's just where he is.

When I try to talk to my wife about it, she insists up and down that she's playing as well as she can, and she's so earnest that it almost seems like she genuinely believes it. I'm beginning to worry about some kind of mental illness, like I have no idea what is going on here. I've never had anything like this with her, normally we're very communicative, this is really out of left field for her and really very odd. I've tried talking with her about it multiple times now, but I feel like I'm taking crazy people. pills, I don't even know how to discuss this with her when we can't even agree on what is objectively happening in reality. It's like trying to discuss how to build a sailboat when you can't agree on what water is,

or if cloth and what are things that exist in reality. I don't even know how to start a conversation here. As it stands, my son won't play with me anymore because I always win and it's disheartening for him. If it was simply a case of my wife seeing that he needs a confidence boost and changing her mind about letting him win, I of course would have zero problem with that, I'm 100% on board, we can totally do that. I've said that directly to her, but she's dead set adamant that she's absolutely not going easy on him in any way. The issue isn't that she's letting him

win, it's that she's refusing to admit it. It's just so bizarre, she's just blatantly insisting that reality isn't real. I don't know what to do. Relevant comments, some longs ones flushing out info, someone blames him for crushing his son and being unreasonable in his playing. I'm not sure how you've read the post three times and failed to catch the part where this is my wife's idea. I don't have any desire to crush my son, I'm trying to help him learn. My wife is insisting that we play at full strength and do not let him win. She is continually, currently insisting this, now, even in the face of me suggesting that we could try a different way. She is adamant that she will not play below her strength, and is insistent that I don't play

below my strength either. She says that playing poorly will not help him learn. Then she is turning around, playing below her strength, objectively and unarguably, and then denying that she's doing it to my face. That's the issue. I'm happy to let him win, as I have stated multiple times all over this post. My only issue is that my wife insists that we absolutely must not play below our strengths, and then is playing below her strength in telling me that she's not. It's not a subjective determination, I'm not making it up, she's objectively not playing like a 2,300, she's not even playing like an 800. Yet she swears up and down that she's playing at her top strength. My aim is to understand why she's doing that. Go ahead, break your

son's spirit and tell him. Man, the projection is so strong in this thread, I don't even know why I'm here, you all have decided what I'm going to do without my input, you don't even need me, ha ha, ha. No, I would not tell my son. I would happily go forward in any way that we decide as parents, or honestly any way that my wife decided. She's a literal expert in this matter and I would follow her lead on whatever way she wanted to go forward. The issue is that she's telling me we're going to do A, and then she is doing B, and then when I ask about it, she's telling me I'm doing A. She doesn't need to admit it, it's objectively verifiable, if I had that desire I could prove it any time. But I don't. I'm not trying to win, I'm trying to understand what's going on

here. No, you probably don't want to believe it, Reddit seems to really love that drama of the evil, abusive husband. But I love my son and I care about his feelings, and I love my wife too. I want her to be well and happy, and I want to have good communication with her. I want to know what's going on with her and why she is saying these things, but I don't even know how to start talking to her about this because we can't even find a common reality to live in. People offer actual advice and baffle men at the amount of people misreading his post. I don't really understand it either, according to most of the comments I've read here, I'm an abusive, egomaniacal control freak that is destroying my family's happiness and they live

in fear of me. I'm waiting to hear about how I beat my wife with chains when she looks at me wrong and starve my son when he leaves his socks on the floor, H.A. I think there are a lot of really hurt people out there that project their own trauma and pain onto everything they see. I'd like to address those things, but there's simply too much and honestly it wouldn't do much good anyway. The people who are determined to see me as a monster see monsters everywhere they look. I can't help them. As to my wife, no I haven't played her recently, a few months at least. Perhaps that's a good idea.

It's very odd behavior for her, she is otherwise very trustworthy. My wife and I ordinarily have a very strong, loving relationship, and I am very close with my son, we play Minecraft together a lot. I have been really happy to be able to share chess with him, as it's something my wife and I both enjoy deeply. We really have a lovely relationship, I have had so many wonderful nights getting absolutely demolished by my wife, drinking and laughing and playing chess together. I'm no match for her, I never will be, but I'm not trying to be, I'm just trying to improve my own game and have fun. I enjoy the game, and her mind is endlessly interesting to me. My initial time teaching my son was very positive. I have shared some of the books with him that I used when I was learning the game,

I have taught him some of the very basic opening moves, showed him how to use chess notation, and how to go back over his games and analyze slash annotate them. We've watched some chess streamers together. That has been fun, and I can see his mind expanding and growing. But he only wants to play his mom now because, you know, he's 10 and he gets. gets easy wins, ha ha. I don't blame him, I'm just confused about my wife. I am more than happy to let him win against me too, it's just that's not what we had agreed. My wife and I agreed to a course of action, I followed through and she didn't, which is also fine, people change their

minds all the time, no problem. My only issue here is that she is insisting that it's not happening. It's like we both agreed to drive to France, we got in the car, and then she drove to Germany. And when I asked, hey, why did we come to Germany, I thought we were going to France. Her response was we are in France right now. So strange. My issue is not with beating my son at all, I'm happy to teach him in any way, and as I stated, my wife initially suggested the idea of playing at our full strengths, and as she is obviously an expert, I agreed.

I'm not trying to compete with my son or crush him in every game, I just want to be on the same page as my wife. So many people here simply can't even imagine a scenario where a father isn't taking sadistic pleasure in destroying their beginner child, it makes me really sad for them and how their lives must have been like. Many people here have taken issue with my the plugging games into an engine to prove that they're bad. I guess people outside the chess world don't really understand that engine analysis is extremely standard. It's a tool that every chess player who wants to improve uses on every single game they play. When you play regularly, you analyze literally every game, plugging games into engines is totally normal. But yeah, toxic and bad, got it. Ha!

I appreciate you addressing the actual issue. Your comment has been helpful to me, and I will consider what you've said. I'll try playing her and see how that goes. More responses from Mop clarifying. I believe this comment is really in good faith in trying to help. Thank you. I'll address your questions. Greater than she changed her mind when she saw you crush him again and again. Totally possible and zero problem if that's the case.

Although I wouldn't say I've crushed him over and over, we've played eight games, and after each game we have discussed what went wrong, different concepts, what you want to be doing with your pieces in general, center control, peace development, nights toward the center, don't make too many pawn moves early, etc. I'm not just smashing him and yelling in yo face sucka. And walking away, I feel the games we've had have been positive and instructive. But if she has changed her mind on this, I'm totally fine with it. She's the expert and I defer to her.

The only issue that I have is that she's insisting that she hasn't changed her mind and that she's playing at her full strength when she's just not. It's like if your wife was wearing all white clothes, but insisting that she only wears black and is wearing black right now. It's strange, and doesn't make sense. Greater than I think she doesn't trust you when you say you be okay with letting your son win. I can understand why you might generate this idea, but all I can respond to this is that I really hope that's not the case

and I don't know of anything that I would have done to cause that. My relationship with my wife and my son is generally very good. We are very close and loving, we communicate well. I don't believe that I've ever given her the impression that she wouldn't be able to trust me or talk to me. I'd be happy to let my son win games against me. I'm happy to go in any way we choose. It's just, we chose a way together, I went that way and she didn't. And that's fine too, people change their minds, there's nothing wrong.

with that. But she's telling me she didn't. Greater than she fears if she admits this to you, you will rub it in his face because it bothers you that you could never win against her. Again, these are legitimate questions that deserve answer. You don't know anything about me, it's reasonable to wonder these things. I would never rub it in my son's face. I would never want him to feel bad about himself, I love him and want to build him up. He's my guy, he's such a happy, sharp, cool kid, and I would never want to bring him down or make him feel bad. I understand why you would ask, but on this, just no man. I'm my son's biggest cheerleader.

As to the question about being bothered by my wife beating me? Not for a long time. I'll admit, when we first met when I was in my early twenties, it stung a bit, ha. I tried hard to beat her back then, but I very quickly realized that she's just on a whole other level from me. Like in the same way, it doesn't bother me that LeBron James can beat me at basketball either. It's not a personal failing of mine. Dude is just amazing at basketball at a level that vanishingly few people can ever even get near, that's just how it is.

My wife is like that with chess. I know that in the chess world, there's even lots of people who are better than her, but for me, she's LeBron man. I don't feel bad that I can't beat her, I just stand in awe of her skin. and feel happy that she chooses to share it with me. Greater than has this ever been a problem in the past? Is your ego sometimes getting the best of you? Do you have a history of letting things slip to make other people feel bad?

Again, understand why you would ask, but not really man. Ego has never really been much of a problem for me. People around me have always described me as a very chilled, laid-back guy. I'm not that guy. I appreciate the genuine attempt to help, really. I hope my answers to your questions have helped paint a more clear picture of my family and who I am as a person. Clarification on the word crush. In the chess community, the word crush is standard accepted indicating that the game was very one-sided.

For example, in every single game I have ever played with my wife, she has crushed me. It doesn't have as strong of a negative connotation, it's simply a shorthand, to indicate one convincingly with little challenge. I'm quickly realizing that that word paints a very different picture for people who are not familiar with this. People think it's weird to use a chess analyzer. They will tell you that engine analysis of every game you play is utterly standard. When you finish a game on chess.com, it immediately brings you to an analysis board where you can

replay the game move by move and see all the lines. When you play an OTB game, you write down each move. you and your opponent make, and when you finish you analyze the game the same way, either together with your opponent, as my wife and I do every time, or by using an engine. Analysis is arguably more important for improvement than actual play. I have spent hundreds of hours analyzing games with my wife over the years. There is nothing unusual in the least about tracking games, analyzing games, putting them through engines, this is all absolutely normal, and portraying it as overbearing or aggressive behavior is just a lack of understanding of the tool. Go take a look at

some of my other comments to get a sense of how I am teaching him. I think you'll see that I'm not crushing the life out of him. Sun analyzes the game too. Yes, in every single game he has played with both me and my wife, he has recorded every move, and then analyze the games with us after. The fact that you imagine that to be some unacceptably impossible task for a 10-year-old is pretty telling. In any case, you've clearly made up your mind that I'm a monster and nothing I say will change that. I won't respond to you anymore. Update, oh man. Strap in my babies, it's update time. Probably not the update that a lot of you were pulling for, but, well, hey, too bad for you.

Before I get going, I feel like I really have to shout out slash you slash peachy gizmo. Editor's note I include this at the end, my dude, you were so bang on with your comment. It's not even funny. Whatever it is you do, you should probably quit doing that and go be a psychologist or a mind reader or something, because you're flat out amazing. Crazy how perfectly you had it pegged, I'm floored. Another update, I took the advice that was presented in the original thread, and yesterday when my son got home from school I invited him to play a game of what I decided to call switch chess. Users in the last thread suggested that we play in a way where, at any time, my son can call out switch. And we flipped the board around, he gets the side I used to have and I get his.

We played, and it was great. It was super fun, we were laughing and having a great time. At the end, he fed me all his pieces and then called Switch. And chased my lone king around the board, it was hilarious. We were into our second game, laughing and yelling, he was up out of his seat dancing. When my wife got home, the second she saw us playing, I could tell she was immediately mad. She didn't say anything but she was clearly pissed, she was radiating anger. She left the living room and went to our bedroom.

I finished up with my son, told him we could play more later, and went to the bedroom to go talk to my wife. I asked how her day was and she just said fine. I just let the silence go for a few seconds and she asked how I was playing with him. I told her about switch chess and how he could flip the board around any time he wanted, and she immediately told me don't play with him like that, it's not good for his development. In fact, just don't play with him at all anymore, you're just going to. to fuck him up. Which was, you know, pretty hostile. I didn't say anything, just looked at her like what is going on. I could see her start tearing up, I moved toward her to go hold her

and she just went ballistic. Started crying and hitting me and screaming at me that I couldn't have chess, it's hers, it's not fair, I have everything and she has nothing and I can't take this from her, total fucking meltdown. I just had to let her go off for a while and let it out, then once she cried it out a bit I approached her gently and sat with her and we talked about it. Because we're married and we love each other. She told me she feels like our son loves me more than her. Which from where I'm standing is like. Crazy, our son adores his mom, but that's how she feels.

She said she has always felt that he liked me better, and she's jealous of all the things he and I do together in the close relationship that we have, and she feels like she doesn't have any point of connection with him. When he was younger, I took about a year of leave to stay home with him, and she said that in that time I developed a relationship that she can't have with him. She told me I have everything with our son and she feels like she has nothing, that we play Minecraft, we watch YouTube together, I teach him to cook, I have long conversations with him.

And she knew that if I started playing chess with him, it would just be another thing that she couldn't compete with me on, and that he would like me better like always, and would want to play with me more. She admitted that she wanted to sabotage me and make it unfun for him to play with me, so that he would only want to play with her and she could have something to bond with him on. That was really tough to hear. My son and I do have a close relationship, but I really thought their relationship was just as good. I had no idea she felt this way.

I never imagined she felt like she had to compete with me. For years, apparently, I felt so bad for her. She said she pushed me to agree that we wouldn't let him win so that she could be the fun one to play with, and that when I realized she was letting him win and questioned her about it. She just panicked and said that she was playing at full strength even though she obviously wasn't and it didn't make any sense. She said she knew it made no sense, but she just said it. And once it was said she felt too trapped to back away from it so she just kept saying it. She told me she's been terrified that I might start losing to him too, and that he would stop wanting to play with her.

I asked her why she didn't just talk to me about this and she said it's because she was too ashamed, that she knew that she was being hateful and fucked up, and that she's a horrible person but she couldn't help it. I just held her for a long time and told her she's not horrible at all, that I love her, that our son loves her, and that she's the most wonderful mother in the world. I really believe those things, my wife is amazing. It ripped my heart out to hear how hard she was being on herself. She just kept insisting that she was fucked up and evil and what she did was horrible. I told her I could completely understand why she did what she did.

To be honest, I'm still very hurt by her behavior, and honestly feel pretty messed up from the weeks of questioning my sanity, but of course I did not tell her that, L.O.L. Not the right time. We can talk about it later. I told her that I love her, and I fully understand how she felt. I told her I understand what a massive part of her life chess is and how she must have felt that it was being taken away from her. I told her I never want to compete with her on anything, least of all our son's love. I held her and reassured her for a long time. We had a pretty emotional night last night, but I think we're in a better place now. In the end, we decided that chess can be her thing with our son for now.

I'll hang back and just let them have their time. Maybe in the future when my wife feels more secured, I'll start playing with our son again. Later on, I'll talk with my wife about how she approached this, and how it made me feel, but for now I'm just happy she feels better and that she's not going crazy, and that I'm not going crazy, huh, because I was really starting to feel like I was going nuts over the past while, I want to address all of the people who told me I was an insane. Ego-maniacal, controlling monster, a shitty husband who loves bullying his wife, and a sadistic father who loves torturing his child. There were a lot of you.

I'm certain that nothing I've written here will change your opinion of me, I'm sure you will somehow find a way to continue to blame me for causing all of this, that I'm neglectful, and evil, and excluding my wife, or any of the other things that you project onto me, but I want to address you anyway. I want to tell you that I really feel for all of you, I truly hope you find peace. I can see how deeply you're suffering, how bad you're hurting. I'm so sorry that your lives have left you in a place where you can't even imagine a scenario where a father might actually love his child, where a husband isn't vicious and monstrous demon trying to destroy his wife's life. I'm sorry that's how you see the world. I want you to know that the world isn't always like that, and you don't have to keep living

like that. You don't have to keep living in that world where everything you see is evil and everyone is out to do harm. You don't have to stay there, you can come out. I really hope you get the help you need. Life can be better than that. I wish all of you well. My wife and son are playing chess right now. I'm really happy about that. Edit, to stem the absolute total wave of comments on this. Yes, I will get my wife into therapy. Thank you for your concern. I hope you enjoy this story. My child did not ask me to attend her wedding and decided to have her mother's partner escort her during the ceremony. This situation involves my daughter, Samantha Sam, a 24-year-old woman, but I must accept it. Explain our family dynamics before getting

into the reason for making this post. I, M-51, got married to her. to my ex-wife Judith F-49 when I was 24. We had known each other since we were kids and had always been together. Judith came from a very broken household and spent most of her days at my place. My parents treated her like family, and we gradually got close. I had always been in love with her ever since I was a kid. Both of us came from very humble backgrounds and built what we have from scratch. At 24, we got married. I was a normal trucker, I didn't have the money to afford college, and I wanted to make a living as early as I could. Judith didn't go to college either. She worked as a waitress in a local restaurant. Between the two of us, we were comfortable.

It wasn't as though we were starving, but we weren't extremely well off either. Then Judith got pregnant. She decided to quit her job and focus on raising the baby. It was a financial strain for us, but this was the best arrangement possible. We didn't have money for daycare at the time, and I was earning more than her anyway, so it made sense for her to stay home and for me to bring in the money for the family. I changed companies, got promoted, and had a bump in my pay, so by the time Samantha turned three, we were quite comfortable. Things were better back then, I won't deny it. The economy was in better shape, so we could afford a lot more on our limited income than anyone with the same or similar paycheck can today. We were lucky because, despite being

tight, it was mostly smooth sailing for us. The issue started when Samantha started school. Judith began getting bored at home and said she wanted to start working again. We had a long discussion and finally agreed that I would cut back on some hours and help around the house more, and she would get a job. This suited me because I had been working myself to death for all those years that Judith was at home. I worked 14 hours a day, six days a week, so the minute I came home, I was beat. I was very happy with the change because it gave me time with my daughter. And the new arrangement worked beautifully at first. I came home at a reasonable time and could spend time with Sam. I helped her with homework, and it felt like I was finally bonding with my daughter,

after all these years. Judith seemed happy with the change, too. She was a little aloof at home, but I understood that. Her life had been within the four walls of the house for years and years, and this was her time to go out and catch a breather. I was more than happy to pick up the slack so she could have time to herself. Little did I know that the entire time I was busy bonding with my daughter, Judith was busy looking for a way out of the situation.

When she got a job after all those years, it wasn't at her former workplace. It was at a nice cafe that was frequented by affluent people. I think being around the kind of crowd made her look down upon me in our living situation. Mind you, we weren't poor, but we also weren't loaded or bathing in luxury. She started pressing me to work more hours and make more money, but I didn't want to because I didn't see the need. I would much rather spend time with my daughter and wife than sleep. away for a few extra dollars that we could very honestly do without. I don't know why or when

it happened, but Judith gradually started resenting me and Sam. It all came to a huge blow a few months later when Sam was seven. Judith came home late, drunk as hell. She had developed an alcohol problem, and no amount of support or counseling could help her out of it. She came home, and by then, I'd lost my patience with her. For a long while, it had started feeling like I was a single parent. Judith used to come home late, and I was the one who had to do almost all the chores. I helped Sam with her schoolwork, made her braids, and got her ready for school. There were days when Sam didn't even miss her mother.

She had become so used to her absence. So that night was the final straw for me. I told Judith that she needed to get her act straight and be a mother to her daughter because I was exhausted from playing both dad and mom to her. That's when she dropped the bomb. She told me that she wanted a divorce and that she was having an affair with someone. The next few days were a blur. I won't bore you with the details.

She met someone at the cafe, they hid it off, and they'd been having an affair for the past year. The guy, Stephen, now M-60, was loaded, and she left Sam and me for him. It hurt like hell, but at least I knew my daughter was safe, and that was all that mattered. She did not fight me for custody. She didn't even want Samantha. I just told her she was allowed to do whatever the hell she wanted, but I didn't want her influencing Sam. That worked perfectly for her because her new boyfriend wasn't good with kids anyway.

It was as though she had flipped and become someone else altogether. She was not the woman I married, and she was not the mother of my daughter. Since then, it has been only Samantha and me. Judith breezes in and breezes out as and when she wishes, with expensive gifts for Sam to compensate for what she could never do emotionally and physically. But the entire job of raising our daughter fell on me, and I tried to do it as well as I could. It was tough, but I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. Now on to the main issue. Sam has been in my care since her mother left. It wasn't ideal for either of us, but it was what it was.

