'AITA for telling my cousin the truth about her BF after he kept refusing to confess?'

"AITA for telling my cousin the truth about her BF after he kept refusing to confess?"

I (23F) know a guy who is not exactly my friend, but he is part of my friend group. He has been dating my cousin for a while. Recently, someone from my friend group told me that this guy has been secretly seeing another girl outside of college. The same friend had actually seen them together at his workplace, arguing and later found out the other girl claimed she was pregnant. He also had pictures as proof.

I confronted the guy privately and told him that he needed to tell my cousin the truth. I warned him that if he did not, I would. He begged me to let him handle it and said he would talk to her himself. I gave him two weeks. During those two weeks, he continued going out on dates with my cousin like nothing was wrong. When I confronted him again, he repeated the same thing I’ll tell her, don’t say anything.

I gave him two more days. When he started ignoring my texts and calls, I got angry and decided that I would tell my cousin myself. Before I could, my cousin showed up at my house extremely upset. She asked why I had been calling her boyfriend and telling him to break up with her. She had seen part of my messages and thought I was interfering for no reason.

I showed her everything: the proof, the chats, the pictures, and even let her talk to the friend who told me in the first place. She started to calm down but was still upset with me. She said I should have come to her immediately instead of waiting and giving her boyfriend time to confess.

She felt I had betrayed her by keeping it from her, even though my whole point was that I wanted him to admit it, so she would not feel blindsided by a third party. Eventually, she broke up with him but now she won’t talk to me. She ignores my texts and calls.

I have explained everything that I wanted her boyfriend to tell her himself, admit his mistake, and avoid making things more dramatic. But she still thinks I handled it wrong. So AITA?

Here's what people had to say to OP:

Pristine_Ad5229 said:

YTA. It looks like you have something to hide when you wait two weeks. Two days would've been more appropriate.

Plastic_Expression89 said:

YTA you gave the cheater 16 days to figure how to discredit you. Now your cousin can’t lean on you for support because you betrayed her by withholding crucial information. For 16 days. WTF?

rtereh said:

NTA. Your only mistake was setting too late of a deadline.

Lopsided_Tomatillo27 said:

YTA You got so wrapped up in what you wanted that you lost the plot. You gave him too much to make his confession. Two weeks is about 13 days too long. He wasn’t writing a book report.

The most important thing was for your cousin to know the truth. But you put that second to insisting he be the one to tell her, and giving him two weeks to string her along while you silently covered for him. What you did wasn’t nearly as bad as cheating, but you betrayed her, too.

howardcoombs said:

YTA -- instead of protecting your family, you protected the cheater. Thats not nice at all.

AngleSad8194 said:

ESH I get what you tried to do, him confessing is better than finding out from someone else for everyone involved. But 16 days is way too long, it should have been a couple days not weeks.