Sometimes the most innocent thing happens that can lead to consequences we would never have seen coming. And this is the reality for one teenager (OP) whose day was going fine, for the most part, until it wasn’t.
Now, in the blink of an eye, her family dynamic has shifted so much that she’s still trying to understand everything that happened.
She took to Reddit to share what happened in hopes of getting some advice on how to proceed.
Posting to Reddit’s AITA community, OP explained that she’s 17 years old. Her parents had her young and the two never got married. Growing up and before the issue happened, OP shared that she lives with both parents relatively equally.
“I usually spend 1 week with my dad and 1 with my mom since they live pretty close and are friendly towards the other,” she wrote. “My dad is single now, but my mom has been dating Jerry (38M) for the past 8 years, he's amazing not only towards my mom but with me too.”
Thankfully, Jerry also gets along with her dad, telling Reddit the two are friends, “and I know I can trust them both.”
The real issue is her mom. “My problem is my mom who never had any issue letting me know that I ruined her life. Sometimes she's an amazing mom, sometimes she's just not and this was one of those times.”
A few days before hitting up Reddit, something happened at home that changed everything.
“The issue happened last friday, while I was at the shower I felt a small lump on the right side of one of my breasts,” she explained. “I freaked out and thought that if I ignored it it would just disappear, I kept showering.”
When she got out of the shower, she dressed part way and wanted to check the lump she found. “I started to [inspect] myself again and I had the door in front of me, out of nowhere Jerry opens the door,” she wrote.
“We both react, I cover myself and he turns around, starts to say sorry, closes the door and leave. I felt bad of course, but I know that Jerry didn't do it with ill intention since the shower wasn't running and I forgot to lock the door.”
A few hours later, Jerry went to speak to OP to apologize again.
“Jerry comes into my room and starts to apologize to me,” OP explained, and “he says that since he saw my door closed he thought I was in my room and that he was in an emergency to get into the bathroom.”
He acknowledged that “things will inevitably be weird between us for a while and that it's best for us to tell my mom. I ask him to please don't tell her but he says that if we keep it a secret it won't look good and that my mom has to know, that he'll give me all the space I want, but we can't and shouldn't keep this between us.”
She understood this and agreed to speak to her mom. So that’s what they did – but it didn’t go too well.
“We both went down and tell my mom,” OP explained, and “she starts to berate me for 'flashing’ to Jerry, that she always knew I wanted her man and starts to call me names.”
Her mom clearly blamed her and felt as if it was intentional. Jerry even tried to set the record straight.
“Jerry tries to explain to her that it wasn't like that and that it was him who accidently opened the door.” But that didn’t matter. “My mom says that he doesn't need to defend me and she says that I have to go to my room without dinner for being a s*ut.”
And that’s what OP did. She went into her room and called her dad.
“I called my dad to pick me up and explained what happened and that I didn't [feel] comfortable here, not for Jerry but for my mom,” she explained. “He then tells me to pick more stuff than usual and that he'll be here in no time.”
It didn’t take long for her dad to get her. “After then minutes I go downstairs and my mom and dad are fighting and he's telling her that I won't be back until she apologizes to me.”
Her mom then blamed her again, calling her out for "letting my dad know our personal business" and for "lying to him.”
The following day, OP shared that her mom called, angry still, to say Jerry had “dumped her. Since then, she’s been living with her dad and was happy Jerry stuck around until she “was safe,” but now she’s having second thoughts.
She turned it over to Reddit, wanting to know if she was in the wrong for calling her dad.
“Your mom is a mean woman, and you never have to keep it a secret when somebody is treating you poorly,” one person wrote in the comments. “You do not owe her immediate forgiveness, if at all. Do not let her cut you down or bully you — she sounds like she has some toxic issues that she needs to work out on her own, without you around as her punching bag.”
“You are innocent of any and all wrong doing,” someone else shared. “Your mom is a piece of work. You did the correct thing by calling dad.”
“Jerry is a real stand-up guy,” another person wrote. “I really thought this was going to go in another direction and I'm glad it didn't. Given your first statement about the things your mom says to you it was only a matter of time before Jerry dumped her.”
“You did everything right and your mom did everything wrong,” pointed out another commenter. “She has a lot of issues to work on and I'm glad that you're somewhere safe.”
No one should be spoken to like OP was. We’re glad she had somewhere soft to land.
These stories are based on posts found on Reddit. Reddit is a user-generated social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website where registered members submit content to the site and can up- or down-vote the content. The accuracy and authenticity of each story cannot be confirmed by our staff.
