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Her husband died while on a trip to visit his mistress. Now she wants to be part of the funeral.
By John Sundholm — Written on Feb 06, 2023
A recently widowed woman is struggling to justify her decision to exclude her husband's mistress from his funeral.
Posting to the "r/AmITheA--hole" (AITA) subReddit, a forum where people go to figure out if they were in the wrong in a conflict, she detailed what happened.
In her post, she explained that her husband died in a car accident recently while visiting his mistress.
The mistress asked to be included at the funeral, and the widow was having none of it.
The woman's husband had lied and said he was traveling for business, but he was actually traveling to visit his mistress.
His wife didn't learn of the cheating after his death.
The car accident occurred "halfway across the country," the widow writes, and she soon found out his "work trip...was actually...a cheating trip."
After his death, she found out he'd been having the affair for the last five years.
Worse still, the couple has three children, a seven-year-old daughter and two sons ages 14 and 19.
The widow has only told the eldest child in order to protect the younger ones from learning about their dad's infidelity.
Shortly after the death, the mistress asked to be included at the funeral, and the widow told her that "wouldn't be possible and she should respect our privacy."
The widow went on to say that while her eldest son is "trying to be strong" to protect his younger siblings, he "is battling with his anger and grief."
Despite the widow telling the mistress not to come to her husband's funeral, 'she was there when we arrived at the graveyard.'
The widow had her brother remove the woman from the funeral. Afterward, she got a text from the mistress calling her "selfish" and "saying I robbed her of the chance to say goodbye properly."
The widow writes that she believes she did the right thing by putting her children's needs first and that the mistress "had no business there and her presence would only cause drama."
Still, she can't quite get past how she handled it.
"I've found myself justifying my actions to myself repeatedly since receiving that text," she writes.
Commenters agreed that the widow had done nothing wrong and owed the mistress nothing.
One user wrote of the mistress, "She apparently knew she was having an affair with a married man and father and she is unreasonable in expecting anything from you."
"I'm sorry for what you're going through," they added, "this must be a hell of a time."
Another user agreed. "These are not the actions of a woman who didn’t know the man she was seeing had a family," they wrote. "She knew. She didn’t care."
In fact, many were shocked by the mistress's gall.
As one user put it, "She even had the audacity to approach [the widow] before the funeral even happened and thought she was in a position to ask for anything."
Another person added, "She also had the audacity to call OP selfish. Disgusting."
And one person felt the widow had handled things better than most people could be expected to.
They wrote, "I would be hard pressed not to point out to her that if it weren't for their affair he would still be alive (since he wouldn't have been in that place at that time otherwise)."
Another user summed the situation up perfectly. "I’ll say this for the woman, she has balls..."
"She’s grieving, I get it. But she has no right to demand that she get to participate... [The widow] did right by her kids... Other woman did right by . . . no one."
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.