Woman finds out parents have been spreading 'lewd' rumors about her husband for 10 yrs.
When this woman is appalled by her parents, she asks Reddit:
"AITA for avoiding my parents after discovering they were spreading SUPER inappropriate lies about my husband and I?"
Last year, my husband (H) and I met my parents, aunt & uncle for Thanksgiving (they had been vacationing together a few days prior). As we were leaving, my aunt (who was visibly upset) pulled me aside, “I need to talk to you, can you call me in a few days? ”I asked if she was ok, she said “yes, I just need to ask you something, but not now.”
When I called to ask what was going on. My aunt said “I heard something that seems very out of character for you and I want to see if it’s true. Evidently, a few days before thanksgiving, my parents told her an untrue story about how my current husband and I met. To note, I was separated at the time from my now ex-husband when we met.
She explained, according to my parents: I met (H) while online soliciting for a proposed threesome with my ex-husband as a last-ditch effort to salvage my then failing marriage.
However during this tryst, (H) and I supposedly realize we had a connection which lead us to be together while choosing to dissolve my previous marriage. (My parents shared more gross details, but I’ll spare you).
I was shocked as NONE of this was true. We met at work through mutual friends and our romantic relationship developed slowly over a period of time. I had repeatedly told my parents how we met, and even introuduced our mutual friends to my parents at our wedding as “the ones who got us together”.
So, I FaceTime my parents and ask them why they’re lying about us behind our backs? They look me dead in the eyes and say “because that’s what you told us.” EXCUSE ME?!
When I refuted this, my dad proceeds to get angry at ME saying that I must have amnesia as my mom stormed off refusing to discuss the issue. The rest of the call is me sitting in silence, while he attempted to gaslight me. I’m dumbfounded.
A few days later, I get a call from my cousin. She explains that my dad had told her husband the same story almost 8 YEARS AGO! Which they had believed until now. My cousin apologized for not saying anything sooner but the story made them so uncomfortable they didn’t know what to do.
H and I wrote my parents an email explaining what we had discovered and asked them some simple questions like: Why did you make this up? Who else have you told? etc.
We’ve been emailing back and forth for almost year and gotten nowhere. Their story keeps changing, the blame keeps shifting, and they have continuously tried to diminish the seriousness of this issue even saying “no one thinks any less of you because of it”.
WHAT? It never happened. Period. The only apology we’ve gotten is “we’re sorry for upsetting you”. You mean you’re not sorry for lying about your daughter for 10 years?
Most recently, they have almost demanded that we forgive them and “move on”. Since we haven’t forgiven them yet, we’re “responsible” for my mother crying all the time, and essentially breaking the family apart.
So, AITA for wanting to continue to avoid my parents even though I'm tearing the family apart?
Let's see what readers thought.
astreja writes:
NTA. "Don't contact us again until you've emailed everyone you told your lies to and confessed in writing. As for forgiveness, we'll revisit that after your confessions and not an instant before."
sinasnow writes:
NTA. Why are they discussing their child’s sex life at all, let alone in such explicit detail and with so many other people? Wtaf? You should ask them this over and over again every single time they try to engage on this topic and try to deflect by saying things like “nobody thinks less of you for it.”
That’s neither here nor there. This is an inappropriate thing for parents to be talking about amongst themselves. It is also grossly inappropriate for them to be gossiping about this with friends and extended family.
entorpynchaose writes:
Omg, NTA. So, even if you had met that way (I know you didn’t) and your parents did know, they would have been assholes if they told anyone else.
So, even more so because it’s not true, they haven’t really apologized, and they just want you to get it over it. Yeah, maybe when they apologize, and call every single person they told or the story got spread to and tell them the correct story.