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The original was posted on /r/bestofredditorupdates by /u/Direct-Caterpillar77 on 2024-04-10 06:01:23.
I am not The OOP, OOP is aitadinnerwex
AITA for coming to dinner with my ex and his new GF uninvited?
Originally posted to am-i-the-asshole-official Tumblr
Thanks to u/PitaEnigma for suggesting this BoRU
EDITORS NOTE: Changed the initial “K” to Kim for easier reading
TRIGGER WARNING: emotional manipulation, theft, verbal abuse, controlling behavior, parental alimentation, drug use, mentions of alcoholism, harassing a child and neglect
Original Post Aug 12, 2023**
This situation is long and messy, so I’ll try to include the relevant info only. I (F32) broke up with my long time partner (M33) right before COVID hit. We stayed in the same house during lockdown and continued to live together after lockdown was lifted, because we generally get along and we had a child (F11) to raise together. Over the last 3 years we’ve been roommates and co-parents and that’s it.
One day he was supposed to take our daughter to buy new school clothes, and she came back 10 minutes later in tears. She said they were on their way to the store when his new GF called, and he drove her back home and dropped her off so he could go spend time with her. He even asked our daughter to lie to me for him, but she was tired of covering for him (implying she’d been lying for him for a while now).
When he got home we had a massive argument. I didn’t care if he dated other girls, I cared that for some reason he thought he had to sneak around, and it made him act like a jerk to me and our daughter. I told him if he had been a man about this new girl and just introduced me to her then maybe we could have all been friends, but instead he had to act like a horny teenager. It ended with him moving out to live with his parents.
A couple days later he called and apologized. He said he hoped it wasn’t too late for him to do things right, and he hopes we can all be friends. I was hopeful that we could finally co-parent in peace for the sake of our child.
This is where I may be TA: I have always been close with my ex’s parents, to the point where even after we broke up I would be invited over regularly for dinner. They said even if I wasn’t their son’s partner I’m still their grandchild’s mother, and that makes me family.
So one day when my daughter texts me while at my ex’s parent’s house and invites me to dinner because they’re having my favorite meal, I don’t think twice about coming over even though my ex and his GF I’ve never met now live there. I figured everyone had to be okay with it, since my daughter was inviting me.
I end up having dinner with my ex’s parents and daughter, but my ex only comes upstairs to grab two plates of food and goes back downstairs. I ask my ex’s mom why and she says his GF doesn’t feel well today. Whatever, I think. She’s just sick and I’ll meet her another day. I have a perfectly pleasant dinner with my ex in-laws, help clean up, and make a promise to bring them a coconut cake (ex father-in-law’s favorite) and take my daughter home.
Later my ex blows up my phone with texts and calls, saying it was so weird and rude that I came over for dinner uninvited. That I made his new GF uncomfortable, and like she wasn’t welcome there. And that I caused trouble in their relationship because she assumes we must still be in love for me to come over and see his parents out of the blue like that, because “exes don’t do that. it’s creepy.”
I had a talk with my daughter and asked her calmly if she had asked everyone else if it was ok if I come over before she texted me, and she sheepishly said she didn’t know she had to ask since it had never been a problem before. (I didn’t tell her about her dad’s meltdown at me, or tell her dad that she’s the one who invited me. She’s a child and shouldn’t be involved)
Instead I just told him I’m sorry me dropping by made things awkward, but I thought he wanted us all to be friends from now on and I figured this was a good place to start being friends. He said there was no way she’d want to be my friend now that I made her feel uncomfortable in her own home.
It wasn’t my intention to make anyone uncomfortable, but I admit I’d be perturbed if he brought this woman into MY home and I had not even been warned first. So AITA?
VERDICT: NOT THE ASSHOLE
UPDATE: My daughter has gone no contact with her father and grandparents for the foreseeable future. Sept 1, 2023
Hey, all. I saw a post here recently about not getting a lot of updates to stories submitted to this blog yet and figured I could give mine, even though it’s a sad one. I also maybe need to vent a little about this situation. Under the cut to save people’s dashboards:
(from now on, ex’s new gf will be Kim, ex father-in-law will be FIL and ex mother-in-law will be MIL)
I’ll start from the day after the dinner and try to give a concise recap of events.
The day after the dinner I bring FIL the coconut cake I promised, but not wanting to stir up trouble I text that I’m bringing it over instead of dropping by unannounced like I normally would. FIL meets me on the porch instead of inviting me in like he normally would, and I gathered from his distant but polite tone and body language that he was basically shooing me away. I was hurt that a man who had always treated me like a daughter was being cold, but I didn’t say anything about it and I left.
Over the next couple weeks my ex in-laws continue to hold me at arms length where once I would consider them not only family, but close friends. I used to take MIL to doctor’s appointments and shopping trips, but texts asking her about her next appointment or inviting her to come shopping with me went unanswered. I used to go fishing and go-karting with FIL, but these invites also stopped. I had a sneaking suspicion my ex was behind the sudden change in my ex in-laws, and I also started to notice a change in my daughter.
Because my ex and I were never actually married, there was no actual custody agreement between us. She would just text her dad if she wanted him to come pick her up, or text me if she wanted to come home. She’s always been a daddy’s girl and spent more time with him than she did home with me, and I was fine with that. But after the dinner she spent a lot more time home with me, and one day she went with her dad only to call me within the hour, crying and asking me to pick her up. On the way home I gently reminded her that she could talk to me about anything, even if it was hard. That adjusting to her dad having Kim in his life would be a challenge, but if she had any problems she could tell me and I would help her fix them, and she told me what had transpired over my ex and Kim’s relationship from her point of view:
My ex and Kim had been dating for about 6 months before my daughter told me, and she pretty much knew about it from the beginning. My ex told her she couldn’t tell me about it, and she agreed because she didn’t want us to fight. My ex also had Kim around my daughter from the beginning, and my daughter was wary of her at first but started to like her. (so the people saying I should meet Kim before she was around my daughter, that ship unfortunately sailed long ago)
The day after the dinner MIL texted my daughter and basically said “You’re not in any trouble, but don’t mention your mom around Kim again”. My daughter texted back asking why and she said “It’s just easier not to upset her”.
Kim started doing all the things with my ex in-laws I used to do. She took MIL to doctor’s appointments, she took MIL shopping, she went fishing with FIL and tried to replicate my coconut cake. My daughter tried talking to her dad and said it felt like Kim was trying to replace me, and my dad just said “she’s just being their daughter-in-law, your mother isn’t their daughter-in-law anymore”. Still, my daughter is stubborn and insisted it wasn’t fair that her mother was being excluded from the family. Her dad just kept repeating “she’s not family”, to which my daughter yelled “She’s my mom! That makes her more family than Kim”.
At this, Kim apparently got up and left the room while my ex ran after her. Kim didn’t just leave the room though, she took her keys and got in her car and drove away. My ex drove after her, and MIL and FIL started scolding my daughter and saying she needed to apologize to Kim when she got back. That’s when my daughter called me in tears and asked me to come pick her up. She’s insistent that she doesn’t want to go back over there until they all apologize to her, and I don’t blame her.
I’m honestly at a loss at all this. My ex never had a problem with me being close with his parents even though we were broken up. Hell, I was the one who stayed with MIL in the hospital for 4 months after she had a heart attack and subsequent heart surgery in 2021. I was the one who went to doctor’s appointments, and organized her medications, and helped her with physical therapy. I was the one cooking meals every night and bringing them to FIL because both he and my ex have been spoiled rotten by MIL and don’t know how to cook for themselves. I was the one cleaning the house for them for over a year while …
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