I tried to be there for her as much as I could. I never missed a single school meeting, didn't miss her sports events, and drove her to most parties. I tried my best. I knew that I couldn't do much for her financially, so I tried to be a parent and be there for her. I tried to be her friend, I tried to create an open environment at home. I'm not saying that I haven't made mistakes, but I've always tried not to, and tried to do justice as Sam's only parent. Sam, however, loved being with Judith. Judith married into money, and lots of it.

So she used to compensate with gifts and extravagant things that I couldn't afford. It made me feel bad because I knew I could never give my daughter what Judith was giving her, but at the end of the day, Sam was happy, and that's what mattered the most to me. However, I didn't realize that somehow, all this was influencing Sam poorly. She preferred her mother over me because she valued the material things that she had. she got as gifts more than the everyday life that she and I shared together. Initially, I let it go because she was a kid, and any kid would love her shiny new toys more than everyday things.

What I didn't realize, however, was that this was becoming a part of her personality, and that this would carry on into adulthood. When she turned 18, she told me that she wanted to be a hairdresser, so I enrolled her in a cosmetology course. She worked really hard, and I was very proud of her. She got her degree and started working very soon. Ever since then, she would try and avoid meeting me. I didn't think it was avoidance at first.

I just believed her when she said she was busy, and I respected that. She was starting out her job, and the first few months can be rough, so I cut her some slack. I missed her, I missed just the two of us hanging out together, but I didn't express it to her because I didn't want her to feel guilty. She was her own person, and she had every right to live a good life. What else had I worked so hard for? But gradually, it began to dawn on me that she was deliberately creating distance between us. I tried to reach out a couple of times and even asked her if I had done something wrong,

but she never disclosed anything to me. We weren't estranged, but we also weren't very close. I guess that's part of growing up. You drift away from your parents. It just hurt me a lot because she was all I had. I never dated after my divorce from Judith. I was too busy taking care of Sam and working that I never found the time to date. I also didn't want to create a complex family dynamic and didn't want her to have any resentment or complaints towards me. She was my only priority, and I was happy with the way my life was.

My duty to my daughter was much more important to me than the loneliness I felt. However, when she started growing distant, I just felt as though I had been left behind, and that everyone had started new lives but I was still there. All this while, I didn't know she was back in touch with her mother and had begun preferring her over me. Well, Sam is 24 now, and she got married two days ago. In the days leading up to the wedding, a lot of drama happened, and I acted in a way that was very uncharacteristic of me.

A few weeks before the wedding, the wedding is all paid for by Sam and her husband Mark. Sam told me that while I was a very important part of the wedding, she did not want to do the walking down the L thing. That hurt me a lot because I had been looking forward to this moment all my life. I tried not to react poorly and just asked her why she wanted to remove this from her wedding, and she told me she felt this was a very patriarchal tradition and she did not believe in it. I told her that I respected her wishes and that I would be there for her in whatever capacity she wanted me to be. Two days later, to my absolute horror, I found out that there was in fact going to be a walking

down the L thing, but not with me, her mother's boyfriend, the guy she cheated on me with, was going to be walking her down the aisle. I wasn't supposed to find out. It was an accidental slip-up by Mark, but the damage was done. I asked Samantha if that was true, but she denied it. I kept pestering her, and she finally admitted that yes, she had asked Stephen to walk her down the L because he wasn't a middle-class piece of junk like me. I don't think I have ever felt as bad as I did in that moment. Even my wife's infidelity didn't hurt me as much. Mark tried to take the

blame on himself because even he realized that she had said a lot. He took me aside and told me that his family was a bunch of prudes, and it was only to assimilate with them that Sam had asked Stephen to walk her down the aisle, but I was done. I thanked Mark for taking her side, but I also told him that I would not be attending the wedding at all. He said that would hurt Sam a lot because she loves me, but I said that I could not stand to be disrespected by her any longer. I think Mark understood where I was coming from and didn't ask me to budge or change my mind. I think I downed an entire bottle of whiskey that night. I was miserable and don't remember much of what happened. I blocked Samantha everywhere and told her that there was no relationship

between me and her from now on. I don't know if she responded to that, and I don't even have the heart to unblock and check because I feel she doesn't love me at all, and it doesn't matter to her that I'm not a part of her life. That was the last I spoke to her. Samantha got married yesterday. I didn't attend, obviously,

but I got a call from her early in the morning, and she was hysterical. She called from her friend's phone, which is how I could talk to her. She was sobbing continuously on the call, and it took me a long time to even understand what she was saying. She just kept saying that her mom had screwed up and she needed me there to salvage the situation. I asked her what had happened, and she told me that Judith showed up drunk, and by drunk,

I mean sloshed, and she was interacting with Mark's parents. Now, the issue is that Mark's family is very prim and proper, and they do not appreciate any kind of crass behavior. Apparently, that was the reason I was not allowed to walk her down the aisle because I wasn't sophisticated enough. Anyway, so Judith came in drunk and caused a huge scene, which has led to a situation where Mark's parents are saying that they will not be attending the wedding. Sam tried to tell me what exactly Judith had done in between sobs, but I couldn't understand her, and I was frankly not very interested. She had hurt me beyond repair, and there was no going

back this time. I was done being her doormat, and I was done running around after her and cleaning her mess when she was so embarrassed by me that she took away my right to walk her down the aisle. I told her that I was sorry she was going through this, but at this point and moving forward, I could not offer her anything more than words. She had chosen her family, and now she had to live with it. I told her she was worried about me embarrassing her and was confident about her upper-class mom, but that has ultimately backfired, and she only has herself to blame. I told her that I would not be coming to her rescue and that she was free to do whatever she wanted to. I will not lie, it killed me to say this. It felt as though I had ripped my own heart out of my chest,

but I had to do this. I had to enforce my boundaries. I couldn't let her step on me. I had done everything I could for her. I had lived my entire life trying to make hers better, and she only saw me as something to use and feel disgusted and ashamed about. I cannot take it anymore. When I told her I would not be helping her, she started screaming into the phone, telling me that if I didn't save her this time, I was no father of hers. I just responded that I thought I was no father of yours anyway, given how you had been treating me, and I disconnected the call. She called me again from the same number 15 minutes later, but I did not respond. I was crying, I don't remember the last time I cried so much. I wanted to be there for my girl so much, but she had taken my heart and her.

out of my chest and trampled on it as if it were nothing. And my self-respect did not allow it anymore. But now, I'm feeling that maybe I was too harsh with her. I should have gone. I don't know what has happened. I haven't reached out to anyone, and Sam hasn't reached out to me either. I think maybe I was in the wrong for abandoning her when she needed me. I am just so confused, and now I don't know what to do or how to set things right. Edit. A lot of people were asking me why I had such beef with Judith after all these years. Well, if your heart has never been ripped from your chest, spat on, and tossed aside like garbage, you wouldn't know. I know that she and Stephen have stayed together for 15 years now and that it

has been a long time, and maybe they are the real deal, but guess what, I don't care. I don't care if they are Starcrossed lovers destined to be together. What I care about is that she chose to cheat on me and be seen. secretive about the entire thing rather than do this the mature way. What I care about is that she stopped being a mother to our daughter, so I had to raise her myself because her new man was giving her the promise of a luxurious life. And what I care about is that she used her boyfriend's money to steal my daughter from me, and she was successful in doing so. It is because of Judith that I live a miserable life, and no, I will not be the bigger person and forgive her for it. Never in a million

years. Call me petty, call me crazy, or call me a jerk, it doesn't matter. I gave my life to her, and I got nothing in return. And to all those who think she and Stephen are a love match, it is far from true, and that is exactly what led to the entire scene at Sam's wedding. Judith arrived drunk out of her mind. And before going to meet Sam, she went and greeted Mark's family. Samantha did not know she had arrived and only learned about the situation when the damage had already been done. In a drunken state, Judith started flirting with Mark's dad in front of Stephen and Mark's mom. It was apparently very embarrassing, and she was practically throwing herself at him. At first, everyone tried to ignore it, but then things got out of hand

quickly. Stephen came over to salvage the situation, and he had to physically pull Judith off of Mark's dad. Judith was screaming at the top of her lungs, telling Stephen to let her go. He was embarrassed too and kept apologizing, but a huge scene had already been created by then. This is when Sam entered, but this was not all. Stephen and Judith then started fighting. As in, Judith started the fight. She accused Stephen of being a hypocrite and said that if he was allowed to have affairs with other women, she should also be given the same liberty. Stephen's jaw dropped. He asked her to keep quiet, but she didn't listen, and it ended up being a huge verbal blowout between the two of them. From what I heard, and by that, I mean what Judith

revealed to the entire wedding party in her drunken stupor, is that their relationship has been having a lot of issues. Stephen keeps cheating on her with multiple women, and she knows all about it but tries to act nonchalant or ignorant because, at this point, she cannot afford to break up with him. He has given her a life of comfort and luxury, and she cannot trade that at this point, which is why she keeps tolerating his infidelity. She has also been pushing him to get married, but he doesn't want to, God knows why. Whenever some kind of fight breaks out between them, he placates her by giving her gifts and also by buying stuff for Samantha. Judith unloaded all of her marital issues right there. Stephen kept telling her that this was neither the place nor the time for them to

talk about their issues, but to no avail. She went on an entire rampage, beating his chest, grabbing his hair, and the like. The situation was so bad that had she not stopped, they would have had to call the police. Stephen has marks on his face from all the scratching, and in his defense, he pushed her. She was so drunk that she fell on a few chairs and on top of a guest from Mark's side. All this drama is happening at the wedding venue, where almost all the guests have arrived. The entire spectacle was seen by everyone. Mark's parents are embarrassed to the core, and they are on the verge of walking out because they could not deal with this humiliation. They had a lot of friends and family attending the wedding, and to see all this family nonsense

was something they just could not fathom. It was at this point that Samantha called me and asked me to come and rescue her, and I said no. By the time we had spoken and cut the call, Stephen and Mark's parents had left. Mark ran after them and tried to get them to come back, but to no avail. A few of the guests from Mark's side left as well. They're probably going to go no contact with Samantha, and to be honest, I don't really blame them. Judith just sat down on the goddamn floor and started howling, saying how she has ruined her life and can't believe she is going to live her years out with a cheater while her daughter gets to marry a nice boy. So I honestly feel that all this wasn't even an accident or a drunken mistake. I genuinely believe that Judith is so

narcissistic that she planned this to deliberately sabotage her daughter's happiness just because she never got that happiness herself. The wedding was an absolute disaster, and Mark is pissed. He hasn't been talking to Samantha, and she is miserable. She sent me an email detailing everything that happened and apologizing for her behavior. But the apology also came with the blame that I should have come when she called me and that it was my duty as her father to have been there, taken her side, and tried to bring things back to normalcy. I haven't responded to her, and I don't think I will, even though I have a lot to say. But there's no point in saying anything because I know she isn't going to understand my perspective and my feelings, so it is time for me to protect myself.

She has hurt me enough, and now I need to take some space for myself. I have been selfless all my life and thought about others and never put myself first, but I haven't received the same in return. So now it is time for me to prioritize myself. I might just end up telling her that I need some space and that I will get back in touch with her if I want to, but as of now, that is the most that I can do. I don't think I will be updating anymore because I want this chapter of my life to be over. I want to bang my head against the wall in grief every time I think of what happened between Sam and me. But I think it is karma that has come to bite her in the ass, and on the most important day of her life, too. She was worried that Mark's parents would not like me,

which is why Judith and Stephen were her preferred parents. But at the end of the day, they are the ones that humiliated her and embarrassed her so much that she can't even look at her in-laws anymore, and it was me that she had to run to, to help salvage the situation. Update 1, to all those who were hoping for a dramatic update, I am sorry to disappoint you. No jaw-dropping event has happened. A lot of you were hoping and wishing that Mark would leave Samantha, but that hasn't happened either. They are still very much together. If there are disagreements between them, I do not know, and I do not wish to.

Those are issues between a husband and a wife, and they should stay that way. I do not mean to intrude in their lives, and I know I am not welcome anyway. And even if I were, I don't want to be a part of Samantha's life anymore. I have done my duty to the best of my ability, and now I am taking a step back. I did not respond to her email. I thought that I would, but I realized that even an attempt to ask her to give me space and respect my boundaries would be met with blame and criticism from her, so it was literally pointless. In other news, I have joined a biker club in my town, and we meet once a week for drinks.

I have made a couple of friends there, and it feels good to have people to talk to. One of the guys forced me to make a dating app. He's a young lad, but he seems good. They're all younger than me, so they try to keep me aware of the new things that youngsters do. It is quite entertaining. They've made a Bumble profile for me and keep asking me if I have any matches or not. One of them is actually coming over today to teach me how to talk to women and get dates for myself. I feel a little nervous if I'm being honest, ha.

I haven't done this ever in my life, but it is also exciting. I have friends, I have a social circle, and I have something to look forward to. I would much rather have my daughter with me and my family back, but I guess we don't always get what we want, and I need to make my peace with that. If I do end up scoring a date, I will let you know. Please leave some tips in the comments for this old man. Update 2, I have my first date today. I met her on a dating app. It's with a woman named Casey, fake name, obviously.

She got divorced a couple of years ago. Her husband was apparently a huge mama's boy, and her ex-mill kept interfering in their dynamic. She finally had enough and said goodbye. Nothing is serious between us right now, and we are only meeting for a couple of drinks. We have been talking to each other for a while now, and I kind of like her. It feels good to talk to a woman and get attention. I have been starved of this feeling for most of my life. Even during my marriage, Judith wasn't really the kind who was very expressive or loving,

so this is a good and surprising change for me. Gosh, I feel so stupid, having a crush at the age of 50. But she's a beautiful and kind woman, and I wouldn't mind her company at all. I hope it goes well with her. My friends have all been preparing me for the date, and they are even more excited than I am. They came over last night to finalize my outfit for the date. I didn't even know it was that big of a deal, but then again, I am practically ancient now. I have been given a list of dues and don'ts to memorize.

All my friends are waiting for the date to be over so I can give them the details. I am excited too. It feels nice to feel young again, to have friends, and to have a life that is not just responsibilities, but also fun. I miss that, and I hope this feeling lasts for a long time because I have craved this for as long as I can remember. I hope you enjoy this story. Revealed my father's infidelity during my parents' silver jubilee celebration, as they labeled me a maladjusted underachiever, and my favorite sibling excluded me, leading to my whole kin attributable. for contributing fault to me. Me for ruining their lives. So I, 24F, recently exposed my dad's affair at my parents' 25th wedding anniversary party, simply because I was not invited, and right now,

my family hates me because they think that I humiliated them out of spite. They are not entirely wrong, but I have my reasons. Firstly, I was not invited because it was my golden child's sister who hated me, who was organizing everything. She's 22, and doesn't have a very much. She's 22, and doesn't have any degree or expertise, but my parents still went ahead and invested in her, so she could start her event management business. As far as I know, it's mostly her friends and a few relatives who have hired her for small gigs here and there in the past year, so this was her first big gig. And she hates me, she always has, so obviously she didn't invite me. Then, when one of my cousins who I am close to ask me what I would be wearing to the party, that's when

I realized that I hadn't received an invitation, and when I confronted my person, parents about it, they told me that the invitations had been finalized by my sister but even they agreed that it was not a good idea for me to be there. At first, they tried to beat around the bush and be polite about it, but they were just implying that because I struggled with anxiety, I didn't deserve to be at the party so I naturally got upset with them and started arguing about how unfair and disrespectful they were being. And then my mom snapped at me, always the first one to defend my sister, and told me that it wasn't their fault that I was a dysfunctional fool with so many mental health problems and if I wanted to be there at the party, maybe I should have just

been normal, but I wasn't, and they didn't want me humiliating them in front of so many guests with my awkwardness. Then she hung up on me, and my dad didn't say a word in my defense. Not that I expected him to either, because things have always been like this in my family. My mom prefers my sister over me, probably because they're very similar, and my dad is the kind of guy who really doesn't have a spine at home, so whatever my mom says is what goes. And if my mom believes that my sister deserves to be treated better than me, then that's what's going to happen. Right from when I was a kid, I knew that my mom liked my sister better, and maybe my dad didn't want her to be so openly biased, but he could never stand up to my mom. And so, he never said anything to her about her behavior either, and neither did he try to console me.

So it shouldn't have come as a surprise to me, but when he didn't say anything recently, I was a bit annoyed because a couple of months ago, I had accidentally found out that he had. had been cheating on my mom and he knew about it, so I thought that maybe because of that, at least he would know that he owed me something for my silence on this matter, because I was keeping a secret for his sake. So the least he could have done was stand up for me and speak in my defense, but even then, he didn't. This is why, after that conversation, I decided to teach my mom and listen once and for all and I asked my cousin for the venue, sent the address to my dad's affair partner, and requested her to show up on that day and expose my father. It wasn't that hard to convince her, she had been pretty upset with him for the

past couple of months anyway, and that's why on the day of the party, she ended up going and telling everybody the truth about my parents' marriage, how it was just a total sham, and how my father had been having a fare with her on and off for the past eight years. So this is basically what happened and I can provide more details if it's required, but for now, I just need to know if I did the right thing or not. Because my family has been humiliated in front of everyone. My mom cussed out my dad pretty badly, she threw a temper tantrum at the party and had to be dragged out so she could be calmed down. And after that, when she got home, she didn't let my dad enter the house either so he has been staying in a hotel. My dad obviously knows that I'm the only

one who could have put her up to this, so he told me that he was very disappointed in how I had chosen to deal with the situation, and he said that I had been extremely petty and that I had basically just proved my mother right, because I did eventually end up humiliating the family, only out of spite, and I used somebody else's emotions to hurt my family just to get back at them for personal reasons, which was a pretty low thing to do. And now, I feel weird about it, so Ida for having my dad's affair partner expose him at my parents' 25th anniversary party because I hadn't been invited? Edit, for those who asked for more information, here it is. First off, the woman that my father had been having an affair with is the mom of one of my very

close friends from high school. That's how my dad met her in the first place. He was the one he used to attend my parent-teacher conferences because my mom couldn't be bothered to do anything for me. It was all about my sister for her. Anyway, that's how they struck up a friendship at first, and then they started an affair. My friend's dad had passed away when she was little, so at least her mom was single. And a couple of months ago, I went to a restaurant a little out of town for a date, and that's where I saw my dad with her. When I parked my car in the parking lot, I saw my dad's car there, and in there, the two of them were making out. They broke apart when they spotted me standing outside, but it was too late.

I had already seen everything. I obviously got a bit freaked out at first, but then, my friend's mom sat me down and explained everything to me. Basically, she told me that they had been seeing each other for the past eight years and had planned on waiting to tell me about it after my dad had told my mother, but since I had already found out, it was better that I knew the whole truth. She was the one who told me that my dad did not love my mother at all. He could barely even stand the woman, and he had only married her because of pressure from both their families to get married after she got pregnant with me while they were dating. Apparently, he had always regretted that decision, and he intended to get divorced from her after he had helped my sister settle her business

and build a life away from the two of them. Originally, it was supposed to happen after my sister went away to college, but since that was not happening and she was still staying with the two of them, they had decided to delay it for a bit. But eventually, it would have to be done, and since I had already found out, they could only ask me to keep a secret from them. So that's how I found out,

and I had also been told that apparently, after my sister's business started taking off a bit, my dad would talk to my mom about the divorce, and once everything was finalized, the two of them would get married. It was clear that my friend's mom was very serious about my father because she was doing all the talking, but my father hardly even said anything, not even a confirmation or a nod of the head. I agreed to keep their secret, but I also said that if anybody asked me about it, I would not deny anything.

Thankfully, nobody did ask me anything at any point. Nobody even had a clue as to what was going on. But then, a couple of weeks ago, my friend's mom, started contacting me to ask if my dad had said anything to his mom, or if my dad was speaking to me. I'm not very close to my parents, so I genuinely had no clue what was going on, and I couldn't tell her anything. She ended up telling me that my dad had been giving her the cold shoulder for the past couple of weeks and she was very confused as to what was going on because for the past eight years, he had constantly been telling her that he would leave his wife

after his younger daughter was well settled in life. And right now, she knew for a fact that my sister was working on her business and it's not like she constantly needed parental guidance anymore. She's in her 20s now. So she was trying to get my dad to talk to my mom and start the process, but he had started giving her silent treatment and she was just confused so she had tried to talk to me about it because I was the only other person who knew. Unfortunately, I didn't know anything, but from that interaction, I gathered that she was not exactly happy with the situation with my dad. So when I reached out to her and told her about the wedding anniversary and the party and stuff, and by then she was pretty upset so technically I did take advantage of that to get back at my parents.

