Family Drama

<p>There are almost no circumstances in which it is acceptable to &quot;out&quot; another person as LGBTQ. Even though there&#39;s nothing wrong with being not-straight (I mean, it&#39;s 2022, who&#39;s fully straight anymore??), the choice to share one&#39;s sexual identity is one that an individual should be able to make whenever they&#39;re ready, if at all.</p><p>But are there certain instances where it&#39;s morally acceptable (or at least understandable) to out someone? The following story may just qualify, but I&#39;ll let you be the judge. So get your gavels ready.</p><h2>A woman took to Reddit&#39;s &quot;Am I The A**hole?&quot; page to <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/r6iokf/aita_for_outing_my_ex_as_gay_to_get_his_mother/" target="_blank">ask if she was wrong</a> to out her gay ex-husband to his family after his mother wouldn&#39;t stop blaming her for their breakup.</h2><p>The woman explains that her soon-to-be ex-husband was &quot;using&quot; her to have kids, while cheating on her throughout their relationship:</p><blockquote> <p>It&rsquo;s a long and sucky story, but my (25F) soon to be ex (28M) is gay and hid that from me. I found out because I caught him cheating and he as much as admitted that he knew he wasn&rsquo;t attracted to me that way, but he wanted kids and a &ldquo;normal&rdquo; life. I don&rsquo;t care that he&rsquo;s gay, but I will never forgive him for leading me on so he could use me to have kids, so it&rsquo;s over, end of story.</p> </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><h2>After she caught him cheating, they broke up. But his &quot;fundamentalist nutjob&quot; parents don&#39;t know he&#39;s gay or that he was unfaithful.</h2><h2>They also don&#39;t believe in divorce, so they&#39;ve been harassing and shaming the woman, blaming her for their breakup.</h2><p>She writes:</p><blockquote> <p>The problem is that his family are fundamentalist nutjobs except for a few members and his mother is the interfering MIL from hell. Not being related to her anymore is another plus to leaving. His family doesn&rsquo;t believe in divorce, so under the guise of picking up some paperwork and other items I had found that were my ex&rsquo;s, she cornered me about how I&rsquo;m being childish and marriage is about commitment, forgiveness, and working through problems, etc.</p> </blockquote><blockquote> <p>It became apparent that my ex didn&rsquo;t tell his family that he cheated, he told his mom that I was divorcing him because we weren&rsquo;t having sex often enough for me. I tried to be patient and explained that he had cheated and that&rsquo;s why. I wasn&rsquo;t going to go into greater detail because I know how his parents are and it&rsquo;s none of their business.</p> </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><h2>After she revealed to her former Mother-in-law that he cheated, she insisted &quot;men are just that way&quot; and <em>blamed</em> his wife for his infidelity. This caused her to &quot;lose it&quot; and tell her ex&#39;s mother the whole story, &quot;outing&quot; him as gay.</h2><p>She explains:</p><blockquote> <p>MIL&rsquo;s advice, I kid you not, was that men are just that way and if I wanted to have sex more and for him not to stray that I should make myself more attractive to my husband and be a better wife. I lost the plot completely. It had been a sad and hard day already and that was the last straw.</p> </blockquote><blockquote> <p>Here&rsquo;s where I might be the AH: I told her that the only thing that would make me more attractive to my ex would be a sex change operation and that I hoped he and his boyfriend adopted her some grandchildren so she could finally shut the hell up about it. Not my finest moment, but she just hit the worst and rawest nerve she could have and I exploded.</p> </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><h2>She now says her ex-husband will likely be disowned, and he&#39;s accusing her of &quot;ruining his life&quot; out of spite.</h2><p>What a mess.</p><blockquote> <p>It&rsquo;s evidently turned into a huge family drama, he&rsquo;s probably going to be disowned, and my ex called sobbing that I&rsquo;ve ruined his life out of spite. I don&rsquo;t really know how to feel about it. I do feel bad for him that his parents are such awful people and there were just no &ldquo;good&rdquo; outcomes for him, but I also feel like he made his own bed here, too.</p> </blockquote><p>The woman follows up with two important details:</p><p>1.) She&#39;s not putting her ex at risk of physical violence.</p><blockquote> <p>There is almost no chance of violence, his family are fundies but not violent ones, they&rsquo;re more of the Mormon shunning type. One of his cousin came out and left the church and after the initial protests they all just stopped talking to him and basically treated him as if he were dead until he was ready to repent or whatever.