'AITA for breaking up with my fiancé because his mom is harassing me?' UPDATED
"AITAH for breaking up with my fiancé because of his mother?"
Here's the original post:
My fiancé (26 M) and I (24 F) have been dating for 4 years and engaged for 5 months. For some context about my fiancé, he is an outstanding partner. He is so kind and gentle, always ensures I feel secure in our relationship and treats me like a complete queen.
I have had an extremely traumatic childhood, especially from my high school years and from past relationships, which he knows all about and has supported me constantly and always done things to prove to me during difficult times that I am safe and that he is always there for me.
With all of that aside, the only thing that bothers me a little about my fiancé is that his mother and him have a bit of what I call “an extreme relationship”. What I mean by this is they very extremely close as it has been only the two of them since he was 8 years old.
I have always been so nice to her and have done a lot during our whole relationship to spend time with her, help her with anything she needs, and try to become close with her. But unfortunately no matter what I do, she always expresses she hates me and doesn’t believe I will ever be good enough for her son.
My fiancé on many occasions has stood up for me but he isn’t very stern or isn’t really completely on my side. He just tells his mother to stop it or to “not fight today” which makes me feel like he is dismissing it. This has been going on our entire relationship. But one of those times, my fiancé really snapped on her and finally stood up for me.
Which had gotten her to stop as he threatened she would loose him if she didn’t make things right. Before this happened, I had learned to put up with it because I love my fiancé and truly believe he is the one for me. But ever since he proposed to me 5 months ago, his mother has gotten aggressively worse.
She texts me horrible messages, leaves me voicemails, gets her friends to also harass me, and anytime she sees me in person she is terrible only when my fiancé is not around. She has resulted to being nasty no longer in front of my fiancé because of what he said the time he had stood up to her.
Three days ago, I called off the engagement and broke things off with my fiancé without telling him what his mother had been doing. I was scared to tell him because I know he loves her and I didn’t want to come between them again especially when he has been so happy that we are “finally getting along” because his mother fakes being friendly and loving in front of him.
He understandably was devastated and so am I. His best friend and other close friends, along with his sister and my family as well as friends have been calling me non stop for the past three days. Calling me an ahole for leaving my fiancé and breaking his heart for no reason. My fiancé has also been calling and texting begging for me to talk.
His mother sent me one text, to sum it up, it had said “I am glad you are gone, if I had known treating you like this would have made you leave my son sooner then I would have been this nasty from the start. My son will realize you are just a slut and move on easily”. I ended up telling my older brother why I ended things as well as my fiancé’s best friend as him and I are fairly close too.
They both understand where I am coming from but told me I need to tell my fiancé because he will handle his mother and has been a wreck without me. As I have been without him too. They also said that I need to stand up to his mother myself.
So here’s where I feel guilty and think I may be the ahole. I finally called my fiancé and asked him to meet up. On my way to go meet him, I texted his mother a long paragraph calling her a vile disgusting women and going off on her about all the stuff she has done. When I reached my fiancé he looked incredibly angry.
Apparently, his mom immediately called him crying saying that I texted her saying I was going to beat her up and called her horrible names for simply calling me to make sure I was okay. Which obviously wasn’t the case. Once I had told my fiancé what really happened, as well as showed him all the proof of what I said and what she had been doing for 5 months, he broke down crying and so did I.
We both consoled each other and he profusely apologized for his mothers behaviour. He blew up on his mother and immediately went no contact with her. He also uninvited her from our wedding. My family, my friends, his friends and his aunt (his mothers sister) all were happy we are back together and proud of my fiancé for standing up to his mom and cutting her out of his life.
But all his other family and his mother's friends have been berating me calling me the ahole for destroying the relationship between him and his mother. I can also see that my fiancé is absolutely crushed by this. So I’m regretting leaving and wish that I had just continued to put up with it like I had before. That way none of this would have happened. So, AITAH?
What do you think of how she handled this awful situation?
Here's what top commenters had to say:
GorditaPollo said:
Nta and enjoy your life without a MIL hovering over you.
SnooWords4839 said:
NTA - Fiancé needs therapy!! His mother is too enmeshed in his life, and he needs to do more than cut her off, he needs to learn she is extremely toxic, before she worms herself back into his life. Best of luck!!
Disastrous-Panda5530 said:
I have no contact with my MIL and it’s amazing. She was awful but your fiancés mom sounds 100 times worse. You are NTA. Even if he didn’t tell him and moved on the next time he found a girlfriend and got serious his mom would do the same sh!t.
thebaker53 said:
It's the best thing that could have happened. Now, never see her again. Live happily ever after.
About a month after her original post, she shared this update on the situation:
To start off I would like to thank everyone for your comments whether they were good or bad! All of them really helped open my eyes to things I wasn’t understanding myself during this time. Now on to the update!
My fiancé and I had extremely long and multiple discussions during this duration of time explaining our thoughts and feelings. To start off I had explained to him that I totally saw how wrong it was after the fact to jump the gun and end things when I very well could have told him and talk to him about what was going on.
I told him that I was just afraid that this was going to be a never ending cycle with his mother and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to deal with that for the rest of my life as I would surely be miserable. But again I apologized to him profusely for not coming to him and showing him what his mother had been up to behind his back and then hurting him by blind siding him and breaking things off.
I also did explain to him though that I believe a part of me didn’t want to tell him because previously although he had stuck up for me, the build up before that was him brushing a lot of the stuff his mother would do off and it hurt me deeply. I explained to him that the future I saw with him, his mother and I was going to be full of anger, hate and just negativity.
I asked him if she could do these things to me before we were even married then what would happen when we are or even when we had children in the future? I didn’t want that for me, for him or for any kids we were to have.
My fiancé explained to me that he realized that he wasn’t fully standing up for me or setting stern boundaries with his mother before and he can’t imagine how that must have made me feel. He said that he deeply regrets not being the man he wanted to be for me especially when we were setting up a future together.
He told me that it was completely unfair of me to go about things the way I did and that it hurt him so much that I just left him and didn’t let him know so he could help deal with the issues. But he said he did now understand why I felt like I couldn’t or felt like I didn’t want too as he was being blinded by the love he had for his mother.
We both have started individual and couples therapy to work through any unresolved issues and issues related to this situation. His individual therapy has had a lot to do with his mother and talking about his mother. Whereas my individual therapy has been about trust issues and communication issues.
We are trying extremely hard to work on this as we both love each other dearly and couldn’t imagine our lives without each other.
As for his mother. My fiancé and I have blocked her and anyone who had sided with her immediately. We have surrounded ourselves with the ones who support us, loves us and see the wrong in what she was doing. She had reached out to both me and my fiancé to apologize and had asked to talk.
We met up with her at a local café to chat to just see if we could salvage anything or see if she was even sorry… to say this was a mistake would be an understatement. But I think it really opened my fiancé’s eyes to how just mean and cruel that woman can be, I had also showed him the messages, voicemails and her friends texts which I should have done in the first place.
So this was kind of the cherry on the cake. I know it was extremely hard for him as he has only seen her as the loving, gentle, hard working single mom that she was for majority of his life. I do hope she realizes her mistakes and tries to go to therapy herself to get the help she needs as I do not wish any ill upon her regardless of what she has done and how she has treated me.