I wasn't above that, but then again, it wasn't like I forced her to do anything. I just gave her the idea and she acted on it so she was equally as involved. Anyway, this is how the situation unfolded, and yeah, that's it. Also, my friend doesn't know. His mom had requested me not to tell him because she believed that it would be better coming from her and I do think that it would be more appropriate coming from her. I think by now, she must have told him, but I don't know that for sure. Anyway, if she hasn't, in a couple of days, I'm going to tell him myself.

Update 1, hi, thank you to everybody who commented, whether it was good or bad. Before I get into the update, a couple of things in my defense. First off, a lot of people had a lot to say about the fact that I hadn't told my mom anything about the affair and instead of being honest, I had chosen to help my dad cover up. To that, I would just like to say that it was not me covering up for my dad, it was just me staying out of it. Besides, my mom and I have never had a good relationship, she has never liked me, and because of that, even my sister didn't like me. Hate is always a learned behavior, and she learned to treat me badly because of my mom. From when she was a kid, my sister could see that my mom never really

gave me any importance and was always yelling at me for some or the other reasons so she thought that she could treat me the same way. But of course, I was not going to take crap from my younger sister, so I would hand it back to her and we would end up fighting and that's how she started hating me. And my mom never seemed to care about that either, so why would I care about this woman? This woman who had literally never cared about her first child and instead, had always treated her badly. I don't think I did anything wrong by keeping this a secret from her, and even if I did do something wrong, I hardly care about it because I feel like she deserves this. I don't care what anybody else thinks. This is karma, plain and simple. And now, coming to the situation at the party,

I do agree that I created it. My dad's girlfriend never would have found out about the address if I hadn't forwarded it to her, so I played a huge part in it, but then again, it's not entirely my fault. She wanted to go, she wanted to show up and create a scene, so she did. All I did was provide her with the means to do so, I didn't force her to go. And if I go back a bit further, I didn't force my dad to have an affair either if he was trapped in a marriage with my mom and didn't love her. Neither did I force him to give her the cold shoulder and turn her against him. So yeah, I do agree that I had a huge part to play in this, but I think it's really stupid to blame me for all of it.

Besides, they are the ones who have always treated me badly, so why should I feel bad for serving them with some karma? I've always tried to be a good daughter to both of them, I've always tried my best to make sure that I am somebody that my family would be proud of. And it has never been enough, and I know that it will never be enough. They have never appreciated me, so I don't feel sorry about anything that I did. Yeah, it might have been humiliating for them, but I don't care. It was very insulting for me too when they said that I was a dysfunctional failure as well, especially considering the fact that I'm really not. I do struggle with anxiety, I am not good with crowds and I do get a bit awkward,

but I don't think that's humiliating for anyone like they were making it out to be. As for the failure bit, I don't even know what they were talking about, because as far as I know, I'm a normal and relatively successful person from my age. I have a stable job that I love and it pays well too, I don't rely on my parents for money at all, not that they would help me if I did, and I'm completely independent. I think at my age, it's good enough, so I don't know who my mom thinks she was calling a failure. Maybe I don't have a business like my sister does, but I also don't have parents who would support me if I started something of my own.

So, that's a pretty big difference. Now, coming to what's happening right now. I've only been speaking to my cousin about what's going on in my family since obviously my parents are not going to be speaking to me. She's my aunt's daughter, and of course, my aunt, being my dad's older sister, knows everything that's going on. And by extension, my cousin also knows everything since she's 21 and goes to college nearby, so she's still staying at home now. Anyway, she told me that last evening, my dad actually moved in with them temporarily because he couldn't stay in a hotel indefinitely and he had no idea how much longer my mom is going to keep him out.

So he is staying with them currently and clearly, my mom is still very upset with him, and I don't blame her. She should be upset with him. I would probably be considering divorce right now if I was in her place, but I don't think that's on the table for them at the moment. At least not from whatever my cousin has told me, because apparently, my dad is trying to get back with her and my mom is just angry and is holding out on everything. But the topic of divorce has not been approached yet, at least not by my mother. She is just cussing him out every time that they get on phone calls

and she's just taking out her frustration on him, but I don't think she has any intention of leaving him. So it's a pretty situation at the moment, and nobody has any idea how it's going to turn out. Least of all me, because I really don't understand how, even after everything that has happened, my mom can even think about staying with him. But anyway, that's her call.

to make, not mine, so I don't have anything to say about that. Also, I did speak to my friend, and as it turns out, he had no idea about his mom and my dad. So I told him the truth, didn't spare any ideas, and then I apologized for not telling him earlier because I just didn't know how to put it across and also because I didn't want to get involved. He seemed to understand, but he was in shock, which was also expected. So I hung up and gave him time to process everything, I didn't know what else to do. Anyway, at least that's out of the way, I told him and now, he can confront his mom. I kind of feel bad about the mess that everybody is in right now, but I think I have kept

these secrets long enough, I don't need to do this anymore. I did try to stay out of it, but that didn't get me anywhere, so now I'm just being honest and telling everybody what they need to know. If that turns out to be bad for them, that's not really my problem. I'm done with this. Update 2, hi, so a bunch of things have happened over the past two weeks, which was when I posted my last update. So, apparently, my parents are headed towards a divorce now. It took her a while, but my mom finally decided to file for a divorce and she spoke to my dad about it.

She told him that she just couldn't do this anymore and that after finding out that she had been cheated on for eight years, she couldn't pretend that everything was fine and go back to living her life out with him anymore. My dad was pretty much devastated, which is strange, because from what I had been told by his affair partner, he never loved my mom. He had always felt trapped with her and he only married her because she was pregnant with me, stuff like that. But my cousin told me that the day that my mom finally told him that she would be filing for a divorce, she had come over and my dad had literally broken down crying. He had begged her not to do this, he had promised her couples counseling, he had promised her that he would let her go through her phone and stuff and

keep him honest, all that jazz, and he had repeatedly asked her not to leave him. I don't understand how he could cheat on her for eight whole years, set false expectations for another woman, and then expect my mother to stay. I had always hated my mom but right now, I think I dislike my dad even more. This family really is a hot mess and not one that I want to be a part of. The one good thing that came out of what I did was at least now, my mom would leave my dad, something that should have happened a long time back. My sister is not speaking to him anymore either, although he is the one funding her business, but I don't think she's worried about that, because I know that my mom is going to demand alimony and of course, my sister is just going

to rely on my mom after that. Anyway, that's the situation with my parents, and I'm sure that they're blaming me for it. I don't know about my mom, but my dad has been ranting about how I have ruined this family, how I have been ruining his life since even before I was born, and my aunt has tried to calm him down, but he just keeps ranting hatefully against me as if all of this is my fault. My cousin told me that he's been acting deranged, and my aunt is considering kicking him out because she can't have this sort of negativity around the house and he's becoming very difficult to deal with, so she might ask him to leave soon. And then he's going to be in a difficult spot because obviously, he can't go back home since my mom is staying there. Anyway, I'm glad that my mom

is choosing to leave him. She's not a nice woman by any means, but he deserves this. Now, as for my dad's a fair partner, I spoke to a friend, and thankfully, he's not very upset with me. Initially, he was a little annoyed that I did not tell him as soon as I found out because we are good friends, but then I told him that I really didn't think that it would be appropriate coming from me, and also I didn't to get involved. And after a lot of convincing and apologizing, he told me that it was fine, and he was glad that at least now, I had come to my senses and told him what he needed to know. Recently, he told me that he had spoken to his mother about it, and she was obviously very distraught because she knew that whatever they had, it was over now. After the incident at their anniversary

party, my father had not spoken to her at all and had blocked her after a few days, and he had blocked literally everywhere, she couldn't find a single way to get through to him, so she didn't try either. Because after that incident, she had realized that he had been leading her on, and that he had no intention of leaving his wife and family and starting again with her. My friend told me that he was very upset with her. He had tried to confront her about it and be angry with her, but she's just been so miserable recently, that he couldn't even bring himself to do that and he ended up comforting her. She's learned her lesson now, and she's learned it really hard, but that's what happens when you get involved with married men. I don't feel too bad

for her, neither does my friend, but he's taking care of her because he's afraid that she might end up doing something stupid. So he's thankful to me because otherwise, he wouldn't have found out. Because she herself had no intention of telling him, she didn't want him to think badly of her, but after all, we are all human and we all make mistakes. Some mistakes are just bigger than others and I think our parents' mistakes are much, much bigger than what we had expected them to be. So all that's probably harder to deal with. I'm just glad that I'm not on speaking terms with them because I really don't want anything to do with them anymore. But I do hope that things work out for my friend and his mom, because, unlike my parents,

at least he's close to his mom. I know that he feels betrayed right now, as he should, but I'm hoping that they're able to work things out. So that's it for now. 3, hi, so it's been a month since my last update and a lot has happened. My cousin told me that a couple of weeks ago, just a few days after my update, her mother finally asked my dad to leave because he had been losing his temper over the smallest things, screaming at anyone and everyone, and that sort of behavior was not going to fly in her house. She did offer to let him stay for a couple of days until he found a place, but my dad is pretty

egoistic, so the second he was told off about his behavior, which was unreasonable, he stormed out without even thanking his sister for letting him stay with her and neither did he say anything to the family, even though they had been very accommodating of him throughout this whole thing. After that, since he moved out, she couldn't tell me what was going on because obviously, he didn't have any contact with them anymore for a while. But then, a couple of days ago, he came back crying and pretty much begged my aunt to let him back because even though he had found a place, he just couldn't stay by himself in that apartment, because he was too miserable, and he was afraid that he was going to end up spiraling and going into a depression that he would not be able to come back from.

He promised to be better, he said that he was not going to behave erratically anymore and my aunt relented. So now, since he's staying with them again, my cousin told me that he is in the process of getting a divorce right now and it's going to be pretty ugly because he doesn't find the terms of the petition agreeable. So there is probably going to be a lot of negotiation before they are able to come to a common ground. and everyone knows how these things always turn out, it's definitely not going to be pretty, and it might get long drawn. So it's anybody's guess as to how he's going to be dealing with the situation at hand because from what I know, my mom has demanded an insane amount of alimony.

And my dad is not okay with that, so they are going into the whole mediation thing with their lawyers, and we have no idea how it's going to turn out. But I don't think my mom is going to back down, and I'm very interested in the kind of gossip I'm going to get out of this. At the moment, I know that both my parents and my sister hate me a lot, but that really doesn't affect me, that's how it's been for most of my life. My dad had already been ranting about me and recently, I found out that even my mother and sister had been talking badly about me to anyone who would listen. A lot of relatives have reached out to me to tell me that what I did was not right,

it has really hurt my family, and that I should apologize to them because they are all miserable right now. It's ironic they expect me to apologize for telling the truth, but sometimes. So far, the way that I have been treated by my family has never seemed wrong to them. It's not like it was a huge secret. Everyone knew that my mom didn't like me, and that she didn't treat me well, and that my dad never said a word. At that point in time, nobody wanted to get involved, but now, all of a sudden, people

want to apologize, they want to get all up in our business and have so many opinions about our family. It's just very ironic and funny but whatever, I'm hardly interested in whatever anybody else has to say. I'm just happy that I did what I did. My family had this coming for a long time. We can all see who are the dysfunctional failures right now, that's for sure. Update 4, hey, so it's been a couple of months since my last update and recently, I found out from my cousin that my parents' divorce finally came through. Long story short, my dad fought really hard and was able to bring the alimony to a normal

amount, but even that's pretty high for him. However, I don't know if it's going to be enough both my mom and sister, because it's not the kind of income that they are used to living off of. So my sister might actually have to get a real job since I don't think that my mom will be able to maintain their lifestyle and support her business on that kind of money, but I'm pretty satisfied with how the situation has turned out because nobody's happy anymore. I wanted to teach them a lesson, and that, I think I did. So I have no regrets about any of this, I'm very happy. Depended on my spouse to manage our finances only to find out that she neglected our tax obligations, concealed $9,400 in debt on her credit card, and continued to dine out in secret

while I scrimped to make ends meet. Vegetables to pay it off. I, 25M, have been with my wife, 24F, since high school. We got married young, me 21, her 20, which I know most people think is stupid, but it made sense to us at the time. We were already living together, and everything was going pretty well. When we first moved and together, we had to figure out how to handle money stuff and it was pretty clear from the beginning that she would handle all the finances. Her parents are crazy good with money, they're those people who spend their weekends clipping coupons and somehow managed to get like $200 worth of groceries for $12.

I've gone shopping with them a few times and it's like watching financial wizards at work. The cashiers always look annoyed when they see them coming because they know it's going to be a whole thing with the coupons and price matching. They're also really good investors and stupidly frugal in ways I can't even understand sometimes. Like, her dad will drive across town to save three cents per gallon on gas, which probably costs more in gas than he saves, but whatever. My wife grew up around all that, so I figured she'd naturally be good with money too. Plus, I've always hated anything to do with finances like budgeting, taxes, all that crap makes my brain shut down. So it made perfect sense that she would handle all our money stuff while I focused on my career.

Some background, I'm the main breadwinner. She has a part-time job that brings in less than 20K a year, while I make. Well, enough for us to live comfortably if we're smart about it. She's also been going to school off and on, which I've been. in supporting. Not that I mind, I want her to get her degree and follow her dreams and all that. I just mention it because it means I'm covering most of our expenses. Not long after we got married, she got a couple of credit cards that had cash back in airline miles programs. She explained to me that as long as we kept them paid off monthly, the credit card companies

would basically be giving us free money. Made sense to me, and I didn't think much about it after that. We'd occasionally use the points for a nice dinner or something, but mostly they just accumulated. Around a year before we got married, I started working as a freelance contractor. For anyone who hasn't done that, it means you have to pay your own taxes quarterly instead of having them taken out of your paycheck. It's a pain in the ass, but the money was good and I liked working from home. Last year, she offered to handle my quarterly tax payments too. I was super relieved because, again, I hate dealing with financial stuff. Every quarter I would tell her I made dollar X this quarter, so we need to send the IRS dollar Y and she would say I'll take care

of it. For different times she told me she would handle it. And honestly, I just trusted her completely. Never even occurred to me to double check or anything. So then tax season rolls around. I'm not even worried about it because I figure we're all caught up. But when When I had to help with the final tax forms, and signed them, I discovered that she had never made a single one of those quarterly payments. Not one. We got hit with a massive bill, thousands of dollars in late fees and penalties alone. I remember sitting there staring at the numbers thinking there must be some mistake.

This wiped out our entire savings, which wasn't huge, but we'd been putting a little away each month and still left us owing $5,000 to the IRS that we had to put on a payment plan. When I confronted her, she cried a lot and said she misunderstood how estimated taxes worked and swore this kind of thing would never happen again. I was upset but figured people make mistakes, even big ones. I mean, the tax system is complicated, right? Maybe she really didn't understand. We adjusted our budget to handle the IRS payments, which meant to be a tax system. cutting back on some things, but it wasn't the end of the world. I picked up some extra work when I could to help cover it. She seemed genuinely sorry, and I wanted to believe it was just a

one-time misunderstanding. Fast forward to this past June when we moved to a new place. Just a slightly bigger apartment in a different part of town because my commute was getting ridiculous. The city required a credit check to turn on utilities. I went to the office to finalize everything, and they wanted a huge deposit because of our credit score. I was surprised because I thought we had decent credit. I looked at the credit report and under these items negatively affect your score at said average balance on all accounts above 30%. When we first got those credit cards, our limit was $2,000,

so I thought, okay, $600 in credit card debt isn't that bad. I always assumed we were paying them off monthly like she said we would. I mentioned it to my wife later, and she said something like, yeah, sorry, I let things slip a little this month. It'll be better next month. She seemed embarrassed but not overly concerned, so I didn't push it. I figured maybe with the move and all the expenses that come with that, she'd gotten a bit behind. What I didn't know then was that our credit limit had been increased to $5,000, and we were way past the 30% mark. I had no idea the credit card companies had raised our limits. I guess they sent the notifications to her email since she managed all that stuff.

And I certainly had no clue we were carrying balances month to month. I thought we were just using the cards for the points and paying them off each month like we'd originally planned. Then about a month ago, I came home from work on a Wednesday and sat down at our shared computer. My wife came over and started chatting about her day while I closed the browser window that was open. Behind it was a PDF statement for one of our credit cards. She literally screamed close that and grabbed the mouse to close it, but not before I saw current balance $4,900 at the top. She turned bright red and I could tell from her face she knew I'd seen it.

When I said $4,900, she broke down crying. She rambled about how it just got out of hand and she lost control and it had been snowballing and she didn't want to stress me out and it was all her fault. Then she said something that still makes my blood boil when I think about it. It all started when you stopped working from home and got a real job. I didn't realize you were going to make a lot less money. This pissed me off because I actually got a 20% raise when I stopped freelancing. It just seemed like less money because of tax withholding. Plus I was contributing to a 401k.

Plus our health insurance got way better. So yeah, there was less cash in the bank every week, but I was making more money. I don't know if she genuinely didn't understand how taxes work or if she was just making excuses. Either way, it felt like she was trying to put the blame on me somehow. I took a walk around the block to cool off because I was so angry I couldn't even think straight. When I came back, I tried to have a calm conversation about how we got into this mess. She was still crying and kept saying she was sorry. She messed up, she'd fix it, etc.

After a few hours of talking, and honestly, some yelling on my part, we decided we needed to completely change how we handled money. We spent that weekend setting up you need a budget software and she went through and added everything to it. Or at least, I thought she did. We agreed that every week we'd review our expenses together, and neither of us would spend anything without telling the other. We worked out a plan to pay off the credit card by the end of the year if we ate super cheap and never went out. It would be tough, but doable. I started bringing lunch to work instead of buying it. We stopped ordering takeout.

I cancelled my gym membership and started running in the park instead. She said she'd cut back on her shopping and eating out. out with friends. We were both going to sacrifice to get out of this hole. During this day-long financial planning session, I noticed she hadn't included the American Express card in our budget software. I directly asked her about it, looked her right in the eye and said, what about the Amex? She looked back at me with a completely straight face and said it's at like $400 to $600. I barely ever put anything on it because it doesn't have cash back. I'll pay it off this month then just close it. For some fucking reason, I believed her. I don't know why. Maybe because I wanted to

believe we weren't in as bad a shape as I feared. But I took her at her word. For about a month, we stuck to the budget pretty well, or so I thought. I was really proud of us for making these changes and felt like we were finally getting our finances under control. It was hard, but it felt good to be working on a problem together. Then this morning, I decided to check on everything because we had some minor unexpected expenses this week, the car needed an oil change and the dog had a vet visit, and I wanted to see how it would affect our long-term payoff plan. I figured I should learn how to use the budget software myself instead of relying on her for everything. So while she was in the shower, I logged into our accounts. I logged into the Amex account and saw it has a balance of $3,534.39.

I sat there staring at the screen for what felt like forever. My hands were shaking. I couldn't believe it. Then, feeling sick to my stomach, I checked the other credit card account and found it's $1,000 higher than what she's reporting in our budget software. She recorded two $500 payments in a nab that she never actually made. So the software showed we'd paid down $1,000 that we actually hadn't. I started looking through the statements and where I've been living on basically chicken, breasts, and vegetables for weeks.

