Woman Tells Her Daughter The Truth About Her Divorce After Learning Her Ex Was Claiming She Cheated On Him
She wanted to be honest about her & her husband's divorce, but her daughter wishes she'd kept quiet.
Karolina Grabowska / Pexels A woman is under fire with her family after she outed her ex-husband's bisexuality to their daughter.
Posting to the subreddit "r/AmItheA--hole" (AITA), a forum where people ask for input on whether they were in the wrong in a situation, the woman described how she arrived at the decision her family is calling "petty."
In her Reddit post, the woman wrote that her divorce from her ex has wreaked havoc on her relationship with her daughter, who says her mother "ruined her life" by ending her marriage.
She split with her husband after she caught him having a threesome with a man and a woman
She writes that "he had been cheating for over half [of] the amount of years we had been together," but it wasn't until she caught him that she knew the truth of his sexuality.
After they went their separate ways, she never intended to out him to their 15-year-old daughter, because she didn't want to "turn her away from her dad or make her hate him."
But things took a turn recently when her daughter became "very hateful and disrespectful towards me."
After a long period of discord, her daughter finally told her mother she "ruined her life" and blamed her for the divorce, saying if her mother had "kept my legs closed she would have still had her family back together."
It turns out her ex-husband lied about the divorce, telling their daughter that it was her mother who cheated.
The Redditor discovered several text messages between her daughter and her father in which her daughter described how she "didn’t want to be near" her mother and was "disgusted" by her mother's supposed infidelity.
And her ex-husband made no attempt to tell their daughter the truth—so she decided to do so herself.
She writes that she "sat my daughter down and told her that... I won’t be held accountable for actions that weren’t mine."
She made sure to avoid "any and all questions that I couldn’t say without [her ex-husband's] perspective," but broke the news to her daughter about her father's sexuality and infidelity and how it had resulted in their divorce.
She writes that her daughter was shocked by the news, and apologized for her behavior towards her mother.
Obviously, outing someone's LGBTQ identity is serious business.
But the Redditor clarified that she didn't out her ex out of "petty revenge," but solely because "I can't have my relationship with [my daughter] ruined either."
Regardless, she writes that she is "now getting blasted by all of my family and his" for breaking the news to their daughter.
Despite the drama, most people on Reddit agreed that the woman did nothing wrong given the lies her ex-husband allowed to go unchallenged.
Many were emphatic that the woman's ex-husband was the bad guy in this scenario.
One wrote that "he's so trash he's not worth anything" for having said his "partner cheated [to] try to get their kids to hate the FAITHFUL parent."
Many others couldn't believe the families were sticking by him, with one wondering why "both families are angry about her telling her daughter the truth" but "have no problems with the father telling such horrible lies???"
One commenter also pointed out the ex-husband's actions might even amount to illegal "parental alienation" and urged the woman to "keep any messages where he admitted he was the one who cheated."
Another pointed out that there was an easy way to have avoided all this drama.
They reasoned that if the woman's ex-husband "didn't want [their daughter] to know," he could have simply not "lied about you to your daughter" and "kept his mouth shut."
Hard to argue with that.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.