</p> </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><blockquote> <p>They&rsquo;re passive aggressive, repressed, and weird as all get out, but the chances of anyone physically hurting him are extremely low. He&rsquo;s not financially dependent on them and has a more than decent job, so he can support himself easily if they kick him out.</p> </blockquote><p>And 2.) He knew he was gay before he married her and he &quot;never loved her.&quot;</p><blockquote> <p>He&rsquo;s known he was gay since before he met me, so this wasn&rsquo;t a new discovery or admission to himself. He has a boyfriend that he&rsquo;s been dating since six months before we were married. I went through his computer after catching them in the act and kicking him out and found messenger logs and other evidence going back to before he started dating me.</p> </blockquote><blockquote> <p>He literally set this up so he could have the nice Mormon family on the surface to keep his family happy. That&rsquo;s it. He never loved me at all, I was just the first girl to express a sustained interest.</p> </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><h2>Given these extreme and specific circumstances, most people concluded that she is <em>not</em> the a**hole, and was within her rights to out her ex.</h2><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/__thatbitch/">__thatbitch</a> writes:</p><blockquote> <p>Probably unpopular opinion but NTA. You got pushed into a corner and blamed for the demise of the relationship which was ultimately bc of his dishonesty. You didnt do it maliciously.</p> <p>Also he wasted years of your life for selfish reasons and I personally could never forgive that.</p> </blockquote><p> </p><p>level 3</p><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/K-no-B/">K-no-B</a> agrees:</p><blockquote> <p>I think I agree too. This is one of those situations where I could imagine kinder ways for the OP to have handled the situation (e.g. warning her ex on no uncertain terms to get his family off her back before telling them the truth - and even that is assuming he wouldn&#39;t just preemptively make up worse lies about her). But in the real world, I can&#39;t really fault her for just defending herself in the moment.</p> </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><blockquote> <p>It sucks that his family is intolerant. But that&#39;s not the OP&#39;s fault. And it&#39;s also not her fault that she was in a position to feel like she had to defend herself. Her ex put in that spot by trying to save face at her expense.</p> <p>NTA.</p> </blockquote><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/mountainmonk72/">mountainmonk72</a> says:</p><blockquote> <p>NTA. It is a kind and greater good thing to try not to out the person as it can be physically dangerous, but he also hasn&rsquo;t really earned any kindness from you. He&rsquo;s the a**hole that A) cheated and then B) lied about the reason why to his parents leading to his mom harassing you. And he&rsquo;s also the a**hole that was planning on essentially tricking you into a lifelong commitment while he likely would have been cheating the whole time had he not gotten caught now. So yeah you are NTA.</p> </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/RememberKoomValley/">RememberKoomValley</a> writes:</p><blockquote> <p>Speaking as someone who is queer, who has been forcibly outed in the past, who&#39;s been tormented, made homeless, fired from jobs for not being straight--yeah, OP is 100% NTA here.</p> <p>A person doesn&#39;t get to control their ex&#39;s narrative when a relationship has ended. A cheater doesn&#39;t get to expect protection from their ex.</p> </blockquote><blockquote> <p>And he <em>knew from the start</em> and used her--if he wanted to not be outed, he should have made it very clear to his family that the breakup was his fault, and he should have told them that he is the one who caused it.</p> <p>She doesn&#39;t owe him jack shit, and he was stupid to expect she&#39;d just protect him from the consequences of his actions, at the cost of her own suffering.</p> </blockquote><p>And [deleted] writes:</p><div className="ad-splitter"></div><p><span style="color: rgb(119, 119, 119); font-family: BlinkMacSystemFont, -apple-system, &quot;Segoe UI&quot;, Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, &quot;Fira Sans&quot;, &quot;Droid Sans&quot;, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem; letter-spacing: -0.02em; font-style: italic;">&quot;my ex called sobbing that I&rsquo;ve ruined his life out of spite.&quot;</span></p><blockquote> <p>But it&rsquo;s perfectly okay for him to ruin OP&rsquo;s life with his lies??? F**k that guy. NTA.</p> </blockquote><p>We, the jury of internet strangers, find the defendant NOT an a**hole. COURT ADJOURNED! *Bangs gavel*</p><div className="ad-splitter"></div>

Woman asks if she was wrong to out gay ex-husband to get his mother off her back.