She's been eating out multiple times a week while I'm at work. There are tons of expenses I can't account for that go way beyond the budget we planned. Starbucks practically every day. Online shopping. Random stuff from Target and Amazon. All while I'm pinching. pennies and turning down invitations from friends because we're on a strict budget. Our plan to have our debt, which I now know is only half of what we actually owe, paid off by

the end of the year is completely screwed, just a month into the plan. At the rate we're actually going, we'd be lucky to be debt-free in three years. I feel physically sick. I haven't confronted her yet because she's at work, and I'm sitting here trying to figure out what to do. I honestly don't think I'll ever be able to trust her. again. The total debt is around $9,400, about $5,900 on one card, $3,500 on the other, plus we still owe about $4,200 to the IRS. So we're looking at around $13,600 in debt, all of which I had no idea about until recently, and some of which she was actively hiding for me even after I found out about the first card. I feel like such an idiot. How did I not notice that?

this sooner. I just completely trusted her to handle everything. I never even asked to see statements or anything. I guess I was so relieved to not have to deal with finances that I just buried my head in a sand. And now I'm paying the price for it. I haven't told any of my friends or family about this yet. I'm embarrassed, to be honest. Everyone thinks we're doing great. I love my wife. I really do. Up until this, I thought we had a great relationship. Would divorce be an overreaction here? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Update 1. First, a big thank you to everyone who gave me advice. I read everyone's messages, even if I didn't reply. Some of you guys really took the time to write me detailed responses and I appreciate it. I'm still getting DMs about this, which is why I figured I should update. A lot of people accused me of being an idiot for not paying attention to my own finances for so long, and yeah, you're right. I fucked up by putting my head in the sand for years. Lesson learned. Trust but verify, as many of you said.

And to the people who called my wife all kinds of names, I get it, but dial it back a little. She's still a person, and she's still my wife. It's been a month since I found the second half of the debt. Here's what's happened since, we're still together. I know a lot of you told me to run for the hills and divorce her immediately, but relationships are complicated. After I confronted her about the Amex card, we had a really long, really painful conversation. There was a lot of crying, mostly her, some me, and a lot of harsh truths being thrown

around. I told her I was considering divorce, and I meant it. She begged me to give her another chance, said she do anything to make it right. I'm not sure if I'm giving her that chance because I still love her or because divorce seems like an enormous hassle and expense, or maybe a bit of both. I've taken complete control of the finances, but she can still see everything, and we discuss money regularly. I set up all the accounts on my email now, and I get alerts for every transaction. This has been a huge adjustment for me since I've always hated dealing with financial stuff, but I'm learning. YouTube tutorials have been my friend, I set up Mint, big, thanks to those who recommended it,

which has been super helpful, though the net worth column makes me want to throw up every time I see it. For anyone wondering, it's a budgeting app that tracks all your accounts in one place. Way easier to use than a nab in my opinion, especially for someone like me who isn't naturally good with money, I didn't set up a separate bank account like some people suggested. I thought about it, but we have direct deposits and automatic bill payments linked to our joint account, and it seemed like a hassle to change everything. Plus, I can monitor the joint account easily now with the alerts. She gave up all her credit cards without a fight, and I've hidden them away.

I thought about cutting them up like many of you said to do, but I figured that could cause problems if I needed to cancel subscriptions or something, or if we had a genuine emergency. My logic might be flawed, but since hiding them, exactly $0 has been spent on them, so I think it's working for now. I keep them in my desk drawer at work where she can't access them, she has a debit card that she's only supposed to use for gas and groceries from our agreed-upon list. I had to explain to her multiple times what agreed-upon list means.

No, a $6 coffee is not a grocery essential. No, we don't need organic everything when we're trying to pay off debt, we're now about $800 less in debt, which feels like nothing compared to the total, but at least we're moving in the right direction. It's slow going, but we've made all our minimum payments plus a little extra. Better than digging the whole deeper, I guess, we've mostly stuck to the budget I planned out. I say mostly because... Well, keep reading.

Unfortunately, our relationship has suffered big time. I wish I could say everything's great now that we have a plan, but that would be a lie. I checked the transactions on her card every day, and at least twice a week there are things on there she shouldn't have bought. Nothing huge, but little stuff that adds up. When I bring it up, she always has an excuse ready. I withdrew $20 to buy Girl Scout cookies from a client's daughter, but since I can't have them because of my gluten. allergy, I told them to just take the money as a donation. Or I had to get lunch because I forgot my packed lunch at home. Or the shampoo was on sale so I got two bottles instead of one.

I can't bring myself to believe these excuses. I know she's lying at least some of the time, like when there's a Starbucks cup in the car but no Starbucks charge on the card, which means she took out cash somewhere else to hide the purchase. I don't want to start a fight over $20, but I also can't tell when she's being honest anymore. Until a month ago, I thought she never lied to me. Now I second guess everything she says. The worst part is feeling like her parent instead of her partner. I never wanted to be in the position of monitoring someone else's spending and saying no to things.

It makes me feel controlling and weird, but what choice do I have? If I don't keep an eye on things, we'll never get out of debt. I want to clarify something, I've always been attracted to strong, independent women. I fell for her when I was 18 and she was 17 because she seemed so mature and self-sufficient for her age. She had a decent job, for a 17-year-old, was moving out of her parents' place, had her own car. She had her shit together, you know. I never wanted a traditional stay-at-home wife, I wanted a career partner. While we were dating, she was all. all about career advancement, long-term plans, traveling together, etc. She talked about

starting her own business someday, and I was completely supportive of that. Now I'm worried I was wearing rose-colored glasses. Maybe because I wanted her to be this strong, independent woman, I ignored her faults. And maybe she went out of her way to act like the kind of woman she knew I wanted. I'm not saying she planned some elaborate deception or anything, but people sometimes show you what they think you want to see, especially early in a relationship. Whenever I find her spending money on things outside our budget, I either have to let it slide, which seems bad, or I have to basically ground a grown-ass woman from her debit card. I hate doing that. I hate the idea of my wife being my subordinate, like I have to punish or police her. It makes me feel

like a controlling asshole. Not to mention it's completely killed our intimacy. It's really difficult to want to have sex with someone you just had to scold for breaking a budget they agreed to. We've barely touched each other in the past month. This also spills over into other areas of our life. Like, we'll be watching TV and a commercial comes on for some product, and I'll make an offhand comment like that looks cool and she'll immediately say but we can't afford it, right? Because we're poor now. In this passive-aggressive tone. Or she'll see friends posting vacation photos on social media and make pointed comments about how we used to be able to take trips. Despite her telling me she's sorry and feels terrible, I feel like I'm fighting

this battle alone. Instead of being my partner and finding ways to help, I have to actively prevent her from doing more damage. She could also pick up more hours at work or look for a better paying job, but whenever I suggest it, she says she needs time for her studies, which I get, but her grades aren't even that great, so I'm not sure what she's doing with all that study time. Plus, plenty of students work full-time and still manage decent grades. I did. Several people recommended marriage counseling and or therapy for her. I asked her to find a therapist, saying if the therapist thought we should do couples counseling after talking with her, I'd be happy to do it. I reminded her to find a therapist every day for the first week, and a month later, she still hasn't.

At this point, it's pretty clear she's deliberately avoiding it. When I bring it up now, she says she looked but couldn't find anyone taking new patients, or they're all too expensive, or some other excuse. I offered to help her look, and she got defensive and said she'd handle it. Part of me thinks she doesn't want to go to therapy because she'd have to be honest about her spending habits and whatever underlying issues are causing them. It's easier to just promise to do better and then keep doing the same things, I guess. We're still together, but I haven't forgiven her, and I'm harboring a lot of resentment.

I'm afraid of doing something I'll regret, so I'm stuck in limbo. It's not even about the money anymore. Your advice and perspective would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading this far. Update 2. Hey everyone, I figured I should post one last update. I honestly didn't expect anyone to still care about this, but I got a few DMs asking how things turned out. Some people have been surprisingly invested in our story, which is kind of touching, to be honest. I don't know how else to put this. We're still together, we're still in love,

and as of today, we're debt-free. Yeah, I know that probably wasn't the update most of you expected based on my last post. A lot of you thought we were headed for divorce, and honestly, there were times when I thought so too. But we managed to turn things around. The first couple months after my last update were really rough. We had a few big fights, including one where I actually packed a bag and stayed at a friend's place for two days. That was kind of a wake-up call for both of us. When I came back, we had a long, honest conversation about whether we wanted to save our marriage or not. We both decided we did, but that things couldn't continue the way they were going.

We finally set aside our pride and went to counseling, a big thank you. to the Redditors who pushed me to do this, which was a huge help. I ended up finding a therapist myself since she wasn't making any progress on that front. The therapist recommended a financial counselor who specializes in couples, and that was honestly a game changer. Turns out there's a lot of emotional stuff tied up in how people handle money, and having a neutral third party help us work through it made a big difference. Our financial counselor helped us create a realistic budget that we could both stick to, with some built-in flexibility so it didn't feel like a straitjacket. She also helped us identify the emotional triggers that led to my wife's overspending.

Apparently, it's pretty common for people to shop as a way to deal with stress or anxiety, which is what my wife was doing. She wasn't just being selfish or careless, she was using shopping as a coping mechanism. Obviously that doesn't excuse the lying, but understanding the Root Cause helped us address the actual problem instead of just the symptoms. She stayed in school, at my insistence, but started working her ass off. She took more hours at her regular job and took any odd job she could find. Babysitting, dog sitting, house sitting, face sitting, kidding. She gave up a huge chunk of her nights and weekends and really reigned in her impulse purchases.

Her grades suffered a bit, but now she'll be able to cut way back on work and focus more on school. I'm really proud of how hard she worked to help fix the mess she created. It would have been easier for her to just let me handle it all, especially since I was the one who made most of the money, but she really stepped up. She contributed over 40% of the debt payments from her own earnings, which meant a lot to me. It showed she was serious about making things right. It's been 10 months, but I feel like we've matured 10 years. Wow, that sounds uppity as fuck. A, who cares, I'm excited. We're much better at communicating and managing money. We've learned how to go on cheap dates, and we're both better cooks now. We drink and eat out a lot

less, so we're both healthier. I honestly don't think this could have turned out better. Our relationship still isn't perfect. I still have moments where I remember the lies and feel angry or hurt. She still occasionally buys things without discussing them first, though she's gotten much better about sticking to our budget. But we've developed new habits and ways of communicating that make these issues manageable. A big thank you to all of you. I got a lot of great advice both in my threads and from reading others. I'm grateful for all of it. I hope you enjoy this story. Precious offspring sibling couldn't stand the fact that I am thriving. so he vandalized my vehicle with spray paint and assumed I would not take any action.

However, I shared the footage on the Internet and now, he's in trouble. I, 30F, have a younger brother, Jackson, 26M, and we do not get along. Never have, never will. I guess that's why he went out of his way to try and cause trouble for me, but this time, unfortunately, it backfired on him. Part of the credit for that would go to my parents, who always treated him differently as a young kid, it was very confusing for me because as long as it was just me, my parents doted on me. But as soon as my brother was born, I was pushed to the sidelines,

and there was nothing that I could do to bring them back to me. And believe me, I tried really hard to win them over but never had any luck after Jackson was born. I took part in sports, stayed ahead academically, danced and sang, and acted in school plays but nothing impressed my parents enough to pay attention to me. It was all about Jackson, which was weird because he didn't seem to be exceptionally talented at anything to me. Had he been a child prodigy, I might have even forgiven my parents for the kind of treatment I received, but he was a brady and spoiled kid who got so used to the attention that he just couldn't stand it when anyone else was receiving it. Every time I came home with good news from school,

he would find some way to make the day about him and my parents let him get away with it as well. It was like they were blind when it came to him and they proved me right on my 18th birthday. When I turned 18, my parents threw me a party but in the middle of it. We received word from the cops that my brother had apparently decided to get caught while drinking with a couple of his friends. Here's the deal, all of his other friends had made a run for it, but he was the only one who had been caught, and I knew that it was on purpose. He wanted to get caught so they would become all about him and my parents would be concerned.

The worst part is that he didn't even get into trouble for it. The cops just let him off with a warning because my dad is on the force and once my parents had brought him back home, they just reprimanded him for a bit. But they didn't even punish him by grounding him or whatever. So he totally got away with ruining my party and that wasn't even the last time that something like this happened. At 21, when I got my first job, he decided to come home with his girlfriend and told our parents that he was engaged to her.

So instead of celebrating my job, we started to celebrate his engagement and once again the spotlight was stolen from me. and I think for me personally, that was the straw that broke the camel's back. I got into a huge fight with my brother and my parents that day and instead of trying to understand me, they told me that I was being oversensitive and dramatic, and after that, I never spoke to them again. My parents tried to reach out to me several times afterward, but it has been nine years and I still haven't spoken to them because I know that they still love my brother a lot more than they loved me. Jackson has never tried to reach out to me and from what I know, he broke off the engagement

with that girl a couple of weeks after I cut them out of my life. So all that really was just to hog the limelight, so I didn't get any attention. Anyway, I'm glad that he did not try and reach out because he's a horrible human being and I wouldn't want anything to do with him. For nine years, we haven't spoken, but I guess he knows what I've been up to. We have all seen each other at family events and stuff and I think my family knows that I'm doing well for myself. I drive a pretty nice car and I always try to dress my best, since I don't have any family of my own and I don't plan on having one anytime soon either.

All my money is spent on myself. I can afford this because I'm running my own company and it's pretty thrilling since that's what I always wanted to do. Two years ago, when my business started taking off, I decided to buy a new house and moved out of the apartment that I had been living in ever since I got my first job. I had told all my relatives not to give out my address to my family, especially not to my brother. But somehow, he was able to find out about it and six days ago, he showed up in the evening and decided to vandalize my car. I had just come back home from work and I was about to leave for a party again, so I hadn't bothered to park my car in the garage and it was still out in the driveway. When I came back outside to drive to the party, I saw that

somebody had spray-painted my car with blood-red paint and they had said some pretty mean stuff. The sides of the car had been spray-painted with a bunch of cuss words, but that did not bother me as much as what had been spray-painted on the windshield. You don't deserve any of this. I was shocked for a few minutes, trying to just process what I was seeing and I was about to call the cops when I realized that if this was the handiwork of my brother, then there was simply no point in doing so. Because if I got the cops to report, my brother, and my dad would just squash the entire case, and he would be let off with just a warning again. After I had processed what I had seen, I realized that the handwriting belonged to my brother and just to be sure, I checked the

security footage as well. He had been wearing a hoodie, but I could just tell that it was him since he hadn't been careful enough, and I had caught a bit of his face on the cameras. When I realized that it was him, I knew that there was no point in calling the cops because my dad would deal with it and he would get away with everything. I'm speaking from experience, not just from my 18th birthday, but also because of all the gossip that I've heard about my brother from a couple of relatives. Apparently, taking advantage of my dad's connections has become a pretty common thing for him. To be honest, I have a fair idea of why Jackson did this since he hasn't been doing that well in life. I have heard from a couple of people that he had tried to start a business a few years

back, but that had failed miserably, and he had to get help from our parents to clear all his debts. Even the jobs that he had had before, they refused to take him back. With nothing else to do, he kind of gave up on everything and just started drinking and doing drugs. And my dad knows about it, he knows about all my brother's shady dealings, and is constantly trying to help him cover up and bail him out any time he gets into trouble. I guess recently, Jackson has been finding it very difficult to deal with the fact that I am successful, especially because I made it to the cover of a local magazine, and that had become the top of, of the town among the family a few days back. And he's not really dealing well with it emotionally,

since he hasn't really grown up from when we were kids and also because he doesn't really have anything going on for himself, and partying every weekend isn't really something worth bragging about anymore. And maybe that's why he felt like he had to go out of his way to vandalize my car and let me know that I don't deserve any of this, even though I do. It might sound mean, what I'm about to say, but he also deserves what he is going through right now. He was never very hardworking or dedicated to anything. He just expected things to work out for him, and my parents always made it happen, so it isn't surprising that he's turned out like this. So when I saw that footage, I knew that there was no point in taking it to the cops because my dad would definitely

not allow Jackson to get in any sort of trouble. But I was not about to let him get away with it, since I had never even spoken to them for nine years, but he had still decided to try and get on my nerves. After some brainstorming, I came up with the brilliant idea of posting the video on social media and leaving everyone else to deal with him. I took a bunch of photos of whatever was written on my car, and posted it along with the video, claiming that it was my brother who had done it, and I was sure of it. Unfortunately, I couldn't go to the cops with this information because my dad, who had spent a lifetime on the force, was going to make sure that he covered all of this up just so his darling baby did not get into trouble. Within a couple of hours, the comments started pouring

in and I had made sure to unblock my family just so they would be able to see this post. When Jackson inevitably texted me to take that post down, I just told him that I wasn't going to do that and he couldn't even make me because if he took this up legally, he would have to prove that it was actually not him in the video and that would require this situation to go to court. And it definitely is him in the video, so we were at a stalemate. But to be honest, he had more to lose than I did because even though he had vandalized my car and I would have to pay for it to get repainted, it really wasn't a big deal for me because I was earning enough to be able to afford it. On the other hand, if he decided to take this situation up legally in order to get me to take

my post down, then he would have to try and prove that it was not him and he had more because it was actually proven that it was definitely him in the video, he would be screwed. And it wasn't just about him, even my father and whoever had been helping him out, they would also get into trouble. I'm pretty sure that he hadn't seen this coming. He had probably just expected me to go to the cops and have them deal with it and then he would have just spoken to our dad and gotten away with all of this scot-free. Unfortunately, I know my family and he picked a fight with the wrong person this time. So after I sent that text to him, he did not even reply for a couple of days because he did not have anything to say. The posts stayed up in pretty much everyone that we know, my friends, our family members,

and even our family friends had seen that post. Finally, two days ago, he reached out to me once again and said that he was ready to cough up the money required for the paint job, but he just wanted me to take that post down. But for me, it was obviously not about the money. So I told him that I didn't care about the money, I wanted him to acknowledge what he had done and post a public apology. And only then would I consider taking that post down.

At that point, he started pleading with me and said that he was, was ready to apologize in person or however else I wanted. But just not publicly because that would involve having to accept the fact that he had done something like this and it would put everything at risk for him and claim that he would lose all his clients. I don't know what client he's talking about because I don't think he has a business right now, but I don't care either way. So far, he had just been denying all of it whenever anyone was approaching him to ask about it, but accepting it was just going to make him look bad. But I didn't really care. told him that this was what I wanted and he could either do it or that post would stay up.

It was as simple as that for me and he sent me a couple of more messages after I told him that I was not ready to negotiate, trying to reason with me, but I didn't even bother to reply a few hours after that. My father called me up and told me that the post that I had made was not just reflecting badly on my brother, but also on him, and he had dedicated his life to his career, so he couldn't allow something like this to derail it. He requested me to take that post down and yet again, I had to disappoint another person by declining because if he had just not risked at all to protect my brother, maybe I wouldn't have anything to say against him in my post in the first place. Now, his reputation was at stake, but instead of trying to convince Jackson to apologize to me publicly,

my parents started yelling at me on the phone. They said that I was being ridiculous and that my success had gone to my head since I thought that I could just do whatever I wanted and get away with it. I was about to hang up on them as soon as they started yelling at me, but then my mother started crying and said that she had never expected me to behave like this. She acknowledged the fact that Jackson and I had been treated differently as kids, but she and my father had tried to contact me several times throughout the past nine years and yet I had never responded.

So it wasn't fair for me to act like they were the villains here, even though they had tried to make amends with me a lot of times. Even now, I had no idea that they had apparently cut ties with Jackson soon after I made that post and he told them the truth, that it was indeed him. The only reason they were even speaking with him right now was because they had to get me to take that post down, but apart from that, they had no contact. They told me that they really had changed as people,

but now, by not taking that post down, I was ruining my dad's reputation as well without even giving him a chance to prove that he had changed. And now I'm kind of confused because I really don't want to take that post down. At the same time, I don't understand what to do with the same thing. situation regarding my parents. So I'd have for not wanting to take down a Facebook post against my brother, even though it's ruining my dad's reputation. Update 1, hello. So a couple of things before I move on to the update, the first being that my dad has retired from the force.

He just crossed 55 recently and announced his retirement around the same time, even though it's not exactly mandatory for him right now. But he's been having a lot of problems with his heart, so he decided to take an early retirement. This happened just a couple of months ago, and I found out about it from other family members. But he still has connections with his colleagues on the force, and I know for a fact that if he wanted to, he definitely would have been able to bail my brother out.

