'AITA for making my ex look like a creep 20 years after the breakup?'
"AITA for making my ex look like a creep 20 years after the breakup?"
Okay 20 years ago I went home for the holidays and discovered my mother had been diagnosed with cancer. It was devastating. My mother was hit by a car earlier that year and received brain damage.
Going through cancer treatment while still healing with a frankly incompetent partner was not going to work. I returned to university to basically pack it in and return home and care for her.
My boyfriend at the time had not picked up any of my calls, before cell phones were popular so understandable. I thought it was weird but he was working two jobs at the time. It was New Year’s Eve by the time I got him on the phone and he wanted me to go out with him and his friends.
I told him I had some really bad news and that I might have to move an hour away for the foreseeable future. I had not been sleeping and did not feel well enough to go. I wanted to tell him about my mom in person. He got mad. I told him my mother’s diagnosis and that I really did not feel like partying.
He said and I quote, “Well, I want to go out and have my girlfriend with me.” No “I’m sorry,” no comfort, just a demand that I go out bar hopping with his friends. He had never acted like this, we had been dating for 8 months.
I told him he should go find her. I hung up. Deleted my email, unplugged and packed my phone. I was gone 5 days later. The world turned, my mom got better, I returned to university roughly a year later. Finished my degree and got a job. But it is a small town and I ended up working with his relative.
Years had passed and I moved my mom in with me. Everyone knew me as a devoted daughter and hard worker. His relative (great uncle) asked me if I had dated his brother’s grandson and I told him yes.
He lamented I never joined the family and asked why. I tried to say we just grew apart but he called my bluff. I told him my mother’s diagnosis and the relationship did not survive me having to leave to care for her. He grunted, we never spoke about it again. I never was curious about what happened to my ex and years passed.
Then three days ago it reared its ugly head. I was at the check out at the grocery store. Remember this is a small town. Who is behind me, his mother. I did not even recognize her. But she was overly fake friendly at me.
She got out her phone and began to try and show me pictures of my exes wife, their kid, and their dog. I was politely interested and was properly politely impressed for her sake while unloading my cart. Wished them all the best.
She then sneers, ‘It could have been yours if you hadn’t [messed] up.” Completed with villainous eyebrow raise. I told her I did not know what the [heck] she was talking about.” I explained my mom got sick, I left to care for her. We broke up, end of story.
If she didn’t believe me. I told her to ask her relative or a young woman who had been a mutual friend of ours. The mutual friend reached out to me when social media became popular and wanted to tell me she was sorry how the situation had gone down as she was one of the friends he had gone out with that night.
I had thanked her for her well wishes and told her sometimes bad things happen. I left the store and wrote it all off. Then today I get a DM from the ex, he is furious at me for outing his behavior to his mother.
I told him, not my monkey, not my circus. Then blocked him. BUT I JUST HAD TO KNOW WHAT HAS HAPPENED. So I contacted the mutual, who was more than happy to tell me the tea.
Evidently, the ex had told everyone I had broken his heart by cheating on him. He had milked the story for sympathy. He even made the story part of the lore behind getting with his wife. How she was the kind hearted soul who proved to him not all women were backstabbing cheaters.
She got a DM from his mom who is one of her in-laws (evidently she married his brother a decade ago). She told her the truth. The call, his behavior, him explaining that my mom’s diagnosis was just too much drama.
She evidently also called her relative and he explained I was known for caring for my mother who had a multitude of medical issues, for many years. This had evidently lead to her calling her son to ball him out for lying bout it for all these years. This was evidently all my fault. So am I the A for not keeping this guys secret?
UPDATE: Jesus H Tap Dancing Christ. I’m in the wedding video. Or at least the tale of evil me is. So chilling here when I get a message from a name I don’t quite remember. But I look and it is one of the friend group of my ex. We will call him Mike.
Mike and I went to the same university but had vastly different majors. So evidently mutual contacted Mike to gossip about my ex. It seems ex hired Mike to do his wedding video and they had a falling out when he was never paid.
He told me he knew why ex was so freaking mad. Then sent me a video clip. It is ex giving a speech at his wedding about how she was his savior, healing is ‘rendered heart’ and bringing back the light that had been ‘extinguished by heartless others’.
They married years after we broke up, he was still using this story for sympathy years later. Mike said that he never believed the entire cheating cover story and wished me well. To answer your question Mike is a self confessed digital hoarder, he kept all his beginning work.
Here is what readers had to say in response to the OP’s post:
Being an ass would be actively going out of your way. Based on this, the mom couldbt let the past go and brought it up based on the lie from her son. Go on with your life. Lying never pays as he found out 20 years later.
NTA. What's the problem here? You just told your version of the story so why would you be an a***? Lies take the elevator, and truth take the stairs but truth always comes out. If he's furious, let him be. He acted that way on this day, so time to take responsibilities.
Ginnylala (OP)
Evidently Mr. Man is angry because his wife now knows she was not the angel that saved him after the the evil devil woman (me) cheated on him and broke his heart, also the entire treating your girlfriend like crap after she shared her mom had cancer was not on brand with who he is trying to be. Also evidently his mother is very “disappointed” in him. But again not my circus not my monkeys right?
So NTA. This is just karma showing up. Admittedly it would have been better had it shown up 2 decades earlier but better late than never.
NTA - And it seems like you dodged a bullet, as he is a huge jerk.