There are almost no circumstances in which it is acceptable to &quot;out&quot; another person as LGBTQ. Even though there&#39;s nothing wrong with being not-straight (I mean, it&#39;s 2022, who&#39;s fully straight anymore??), the choice to share one&#39;s sexual identity is one that an individual should be able to make whenever they&#39;re ready, if at all.But are there certain instances where it&#39;s morally acceptable (or at least understandable) to out someone? The following story may just qualify, but I&#39;ll let you be the judge. So get your gavels ready.A woman took to Reddit&#39;s &quot;Am I The A**hole?&quot; page to ask if she was wrong to out her gay ex-husband to his family after his mother wouldn&#39;t stop blaming her for their breakup.The woman explains that her soon-to-be ex-husband was &quot;using&quot; her to have kids, while cheating on her throughout their relationship: It&rsquo;s a long and sucky story, but my (25F) soon to be ex (28M) is gay and hid that from me. I found out because I caught him cheating and he as much as admitted that he knew he wasn&rsquo;t attracted to me that way, but he wanted kids and a &ldquo;normal&rdquo; life. I don&rsquo;t care that he&rsquo;s gay, but I will never forgive him for leading me on so he could use me to have kids, so it&rsquo;s over, end of story. After she caught him cheating, they broke up. But his &quot;fundamentalist nutjob&quot; parents don&#39;t know he&#39;s gay or that he was unfaithful.They also don&#39;t believe in divorce, so they&#39;ve been harassing and shaming the woman, blaming her for their breakup.She writes: The problem is that his family are fundamentalist nutjobs except for a few members and his mother is the interfering MIL from hell. Not being related to her anymore is another plus to leaving. His family doesn&rsquo;t believe in divorce, so under the guise of picking up some paperwork and other items I had found that were my ex&rsquo;s, she cornered me about how I&rsquo;m being childish and marriage is about commitment, forgiveness, and working through problems, etc.  It became apparent that my ex didn&rsquo;t tell his family that he cheated, he told his mom that I was divorcing him because we weren&rsquo;t having sex often enough for me. I tried to be patient and explained that he had cheated and that&rsquo;s why. I wasn&rsquo;t going to go into greater detail because I know how his parents are and it&rsquo;s none of their business. After she revealed to her former Mother-in-law that he cheated, she insisted &quot;men are just that way&quot; and blamed his wife for his infidelity. This caused her to &quot;lose it&quot; and tell her ex&#39;s mother the whole story, &quot;outing&quot; him as gay.She explains: MIL&rsquo;s advice, I kid you not, was that men are just that way and if I wanted to have sex more and for him not to stray that I should make myself more attractive to my husband and be a better wife. I lost the plot completely. It had been a sad and hard day already and that was the last straw.  Here&rsquo;s where I might be the AH: I told her that the only thing that would make me more attractive to my ex would be a sex change operation and that I hoped he and his boyfriend adopted her some grandchildren so she could finally shut the hell up about it. Not my finest moment, but she just hit the worst and rawest nerve she could have and I exploded. She now says her ex-husband will likely be disowned, and he&#39;s accusing her of &quot;ruining his life&quot; out of spite.What a mess. It&rsquo;s evidently turned into a huge family drama, he&rsquo;s probably going to be disowned, and my ex called sobbing that I&rsquo;ve ruined his life out of spite. I don&rsquo;t really know how to feel about it. I do feel bad for him that his parents are such awful people and there were just no &ldquo;good&rdquo; outcomes for him, but I also feel like he made his own bed here, too. The woman follows up with two important details:1.) She&#39;s not putting her ex at risk of physical violence. There is almost no chance of violence, his family are fundies but not violent ones, they&rsquo;re more of the Mormon shunning type. One of his cousin came out and left the church and after the initial protests they all just stopped talking to him and basically treated him as if he were dead until he was ready to repent or whatever.  