Besides, I think posting it on Facebook did a lot more damage to my brother's reputation, and that's exactly what I had wanted. So I don't really regret not calling the cops on him. I think I did the right thing. And coming to Jackson and what kind of drugs he was taking, I'm not really sure about that, but all I know is that none of what he was doing was legal. Not just drugs, but he's also involved in a lot of other shady things.

Because I know, for a fact, that he hasn't worked since his business flopped a couple of years back, and yet, he has still managed to be able to pay rent and live in an apartment of his own. Of course, it's very likely that my parents have been supporting him financially, but even then, I'm sure that they haven't been giving him money to party and his Instagram feed is just full of pictures of him, living it up with his friends. I don't know exactly what he's involved in, but I know that it can't be anything good because if he has been able to raise money for himself without working hard, I'm pretty sure he's doing something illegal and dishonest, and my dad has been helping him cover it up.

So he's not really the honest and upright cop that he has been pretending to be for everyone else, and that's why I don't see any reason for me to take that post down and protect his reputation. They did have a valid point that they had tried to contact me several times in the past couple of years, but the reason that I had never accepted their attempts to contact me was because I had always known that for them, my brother was more of a priority than me. And even in this current situation, it was the truth. They claimed that they had cut off, but still spoke to him, so they could get me to take the post down. So they didn't really cut him off, and what they said to me was pointless. I was a bit confused at the time because

I was feeling a lot of mixed emotions, but after reading the comments on my post, I realized that I didn't really have to take that post down. My family deserves every bit of the hate that they are getting right now. They have brought it onto themselves and I'm not the bad guy in this situation in the slightest. So it's been nine days now and the post is still up. I got my car repainted already, I didn't think there was any point in waiting for my parents or brother to cough up the money that they owed me. And besides, it was not about money for me in the first place. I think I have made that very clear, but in spite of that, my brother has not given up. Jackson keeps texting me again and again, saying that he really is sorry and that he's ready to send

me whatever amount I ask for, which is just another indicator that he's definitely involved in something shady, because otherwise, where is he getting that money from? Since my parents just told me that they they have cut him off, I'm pretty sure they're not giving him the money. Anyway, he keeps texting me and I just have to keep ignoring it because all I want is an apology, and a public one at that. And unless and until I get one, that post is staying up. At this point, even if I do take it down, it's going to be pretty pointless because everyone has seen it. The entire family has ostracized Jackson and my parents, literally not one person wants to speak to them anymore. As for whoever went to school with us, most of them have reached

out to tell me that they are not surprised that Jackson turned out like this. He had always been a bit of a brat and thought that he could always get away with everything. And he could, that was true. But not this time, unfortunately for him. The only people who have not spoken to me after that last phone call are my parents, and I genuinely have no idea what they have been up to. Truth be told, I really don't understand why it's so difficult for my family to just acknowledge and accept their mistakes and apologize for them to me. It's a very simple and reasonable condition, in my opinion, and yet they are acting as if I've asked for the world.

It's really sad, but I'm not surprised that they are acting like this. They've always been this way and I, for one, am glad that I got them nine years back because they don't deserve to be a part of my life in the first place. Update 2 so my parents decided to pay me a visit today. But it was not just them who showed up, their family lawyer came along with them. My mom's older brother, my uncle, is a pretty great attorney, but I'm not sure why exactly he decided to be as coming along with my parents to visit and intimidate me. It was the weekend, so I was at home in the morning, when they came by.

And then I saw them standing outside, I decided to invite them in because I was really curious about what they had to say. As soon as they were inside, my parents told me that they were there to talk about the post and said that they would be forced to file a defamation lawsuit against me if I did not take it down. I wish I could say that I felt threatened or intimidated in the slightest, but I was just amused that they thought that. Anyway, when they told me that they would be filing a lawsuit for defamation against me, my uncle decided to show me the paperwork for it which had already been prepared by him. You know, just show me that they were serious about it. about this and not just bluffing to scare me. Unfortunately, even the paperwork in the presence

of a lawyer didn't scare me, I just told my parents that they were free to do whatever they wanted. In fact, I didn't even understand why they felt obliged to come to my home and give me a warning before they went through with the lawsuit. They had no need to do that and after saying that, I told them that since they had made up their mind, they were free to leave because I had also made up my mind, and I was not going to go back on my word. So I was definitely not. taking that post down until I had received a public apology from Jackson. But they refused to get up, they remained seated, and my dad tried to drive home the point that they were trying to make, that they were giving me a chance to avoid a lawsuit and a lot of trouble by just taking that

stupid post down and I needed to take it seriously instead of laughing it off. When I stayed silent and did not say anything, my dad decided to slam his fist against my coffee table and that's what really pissed me off because it's very expensive and I did not want him to cause any damage to it. His son had already damaged my car, and I had to pay for it. I was not going to allow another one of those incidents to take place. So I told him to get out of my house because it was very obvious that neither he nor his son were capable of having a civilized conversation and acting like decent human beings, and I had absolutely no interest in interacting with them.

My uncle said nothing but pulled my dad back, and my mother tried to salvage the situation by trying to reason with me. She was trying to bargain with me and kept saying that we could save a lot of time by just forgetting about that and that could only happen if I deleted it. I did not even need to forgive them or whatever. But I had had enough, I just told him that I did not want to negotiate with them, and I honestly did not believe that they had the guts to go through with the lawsuit because that would create more trouble for them than it would for me.

And most importantly, the thing about defamation lawsuits is that the entire basis of the lawsuit is that it's only valid if the other person is lying. Everyone knew that I wasn't lying, so filing a lawsuit against me would only bring out their truth. And I was all for it. Then my dad started screaming and cursing at me, and I lost my temper,

so I reciprocated by doing the same thing. Naturally, it turned into a shouting match soon enough and my dad got so worked up that he started punching the wall and was eventually able to make a hole in it. My uncle had tried to stop him from doing it, but there was no point. He had been trained as a cop, and it was actually pretty scary to watch him punch a hole in my wall,

but after he was done, what he did was what pissed me off even more. He took out a wad of cash from his wallet, threw it onto my coffee table, and then walked out after saying that I could contact him if I needed more. It was incredibly disturbing and disrespectful to me, and it was then that I decided that I was going to have to pursue this legally. It had become very obvious to me that both my dad and Jackson are unhinged and I don't want them around me at any point now. Initially, it had just been funny to mess with them, but clearly, there's something very wrong with both of them. Because I can't imagine normal people behaving like

this. So I had a talk with my lawyer and told him everything that had happened, right from the beginning. Of course, he already knew about the incident with my car, since I had posted about it online. And now, we are thinking about getting a restraining order against my family. I definitely qualify for it, especially after what happened today. A lawsuit will also be particularly helpful in bringing out the truth about my family, and I think that's really necessary at this point. People should know what kind of scum I'm dealing with because they really are the worst of the worst. So I'm actually looking forward to going against them right now. Update 3, hey, so in my last update, I said that I was going to file a lawsuit and a restraining

order against my family and I finally did that last week. The legal legal law. The legal proceedings have started and I only recently discovered from a couple of old school friends that Jackson had apparently become a full-fledged drug dealer. And it wasn't even like he was selling weed to college kids, he was dealing with hard drugs and had managed to build an elite clientele for himself, like spoiled rich trust fund brats or upper management folks from the corporate world. You know exactly the kind of people that I'm talking about and I'm actually surprised that he was able to do this, but I guess it's a good thing that he's finally found as niche. I guess that's why he was actually jealous of me because obviously, I'm doing far better

than him in life right now because I'm a successful entrepreneur and he's a drug dealer. So even though he parties every weekend, it's nothing compared to the life that I have and nobody is really proud of him. It's going to be hard to prove that he is a dealer, but I'm sure that a bit of fair investigation will reveal everything in due course. Right now, it's just based on rumors, but I have my faith in the judicial system. And anyway, at least received an explanation as to how he was able to maintain the kind of lifestyle that he had without any apparent source of income. So that's what's going on with my brother and I don't really think that my parents had cut him off at any point because the last time that I saw them after our court hearing,

they seemed to be pretty chummy. I don't think they would have been able to patch things up so quickly, especially if my dad had been telling me the truth about cutting him out of his life. Honestly, I'm just glad that I did not give my parents a chance. And I went with my gut feeling. They are truly terrible people and I'm just hoping that when the verdict finally comes through, it's against them. So far, it seems like it's going to be, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed. My lawyer and I are going to leave no stone unturned to make sure that they get what they deserve. I have the entire family on my side, and I also have a lot of friends who are willing to testify if it comes down to it. Even my neighbors who had heard the wall getting punched repeatedly

on the day that my father had visited are willing to testify against him. So at least I'm going to be able to get a restraining order against them for sure, and that's still good enough for me. About the rest of it, I'll deal with it as it happens. For now, I'm just really happy that I'm getting the kind of closure that I needed. I hadn't even realized how much pent-up anger and frustration I had within me because of my family until recently, and I don't know if this is the most productive way to deal with it or not, but at least I am dealing with it and confronting my feelings. So I'm pretty proud of myself and I know that this is going to work out. I hope you enjoy this story. Father never assisted with college expenses but set aside funds for his other

children, so when he discovered that my sibling would be accompanying me as I walked down the aisle at my marriage ceremony instead. Of him he got mad and said he doesn't approve of my marriage. So 25-ish years ago two dumb 20-year-olds got drunk and made me. They had and still have nothing in common, don't particularly like one another, but for some reason decided to keep me. I always lived with my mom full time. I love her don't get me wrong, but she's pretty messy. I have six other half-siblings, two of them have the same dad. We always had a clean place to live and never went hungry or anything, but I know there were times that she did so we wouldn't.

Mom very clearly loves all of us individually and as her family, she's just pretty irresponsible. My dad I'd say more has his shit together, but we're not close. He married Hilda, also mid-forties now, when I was six-ish and they had my half-brothers Jesse, 16, and Kyle, 14, a few years later. They both have really good jobs in a nice house and cars. I know my dad paid child support, but their lives simply were very different than mine. I'd come over every other weekend, but after a while they were too busy with the other two, so I'd just wait for Dad to text me when he was available. He did, don't get me wrong, but he works a lot so I probably saw him once a month before I went to college, and after that we'd talk

every now and then but mainly just see one another on holidays. One of these holidays, Hilda got kind of drunk and told me that after my mom had me my dad basically blocked her and just paid child support until his parents, my grandma and grandpa basically shamed him for being a deadbeat and he got some visitation. That hurt a lot to hear, but it made a lot of my childhood make sense. It all came up because she was resentful that he had to pay my mom child support until I was 21, and was saying she had wished I'd skipped college. It's all. also sad, because I know she was busy with her kids, but I always thought she at least liked me. Like, I know she hates my mom because it was maybe petty, but when they had Jesse they replaced

my room at their house with the nursery and pout my stuff in another one, so my mom filed and was awarded much more child support than she had been getting, and that affected them. It's fine, there was free therapy at college and I'm actually doing great career and mental health-wise now, in fact, my fiancé and I make about as much as they do, granted less property, etc., so I'm in a good place. Literally freshman week I met my now fiancé John, 25, but we didn't start dating for two years and have been inseparable ever since. His family is amazing, super-loving, involved but not pushy, and kind. They do have a lot of money, and idk if you don't believe me but even if they were broke I'd be so lucky to be marrying into their family. Like, just a lot of money.

an example of how amazing they are. His mom gave him her grandmother's ring to propose and has offered me any and all of her or her sister's jewelry to borrow for the wedding. His dad helped my brother get a job in his industry. He deserved it, but it's a hard one to crack into. And even his sister is going to be my I'm oh, okay, maybe these are stupid examples. But they've told me before I don't need to apologize for my crazy and kind of trashy mom and have even thanked her for raising. The love of their son's life. They're just so happy and positive and full of love, I'm so lucky. I've been so good about setting up boundaries, like with my mom, I laid it out that I'm not her best friend, she's not Lorelei Gilmore and I'm not Rory, I'm her daughter and always have

been. We've had some come to Jesus moments but are in a much better place, and I am sad, but also very happy to say that she's been a much more responsible mother to my four youngest siblings than she was to my brother, diff dad, Jake, 23, and me, and my dad. and I have never been close, but I've tried. When John and I were talking about getting engaged, he asked me if I wanted him to ask my dad's permission. At first I said no, what's the point? Then I was like, okay, I'm his only daughter, he's kind of traditional, and he was more or less there for me growing up. So he did, and dad was tickled pink just as I expected. They never said

they had any money for the wedding or offered any, which wasn't shocking or anything, and I didn't ask. So after all that background, we're getting married soon. It will be in John's hometown, which is a pretty nice place that people go to for vacations and they know basically the whole town so it will be a huge event. His family, and to be honest, we won a big wedding, but since we're just starting our careers out, his parents are paying for the whole thing. I am paying for my dress, though, and my mom and younger Sibbs travel. I kind of just assumed my dad would walk me down the aisle, but a few weeks ago at one of my showers, Hilda was talking with John's mom, who was saying how proud they must have been that I paid my own way through college.

Hilda was like, oh yeah, it looked really hard, we're glad that we started saving towards our son's college funds a long time ago. They have more than enough for undergrad and probably grad school. I overheard this and confirmed with John's mom what she said. It hurts so bad. College was a struggle. There were times all I had were multivitamins and P.B. and J.S. And only because my mom would send me $20 here and there. Don't get me wrong, I'm also proud of myself, and I know the boys are both their kids while

I'm just my dad's so of course they'll give them more, but it really solidified to me who and what I was to them. So I asked my brother Jake to walk me down the aisle. John and his family know about this and 100% support me. Hilda called me yesterday asking about the rehearsal dinner, where they'd need to be and when, and I told her they wouldn't need to be at the church or anything and could just go to the restaurant after. She was like, oh well, how will your dad practice walking you down the aisle? It was super awkward and I let her know Jake would be, but I was excited to see them.

A few hours later my dad came to our condo and told me how disappointed he was, he said he's been dreaming of giving me away my whole life. I was in a pretty good headspace luckily and was just like, oh, I didn't know you'd want to and didn't expect you to care, trying to be nonchalant and avoid drama. He was aggressive, though, and wouldn't let it go, saying I was trying to make him look like an idiot and if Hilda hadn't asked he would have shown up thinking he'd walk me down the aisle. I asked him why he would assume that and he looked at me like I was stupid. But I wanted to hear him say it, and he finally said that any father would expect that. I was just like, sure, but any other father probably didn't ignore their daughter for the first few months of their life,

have as minimal custody as possible, or have college funds for some of their kids but not others. They probably did do things like take their daughters on vacation, attend a single father-daughter event, and help them out even though they were legally done. He got mad, but honestly couldn't even argue, and just said he wasn't sure if he approved of this marriage anymore. I told him I wasn't worried about that, and the truth was that we just simply weren't very important people to one another. He got really sad after that and left, and even though John agrees with my decisions, he said I should have given my dad the heads up about what I wanted from him at the wedding. As much as I value his opinion, I also feel like he doesn't get it.

His family loves him and would do anything for him and has, while my dad has only ever done the bare legal minimum when I needed him. I never assumed he would help me and he shouldn't assume he can play a role in my wedding. I know I'm not the asshole for having my brother walk me down the aisle, that's no debate. But was I wrong for not directly spelling out for my dad that he would be attending as a guest and only a guest? Comments where OP has replied, downvoted commenter one. Oh, O'Day. If you only had multivitamins and PVJ in college, even though he was still paying child support, it sounds like your mom was using it to pay for her other kids since you paid your whole college. Plus it's your own.

your dad who was there. Get over yourself. Oop, until I was 21. The hard years were after that. I didn't graduate with my master's until I was 23. When he was paying child support, she sent me money minus the health insurance premium. Comment one, not sure how child support works, but if your dad had to pay it till you were 21, wasn't that supposed to include tuition as well? No, the amount didn't change and my mom sent me money for the first few years I was in school from it. It stopped on my 21st birthday and that's when I really started struggling. Sorry for the confusion. Comment two, not even remotely close to being an asshole. Your dad has some nerve having expectations of you after not treating you like an equal child

your entire life. I'd have punched him at the dreaming of giving me away his whole life. You don't owe him jack shit. Did he give you a heads-up before becoming a deadbeat? Did he give you a heads-up about not paying for your college but paying for your half-sibling? The audacity to say he doesn't approve. Honestly good, because now you can un-invite him without feeling guilty. Who would want to attend a wedding they don't approve of? Oop, honestly, I doubt he's been dreaming of this for more than a few years.

One of my brothers is trans, so I'm sure he thought that was his redo daughter he could do all of the father-daughter stuff with, but that isn't happening anymore. Comment three, sorry legal bare minimum is invite you to the wedding. Father of the bride costs extra. Be sure to add a speech in about your amazing mother who didn't always have a lot but gave you her last dollar when you couldn't afford food in college. How you've learned the value of struggle and who really shows up for you when it matters. Then ask her to join you for a mother-daughter dance.

NTA-oop, my mom was a billion times better than dad, but honestly they'd be both had their own issues. Downvoted commenter too, I mean, O-ODA in this circumstance because one of the showers is usually a month before at least? Upp, yes, his family threw a small one because he had some family in from out of the country and it worked out, and my friends are throwing another one for more people. I also clarified for the few people that would be at both that they didn't need to get us gifts for both or any. Oop clarifies on the money she received from her mother that was child support. Jesus, since this keeps coming up. One, it was the first two years of college. She sent me a few hundred dollars, Am, but did use the money for my health insurance and if something

came up, an issue at the house that I lived at in the summer, by the way. Two, even if she spent any of it on my siblings, it doesn't matter. It was her money. Three, after I turned 21 is when it got hard and she'd sent me $20 when she could. I haven't received a dime from dad since I turned 21. Comment 4. You should have told him that walking you down the aisle was not required by the court, so why would you expect him to do A-UP? LMA-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-W-A-O-W-Apresponds to multiple comments regarding if her father paid for college. He did not pay anything for college. He simply had to continue to pay child support an extra three years. My dad never tried to have joint custody. Most non-custodial parents are ones that don't care to seek more custody. My mom never fought any of our dads who sought

50 to 50. I paid for my college. He paid nothing for college and is offered the same for the wedding. Update, thanks for all of your comments, I think I read all of them. It was very cathartic, and to be honest, even though it was overwhelmingly NTA, I actually started to agree with the OODA folks, who were mostly still very nice. I should have put on my big girl pants and just told my dad he would be a guest at my wedding and nothing more. I wasn't doing anyone a favor by not being up front. I apologized, kind of, to my fiancé, he totally understood and admitted he doesn't really understand my family dynamic, which I told him I was glad for. I mentioned in some comments, but one of my dad's sons came out as trans a few years ago. I know they were hoping it was

a phase, but to their credit they did let him take puberty blockers. Well, it's at this point not looking like a phase anymore, and I think that's where the whole my only daughter slash only chance came from. In fact, after spending time with Hilda and hearing, with horror, about the thing she's done, my sill confided in me that she's pretty sure that if he and Hilda did have a daughter, he would refuse to walk me down the aisle before he was able to do it with her. My dad wrote me an email, I'm not going to post it because it's super lame and was just the same old song of Poor Him His Life is so hard, he wasn't ready to be a dad, he did the best he could, he's always loved me blah blah blah no action items no probably false promises to change nothing new no he didn't offer any money for the wedding but reiterated a lot that he's always dreamed of walking me down the aisle he did the whole oh i know i haven't been perfect and you deserved a better dad and how he knew he could do better with his grandkids i just replied that we looked forward to him being a guest at the wedding and to remind me if they had any food allergies unfortunately i care a lot and i know there you're you

youngest allergies but whatever. I had already decided who'd be walking me down the aisle by then so it didn't matter. My sill is one of my dearest friends, and she and my fiancé John have been very sweet to me about all of this. They are their parents only two kids and very close. She's the one who convinced me to date John in the first place and I can never stop, thanking her. She and my Phil always go, don't laugh, to this amateur wrestling thing in our city whenever he's in town, drink a lot of beer, and either John or myself pick them up. It's a fun thing, and they've always done it just the two of them, so I was shocked and thrilled that she invited me to go with them this past weekend. My Phil kept bragging about his two daughters and my sill told me she's

so excited to finally have a sister. I told them my new plan for the ceremony and who would be walking me down the aisle, I had already told Jakers and he approved, and even though they're pretty traditional they thought it was a great idea. I'm excited for the future, I've worked really hard for my life, and yes, I got super lucky with John and his family, and it's going to be a great rest of my life, and the wedding will be a great start to it. Comments where Op has replied, Oop clarifies on if her brother, Jake, is still going to walk her down the aisle. I was having him walk me down the aisle because he's the closest man I have in my family, and that's what I thought I had to do, be walked down by a family member, ideally a man. But I will be

giving myself away smile comment one. Curious to know some of the horrific things that Hildy has done that makes you know that if Hildy had a girl your dad would have dumped you like yesterday's trash. If it's too personal to tell, it's fine. I am just how curious what a P-O-S Hildy really was. I seriously think some people watch Cinderella and Snow White and think the stepmothers are role models. Oop, my brother is trans, a fab, so yeah comment too.

