'I've known both my parents were cheating for years and didn't say anything. AITA?' UPDATED

"I have known my parents were cheating on each other for years, they found out and got mad at me"

When I was 11 I saw my mom kissing one of her coworkers. Since i didn't know what to do or even who to ask I ended up talking to that coworker. They worked at a sort of family restaurant so i went there pretty often, and one they i just told him i knew about their thing and straight up asked what i should do.

I don't remember exactly what he said, but i know he was really nice to me and adviced i stayed quiet so as not to hurt my father. While it made sense to me, i spent around a year feeling bad for my father whenever i saw mom leave for work or stay there late. Then, one of the days mom stayed for the night at the reataurant, my father brought home another woman. It made me have a sort of epiphany.

I started thinking that they knew, and after some very productive internet research, i figured they were simply in an open relationship. As i grew older i realised this wasn't the case. The two pieces of shit somehow managed to put two and two together after years and noticed i knew so they started using me to cheat more efficiently.

From around my 15th birthday, they started trying to get me to make excuses for eachother, ask one of them to go out for the day when they wanted the house alone, and even arrange meetings with their side pieces. They're both some of the stupidest people i have ever met, but they somehow believe they're geniuses. I think this is what brought them together, they enable each other.

But it also meant they were so busy thinking they were cheating gods to realise the other was doing the same. At some point i stopped helping them, but i never said anything. It was such a normal thing that it never even crossed my mind telling them. Last year i started uni and moved away, which meant they had to deal with each other on their own. I figured divorce was coming, didn't expect them to last

long without having me around to keep them at peace. You know the way two toddlers have to be kept under adult supervision to make sure they don't like, throw each other at upcoming traffic? That was what i had been doing ever since i can remember, stopping them not only from making the other mad, but also separating them whenever they had a bad idea that the other would enable.

I was right, they are going to divorce, and they decided to anounce this at a family gattering a couple weeks ago. There was a very funny silence when they said it, and it was broken by them starting to fight and trying to get the other to look bad. My mother was Oh so hurt by his cheating, and my father was oh so hurt by hers. I couldn't help but laugh, it was ridiculous,

that sh!t looked like children acting out a telenovela. When i said that yes, i knew, they both had been doing it for more than 7 years there was silence. I didn't find this one funny. They got so mad at me. Started screaming that i ruined their marriage, that they could have worked it out if they knew sooner, that how could i have done this to them, bla bla bla. I left and just went to my apartment.

I think they only found out about recent cheating and they might have been mad because outed all those year, plus aparently i've "been playing both sides". This two weeks since then i have been recieving calls from everyone in my family, a lot of them are just puzzled my parents would do that, others know them and are telling me that they're sorry for me.

It seems unanimous though, that i am an a-hole for not saying anything earlier. Personally i just think that they deserved it. You're telling me that they could peacefully cheat, but not be cheated on? It's wild. They're both dickheads in may ways, and they're perfect for eachother. The fact that they got divorced the moment they knew about the other cheating just proves me right.

They wanted it hidden, they wanted it to be behind the other's back. Not one other person in this world deserves to deal with either of theres two, they need to stick together to keep them from hurting others. I don't know what to do. They haven't talked to me at all in two weeks, the only contact we've had has been through other people. I've never spent this long without talking to either of them. AITA?

What do you think? AITA? This is what top commenters had to say:

[deleted] said:

Your parents are complete a-holes. You did nothing wrong. 😑

ladnakahva said:

Wow, such selfishness towards their own child. Do you really need that in your life?

ThatOneSnakeGuy said:

What do you do? Live your life. These two people made a ton of sh!tty decisions and when the time came, they needed a scapegoat so that they weren't bad people. It's sick that they have that mentality, but you did nothing wrong. A child is not equipped to deal with that, some adults aren't. Let them be horrible, keep in touch with who you like, and let them be horrible alone. It's not your problem, really. NTA.

[deleted] said:

Who uses their kid to hide infidelity? And both of them?! I'd go no contact with your entire family, including the ones blaming you for not speaking up sooner. NTA.

halasaurus said:

The cognitive dissonance required to cheat on one another, then use their child to enable their behavior and then blame their child for their own actions is down right mind boggling. You don’t have to do a damn thing. They dug their holes. They need to dig themselves out of them and apologize to you. Forgive them. Eventually. If you want. But make them work for it.

Two weeks later, OP shared this update:

thank you all so much for the support and comments, most of them gave me so much courage to just step away from the situation. The ones that didn’t were those that mentioned how different I was from my parents or how glad they were I didn’t turn out like them. Those comments made me feel guilty, because I might actually be just like them.