They&rsquo;re passive aggressive, repressed, and weird as all get out, but the chances of anyone physically hurting him are extremely low. He&rsquo;s not financially dependent on them and has a more than decent job, so he can support himself easily if they kick him out. And 2.) He knew he was gay before he married her and he &quot;never loved her.&quot; He&rsquo;s known he was gay since before he met me, so this wasn&rsquo;t a new discovery or admission to himself. He has a boyfriend that he&rsquo;s been dating since six months before we were married. I went through his computer after catching them in the act and kicking him out and found messenger logs and other evidence going back to before he started dating me.  He literally set this up so he could have the nice Mormon family on the surface to keep his family happy. That&rsquo;s it. He never loved me at all, I was just the first girl to express a sustained interest. Given these extreme and specific circumstances, most people concluded that she is not the a**hole, and was within her rights to out her ex.__thatbitch writes: Probably unpopular opinion but NTA. You got pushed into a corner and blamed for the demise of the relationship which was ultimately bc of his dishonesty. You didnt do it maliciously. Also he wasted years of your life for selfish reasons and I personally could never forgive that.  level 3K-no-B agrees: I think I agree too. This is one of those situations where I could imagine kinder ways for the OP to have handled the situation (e.g. warning her ex on no uncertain terms to get his family off her back before telling them the truth - and even that is assuming he wouldn&#39;t just preemptively make up worse lies about her). But in the real world, I can&#39;t really fault her for just defending herself in the moment.  It sucks that his family is intolerant. But that&#39;s not the OP&#39;s fault. And it&#39;s also not her fault that she was in a position to feel like she had to defend herself. Her ex put in that spot by trying to save face at her expense. NTA. mountainmonk72 says: NTA. It is a kind and greater good thing to try not to out the person as it can be physically dangerous, but he also hasn&rsquo;t really earned any kindness from you. He&rsquo;s the a**hole that A) cheated and then B) lied about the reason why to his parents leading to his mom harassing you. And he&rsquo;s also the a**hole that was planning on essentially tricking you into a lifelong commitment while he likely would have been cheating the whole time had he not gotten caught now. So yeah you are NTA. RememberKoomValley writes: Speaking as someone who is queer, who has been forcibly outed in the past, who&#39;s been tormented, made homeless, fired from jobs for not being straight--yeah, OP is 100% NTA here. A person doesn&#39;t get to control their ex&#39;s narrative when a relationship has ended. A cheater doesn&#39;t get to expect protection from their ex.  And he knew from the start and used her--if he wanted to not be outed, he should have made it very clear to his family that the breakup was his fault, and he should have told them that he is the one who caused it. She doesn&#39;t owe him jack shit, and he was stupid to expect she&#39;d just protect him from the consequences of his actions, at the cost of her own suffering. And [deleted] writes:&quot;my ex called sobbing that I&rsquo;ve ruined his life out of spite.&quot; But it&rsquo;s perfectly okay for him to ruin OP&rsquo;s life with his lies??? F**k that guy. NTA. We, the jury of internet strangers, find the defendant NOT an a**hole. COURT ADJOURNED! *Bangs gavel*

There are almost no circumstances in which it is acceptable to &quot;out&quot; another person as LGBTQ. Even though there&#39;s nothing wrong with being not-straight (I mean, it&#39;s 2022, who&#39;s fully straight anymore??), the choice...