Ah. Hildy is also transphobic. Gotcha. Total POS. You and your brother deserve happiness. Screw her. Oop, she's not. They've been very supportive of my brother.

I'm saying I think a lot of this came out because he realized I'm his only daughter. I'm also almost 100% certain that if he had a daughter with Hildy he wouldn't be allowed to walk me down the aisle until he walked her down first, just like how he was never able to go my father-daughter dances. Fine and retrospect B.C. those were cringe, next story. Boyfriend's mom copies everything I buy and makes say-y-yell comments about our relationship, but when she tried to watch him pee on a road trip right after I did it as a joke, I realized she's obsessed with him and we had to cut her off. I, 27F, have been with my boyfriend, 26M, for two years. Our families are very close, both of our most. We're moms get along and pretty much became best friends once we started dating. I adore his mom,

50F, 2, we've had a genuine friendship since her son and I got together. Let me start by saying my boyfriend and his mom are pretty close and they have a great relationship. But since we started dating, she seems to be jealous of our relationship. And she seemed to start copying me. My boyfriend bought me a beanie from our favorite local company and suddenly, she needed the same beanie. We went bikini shopping and she bought the exact same bikini I decided to buy. My boyfriend bought me a camping ice chest, so she went out and bought the exact same one for herself. Now, she's looking to buy the exact same car as me that I bought for myself six months ago. For reference, I bought a four-by-four off-roading SUV with full towing capabilities because I go camping and ride dirt bikes quite a bit.

She does not do any of that, nor have a single use for any type of four-by-four car. Aside for from the copying, she makes very weird inappropriate jokes. I said I wanted breakfast, she responds, don't you get enough sausage for my son? I say I'm tired, she says maybe don't stay up so late having segs, has literally said that. One time I made a comment about my boyfriend having big hands and she said you know what that means, right? Mama didn't raise no shrimpies. We were on a road trip once, and we had to pull over for a pee break. My boyfriend got out, and just peed on the side of the road. Jokingly, I stood behind him and peeked over to watch his business.

His mom saw and she came over to do the same. She does say this stuff in front of my boyfriend, her son, and he'll snap and tell her she's being weird, but she only ever laughs it off. When she came over to see his business, he immediately shrugged her off slash elbowed her and snapped at her to knock it off. She just doesn't take it seriously.

I want the entire future with my boyfriend, kids, house, land, all of it. So cutting her off or giving my boyfriend that ultimatum doesn't seem feasible. Is this an overreaction? Do I just let the weirdness fizzle out and ignore it in the meantime? Edit, shit hit the fan. She absolutely lost it when my boyfriend sat down to have a conversation with her. But in the end, we did cut ties. I made a full post explaining how that.

that Bats hit crazy woman reacted. Thank you for all the responses and advice. While it wasn't what I ever wanted to hear, I apparently needed two and so did my boyfriend. Update, hi, everyone. I was overwhelmed by the amount of responses I got on my previous post, and fucking horrified that my fears were put into words that outsiders were able to very clearly see. I'm not going to lie, it made me nauseous reading some of the comments and realizing it was a form of emotional incest, which I had to research, by the way, hated every second of it. Anyways, here's an update from the drama that went down the last month. I sat down with my boyfriend and had a really uncomfortable talk about all of it, and he was equally horrified.

I don't think it ever really hit him how completely bananas and sick the behavior was until everything was laid out on the table back to back. He assured me he hasn't dealt with any deeper abuse from his past, and this seems to be a more recent behavior. I'm his most serious. I'm his most relationship, so we're assuming it was some weird sick jealously like many of you said. The real drama, he sat down with his mom, without me, and told her how he felt, that it was inappropriate and that it needed to stop. Well, shit hit the fan after that. That woman completely snapped, she blew up my phone with messages about how I will never compete with her, she will always be, BF's name, first love, and that I shouldn't have felt so insecure,

especially since we considered each other friends. She also said there was nothing weird or sexual about the comments she's made, and that were all sensitive snowflakes. Eventually they got into a screaming match. He told her we'd cut ties if she continued acting like this. Both his siblings have cut ties with her for years now, and she pretty much said, I dare you, you'll deal with the consequences. So ties were cut. But we have learned she's been twisting the story quite a bit to her friends and family, and they apparently blame me, saying I poisoned her in my boyfriend's mind. I personally have no guilt for the situation. I think cutting ties was the best outcome, but I do worry about my boyfriend. His dad is still very much in his life, but I worry about him not having his

mom, even though she was toxic. For the ones who have cut ties with family members in the past because of a spouse, what kind of advice can you give for a smoother transition to essentially losing a parent. Is there anything that will make it easier on him or both of us? We want to start planning a family soon too, but how am I supposed to ever explain to our child what happened to their grandma? I'm truly scared my boyfriend might hold resentment towards me one day for bringing light to how toxic his mom was. I hope you enjoy this story. Relative tied the knot with my domineering former partner, shared falsehoods about me, criticized me in their wedding address, was disowned by their parent and subsequently attempted to enter my residence during the evening.

So my cousin Julia, 27F, started dating my ex-boyfriend Lewis, 29M, two years ago. I, 27F, had been with Lewis for three years. We started dating after he graduated and I was in my second year of college. We stayed together for three years and broke up a couple of weeks after my 20th birthday. It was honestly not a good relationship. and I regret the fact that it was my first relationship as an adult. He and I were perfect on paper, but in reality, things were quite different. He was really insecure and controlling, and would not let me do anything that I wanted to

buy myself, like going out with my friends to bars and stuff, or even let me speak to my male friends. He was always keeping tabs on me in any time that I did not do things that he wanted me to, he would start manipulating me and gaslighting me to think that I was the reason this was not going to work and I was also pretty desperate to keep him around me, so I would bend over backward for him. But that was still not enough to make him stay. He was the one who dumped me, saying that things were not working out, and then proceeded to block me so that I would not be able to contact him. I tried really hard to get in touch with him, but after the breakup, he was completely gone and within two months, I heard from people that he had already moved on to his next

girlfriend. So, that was a colossal waste of my time and I really don't like that guy. We had no contact with each other for some time after the breakup. But then, when I turned 25, he finally unblocked me and reached out to me to wish me a happy birthday. I did not respond to him, and I thought it was weird that he was texting me because by then, I had also moved on, and I was with somebody different. But he still kept texting me, even though he did not get a response. So ultimately, I had to block him, and then, we did not speak for a couple of months again. However, just a few months after my birthday, Julia invited me over and when I went to her house, she told me that she wanted to introduce me to somebody, and it turned out to be Lewis.

Apparently, the reason he had been texting me earlier on my birthday was because he wanted to make things right with me before this happened. The two of them had met through work and had started dating and were quite serious about each other. Julia and I had been really close right from our childhood, so this came as quite a shock to me because she had known that he and I really did not get along and he was quite toxic to me. So I was very taken aback when I realized that the two of them were together and she told me that she knew I would be uncomfortable, but she wanted me to give it one chance and I really wanted to do that, but it was just too much for me. I wanted to be happy for Julia, but Lewis was somebody

who had caused a lot of pain for me in the past, and it was my first serious relationship, because in middle school and high school, I did not have anybody except crushes. And he had ruined that for me, so I had a major grudge against him in the way that he had treated me in the past. I tried to be as respectful as possible about it, and I told Julia that while I really wanted her to be happy, I could not process the fact that she was with Lewis now and I did not think that I wanted to be a part of her life anymore. She was really upset about it and tried to talk to me several times after that, but I couldn't accept it. Because she, of all people, had known exactly how toxic he had been to me

and how traumatized I had been because of him. But she still went on to date him and she kept telling me that he had changed and was a better person now, but I did not buy it. She was free to have him in her life and be with him. I did not have a problem with that. But also, I had the right to cut him in by association, her two, out of my life. life. It was very simple for me, and obviously, it was really hard for me as well since Julia and I were really good friends, along with being cousins. But then, there's something that I

absolutely had to do for my own sake, and I did it. After she told me that she had started dating Lewis, I stopped speaking to her much and for the past two years, we had been really cold to each other because once she realized that I was not going to talk to her, even she started acting distant with me and I don't blame her for that. We would meet at events and stuff, and we would just ignore each other, whereas earlier, we had always been the cousins who would stick to each other and gossip about everybody else. But now, things were different and I was honestly okay with that. Everybody had their own life and the freedom to do whatever they pleased, so I did not have a problem with her. I just did not want to speak to her, that was it from my side, but I guess she took it

personally and wanted to get back at me or something. So she took it upon herself to start talking crap about me to other people from our family and ruin my image, which I did not think was necessary at all. Because I would never do that to her, I had never done that to her, even though we were not getting along. For the past year, she had been telling everybody that I was the reason behind my breakup with Lewis, and apparently, I did not have any morals or ethics. She and Lewis had been spreading rumors about me, saying that I would have been. flirt with other boys while I was with Lewis, right in front of him. And that was the real reason why he would end up getting possessive and controlling. They made it sound like I was

the flirt and that's why he would get insecure when it could not have been further from the truth. It was actually the other way around. He was the one who would be excessively friendly with other women and expect me to be fine with it, but did not like it when I would have male friends even though I kept it completely platonic. And he would constantly manipulate and gaslight me into cutting everybody out of my life. I found their strategies to ruin my reputation among my own family members very offensive but was honestly too busy with my own life to care about what they were spreading, and it was not like anybody actually believed them, so I was fine with it. And I did not respond to that or react since I knew that it would give them exactly what they

had wanted, a reaction out of me. I was also aware of the fact that I wanted to put an end to this, it would be really easy for me since all I had to do was speak to my auntie and she would take care of it all. Even though I was no longer close with Julia, I was still pretty close with her mother and the woman was a federal court judge, so I knew that she would do the right thing. She is my dad's older sister, and everyone knew that she has a spine of steel. She would never do anything underhanded or wrong, so I don't know how Julia turned out to be the way that she is, in spite of being the daughter of somebody like that. Literally, one conversation with her would put an end to all of this, but as a consequence that, I knew that Julia would also have to suffer quite a lot since she was quite financially dependent on her mother since recently. She had started her own jewelry line, but it was not doing too well from what I had heard.

Anyway, I did not want to bother her with such petty things, and I knew that I was strong enough to handle it on my own. So I did not bring it up with her and also, I wanted to let this go on and see what kind of ridiculous rumors they would come up with because either way, my other cousins were still coming up to me and telling me what she had been saying behind my back. So it was just amusing in a form of entertainment for me. Then, six months back, they got engaged and announced the wedding dates soon after. My parents received an invitation, but I did not and I was fine with it. I did not expect to be invited to the wedding either. I don't think I would want to attend even if I had been invited,

after everything that has gone wrong with me and Julia, let alone me and Lewis. The wedding took place three days ago and it was just another day for me, so I was not too concerned about what was going on there. But after a certain point of time, my phone started flooding with texts from everybody in the family. Everybody was harping on about some speech that Lewis and Julia had made at the wedding and I was really confused, but then my parents called me up and said that they needed to speak to me. So they were the ones who finally told me what had happened and I lost my temper at that point. Apparently, they had taken the opportunity at the wedding to make a horrible speech about me and spread as many nasty things about me as they could

at once. They wanted to turn everybody in the family against me and I guess they might have succeeded if I did not have anything against them in my arsenal. Julia and Lewis have been clever enough, not to mention me by name, but kept referring to a certain ex-girlfriend who was not present at the wedding, which would only be referring to me because who else could it have been? Anyway, they repeated all the rumors that they had tried to spread about me already like I was the flirt, and apparently I was a gold digger as well, and I would rely on Lewis for money and expect him to pay for everything and he had two. Since I insisted I was just a college student and could not be wasteful, so I would demand

that he took care of me financially when we were together. That was not true either. I would always make it a point to split everything on our dates and never expected him to pay for anything, let alone demand. But the most horrible thing they said about me by far was when they accused me of cheating on him, which is what ended the relationship, according to their stories. So now, at the wedding, they had said that they were glad that I was out of their lives and had not been present at the wedding, since they did not want such a negative influence to be anywhere around them either and had given the family an ultimatum, that from now onwards, they could either invite me to their events or them.

Since if I was present at any family event, they would not be attending. And after that, people started flooding my phone to tell me about it. But I only got to know about it from my parents and I was majorly pissed, as I mentioned earlier. So, I thanked them for what they had done because my parents had left immediately after that speech since they could not stand the fact that Julia was going to such lengths. They also told me that my aunt was really perplexed about what was going on and spoke to them about whether what Julia was claiming in her speech was true or not since it seemed very out of character for me, and she was right. I hadn't actually done that and she was completely correct to doubt

her daughter about the truthfulness of the statements. Anyway, after getting to know what they had said about me in their wedding speech, I decided to go all out and dug up screenshots from the past to prove that they were lying. I had to do a lot of digging, and it took me quite some time since I had to scroll for several minutes to get to the part that I wanted. Thankfully, after a really long time, I was able to find the screenshots of the chat between me and my ex that I've been looking for. These were around the time from when we were picking up and he had been particularly toxic and vicious at that point in time. He had said a lot of nasty things to me, like how we wished he had never started dating me and how he had wasted three years

of his life with me when he had the option to be with other people since a lot of women had expressed an interest in him during that time. But now, he finally going to go out with other people. There was no mention of cheating and I am pretty sure if I actually cheated on him, he wouldn't have let it go so easily. Anyway, I scrolled even further back up, and I found other chats of him being toxic towards me and then I went ahead and posted it all online without an explanation. or caption because I think those chats would speak for themselves. And so they did, because after I posted the screenshots, because started texting me once again and commenting on the posts saying that they knew that whatever had been said was not true

because it just seemed really weird for me to act that way, because everyone had known me for ages since I was a child. And I was not the kind of person who would do such things. Those screenshots just went on to show that they were lying and knowing that my family was on my side and not theirs, that was all that I needed. In fact, several people even contacted me to tell me that they had left the wedding, just because of the things that had been said about me. So while Julia and Lewis had been hoping that they would be able to turn people against me, their speech had backfired horribly, and nobody was on their side anymore.

Worst of all, not even my aunt was on their side anymore, which was really bad for them. They contacted me on the night of the wedding itself and literally started begging me for forgiveness because apparently, after reading the screenshots that I had posted online, my aunt had spoken to them and expressed how disappointed she was by the fact that Julia had been so dishonest and was trying to ruin my reputation just because she couldn't stand the fact that I had chosen to cut her off because she was with my ex-boyfriend now. Most of the guests had already left because of the ongoing drama, and after speaking to them, my aunt also told Julia that she was very upset and disappointed in her behavior and had expected better, so until she apologized,

to me, and I forgive her, she was going to be cutting the two of them out of her life as well. And then she left, in spite of Julia trying her very best to convince her not to do so, since she was really depending on her mother. At night, the two of them called me and started apologizing profusely because they knew that they would not be able to make do without my aunt's support since she had been supporting her daughter financially for quite some time now. Julia had actually been planning on shutting down her business and taking a break for some time, which meant that she would have to rely on her mother even more now, but since my aunt had decided to cut her off, things were not going to work out according to plan and she was really worried

for the future. And that's why she had contacted me and wanted me to forgive her, take down that post, and speak to my aunt about all of this. I was really upset about everything that happened so I refused to do that and blocked two of them. But since then, they have been trying desperately to contact me and get me to change my mind and now, I'm really confused about what I should do. My aunt is a really upright woman, we have spoken. She had contacted me the day after the wedding

to let me know how sorry she was about whatever Julia had done, but I told her that I did not want my equation with Julia to affect our relationship, since I had not let it happen in the past and I would still not let it happen now. So it's all cool between us, and I know for a fact that if I speak to her, I can make things right for Julia, but I personally feel like I don't really need to. She is a full-grown adult woman, and she should be able to sort things out for herself. The other consequences of her actions, but then again, would feel like a total jerk, knowing that I can help her and I'm choosing not to. I'm just kind of conflicted about what to do right now. So please, help me out.

Ida for not speaking to my aunt and convincing her to forgive my cousin after she made a horrible speech at her wedding with my ex-boyfriend about me? Update 1. Hello. So first of all, thank you so much for all the comments and support. Before I get into the update, I just want to get one thing out of the way. My parents attended the wedding, like a lot of other family members, because they are kind of in the older generation of our family, and they were not exactly aware of the rumors that were being spread about me. Lewis and Julia were mostly saying it to our other cousins and relatives

in the same generation as us or around the same age. They were keeping the older people out of it. So my parents had absolutely no idea what was being said about me and so, they had chosen to attend the wedding out of respect for my aunt, even though they were kind of aware that there was some bad blood between me and Julia after she had started dating this boy. I had not said anything to them or complained to them on purpose, just like I had not said anything to my aunt, because I did not want to drag them or involve them in such petty things. I was above all of that, but clearly, Julia and Lewis were not. Anyway, my point is that my parents were not aware and that's why they attended the wedding, so there is no need for anyone to question them or hate them.

As soon as they, and some of the other people from the older generations, found out the kind of things that were being said about me at the wedding, they chose to opt out and are not on speaking terms with Julia or Lewis anymore, so it's all fine. I hope that's clear now. Now moving on. It's been one week since the wedding and I blocked Lewis and Julia, both. So they could not be able to get in touch with me, but that has not stopped them from trying, since they keep making new accounts on social media and keep sending me emails, even though I just keep blocking them. They are desperate, but I've made up my mind that I'm not getting myself involved and helping them out here. I have kept in touch with my aunt and she has made it very clear to me that she is only going to

resume supporting her daughter after I forgive her, but honestly, I don't think I need to forgive her because for one whole year. I had kept my mouth shut and I had allowed them to say whatever they wanted to about me because I was not taking them seriously. But they thought that it was a free pass for them to take things to the next level and now, they're going to have to face the consequences. There's also another fact that I honestly don't feel like she deserves the support from her mother, since she is in her late 20s now and I think by now, she should have a sense of what she wants to do in her life. I can't imagine anybody still relying on their parents for money at this point in life. It's not even like she's not educated enough or is

not competent enough, she's just always been way too lazy to stick to a job. It had been that way when we were in our early 20s and had just graduated and I thought that she would grow out of it, but it's still the same way now. So in a way, I think I'm kind of doing her a favor because not getting any financial support from my aunt is going to probably teach her to be better at her job or whatever. Either way, I have made up my mind that I'm not going to help her out. I have discussed this decision with my parents, just to let go of some of the guilt that I had been feeling, and they said that I was perfectly justified in whatever I was trying to do. It was my call whether or not I wanted to forgive her. I did not have to forgive her if I did not feel that

she deserved it, just because I was worried about what happened to her in the future. Besides, Lewis still had a decent job and he could support the two of them if they really wanted to get by without any financial help from my aunt. The bottom line is, I spoke to my parents, some of my friends and even you guys here, and most people agree that I have no reason to feel guilty. So, I feel much better now, to be honest. But I have taken that post down because I don't think that it needed to stay up much longer. Everybody in the family already knows what went down and I don't want to keep that on my profile, since a lot of other people follow me and it would be really difficult to explain everything that happened to them. So it was much easier to just take it down.

