'AITA for saying my mom's cheating did make her a worse parent?'
"AITA for saying my mom's cheating did make her a worse parent?"
Last year my dad found out my mom was cheating on him and they broke up. Mom moved in with her AP "Ron" and she tried to carry on like nothing happened. With me (16f) and with my brother (13m) she was expecting nothing to have changed but I didn't want to see her.
I told my dad, who told his lawyer, who told the judge and the judge ordered therapy for me and my mom together to work it out. And right now that once a week therapy is the only time I see my mom.
My brother has to go to mom's house every other weekend despite not wanting to. Mom has told me this is because he sees my reaction and copies me and if I were to stop acting like she did anything bad to me and fixed our relationship she'd have both kids willingly in her life now.
In the almost year since we started therapy we have been to see three different therapists assigned by the same judge. The most recent one we just started having appointments with a month ago and it was suggested I engage just a little in therapy at some point to help get my point across directly to mom. I decided to do this after we switched.
The new therapist didn't just ask dumb questions like the others about why I'm mad at my mom or why I don't want to forgive her. Instead the therapist let mom do her talking which was all about how unfair this is.
How she was always a great mom to me and my brother and how we should not be treating her different because of how her marriage ended. She never failed in her duty as a parent to the two of us and her heart is broken by the fact she can be so easily discarded. And how unfair she finds it that we won't give her AP a chance.
Then the therapist asked me if I had anything to say to the things my mom said and I told her I did. For the first time I said exactly how I felt and I told mom directly. I said that yes, mom cheated on dad and their relationship is their relationship.
But I pointed out how cheating creates a broken home, one that is full of pain and anger and does damage that can't be brushed away. I pointed out that mom didn't think about me and my brother when she chose to betray dad and hurt him or the impact it would have on us to go from our parents together to mom being with someone else immediately.
I said people talk about how kids need time after divorce or death to adjust to the transition and cheating takes away from that because typically the people who had the affair move in together immediately and I said that happened here.
I said I went from having a normal happy family to finding out it was not as happy as I expected because clearly mom wasn't happy. To then being told my parents were divorcing and realizing that my mom had hurt dad. And that mom expected me to live with her and the person she destroyed our family to be with.
I told my mom I don't see her the same way anymore. She's not someone to admire because she's not honest. She doesn't care about hurting the man who gave her two kids or hurting her two kids.
I told her I would never want to be like her now. And that's hurtful to realize. I said she can talk all she wants about how she did nothing to us and the more she does the more she angers me because she did.
She caused so much upheaval in our lives and expected us to just go with it. I told her the fact she expects me to be nice to Ron is insanity and that I felt like she was selfish for refusing to see why me and my brother would feel that way.
I said she even wanted to blame me for my brother's feelings instead of herself. I said so mom saying this never changed her parenting is wrong. I said it made her a worse parent because of everything I said.
And I told my mom and the therapist that my view is pretty freaking set and I'm not open to seeing if it can change. I took up the rest of our appointment so mom didn't get to address it but she looked mad. AITA?
Here is what readers had to say in response to the OP’s post:
Nope, you're not the AH. You were honest about how her actions affected you, and that’s what therapy is for. She can’t expect everything to be normal after breaking your trust like that. You didn’t attack her you spoke your truth. That’s not mean, that’s real.
SkissyScoons (OP)
A lot of people think they can hurt people and have it change nothing. I don't thinking like that but it's so common. I used to have a friend like that too. She could be awful to her friends and expect us to stay her friends no matter what.
Your mum doesn't want to accept the consequences of her actions. If you and your brother just brushed off what she'd done and accepted her and her AP, she could keep telling herself the cheaters lie, which is that what she did wasn't awful, selfish, and thoughtless.
No, what really happened was that she met her soulmate, it's true love, and she's going to live happily ever after, and everyone who doesn't go along with that is just holding her back and refusing to let her be happy so they're the awful, selfish, thoughtless ones, not her.
She's angry because you've not only made it clear that there are consequences, you've also told her why. The truth is that cheaters are liars, they are selfish, they betray their family and not just their spouse when they decide that their AP is worth breaking the family apart for, and they act like them being happy with their AP undoes all the pain and hurt that they caused.
You and your brother are angry and hurting because of her, and she doesn't want to hear it because it means that in addition to being a crappy wife and a dirty cheater, she's also a crappy mum who has caused her kids pain and made them think infinitely less of her. You've knocked her off her high horse, and she's angry about it.
You're NTA. You told her the truth, especially the part about her not thinking about you and your brother. If she had considered either of you for even a second, she'd have realised this would be a potential outcome.
NTA When a parent cheats, they cheat on their kids too. It is a huge breach of trust. It not only changes your relationship views with them but it shapes how you view your own romantic relationships.
It is impossible to forgive someone when they won't apologize and try to invalidate your feelings. Your mom is a very selfish person. She will end up with both of you no contact, blame everyone else. But only have herself to blame.
NTA. Not gonna lie you clocked your mom stuff good and rightfully so, she needed to hear everything you threw her way. Cheaters are selfish people, cheating is already vile but cheating when you have kids is for me even more selfish in my eyes because parents don’t realize that the one who will be the most affected out of their affair will actually be the kids.
The fact that she said she did nothing like she didn’t wrecked her kids entire family life they have know since always. She also expect you to meet and give a chance to the looser that is her AP, a guy who willingly slept with married women without caring he was breaking a marriage and two innocents children household.
I’ll never understand where home wrecker get their audacity but I guess it’s because some of us have morals so we can’t understand! Focus on you, take the time you need to heal and keep going to therapy! Take care OP!