Not in the cheating way, that’s disgusting, but in the manipulative pos way. Even thought, I doubt either of the dumbasses have the ability to properly manipulate anyone but a child. So, actually getting to what happened. I went on ignoring everything for a couple days, it’s exam season after all. I wanted to take full advice from here, I just didn’t know who I could talk about this with in real life.

But on friday I was talking to a professor and mentioned all of this. She told me that I should look into possibly taking them to court for psychological damages and that sort of thing. That same day I got an email from my dad’s lawyer requesting a dna test. The cousin I’ve kept in contact with all this time told me that my dear mother admitted to cheating before I was born, so I may not be my father’s child.

Honestly I don’t give a shit, in fact I’ve been looking into changing my full name and transferring to another uni far away from here, so didn’t care, but coupled with my professor’s idea it made me realize something. I could mess them up a little bit. A lot of people think revenge is stupid, I think it only is that way if you let it consume you. I spent a night awake planning this but it ended up being so easy.

I replied to the email from the lawyer, but not to him. I replied to a joint account my parents had, told them how I didn’t see them as my parents (regardless of biological bonds, so I would not be taking the test), how I was waiting for their divorce, how much better it’d be like that… It just went on. I know they read it, because I got responses from both of their lawyers.

It made me so mad that even after reading all that shit they didn’t talk to me. Then, on saturday evening I had lunch with my uncle (mom’s brother and dad’s best friend) and his wife. They were supposed to be on my side, they were the ones who told me they were sorry for me.

I told them about how I planned on taking my parents to court so that they would have to at least still pay for the rest of my degree, but I also told auntie how I was planning on posting about all they’d done. I asked them not to tell my parents, and “confesed” how I had been planning their divorce so that I could get money on advance, without waiting for either of them to die.

It almost made me sick, saying all this B.S. But it worked, not even a day later and the entire family was turning against me, even my cousin seemed put off but she lives for the drama I guess, so she still talked to me. A family full of rats, not a single trustworthy soul. I confirmed it to some of the people who talked to me, telling them about how I really wanted the money and couldn’t care less about my parents.

I was contacted by the lawyer, now apparently “their” lawyer, and with the help of my professor we crafted a contract were they would give me right now enough to finish my education (it was way more than just “enough”, but I wanted it to be as bad as possible), we wouldn’t have contact again and I would give up the right to sue them for this reason in the future.

It took them two days to announce they’d be renewing their vows, now this time “without a devil by their side”. They said that they could work through anything if they had each other. They have each other, but they don’t have me anymore, that’s the curse they’re disguising as a blessing.

I know for a fact that they won’t divorce now. They already tarnished they’re perfect little reputation by publicly admitting that they cheated, but they messed with they’re own egos by going back on their word and not actually divorcing, there’s not a single possibility now that they admit they were wrong again.

They cursed each other when they met, they passed the curse onto me and now they took it back. They are, once again, getting stuck in a loveless marriage that’s filled with hate and resentment, but this time around they don’t have a middleman. They’re going to make themselves miserable, and I’m so happy about it. Sure, they may have taken being a little girl away form me with their B.S.,

but I sure feel like one now, watching with glee as the two people I resent the most bind themselves to one another permanently. The best part is knowing that, if they were at any point even remotely decent people, they could so easily get out of this. But no, they never will, because they’d rather rot in that misery than admit they messed up.

They got exactly what they wanted. They’re the victims, the poor souls who were soooo in love that they couldn’t see through it. It’s perfect, at this point it’s too late for them to do anything, even if they do realize what I did. What are they going to do? Admit they’re not the victims? That I played up how bad I was to make them look better? That there’s no real love there?

No. They wont. They will not realize, because right now they’re riding the high of getting what they wanted, and by the time it fades away they’ll be like two bulls in a pit. Too busy fighting to think about anything else. If they do realize, they won’t tell. Why would they? Who would even believe it when all I’ve done is try to prove them right?

As for me, my professor has been a life saver. She helped me gather the paperwork I needed to transfer to another uni and got me in contact with the amazing lawyer who helped me write that contract. I needed it to be a contract, if we had gone to court over this I would have had to deal with these people for so much longer.

On top of that, well, a contract that seems entirely made by me makes me look so much worse than a decision made by a judge. Right now I’m trying to focus on passing all my finals, but I’ll update again if I happen to be wrong and they do divorce.

I’m sorry to those who assumed I wasn’t like them. I wanted them to suffer the way I did, and I truly believe dealing with each other (or having to admit they were wrong) is they worst suffering I could inflict on them. So yeah, I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.