Right now, I'm just trying to focus on myself and let go of all the anger and the guilt that I had been feeling for the past couple of days, so I've come back to meditating and trying to take my mind off of things and deal with everything in a Zen way. And I really hope that Julia and Lewis also tried to do better with their lives instead of basing it all around me and making me the reason that they wake up in the morning every day like they have been doing so far. I think that'll be better for all of us. Update 2, hi, so it's been a month since the wedding and from what I know, Lewis and Julia are back on their BS again. My aunt is still not speaking to them because I have not forgiven them yet at this point, I don't even need to. Because I know that their apology was not genuine. They were only apologizing because they wanted money from my aunt. They didn't actually mean it.

After a couple of days of trying to convince me to forgive them and tell my aunt to speak to them, they gave up when I did not respond. After that, they went back to spreading rumors about me. And this time, they were really creative with it as well. Apparently, they went around telling everybody that I was trying to ruin their relationship with my aunt on purpose because I wanted all the inheritance to myself. It doesn't even make sense and it's so absurd that I would do something like that

because my parents are pretty well off as well. Let's not even get there since I myself have a decent job and I'm doing well for myself. I don't even need to think about inheritance because, at the rate that I'm going, with the grace of God, I will not need to rely on anybody for money. Maybe they do,

that's why they are thinking along these lines. But anyway, they have been telling everybody all of this every time they run into somebody from the family in public, which happens pretty often since all of us live in the same city and they live close by to several of our family members. People have been avoiding them like the plague,

yet they find a way to talk about me somehow. It just doesn't make sense to me why they're so obsessed with me since I have not done anything for the past month. All I do is ignore them and yet, they can't let go of whatever has happened. Anyway, I got pretty annoyed by this last week and I told my aunt about it and she told me that now. Even if they do apologize, there's no way that she is going to get back in touch with her daughter and she even communicated that to Julia blocking her again and now, the two of them are

even more pissed at me than they already were. I know that because they made another fake email account to send me a really angry message via email because that's the only way that they can contact me now. They told me that they were going to make me pay for all of this. Like who shiver me timbers. I know they're acting unhinged right now and it's not like I'm really scared, but it can be quite inconveniencing, so I wrote back to them and said that if they tried anything funny with me, I would call the cops and not even hesitate in sending them to jail so they had better watch what they do. I'm hoping that it scares them often if not, well, I have a pretty good security system installed. Update 3, so four days ago, I received an email from Lewis and Julia saying that I would have to

face the consequences of what I had done. I also warned them that if they tried to do anything funny, I would report them to the police and yet, that did not stop them from doing the most idiotic thing in the world. Last night, they tried to break into my house. Julia has been to my house several times. She knows that I have a very advanced security system in place so obviously, I was alerted as soon as they even attempted to open my door. I don't even know why they thought that my door would be unlocked in the middle of the night, at around one in the morning. As soon as that happened, I made a call to the police and alerted them that somebody was trying to break into my house. I had a feeling that it was going to be Julia and Lewis, but just in case

it was not, I did not want to take any risks. So they showed up within 15 minutes and unfortunately, for the two of them, they were even dressed like burglars and had been caught, trying to make a run for it a little distance away from my house since they hadn't brought their car with them and had cycled all the way here. The two of them tried to claim that they knew me personally and for not trying to steal anything, they just wanted to break in and speak to me, intimidate me a little bit. I don't know why they admitted to that as if that was going to make them look any better in the eyes of the law. Julia immediately started crying once she had been placed in handcuffs and started begging me to not press any charges against her,

but I did not have any sympathy to spare for her. You can't just keep screwing up again and again, and expect people to forgive you. Lewis just kept looking at me with pure hatred, but that hardly mattered to me, I was quite used to that. Anyway, after that, I went back to sleep because I had work in the morning and this morning, I told my aunt and my parents about what had happened. And they told me that they knew since Julia had used her phone call to call my aunt so she could come and bail her out, but my aunt refused to even go see her, so now nobody knows what's going to happen.

I'm definitely going to press charges against them because I want a protective order against them since they are obviously unhinged, and I don't want anything to do with them anymore. I hope you enjoy this story. Envious half-sibling attempted to sabotage my wedding by alleging that my partner was interested in eloping with her. I promptly contacted her spouse and informed them of the situation, resulting in their divorce. I, 25F, recently got married to my fiancé and boyfriend of almost seven years. Noah, 25M. My entire family was invited to the wedding, including my step-sister, Charlotte 24F. Our parents got married when I was nine years old and Charlotte was eight. My mother married her father, and we were fine with it at the time because we had already

known each other for a couple of years and our parents had been together for almost three years before they got married. So to be more accurate, we actually met each other for the first time when I was six and she was five. We got along reasonably well. I lived in a neighborhood where there were not a lot of of kids to play with and whenever Charlotte and her dad would come over, I would be thrilled, and we would have a great time. Even as we grew older, we had a nice relationship and I considered her a close friend even up until middle school. It was not until we started high school. That thing started going between us, and it was so typical and sad because it happened due to a boy. Noah, to be more precise. My dad had cheated on my mother with a friend of hers when she was

pregnant and promptly decided that he wanted nothing to do with her or me after I was born when he was caught, so he signed away his rights and moved away with his girlfriend. They were never married, so she never saw him again, and since my grandparents were reasonably well off, she decided that she didn't even want child support from him because she wanted nothing to do with him anymore. So I never met my dad and I don't know him. My stepdad was pretty much the first father figure that I had in my life. Charlotte's mother had, unfortunately, passed away when she was very little

from multiple health issues and the pregnancy had just complicated things. So my mother had full custody of me and Charlotte's dad had full custody of her, so when they started dating and moved in together, we ended up spending all our time with each other. She was close to my age and it was great because I had a constant companion.

As I had mentioned before, Charlotte and I were really close until high school. She had started her education earlier than usual, so even though she was a year younger than me, we were in the same grade at school. We started high school together and had a bunch of classes together as well. And with us, we had Noah. His family had moved to our town that year and he was the newest student in our high school. I took a liking to him almost instantly and unfortunately, so did Charlotte. He was cute and really sweet, and even though both of us had dated other boys before, we were just kids at the time, and it didn't really count. I could sense that Charlotte

liked him just as much as I did, so I decided to talk to her about it and we promised each other that neither of us would try to make a move on him or get with him out of respect for the other because we didn't want to let a boy get in between us. We were just teens and we liked a boy, big deal. Both of us figured that we would be able to move on from our little crush on Noah, but unfortunately, it didn't work that way. Since the three of us had a lot of us had a lot of us had a lot of classes together, we ended up becoming good friends, and as I got to know him, I started liking him even more. He was everything that I wanted in a guy, but I knew what I had promised, and I kept things strictly platonic. Even though Noah would constantly try to flirt with me,

I never reciprocated because I knew I couldn't hurt Charlotte. She and I never talked about him at home or otherwise because we knew this was a sensitive topic for both of us and we didn't want to bring it up with each other. So that's how things went on until our senior year. Around the time that people were asking each other out for prom, I was about to say yes to some other guy when I found out from Noah that Charlotte had asked him to go to prom with her. He had confronted me when I was on my own and told me that Charlotte had not only asked him to go to prom with her, she had also confessed that she had feelings for him and wanted to be more than friends. I was shocked that she would do such a thing, after promising me that she would never make a move on him and telling me to do the same.

It was just unacceptable and I was hurt by it. But then, Noah also told me that he had turned her down because he didn't see her as anything more than a friend and even though he had always felt that she was trying to get with him, he had never reciprocated. He told me that for the past couple of years, ever since he joined this school and became friends with us, Charlotte had been trying to flirt with him and acted differently around him when it was just the two of them, and he had sensed that she liked him, but he didn't do anything about it, and the reason for that was because he liked me. The reason that he had confronted me

and chosen to tell me all about this was because even though he liked me and kept trying to get me to flirt back with him, I would never do the same and never expressed any interest in him. And now that our senior year was about to come to an end, and we were going to go separate ways for college, he needed to get an answer, because he wanted to know if we were ever going to happen. So he told me that I could either give him an answer and tell him if I liked him or not and if I didn't, he would know where he stood and start thinking about asking other girls to prong. I still remember that day very clearly because it was a significant one. After the conversation that I had with Noah, I was very disoriented because it was a lot to process.

He had not only told me that he liked me and had for a really long time, but he had also told me that Charlotte had been trying to flirt with him relentlessly even after promising me that she would never do anything to jeopardize our friendship. And that hurt because I really used to consider her as nothing less than my sister. So after Noah had cornered me that day and told me everything, I told him that I needed a day to think and sleep on it, and I would have an answer for him by the next day. I honestly didn't know what to tell him because everything hinged on the conversation that I would have with Charlotte once I got home that day. I decided to skip the rest of the classes and head home because I didn't want to walk home with her, I was just that

sick to my stomach after finding out the truth. Once I got home, I waited for her, and when she came back, she was very casual about everything acted as if nothing had happened. She didn't say anything about Noah, or the fact that she had asked him out, despite the many promises that we had made to each other. So I brought it up and decided to confront her and get to the bottom of this. I asked her if it was true that she had asked Noah out for prom and confessed her feelings and she immediately got real defensive about it and told me that it was none of my business because that was between Noah and her. But you see, it was a lot of my business because she had promised me that she wouldn't do anything of the sort and had made me promise

that I wouldn't try to get with him either. So for ages, I had been suppressing my feelings for him while she had been making move after move on him. And that was incredibly unfair because I honestly didn't just like Noah, I'm fairly certain that I was in love with him by that point. And it wasn't easy for me to just continue, ignoring all his advances for the sake of my relationship with Charlotte. I didn't want to hurt her, and I had prioritized her feelings over mine, only to find out that she was not willing to do the same for me. So when I confronted her, we got into a really nasty fight, and I made up my mind that I was going to go out with Noah. It was evident to me that Charlotte couldn't care less about my feelings, and I didn't see any reason

for me to continue putting her feelings over mine anymore, because she had essentially told me, during the fight, that she had wanted to spare my feelings by making that promise because she knew that if it came down to it then Noah would obviously pick her over me. It was extremely arrogant of her to say that and I was just done with her because she had betrayed me on the worst level possible. So the next day, I told Noah everything. Like everything. The promise that Charlotte and I had made to each other and the fight that we had the previous day, and he was very understanding about it.

He told me that he was ready to wait for me if it took me longer to come around. But I told him that I was in love with him and I couldn't deny it any longer. So we started dating the very same day and it's been seven beautiful years of us being together, I have no regrets. Obviously, we had to cut Charlotte off and we didn't speak to her again after that day. It was a lot easier for him, but it was different for me because I actually lived with her. We used to share a room, but after our fight and after I started going out with Noah, she moved into the basement so she could live separately and I had no complaints about it.

Our parents asked us, several times, what had gone wrong, but I never told them about any of it and I don't think Charlotte did either. We just stopped speaking to each other after that day and it was difficult initially, but we got used to it. Noah and I ended up going to the same college and Charlotte picked one across the country, so I didn't have to see her for the next couple of years, and would only meet her on the holidays. After we graduated from college, Noah and I were still going strong, and Charlotte had started dating a guy from her college as well. All of us soon started working, and our fights started feeling like something out of a high school TV show because it was just petty and didn't matter anymore.

Charlotte and I would meet each other at family gatherings and even though we would never consciously make an effort to talk to each other like we did as kids, we started being civil to each other, and would at least greet each other like family. We would stick to small talk and safe topics, and nothing more. So things started changing, and we were at least on talking terms as we grew into adulthood. And then, last year, she announced her engagement to her boyfriend from college and I congratulated her. It was all very formal and she told me that she would love to have me at the wedding. It was kind of bittersweet because when we were little, we would always be each other's made of

honor whenever we would have make-believe weddings, but when I attended her wedding, I was just a guest. So I guess I was happy that we were finally acting like adults and patching things up, but I was also kind of sad that things would never go back to the way that they were. We had been on speaking terms since then, and she even seemed to be fine with Noah. Of course, I had the good sense not to bring him to her wedding as my plus one because that would be kind of weird and insensitive, even though she had moved on completely and was actually getting married to someone else. But sure enough, she picked up on it, and when we were talking and socializing after the ceremony,

she told me that I could have brought Noah along with me because she had moved on and didn't care about it anymore because it was all in the past. But I guess I shouldn't have taken her word for it, because what happened recently was a to the fact that she had in fact not moved on even one bit and was still a humongous jerk. A couple of months ago, I'd say eight, Noah proposed to me and I obviously said yes, because the timing was just right. He had just been promoted at work and I had quit my job to join my friend in her startup, both of which were great things. I was looking forward to having a stress-free, drama-free wedding, but I guess I shouldn't have invited Charlotte if I wanted

that. She congratulated me when I got engaged and that was it. I thought that things were fine. I invited her to the wedding and she accepted the invitation. There was no way that I was expecting anything to go wrong but a week ago, on the day of the wedding, Charlotte decided that she was going to make one last ditch effort to ruin my relationship. Noah and I were getting married in a hotel a little out of town and most of our close friends and family members were living in the hotel with us. The two of us, along with our parents and bridesmaids and groomsmen, arrived two days ago, while other family members and friends and people coming from out of town, reached a day before the wedding. Now, Charlotte and her husband were supposed to come to the venue a day before the wedding,

but they showed up on the same day as a switch threw us off a little, but they made it seem like an honest mistake. And luckily, or maybe unluckily, the hotel did have some vacant rooms, so it worked out for them. I genuinely believe that Charlotte had made a mistake and didn't think much of it because I had no idea what she had up her sleeve. But on the day of my wedding, I finally understood what she was trying to do.

I was getting my makeup done and stuff when I noticed her constantly looking outside my room and I thought that it was a bit strange because the guests were supposed to be either in their rooms or just having fun. After all, we had booked a major part of the hotel that we were staying in and they were free to do whatever they wanted until it was time for the ceremony.

So for her to leave all of that, and lurk outside my room was kind of weird, especially since she was neither a bridesmaid nor my mom. Once I was ready, my bridesmaids and my mother went to their rooms to get dressed and get their makeup done themselves. There was just one hour to go before the ceremony was supposed to start, and since they didn't need as much time to get dressed and everything, I figured that we would have enough time to get down to the venue on time and decided to take a little walk down the corridor outside my room to calm my nerves.

I couldn't leave that floor or go anywhere else because I didn't want anybody else to see me in my wedding dress, but right then, I was caught by Charlotte outside my room, and she pulled me aside, saying that she wanted to talk about something very important to me. I had no idea what this could be about because she and I, while we had been on speaking terms, hadn't actually had any intimate or personal conversations so this was a bit weird. but I let her talk to me out of curiosity. And then, she started telling me that she had reached the hotel a day earlier than scheduled, not by accident, but on purpose because apparently Noah had asked her to.

She told me that she had come only because he had asked her to, but she had no idea why he had asked her to come earlier so that he could ask her to elope with him. She fed me some rubbish story about how Noah had contacted her around two weeks before the wedding, saying that he was getting cold feet, and he was afraid that he was making a mistake by marrying me because it had taken him a long time, but he had finally come to terms with the fact that he was no longer in love with me, but had fallen for her. She said that apparently, they had been in touch behind my back for a really long time, but it had all been platonic. However, he had fallen for her and had told her to come by earlier so that they could run away together. And he had been pressuring

her to agree to his reckless plan, ever since she had shown up at the hotel since he didn't feel brave enough to talk to me because he was afraid that I would end up doing something crazy, and he didn't want to be responsible for it or even around me when it happened, but apparently, my dear Charlotte couldn't do this to me, and believed that she had to be honest with me. So she, like a normal person, had picked the hour before my wedding to come clean to me about this huge thing. Now, obviously, I was fully aware of the fact that she was lying. through her teeth about all of this because I had faith in Noah, and I knew that he would never do something like this to me. And besides, he was a very straightforward and blunt guy,

and if he had something to say, he would just say it to my face instead of going behind my back. He and I were not cowards who ran away from problems. This story that Charlotte was telling me seemed pretty out of character for him, which is how I was able to tell that she was lying. It was infuriating because she was pretending like it was coming from a place of concern, and she was worried about me and my relationship. I knew that she was actively trying to create drama when there was nothing happening just to spoil my wedding, so I decided to go even lower and called up her husband right in front of her. I didn't have his phone number, but I did follow him on Instagram, so that's where I placed the call.

I was pretending to be devastated and I was standing in front of Charlotte, so she couldn't exactly see what I was doing on my phone, but she didn't stop me because she figured that I was probably going to call Noah and confront him, or even break up with him, and that's what she wanted. But she didn't have a clue that I was actually calling her husband, who was in another part of the hotel and thankfully, he answered my call. I repeated everything that Charlotte had said to me before asking if that was true and she didn't say a word because she was still thinking that it was probably Noah that I was on a call with. I don't even know what she was planning because one looked through their texts and emails would tell me the truth, so I had no idea what her

game was here. But anyway, after I was done talking, I decided to put my phone on speaker so that Charlotte would also be able to hear her husband's response. And sure enough, her husband was shocked to hear about all of this and said that he was going to come back to his room immediately. And when Charlotte heard her husband's voice on the phone as opposed to Noah, she freaked out completely and started screaming at me. She said that I was trying to sabotage her marriage on purpose and I just told her that I was doing to her exactly what she was trying to do to me and then walked back into my room.

I told my bridesmaids what had happened and said that they needed to make sure that she didn't turn up at the wedding or during the ceremony because I didn't trust her and I wanted her out. But turns out, I didn't have anything to worry about because the ceremony went smoothly and Charlotte didn't even try to interrupt anything by showing up because I guess she was too busy trying to smooth things out with her husband after the little stunt that she had pulled. And nobody at the wedding even noticed that she was not present, except for our parents. After the ceremony, when they asked me where Charlotte was,

I told them that I would tell them later, but I didn't have any intention of letting them know because it wasn't important to me. After everything was wrapped up, I contacted the hotel authorities to ask what had become of Charlotte's room, and to my satisfaction, they told me that she had checked out during the wedding, and they were gone now. Nobody brought up anything in the aftermath of the wedding and I was glad about it because I only wanted to enjoy being a newlywed without having to talk about Charlotte and her stupid little act. I did tell Noah about it and we had a good laugh afterward, but that was about it. However, it's been a week since then, and two days ago, we found out that Charlotte and her husband were separating. Our parents were the ones who informed me and said that her

husband had apparently called them up and yelled at them about how awful Charlotte was and told them that they needed to come and get her because she refused to leave their house, and if she didn't go, he would call the cops on her. So they had to pick her up and they found out that they were separating because her husband had found it very insulting that Charlotte had reached the wedding venue early on purpose because she wanted to sabotage me. He had heard the entire story from me and for ages, he had been hearing about how great Noah was, and how Charlotte should have been the one to end up with him from her first.

friends, who are clearly very stupid. And he couldn't take it anymore because it was very obvious that she still had feelings for him and that's why she was trying to ruin my wedding. That was pretty much the last straw for him, and he had decided that he was going to end this marriage because no matter how much she insisted on it, she was in love with someone else and it wasn't something he could deny anymore. So they are going to get divorced and I don't know why, but my parents think that this is my fault and are blaming me for it. They think that, despite what Charlotte had tried to do, I should have kept her marriage and her husband out of it because by dragging him in and calling him, I had ruined her marriage. So now, they expect me to apologize to her and are refusing to talk to me

because I said I was not going to do that. I literally do not understand how this is my fault because I didn't ask Charlotte to do something so psychotic. All I did was hit her where it hurt because she tried to do it to me first. That's all that I did and think it's very unfair to hold it against me. She ruined her own marriage, and I had nothing to do with it. Noah also feels the same way, but my parents and a lot of our mutual friends with Charlotte are on her side and it's screwing with my brain right now. I'd defer for involving my stepsister's husband when she tried to sabotage my wedding

on purpose by lying about my husband? Update 1. Hello, people have read it. First and foremost, I would just like to thank everyone who commented on my original post and made sure to tell me that I am not in the wrong here. That helped me realize how unfair my parents and a couple of my friends were, so I decided to cut them off. Honestly, I don't see any other way out of this because if I don't cut ties with them, then they will just continue blaming me for it and making me feel like crap about it.

And at some point, people are bound to crack. I don't want to crack and apologize to Charlotte, so it's for the best if I cut everybody off. Anyway, isn't that what my parents wanted? They were the ones who were refusing to talk to me because I wasn't ready to apologize to Charlotte. So now they have what they want and I'm not talking to them either. As for my friends, if they are really going to take Charlotte's side on this and make me the bad guy then they are welcome to do so. It just helped me realize that they were never my true friends in the first place.

Everyone knows that Charlotte is the one at fault here and if anything, she is the one who owes me an apology. They can keep denying it, but it's not going to change the facts. And honestly, I'm not interested in changing the facts either or changing anybody's mind. Everyone can believe what they want too. I just want to spend time with Noah and that is it. Update 2, hey, so Noah and I have left for our honeymoon. It's been close to two weeks since the wedding and I'm still not talking to my parents. Not talking to my friends doesn't hurt as much because I have my husband now and if I'm being

honest, I wasn't really that connected to those people anyway so it's not like it makes a huge difference to me or something. But not talking to my parents, yeah, that stinks. I keep wanting to text my mom and talk to her or just call up my stepdad and have a funny little conversation with him but then I remember that I can't do it because they have decided to take Charlotte's side on this. From what I know, she is living with them and probably feeding them more lies about me so as to turn them against me fully. No doubt, by the time I get back, my parents will probably end up hating me.

I can still understand that my stepdad wants to be there for his daughter, but I cannot understand why my mom isn't taking my side on this. She literally got cheated on by my dad and he left us to be with someone she called her friend. That's exactly what Charlotte was trying to do here. She was trying to screw me over so she could have Noah all for herself. I feel like my mother, of all people, should at least understand why I was mad at her and why I did what I did. But if she doesn't understand me and thinks that I'm the villain here, I don't know what to say anymore. It's fine, though, because Noah and I are on our honeymoon right now, and hopefully, this will help with cheering me up and make me forget about my problems. Update 3. On the third day of my honeymoon, I received a text from my mother, but I'm not going to open it until I get back home because I want to live in the moment right now.

Noah and I are having a great time and in case this is not a good message, I want to experience the disappointment later on. I know it sounds weird, but I really want to cherish this experience because you only go on your honeymoon once. Update 4 So, I'm back home and the first thing that I did after landing was check the message from my mother. She told me that she had allowed Charlotte to live with them for a couple of days, but it had become too much to bear because all she would do was badmouth me, and after a point, my stepdad, and my mom decided that it was enough. They realized that what Charlotte had done was certainly to ruin my wedding and decided to kick her out.

They invited me over for dinner this weekend so they could make me. make it up to me because they had gotten carried away since Charlotte was getting a divorce, and it seemed like a bigger deal to them at the time and they didn't know how to deal with her emotions and made some bad calls. But they had come to their senses now and wanted to apologize. I honestly couldn't be happier and Noah and I have already agreed to the dinner and this is what will fix our relationship again. I guess all's well, that ends well, I just hope we never end up fighting like this again. I hope you enjoy this story. Ultimately exploded on my privileged slob invoice and his inactive spouse after they barged into my residence without invitation, departed our space and disarray, disregarded my requests, and attempted converting my own wife against me.

I have been married to Rita for about a year and it has been great, for the most part. I am 31M and she is 30F, and we have been together for three years before we got married. We met because of a couple of common friends who thought that it would be a great idea to set us up on a blind date as a joke since we are so different, and eventually, it actually turned out pretty great, considering the fact that we got married. But anyway, Rita has an older brother, David. David is 35M and his wife, Erica, is around the same age. My wife is very close to her brother because while growing up, they pretty much only had each other. Their mother passed away shortly after Rita was born and it was a devastating incident for the family because she passed away in a road

accident, so nobody saw it coming. Rita was just seven months old at the time and her mother had been out, getting the groceries, since her father was at work. It was just the kids and the babysitter who had been at home at the time and her father fell into an irreversible depression after their mother passed away. My wife was obviously too young to remember it, but David remembers the way their father used to act in the aftermath of their mother's demise and how he would spend all his days locked up in his room, either working or sleeping. He had started working from home after that and even though everything was provided to them, they essentially did not have parents, even though their father was still alive. There was no love or affection that was shown

to them and it was just very sad. So anyway, they realized that pretty early on and they would have to be there for each other because their mother was gone and their father was just barely surviving without her, so they had to look out for each other and have each other's backs. And I think it's very admirable that they have such a great relationship and are so close but at the same time, it can get really annoying for me because I, personally, don't come from a family where this is normal. For context, I do not have any siblings and my parents got divorced when I was 12 years old. I would not say that it affected me in any way, I just realized that I had two rooms now and that was it. My parents getting divorced was not surprising

because even when they were together, they would just keep fighting all the time and barely even speak to each other. I honestly don't even know how they managed to live with each other for 12 years. But anyway, after they got divorced, they were much easier to live with and a lot more pleasant to talk to. So I actually preferred them to be divorced. They continued to co-parent me and remained in touch. But speaking about the different kinds of family that we had, I am not the kind of guy who visits my parents every weekend or speaks with them on the phone every day. I'm very busy with work on my life and we are lucky if we get to speak for maybe a day or two every month. I don't think my parents minded either because they have their own lives and are okay with us

just getting together once in a while, as opposed to every other day. But it's not the same for my wife and I tried to respect it earlier, knowing that she has had a very different childhood and obviously, she and her brother are bonded for life. However, it just kept getting more difficult for me to deal with it with time. Earlier, when we were dating, she would speak to him on the phone almost every day and I thought it was cute. The phone calls would usually last for an hour and I didn't have an issue with it because like I am not close to my family, she is. And that's her life and her choice. As long as it was not affecting me in a negative way, I did not have a problem with it. So I knew that she would be busy at night and I would not call her around that time. But then,

we moved in together and she would talk to her brother for almost three hours every day. And every weekend, he would come to visit us. That kind of started annoying me a little because of a couple of reasons. Both Rita and I had full-time jobs and would be working throughout the day. So when I came back home from work, I expected to be able to spend some time with my girlfriend I would have to wait for her to be done talking to her brother, and by the time she was done, I was too tired and I would just fall asleep as soon as my head would hit the pillow. That was the weekdays but on the weekends, I thought that maybe we would be able to spend quality time together. However, on those days, her brother would land at our door.

and we would spend the entire weekend together. It used to feel like we were not getting any time together and I didn't feel good about it. I didn't even know how to bring it up with her without sounding petty and insecure. So I stayed silent about it for a couple of months but then we had our first big fight about something that I don't even remember and then,

I decided to bring this up with her. Thankfully, that fight was resolved and we even spoke about the excessive time that she was spending with her brother. and she told me that she would try to cut down on it and give me more time instead because evidently that was bothering me and getting in the way of our relationship and she did not want that. She explained to me that her brother lived a couple of hours away on his own, which he was not used to but he had to live alone since their father passed away a couple of years before that.

He was also feeling very lonely because his girlfriend was working in another state and would only come back for the holidays, so he did not get to see her very often, which is why they were spending so much time together, so he did not feel alone. She had not told me about it because he was not comfortable talking about it, but once I got that explanation, it started to make a little more sense to me. She also understood where I was coming from and told me that she would try to spend more time with me and we would work on our relationship. So then, her brother started visiting less frequently and they cut down on the hours of their calls. This had happened one year into our relationship, but then once we had the discussion and got it out of the way,

everything was fine again and I proposed to her about a year after that. But things started getting awkward between me and David soon after she started spending less time with him. He would still visit us occasionally, but on those visits, everything would be very tense. I don't blame him for that because obviously, I was the one who had asked his sister to spend less time with him and he did not like that because now, he had to spend more time alone. So whenever we would be together, he would take digs at me and try to imply that I was too insecure and jealous to let Rita be in touch with her family. Of course, he would pass it all off as jokes, but I knew that he was actually pretty pissed about what had happened.

I thought it was weird that he was taking this so personally because it was really not about him. Even if Rita had been spending that kind of time with anybody else, I would have felt equally sidelined. I don't think it was wrong for me to want to spend time with my girlfriend. And it was not my fault that his girlfriend was working out of state so he could not be with her but his sister was not a replacement for that, for God's sake. I felt like things had changed between the two of us and now, he saw me as more of a sort of competition because that's the way he started behaving. Even a month before I proposed, he organized a party and invited us all to it, which actually turned out to be his wedding.

Erica had quit her job and come back home and they had decided to surprise us. The key word here is surprise, so I had no idea that they were getting married. They had skipped the engagement and just got married, which made sense because they had been together for a really long time before that. I was happy for them and we did not interact much at their wedding, even though it was very small and intimate and he had only invited a couple of his friends, co-workers, and family members, so he had enough time to interact with me but he just chose not to. I did not mind it because it was his wedding and he could choose to do whatever he wanted to

and it was not like friends anyway, so I did not make an issue out of it. But then a month later, when I got engaged, and I threw an engagement party a couple of days after that, he spent the entire party making jokes about how we were getting serious about the competition now because I had even gotten engaged just because he was married and I did not want to fall behind. Even as jokes, they were quite distasteful because this was supposed to be a happy occasion making it all about himself. I don't think anybody found it funny and everybody who was laughing was doing it so that he would stop talking about it. Even Rita did not like it one bit and we talked about it later but did not do anything about it because it did not seem worth it to make a big deal out of this and we decided to focus on planning the wedding instead. We got married about seven months later and that's when he announced that he and Erica were going to be done.

parents. He made the announcement about a week after our wedding and Rita was ecstatic, but I was just worried about how the dynamics would change between us after that because I was pretty certain that he would use this opportunity to start taking pot shots at me. I know it probably sounds like I'm making too much out of it, but trust me, David's behavior around me was nothing short of disrespectful and unnecessarily passive aggressive. And I was actually right because as soon as they got pregnant, he started making jokes about how I would announce that we were pregnant the next thing that they knew, because obviously I could not live with the fact that I was falling behind and I had to win whatever competition I had initiated. He said it all in a very

joking way, so I had to laugh along with him every time he would visit and say these stupid things, but on the inside. I would actually be pretty pissed off. Anyway, after they had their twin babies, they got pretty busy with their kids and did not visit us as often as they would and we did not mind that either because Rita understood that they were parents now. And I did not even want David around in the first place, so I was good. Everything was going normally but about two weeks ago I came back home from work and all of a sudden I realized that David and Erica had taken over the house. It was kind of disorienting for me because I didn't remember having any discussion about this with Rita and I had been caught completely off guard when I came back home and so David was playing

in the living room with his twins and Rita and Erica cooking together in the kitchen. I also noticed that there were a lot of unpacked bags in the living room and I asked Rita to speak to me in private so I could understand what this was all about. Once we were in our bedroom alone, I asked her what was going on and she told me that she had invited them to live with us for a month or so because apparently, Erica had to quit her job when she got pregnant and was not actually on maternity leave like she had been telling everyone. When she got pregnant, she had only been working at her new company for a couple of months and they don't really offer paid leave for new mothers who, have not even been working there for a year, so she had been told that she could either go on maternity leave without pay or she would have to come into work. She had decided to quit because it was too stressful for her to even think about it and David was earning well enough so it did not seem to be a problem for either of them at the time

but now, she spent the entire day at home and she was not used to not contributing to the household expenses because she had been working ever since she turned 18. And that's why she was having a tough time not going to work and just being at home with her children so she had been acting out and David thought that maybe this was postpartum depression or something. So he had been very concerned about it, and had spoken to her doctor and had come to the conclusion that it would be better for her to be able to spend some time with other people as well, instead of being left alone with the kids all day. So they decided that we would be living together under one roof until she was ready to go back to work or until she felt better. I don't know how I

felt about that decision because I hadn't even been included in the discussion and Rita had just made that decision without even consulting me first. Even though both of us lived in the house together and this was something that should have been a joint discussion instead of just her deciding something and then informing me after she had already yes to it. Especially when she was well aware of the equation between me and David. So we got into a bit of a fight that day because I told her that I was not comfortable with the idea of living with them for more than a week and she had already agreed that we would all be living together for at least a month. But I had not even been included in that discussion so I did not understand why she had thought

that I would be okay with it, especially given the circumstances with me and David. I was very against it and she thought that I was being selfish and that I should think about her family and their well-being instead of being petty. Eventually, I had to agree because she had started emotionally manipulating me and said that she did not want to have a guilty conscience in case Erica actually did have postpartum depression and so she was willing to help them out. It was just a month and it would be over in no time. At least that's what she told me,

I was really too tired to fight with her anymore, so I just let it go. Because at the end of the day, I knew that she really valued her family and this was just something that I had to accept even if I did not like her family. Her brother, to be more specific. They were all kind of loud and obnoxious to live with,

especially David with his constant gives at me. and I really hated having to wake up in the middle of the night because one of their twins was crying but it did not even bother Rita because she was not a light sleeper like me and as a matter of fact neither was anybody else. It felt really unfair because I was having to make so many sacrifices for kids that were not even mine. I have nothing against the children but I did not like the fact that the adults in this situation did not seem to care about anybody apart from themselves. and the worst part was that David and his wife were both huge slabs, which was not something that I could accept because I am a bit of a neat freak and I really don't like it when people don't even want to do the bare minimum. They would keep their dishes lying here and they're around the house, they would never

clean up after themselves and they could not even be bothered to do their share of chores around the house so everything was a huge mess and I hated living that way. I even tried to politely tell them that they had to clean up after themselves and everybody just made fun of me because they thought that I was being ridiculous and would ask me to lighten up, which was even more infuriating than what they were doing. I finally lost my temper at them a couple of days ago, and since then, Rita has been refusing to speak to me because she thinks that I was very rude and I should not have behaved that way with her family.

David and Erica know that we are fighting and they are obviously on her side, but while they are not ignoring me, they are definitely all giving me the cold shoulder and I don't even know what I did wrong. About three days ago, I came back home from work and everything was a huge mess. I could not even walk in without stepping on something because there were toys and clothes literally all over the floor. There were random food stains on the walls and the couch and Erica was napping on the couch with her children, even though they had the guest room to themselves. And David was sitting on the couch with a glass of wine and watching the football game that was on that day and he did not even seem put off by the fact that the entire room smelled really bad.

He usually gets home earlier than me because he has been cutting down on his hours ever since the kids were born. And I don't know what happened that day, but I just snapped and I started screaming at everybody. I woke Erica up and I told her and David that I would watch the kids, but they had to clean the house up immediately because this was my house and it was my name on the deed. So they were welcome to do whatever they wanted when it was their own home that they were living in but here, they were house guests and they had to do what I asked of them. I had tried telling them to keep the house clean plenty of times and I had been very polite about it earlier but evidently, that did not have the desired effect. So now I was demanding that they do what I

told them to and clean up the house. They did not even argue with me because I was that pissed off and I was yelling my head off at them. When the twins started crying because of all the yelling, I took them into the guest room and I told them to get to work while I watched the kids. I was literally fuming and I only came back out two hours later, when the house was spotless. I did not think it was necessary to thank David and Erica because I had been asking them to do this for ages and they had only done it because I had started yelling at them. So after I made sure that the house was clean, I went into my room and stayed there until Rita came back home. She had been working overtime that day and I had known about it so she came. back home pretty late, around 10 in the night. As soon as she came back home, she came to

our room and started fighting with me over what had happened earlier. She told me that what I had said to David and Erica and the way that I had behaved that day was absolutely unacceptable and she wanted me to apologize to them because she thought that I had been rude to them on purpose. She believed that I had never liked David and I was just trying to put him down and make him feel bad about himself, along with his wife, which is just such rubbish. I had no intention of doing any of that and I literally only just wanted the house to be clean, that's it. I even tried to explain that to her but she was not ready to listen to me and told me that I had to apologize because the way that I behaved that day was not okay, and she did not appreciate the fact that I thought that I can speak like this to her family.

She even went to the extent of saying that I would not like it if she acted like that with my family but I think that's completely different. because first of all, I would never invite my parents to live with us without making sure that she was okay with it first. And more importantly, even if my parents were living with us, I am sure that they would not make a mess of the house like her brother and his family had. If speaking to them rudely was insulting to them, living in my house and disregarding my opinions about cleanliness and hygiene was also disrespectful to me. Now it has been a couple of days and my wife is not talking to me and everybody else is getting. giving me the cold shoulder. My wife and I sleep in the same room with our backs to each other, that's how bad it is right now. I feel very bad about this and it honestly feels like they are targeting me on purpose. It will sound kind of immature but that's little how it feels like

everybody is on one side and I am being pushed to the other side because they just want to make me feel like a bad guy for wanting something as basic as the house to be clean. Nobody is on my side on this and literally, the only people who are treating me like they usually do are the kids, which is just so sad. I want to fix things with my wife, but I don't want to apologize because I don't think I did anything wrong. So I'd have for yelling at my brother-in-law and his wife because they have been living with us and had made a mess out of my house. Update 1, so I went through the comments that you guys had left for me on the original post and most people agreed that I don't have any reason to apologize right now and I agree. It has been a very good. It has been

a week since our fight and she has still not spoken to me. This is probably the longest that we have gone without talking to each other and if this goes on for any longer, then I think I might move out and file for divorce because I don't see any other way out of this. She is not going to apologize and acknowledge that she messed up and that I don't have to do any of that because I did not do anything wrong. So we are in a deadlock and I don't know what to do about it. It is really sad because I love her, I really do and I want to make this work but not at the cost of my dignity. So either we talk this out, or I leave and this marriage comes to an end. It's going to be really sad if that happens, but I honestly don't know what else to do.

Update 2. Okay, so yesterday I was talking about divorce, and today, I don't think that's going to be necessary. Thank God for that. So when I came back home from work today, I realized that the house was empty and Rita finally spoke to me. She had come back home before I had and she finally told me that she was sorry about the way that she had been behaving. She said that she had become so protective of her family that she forgot that even I was her family now and she couldn't believe how stupid she had been. She told me that she had regretted fighting with me the very next day and had been trying to distance herself from David so she could think about things from my perspective and she could think about things from my perspective and she had been. had realized how wrong she had been. She had even tried to talk to David and Erica to get them to apologize to me, but instead, they started trying to turn her against me and talked badly about

me. The last straw was when David suggested that she leave me. She had been trying to talk them into apologizing to me for the last couple of days and this morning, she had tried to talk to them yet again and had asked them to apologize to me, but that's when David brought up the fact that I I have not been talking to her since we had that fight and he told her that I was this respectful towards her and her. Family and she should stand up for herself and leave me. So she tried to explain to him that even they were being pretty disrespectful by not bothering to listen to me when I told them that I wanted my house to be clean.

And so he started throwing a fit and said that she was being unfair to them since they were new parents and did not have the time and energy to constantly look after the house and when she tried to defend me and said that she was doing most of the household work and did not have to do anything and even David came back home from work early. The least they could do boss keep the house clean. So they ended up fighting and she realized just how toxic and entitled they were so she told them to leave and they left but they told her that they were disappointed that she had decided to be just like me.

She had realized that they were not the right people and definitely did not want the best for her because if they had, they would have realized that she was happy with me and did not want to leave me. I was overjoyed that they were gone and Rita and I were finally back. But obviously, we had a lot to work on and sort out so we have decided that we are going to go see a marriage counselor this weekend and try to be normal again. I love her and I really would have hated to live without her so this is ideal. Everybody makes mistakes and I am just glad that she realized that she had made some bad choices by alienating me but at least now she acknowledged it and apologized for it so we can work on everything and fix it.

Update 3, Hey, so this is just after our first counseling session and it went pretty well. We had a lot of issues and I think that was pretty obvious from my post. But we have decided that from now on any time that we have a conflict, we are going to talk about it and make sure that we end it then and there instead of just letting it build up and then blow it out of proportion. It was difficult to talk about things in front of a stranger but we got used to it after a while and once we got into the flow of it, it was actually pretty relieving and I feel like I got something really big off my chest. I can actually tell that she feels the same way and I am

really looking forward to where this leads us. We have had problems in the past, but I'm looking forward to sorting them out. She also thinks that she should get therapy for herself because the things that have happened with her brother have really shaken her up. They don't talk anymore because he stopped responding to her after the fight. I can't believe that somebody can be so ungrateful, but I have that's how David is, I guess. I never liked him much, but now I think I like him even less, which I didn't even think was possible. But it's fine, I know that we can get through anything as long as we are together and she will move on from this, I will make sure of it.